Quote:The film “the Dead Season” served another purpose. Its director Savva Kulish was openly given advisers from the KGB. The film was preceded by a 10-minute speech by a real Soviet intelligence officer - Rudolf Abel (Vilyam Fisher) - who was arrested in the USA by the FBI in 1957 and in 1962 was exchanged for the U-2 spy plane pilot Gary Powers. The KGB intelligence officer’s speech was intended to make the film more “documentary”. The “Dead Season” presented the KGB version of Konon Molody’s exposure in London, his imprisonment and safe return to the Motherland.

In the Dead Season, KGB intelligence officers were depicted in a manner reminiscent of the famous British spy movie the Ipcress File (1965): they were the heroes who bravely penetrated the German army’s highest echelons during World War II and who kept fighting against inhuman Fascist scientists who not only escaped punishment but were hired by the Western intelligence after the war. The main character, inspired by Konan Molody, was a Soviet intelligence officer who was sent to the West to unmask a German scientist who was developing a new type of weapon, even more terrible than the atom bomb.

The “Dead Season” was extremely successful: more than 100 million people watched this film during its first nine months.

Propaganda, KGB style

Quote:Rishi Sunak says RAF Typhoon jets are ready to shoot down spy balloons at a moment's notice
as Prime Minister vows to do 'whatever it takes' to keep Britain safe

*Defence Secretary Ben Wallace to assess the dangers of suspected spy balloons
*Four objects in US or Canadian airspace have been shot down in just over a week

'Rishi Sunak today revealed that RAF Typhoon jets are poised to shoot down spy balloons at a moment's notice.
The Prime Minister vowed to do 'whatever it takes to keep the country safe' in the wake of UFOs flying over the
US and Canada.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is undertaking a review into suspicious flying objects, amid fears Chinese spy
balloons might have already targeted the UK. It comes after US fighter jets shot down an 'unidentified object'
over Lake Huron yesterday - the fourth object to enter US or Canadian airspace in just over a week.

Quizzed this morning about whether spying devices had already been seen in British airspace, Mr Sunak said
he could not comment 'in detail on national security matters'. But he revealed that UK fighter jets were at '24/7
readiness' to scramble and shoot down any hostile objects...'

Quote:Filming began in spring 1986, in Tecumseh, a depressed rural Nebraskan town which doubled as Milford in Amerika's Heartland. Smitten by the glamour of Hollywood, the local press greeted the film with civic boosterism, and the populace lined up for jobs as extras. The relatively few Nebraskan peace activists who protested the film's militaristic implications were generally ignored or dismissed as spoilsports.
..
The protests focused on several themes. Most frequently, the film was decried for fostering an unduly paranoid view of the USSR, a criticism shared even by some Establishment figures, like ex-CIA chief William Colby. Other elite critics focused on the film's negative depiction of United Nations’ peacekeepers as a brutal tool of Soviet domination. Prodded by concerned Americans and Canadians, UN officials and supporters joined the emerging controversy.

Critics further to the left were angered by the film's portrayal of socialist and even liberal interpretations of American society as Soviet propaganda, by its perceived stereotyping of women that provided grounds for a feminist critique of the film, and by its promotion of militarism. FAIR’s founder Jeff Cohen called the mini-series a commercial for Reagan's Star Wars program (Waters 1986)

One suspects, however, that much of the opposition was animated less by the film's (mis)representation of specific groups and viewpoints than by the “structure of feeling” (Williams 1977) that it both expressed and evoked.


Amerika was, in the very words of an ABC commercial, a "call to arms”. It sought to "revitalize" American patriotism, without clearly distinguishing it from superpower chauvinism, and to equate it with an ideologically narrow set of values, such as "freedom" defined as rugged individualism. It created a mood of siege from without and betrayal from within, and provided a myth of national degradation and potential redemption through a charismatic (male) leader who personifies national ideals. It offered the pleasure of a narrative in which American audiences could, yet again, revel in seeing themselves as victims, underdogs and rebels—an inversion of their system's real role in the world which had been evident in popular literature even following the US atomic bombing of Japan (Boyer 1985, 14)

In short, Amerika was a litmus test of political sensibilities. It was most likely to offend Americans whose social experience or historical memory—most notably from the counterculture of the Vietnam war era—gave them reason to fear the intensification of American nationalism into an unreflective chauvinism. It was a lightning rod for Americans who felt the dominant media had been complicit in the political consequences of Reaganism—renewed Cold War tensions, the containment of domestic dissent, growing economic inequality, and a militaristic and interventionist foreign policy. Similar sentiments regarding the US corporate media’s complicity in massaging public opinion prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, catalyzed outrage and resurgent media activism two decades later (McChesney 2004, 279-80).

Quote:BILLINGS- Montana’s 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls is responsible for 150 launch facilities across Montana.

It’s a historic and complex program with national security interest, and some are suspecting it’s the reason a Chinese surveillance balloon was seen floating above the state this week.

“I’d like to find an answer for why it's hanging over our area,” Lewistown lawmaker Dan Bartel said Friday.

Bartel is a state senator representing a district in Fergus County, an area with some of Malmstrom’s missile sites.

The Department of Defense has referenced these critical zones in its media briefings on the balloon in recent days. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense has been making plans for a massive overhaul of the nuclear missiles scattered across the state.

The upgrades are something Bartel is familiar with because 50 of those missile locations are in Fergus County.

He says the upgrades were set to start in 2025. Now that’s been pushed back, and talks about upgrades with the Air Force suddenly became radio silent.

“We’ve been told that the project has been pushed out. It’s been pushed out two years,” he said. “They are having some redesign issues with the missiles themselves.”

The sites are spread across a 13,800-square-mile missile field that covers parts of eight counties: Cascade, Chouteau, Fergus, Judith Basin, Lewis and Clark, Meagher, Teton and Wheatland.

The project will replace the aging Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile system.

“The missiles have been around since the '60s so now they are being upgraded to the new technology,” said Bartel.

It includes the complete renovation of all 450 existing missile launch facilities, and the construction of two dozen new missile alert facilities all over the northwest, including Malmstrom Air Force Base, Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, and F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming.

Bartel says the presence of the military in town has been a big boom for the local economy and helped maintain county roads.

But when the construction starts for the missile upgrades, the town will grow even more.

"First estimates are there would be about 1,500 new people during construction moving in and around these missile areas,” he said.

Bartel said he hopes they can put permanent infrastructure in place for the Lewistown workforce hub so that after work is completed, it can be converted for community uses – whether housing or something else.

KTVQ Montana

Quote:Amid heightened focus on airborne national security risks, U.S. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), chair of the Senate Armed Services Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee and member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Marco Rubio (R-FL), Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, are leading a bipartisan push for full funding of their unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) office, formally known as the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).

Gillibrand and Rubio’s groundbreaking AARO was created following their UAP amendment in the FY22 NDAA to focus the Department of Defense (DoD) on resolving UAP sightings, improve data sharing between DoD and the Intelligence Community on UAP sightings, address national security concerns, and report health effects people may experience in relation to UAP events. AARO has access to DoD and Intelligence Community UAP data and is required to provide Congress with briefings and reports on UAPs. FY23 funding falls short of what AARO needs to fulfill its mission and maintain American air supremacy.

In addition to Gillibrand and Rubio, the letter pushing for full funding of AARO is signed by Senators Warner (D-VA), Graham (R-SC), Heinrich (D-NM), Cramer (R-ND), Shaheen (D-NH), Kelly (D-AZ), Warren (D-MA), Kaine (D-VA), Bennet (D-CO), Hickenlooper (D-CO), Blumenthal (D-CT), Klobuchar (D-MN), Sullivan (R-AK), and Rosen (D-NV).

“AARO provides the opportunity to integrate and resolve threats and hazards to the U.S., while also offering increased transparency to the American people and reducing the stigma around this issue of high public interest,” wrote the senators. “AARO’s success will depend on robust funding for its activities and cooperation between the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community. As such, we respectfully request your assistance in securing the necessary funding and organizational support for AARO’s success and longevity.”

For the full letter, please click here and see below.

Quote:Acting? This is the real thing (The Times, Nov 25, 2002)

For ‘actor’s actor’ Roger Allam, starring with Gillian Anderson could finally be the making of him.

AT FIRST appearances there appears to be a mismatch of glamour. When Gillian Anderson, radiant international star of the X-Files, takes to the London stage in What the Night is For her partner on stage is Roger Allam. He’s the sort of self-effacing, slightly broke theatre actor who will take the bus home afterwards while Miss Anderson is being ferried about in a limo.

Allam’s background is solidly Anglican. His father was vicar of St Mary Woolnoth, the Hawksmoor church celebrated by T.S. Eliot. At Manchester University young Roger took singing lessons from John Hargreaves at the ENO but abandoned the idea of being a professional opera baritone and went into the theatre. He joined the RSC in 1981, playing a huge variety of roles, touring and having a ball prior to a year’s run in the RSC’s Les Misérables.

Quote:German and Italian detainees

Under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover , the FBI began a secret five-year plan in 1935 to investigate individuals residing in the United States who maintained ties to communist or Nazi organizations. With assistance from the Military Intelligence Division (MID) and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), by 1938 the FBI had developed a list of 2,500 alleged communists and Nazis living inside the United States. Just a year later, with war looming in Europe, U.S. officials claimed that the FBI was monitoring "more than ten million persons."

Quote:When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, eighty-one years ago today, it ushered in one of the most shameful periods in American history. The wrongful incarceration of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent tore families apart. Men, women, and children were forced to abandon their homes, their jobs, their communities, their businesses, and their way of life. They were sent to inhumane concentration camps simply because of their heritage. And in a tragic miscarriage of justice, the Supreme Court upheld these immoral and unconstitutional policies.

Despite losing liberty, security, and the fundamental freedoms that rightfully belonged to them, 33,000 Japanese Americans volunteered or were drafted for service in the U.S. military during World War II. While their own families were behind barbed wires, Japanese Americans fought in defense of the nation’s freedom with valor and courage.

The incarceration of Japanese Americans reminds us what happens when racism, fear, and xenophobia go unchecked. As we battle for the soul of our nation, we continue to combat the corrosive effects of hate on our democracy and the intergenerational trauma resulting from it. We reaffirm the Federal Government’s formal apology to Japanese Americans for the suffering inflicted by these policies. And we commit to Nidoto Nai Yoni – to “Let It Not Happen Again.”
The White House

Quote:One of the interesting ones to pop up again and again is the question of whether the United States warned Hiroshima and Nagasaki about their impending destruction. It’s a discussion in this case that has actually been confused by the abundance of context-less primary sources on the Internet. In particular, the Truman Library posted (some time back) copies of leaflets that it has labeled as being dropped on August 6, 1945 — the day of the Hiroshima bombing. These leaflets have proliferated across the web onto other reputable sites, like PBS’s Truman resources. The understandable result is that a lot of amateur historians out there have concluded that indeed, we did warn the Japanese.

But the truth, as with many things, is more complicated. I want to talk about three potential “warnings,” here, as both a means to help clarify this issue (to any other future Googlers about this topic), and also to use it as a case study for why history is more than just finding documents.

A Day Too Late

(02-20-2023, 05:12 AM)EndtheMadnessNow Wrote: Of the 12 American POWs killed by Little Boy, 10 died immediately. Naval aviator Normand Brissette and Army Staff Sgt. Ralph Neal dove into a water-filled cistern but were still burned by the thermal pulse and received lethal radiation doses. Both died on August 19, 1945...

Quote:On Tuesday, investigators searched several companies in northern and southern Germany. It is suspected that the companies have been exporting highly toxic chemicals to Russia without permission for years. Some of these substances can also be used to produce chemical weapons, German media reported.

According to information from public broadcasters NDR and WDR and the newspaper "Sueddeutsche Zeitung", investigators assume that the substances in question include chemical compounds that can be used as raw materials for the production of chemical and biological warfare agents - e.g. mustard gas.

German companies suspected of exporting chemical weapons components to Russia (Polish press article, Aug 31, 2022)