Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Oct. 2, 1923: An article titled "Is Utopia Really Possible?" appears in Russian newspaper Izvestia, promoting space travel to expand humanity’s horizons. The piece notes that U.S. scientist Robert Goddard’s rocket experiments provide a possible means to escape Earth’s orbit.


This touches off a Soviet science fiction mania. By one count, 250 articles are published in Russian in the next decade on space flight, far more than in the U.S. A 1924 Soviet film "Aelita, the Queen of Mars" imagines a trip to the planet. This movie became such a hit in the Soviet Union that many new parents named their baby girls "Aelita".


Oct 2, 1950: "Peanuts" comic strip, authored by Charles Schultz, makes its debut. Published in seven newspapers, including in his hometown paper the Minneapolis Star.




Oct 2, 1961: Birmingham, Alabama media personality Bette Lee Hanson [1926-2022] ® and her mother, Knudena Johnson (L), began a one-week lockdown in a fallout shelter at the Alabama State Fair.



Born Oct 2, 1920, Louis Onorato "Jeff" Giuffrida (died Nov 20, 2012) former U.S. Army colonel, after a 48 year career as first serving in the Marine Corps as an Infantry Officer in 1943 during the Pacific Theater of Operations as a platoon leader and company commander until 1946. He left the Marine Corps to accept a Regular Army commission and later served with the 7th Infantry Division during the Korean Conflict. He became Reagan era FEMA director serving in the position from 1981-1985 and resigned following a congressional fraud investigation.



In 1970 while at the US Army War College, Giuffrida wrote a thesis (PDF) titled "National Survival—Racial Imperative", outlining a military contingency plan for the forcible relocation of some 500,000 black militant Americans to concentration camps in the event of a national emergency involving racial strife. Though debatable as the thesis states it would take 14 years to relocate them forcibly and appears to question if this is even realistic given the history of Japanese internment camps. His thesis became available after a journo filed a FOIA in 2014.

Several years after leaving FEMA, Louis O. Giuffrida consulted on security matters for Lyndon LaRouche's defense team in his mail fraud trial.


CSPAN: Government and Counter Terrorism Responses (Feb 21, 1986)

1984 correspondence between Louis O. Giuffrida & CIA deputy dir John N. McMahon: (note Project MEDUSA)


Archive.org (FEMA Dir Giuffrida's request letter to CIA attached at link about a secure vault constructed for ALL intelligence, but need secure computer terminals within the vault...he recommends a SAFE IBM system)

CRISIS INFORMATION AND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CIMS) : PROJECT MEDUSA

In another 'Crisis' "MEDUSA" project was a directed-energy non-lethal weapon designed by WaveBand Corporation in 2003-2004 for temporary personnel incapacitation...i.e. Crowd Control.



U.S. Strategic Command

That's 14 subs carrying 20 Trident II D5LE SLBMs apiece, each armed with an average of 4-5 warheads per SLBM, the 90-kt W76-1, the 8-kt W76-2, or the crowd pleaser 455-kt W88 totaling 280 SLBMs and 1,120-1,400 warheads.

Yet, USAF for some maddening reason "needs" at least 400 vulnerable new ICBMs armed with up to 1,200 warheads. And this is aside from 300 or so nuclear gravity bombs (10-360-kt B61-7s, 400-kt B61-11s, and the city killers of 1.2-Mt B83-1s) AND air-launched cruise missiles (5-150-kt W80-1s) deployed with 20 B-2A and 46 B-52H bombers. And that's just what is allowed under New START Treaty, which expires on February 4, 2026.

Aside from whatever you think about nukes, you'll be pleased to hear that there is no significant or sustained opposition in Congress to rebuilding and upgrading the entire nuclear arsenal. In fact, we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars over the last decade and we're on track to spend hundreds of billions more.

The Congressional Budget Office (USCBO) published in July its latest update on the costs of US nuclear weapons. Bottom line: US nuclear weapons and some weapons-related programs will consume $52.4 billion in 2023 and $756 billion through 2032, $122 billion more than its last estimate.

BTW, that massive cost excludes costs to manage and "clean up" large amounts of radioactive waste left over from manufacturing 70,000 bombs and warheads, compensation for people harmed by past production and testing activities, nonproliferation/threat reduction, and ballistic missile defenses.


Meanwhile, UK Veterans wear long-awaited Nuclear Test Medals in public for first time:




Oct 2, 1961: the battleship USS North Carolina collided with the floating seafood restaurant Fergus' Ark on the Cape Fear River in Wilmington. It was the second time a Navy vessel almost sank the restaurant (which had been a USCG barracks during WWII). A sub hit it in 1955. Not many can say that they survived a submarine and battleship attack!


The Fergus Ark is part of Wilmington history, but The Boat is a legend in Florida, too


Oct 1990: German re-unification. The CIA allegedly initiates Operation Rosewood, hiring newly unemployed Stasi staff to retrieve files. The Rosenholz files are a collection of 381 CD-ROMs containing 280,000 files with information on persons who were sources and targets or employees and helpers in the focus of the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (HVA, “Main Directorate for Reconnaissance”), the primary foreign intelligence agency of the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany).



How the Rosenholz files ended up in the hands of the CIA during the German reunification is not known. However, the story goes they were initially analyzed by the United States only, but finally returned to Germany in 2003 after long negotiations. The exact reason for the duration of the negotiations is still debated among scholars.

CIA Booty: The “Rosenholz-Archives” Myth and Reality | The "Rosenholz" files


Oct 2nd: In an effort to prolong his ailing mother from finding out about the reunification of Germany the next day, Alex celebrates the Day of the Republic for East Germany (which occurs on the 7th October) with his mother.