Modern History (1800 – present)

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

Sixty Years Ago, the U.S. Exploded A Nuclear Bomb in Outer Space
by James Felton
July12, 2022

Introduction:

(IFL Science) On July 9, 1962, crowds gathered on the beaches of Honolulu, Hawaii, and watched as the US detonated a nuclear bomb in outer space.

Known as Starfish Prime, the explosion was part of a series of high-altitude nuclear tests known somewhat innocuously as "Operation Fishbowl". Five nuclear devices were set off during the tests, with Starfish being the largest at approximately 1.4 megatons (the equivalent in terms of energy discharge of 1.4 million tons of TNT being detonated all at once).

After the bomb was detonated some 400 kilometers (249 miles) above Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean, and auroras were seen across the sky as electronics began to fail.

"At Kwaialein, 1400 miles to the west, a dense overcast extended the length of the eastern horizon to a height of 5 or 8 degrees," one eyewitness of the event said, as recorded in a military report.

"At 0900 RC a brilliant white flash burned through the clouds rapidly changing to an expanding green ball of irradiance extending into the clear sky above the overcast. From its surface extruded great white fingers, resembling cirro-stratus clouds, which rose to 40 degrees above the horizon in sweeping arcs turning downward toward the poles and disappearing in seconds to be replaced by spectacular concentric cirrus like rings moving out from the blast at tremendous initial velocity, finally stopping when the outermost ring was 50 degrees overhead. "

Read more here: https://www.iflscience.com/60-years-ag ... ace-64400


That is not the Sun.
Image credit: US Gov/Public domain

[Nanotechandmorefuture]

Sixty Years Ago, the U.S. Exploded A Nuclear Bomb in Outer Space
by James Felton
July12, 2022

Introduction:

(IFL Science) On July 9, 1962, crowds gathered on the beaches of Honolulu, Hawaii, and watched as the US detonated a nuclear bomb in outer space.

Known as Starfish Prime, the explosion was part of a series of high-altitude nuclear tests known somewhat innocuously as "Operation Fishbowl". Five nuclear devices were set off during the tests, with Starfish being the largest at approximately 1.4 megatons (the equivalent in terms of energy discharge of 1.4 million tons of TNT being detonated all at once).

After the bomb was detonated some 400 kilometers (249 miles) above Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean, and auroras were seen across the sky as electronics began to fail.

"At Kwaialein, 1400 miles to the west, a dense overcast extended the length of the eastern horizon to a height of 5 or 8 degrees," one eyewitness of the event said, as recorded in a military report.

"At 0900 RC a brilliant white flash burned through the clouds rapidly changing to an expanding green ball of irradiance extending into the clear sky above the overcast. From its surface extruded great white fingers, resembling cirro-stratus clouds, which rose to 40 degrees above the horizon in sweeping arcs turning downward toward the poles and disappearing in seconds to be replaced by spectacular concentric cirrus like rings moving out from the blast at tremendous initial velocity, finally stopping when the outermost ring was 50 degrees overhead. "

Read more here: https://www.iflscience.com/60-years-ag ... ace-64400


That is not the Sun.
Image credit: US Gov/Public domain

Its beautiful when pics like these pop out of the archives.

[caltrek]

India Turns 75: Fast Facts About the Unusual Constitution Guiding the World’s Most Populous Democracy
by Deepa Das Acevedo
August 2022

Introduction:

(The Conversation) India will celebrate its 75th birthday on Aug. 15, 2022.

Its independence from British colonial rule followed a complex process, including Partition: the division of India into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India. Partition displaced tens of millions of people and caused loss of life and property that remains in living memory for many.

India’s future remained unresolved for over two years after Partition. While the country attained its independence on Aug. 15, 1947, it only became a fully sovereign republic with its own head of state on Jan. 26, 1950.

Between those dates, the 299 men and women of India’s Constituent Assembly worked to imagine their emerging country and to inscribe their vision and foundational legal principles in a national constitution. The outcome of their efforts is a remarkable document that remains a source of both inspiration and contention today.

In addition to further describing India’s Constitution, the remainder of the article also makes interesting comparisons with the constitutions of other countries.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/india-turn ... cy-188096

[caltrek]

Voyager 2 Celebrates 45 Years Exploring Edge of Solar System and Beyond
by Dr. Alfredo Carpineti
August 19, 2022

Introduction:

(IFL Science) On August 20, 1977, Voyager 2 was launched into space. Its twin, Voyager 1, would be launched 16 days later. Together, they’d bring a new understanding of the gas giant planets in the Solar system and would become the first human-made objects to leave the heliosphere behind and enter interstellar space. Forty-Five years on, the Voyager program is NASA's longest-lived mission, a testament to the spirit of exploration, and an extraordinary scientific and technical success.

The tech part of the mission is one of the most mind-blowing aspects when we think about it. The technology on the Voyager probes is ancient. They record data on an eight-track tape player. The amount of memory they can store is about 3 million times less than your standard modern cellphones. And, speaking of cell phones, you can forget good signal in interstellar space: The spacecraft transmit data roughly 38,000 times slower than 5G.

That connection comes via NASA’s Deep Space Network and Voyager 2 can only be contacted from an antenna outside Canberra in Australia. There was a bit of apprehension when, in 2020, the antenna had to be off for many months to get refurbished, but the spacecraft was there to say hello again once contact was re-established.

Further extracts:

…
Voyager 1 is currently 23.5 billion kilometers (14.6 billion miles) from Earth. Voyager 2, despite launching earlier, was on a longer and slower orbit that allowed it to visit Uranus and Neptune, so it is a bit behind, currently at 19.5 billion kilometers (12.1 billion miles) from Earth. It is truly extraordinary how the two spacecraft continue to do cutting-edge science.
…
Many of the onboard systems had to be switched off as the nuclear power of the spacecraft is steadily reducing, but as long as it keeps on the essential stuff on, the mission will continue. The spacecraft each carry a Golden Record, which includes images and natural sounds from Earth as well as music.

Read more here: https://www.iflscience.com/voyager-2-c ... ond-64962

[caltrek]

The Curry Trap: How a Continent’s Worth of Food Got Mashed Into One Word
by Anmol Irfan
September – October Issue of Mother Jones

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) In August 2021, Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten penned a piece that mentioned his profound dislike for Indian food, which according to him was defined by a single spice: “curry.” The response was immediate and fierce; Mindy Kaling questioned the article’s point while Top Chef’s Padma Lakshmi called it ignorant and racist. The same summer, BuzzFeed reposted a video by food vlogger Chaheti Bansal calling for the term “Indian curry” to be canceled altogether. “There’s a saying that the food in India changes every 100 km,” Bansal asserted, “and yet we’re still using this umbrella term popularized by white people who couldn’t be bothered to learn the actual names of our dishes.”

Of course, as Weingarten was schooled, “curry” is not a single spice: While the curry leaf is used as an ingredient in some South Asian dishes, curry powder is a varying mixture of spices, one that is rarely found in Indian households. According to Top Chef contestant and cooking teacher Amirah Islam, the word “curry” may have derived from the Tamil word “kari,” which means spiced sauce. When the Portuguese invaded India in the 15th century, they began using the word “carree” to describe broths poured over rice.

Two centuries later, British colonizers began reworking local dishes to their palates and referring to all of them as curries. Indian merchants capitalized on the situation by commercializing curry powder and selling it to the British, who began using it in their versions of Indian dishes. Later, curry became linked to harmful stereotypes, like the term “curry-muncher.”

“Curry is a term that became popularized via colonialism,” says Anita Mannur, author of Culinary Fictions: Food in South Asian Diasporic Culture and a professor of English at Miami University of Ohio. “If colonialism is a system of power, part of that power comes from the ability to name, simplify, and take away complexity. So shorthands enter lexicons—and curry is one of those.”

Since the early 1900s, Punjabi people have made up a large share of South Asian immigrants into the United States, and North Indian cuisine—or Mughlai cuisine, as it is known in India—has dominated the South Asian food scene in the West.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/food/2022/ ... diaspora/

[caltrek]

Remembering One of Humanity’s Worst Catastrophe’s—77 Years On
by John Steinbach
August 21, 2022

Introduction:

(Janata Weekly) The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 77 years ago, marked the crucial turning point in the history of the 20th century. By the end of World War II, Europe, the Soviet Union and the Japanese Empire lay in ruins, and the United States was in a position of unprecedented power with sole possession of the Bomb.

Unfortunately, the U.S. used this power to launch the Cold War against the Soviet Union, and initiated a nuclear build-up that has impoverished the entire world and brought us to the brink of nuclear oblivion. The question remains: Why did the U.S. government decide to initiate the Cold War with the atomic bombings instead of pursuing a course of diplomacy and negotiated settlement?

There is broad consensus among serious historians that the atomic bombings were not necessary to end the war with Japan. By 1945 Japan was a destroyed and starving nation desperately seeking a negotiated surrender and the Soviet Union was preparing to enter the Pacific war in early August, eliminating the need for an invasion of the Japanese mainland. For the Truman administration, the use of the Bomb served two purposes: a demonstration of the terrible power of the split atom to be held against the entire world, and a means to deny the Soviet Union a major role in the post-war settlement.

On August 6 at 8:15 a.m. (August 5, 7:15 p.m. EDT), Hiroshima was annihilated in a flash by a single uranium bomb. Three days later, on August 9, and one day after the Soviets entered the Pacific war, Nagasaki was likewise eradicated by a plutonium bomb. More than 200,000 Japanese civilians and Korean laborers were slaughtered unnecessarily to expedite the promotion of U.S. foreign policy throughout the world.

But to truly understand the decision to use the Bomb and initiate the Cold War, it is crucial to understand who benefited the most. The big winners were the claque of corporations which stood to “make a killing” if the U.S. were to initiate a massive nuclear build-up and launch a Cold War.

Read more here: https://janataweekly.org/author/johnsteinbach/

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

It Didn’t Start With Rump: the Decades Long Saga of How the republican party Went Psychotic
by David Corn
September October 2022 Issue

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) In May, during an Aspen Institute conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the audience, “I want the Republican Party to take back the party, take it back to where you were when you cared about a woman’s right to choose, you cared about the environment…This country needs a strong Republican Party. And we do. Not a cult. But a strong Republican Party.” Her comments echoed a sentiment that Joe Biden had expressed during the 2020 campaign: If Donald Trump were out of the White House, the GOP would return to normal and be amenable to forging deals and legislative compromises.

Both Pelosi and Biden have bolstered the notion that the current GOP, with its cultlike embrace of Trump and his Big Lie, and its acceptance of the fringiest players, is a break from the past. But was the GOP’s complete surrender to Trumpism an aberration? Or was the party long sliding toward this point? About a year ago, I set out to explore the history of the Republican Party, with this question in mind. What I found was not an exception, but a pattern. Since the 1950s, the GOP has repeatedly mined fear, resentment, prejudice, and grievance and played to extremist forces so the party could win elections. Trump assembling white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Christian nationalists, QAnoners, and others who formed a violent terrorist mob on January 6 is only the most flagrant manifestation of the tried-and-true GOP tactic to court kooks and bigots. It’s an ugly and shameful history that has led the Party of Lincoln, founded in 1854 to oppose the extension of slavery, to the Party of Trump, which capitalizes on racism and assaults democracy.

In my book American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, I lay out this sordid history in great detail. But even a highlight reel makes it clear that the GOP has bowed to, depended on, and promoted far-right extremists and conspiracists for the past 70 years. Trumpism is the continuation, not a new version, of Republican politics.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... nt-crazy/

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

Anthology Highlights the Value of Pathways as Cultural Heritage
September 13, 2022

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) Human history and cultural heritage in various places are often well researched and documented.

A new anthology edited by three Swedish researchers explores what ties these places together – footpaths.

“They are unobtrusive remains, but with a very significant cultural footprint,” says Daniel Svensson, historian at Malmö University.

Pathways lead us forward as we walk along them and also take us back in history. These narrow thoroughfares are found the world over and are as old as humankind itself. But they are only preserved while they remain in use.

“Look but don’t touch is often the name of the game in museums that depict history or cultural heritage. But with pathways it’s the other way around: as long as we keep walking along these remains, they will still be there. Movement becomes part of a living cultural heritage,” says Daniel Svensson.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/964453

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

India’s Economy Has Outpaced Pakistan’s Handily Since Partition in 1947
by Surupa Gupta

September 20, 2022

Introduction:

(The Convresation) India and Pakistan inherited the same economic legacy of underinvestment and neglect from Britain when they became independent states following the Partition on Aug. 15, 1947. Their colonial economies were among the poorest in the world.

For both nations, independence almost immediately led to strong growth and fueled significant gains in education, health care and other areas of development. But it was Pakistan that saw faster growth rates during the first four decades or so, while India lagged behind.

Something began to change around the 1990s as their roles reversed and India vaulted ahead of Pakistan, eventually becoming the world’s third-biggest economy by purchasing power and the “I” in BRICS – an acronym referring to a bloc of five key emerging market countries.

Conclusion:

India, on the other hand, has managed to maintain a steady democracy. Though it’s far from perfect, it has kept leaders more accountable to the people and led to more inclusive growth and less reliance on foreign institutions or governments. In one decade alone, India lifted over 270 million people out of poverty.

At a time when democracy is under threat in so many parts of the world, this history, in my view, reminds us of the value of democratic institutions.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/indias-eco ... hy-187053

[caltrek]

Russia Won’t Congratulate CIA on its Diamond Jubilee
by M.K. Bhadrakumar
September 25, 2022

Introduction:

(Janata Weekly) In the Russian journal Natsionalnaya Oborona (National Defence), the chief of Russia’s foreign intelligence Sergey Naryshkin has written a riveting essay on the 75th anniversary of the Central Intelligence Agency, which falls on Sunday. It is an unusual gesture, especially in the middle of the hybrid war in Ukraine.

Probably, it serves a purpose? Most certainly, it serves to remind the Russian people and foreigners alike that nothing has been forgotten, nothing forgiven.

The title of the essay — 75 candles on the CIA Cake — is somewhat misleading, as Naryshkin’s concluding remark is that “Anniversary congratulations and wishes there will not be. As there can be no compromise in assessing its (CIA’s) role in history and ‘merits’ to humanity.”

Naryshkin’s essay will be closely studied by the western intelligence for any “clues.” Indeed, what is he messaging? Naryshkin and President Vladimir Putin go back some 40 years. Naryshkin had just graduated from one of Moscow’s most prestigious institutions, the Felix Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB and Putin was already working in the foreign intelligence department of the Leningrad KGB when they bumped into each other in the corridors of the Big House (as KGB’s regional headquarters in Leningrad was known).

Unsurprisingly, Naryshkin writes about the CIA with an easy familiarity. As he put it, “The CIA was created at the beginning of the Cold War era in order to conduct intelligence activities around the world as a tool to counteract the existence and strengthening role of the USSR in the world, the formation of a bloc of socialist states, and the rise of the national liberation movement in Africa, Asia, and South America.”

Read more here: https://janataweekly.org/russia-wont-c ... -jubilee/

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

[caltrek]

The Right to Vote is Not in the Constitution
by Morgan Marietta


Introduction:

(Conversation) The Bill of Rights recognizes the core rights of citizens in a democracy, including freedom of religion, speech, press and assembly. It then recognizes several insurance policies against an abusive government that would attempt to limit these liberties: weapons; the privacy of houses and personal information; protections against false criminal prosecution or repressive civil trials; and limits on excessive punishments by the government.
But the framers of the Constitution never mentioned a right to vote. They didn’t forget – they intentionally left it out. To put it most simply, the founders didn’t trust ordinary citizens to endorse the rights of others.
…
After the Civil War, the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, guaranteed that the right to vote would not be denied on account of race: If some white people could vote, so could similarly qualified nonwhite people. But that still didn’t recognize a right to vote – only the right of equal treatment. Similarly, the 19th Amendment, now more than 100 years old, banned voting discrimination on the basis of sex, but did not recognize an inherent right to vote.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/the-right- ... on-144531

caltrek’s comment: Actually, I am not sure I agree with this analysis. The 15th Amendment clearly states:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous conditions of servitude-

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The 19th amendment reads

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation

That certainly sounds to me like an implied right to vote. Admittedly, the actual circumstances and details of how that right to vote manifests itself are details that are left to Congress and the states. For example, there is no inherent right to present ballot measures to the public. Perhaps that is what the author is getting at in the conclusion that the “right to vote is not in the Constitution.”
What worries me is that the Supreme Court will use this kind of loophole to in fact deprive of us of the right to vote, arguing that is something that is best left to state legislators. They have already shown a proclivity toward doing this with their partial evisceration of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

[caltrek]

The remarkable thing to me about this "historic" footage is that it could just as easily have been shot in 2015. That is how little aspects of the crop- dusting technology has changed over the years. Even in 2022, the main thing that has changed is that the planes are of a somewhat more modern design.

This video was included in an article noting the 6oth anniversary of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring: https://theconversation.com/silent-spri ... nt-192232