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Copperhead Road - Steve Earle

: music, January 12 2021 ▶

If you are looking for a proper theme music to go with your pickup truck, while flying the Confederate flag, chatting with your full-tactical-gear buddies how to topple the government, look no further! Steve Earle made it perfect, in 1988, recording the "Copperhead Road" (US Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks - reaching 10th position). Earle never became extremely popular, but continues to create "neo-rockabilly" songs up till today.

Well my name's John Lee Pettimore
Same as my daddy and his daddy before
There is nothing subtle - the lyrics paint a young man, with moonshiner's roots, depicted often as redneck (popular theme in many country songs, nothing bad with it). He goes to war twice, probably felt himself on the right spot there, then using his family property on the Copperhead Road to grow weed. The place is know to be an outlaw territory, and authorities, who try to go there, never return. As a young kid I somehow connected the song to the Vietnam war era, not fully understanding the lyrics, also influenced by a movie or two, but, as the melody progresses in more rhythmic rock-folk, you can literally hear the Huey-s flying overhead.
And now the D.E.A.'s got a chopper in the air
I wake up screaming like I'm back over there
I learned a thing or two from ol' Charlie don't you know
You better stay away from Copperhead Road
The guy never overcame the war. The nightmare continues. Somehow he accepts to be an outsider in his own country and grasps the last thing he got - his "family heritage" and the last stand his "daddy and his daddy before" made on the Copperhead Road.

Selyodka pod shuboy

: food, January 09 2021 ▶

There is no way I can take a good picture of the final product, no matter what I do. It will come either as bland top-view pic or messy side-view. Well, as you see, I preferred the latter. Depending where you live, this "salad" is called "dressed herring" or "herring under a fur coat", which is a direct translation from the russian "selyodka pod shuboi". It is a simple, but very time consuming dish. Benefit: you can store it in the fridge for about a week.
Ingredients:
- Herring fillets - no skin, no bones, salted only. Avoid the more common sour ones.
- Mayonnaise - pretty please, use the regular one and not the canola-oil-garbage.
- Boiled potatoes - with some salt, just as they become soft, not ready for mashed potatoes
- Onions
- Boiled red beet
- Boiled carrots
- Salt - just a pinch for the red beet and carrots
- Ground black pepper [not in the original recipe]
- Sumak for garnish on top [dill in the original recipe]
- Boiled and grated eggs [I do not use them]

I cannot give exact quantities as this depends on the amount of salad you want to make. I use 4 small soup cups, as this is best for serving and storing. One cup is enough for a single person. The arrangement is in ~1cm thick layers. You have to put some mayonnaise on top of each layer and then continue with the next.... yeeah, we will be using a lot of mayonnaise. Here is the order of the layers:
- potatoes and ground black pepper(+mayo)
- herring (+mayo)
- onions - this layer is 1/2 thick (+mayo)
- red beet (+mayo)
- carrots (+mayo)
- eggs and garnish
I put as little mayonnaise as possible, but enough to create a "flat" surface on the top of the layer.
There is one drink, and one drink only that goes with the salad - fine russian vodka.

It was probably Germany who tested the first nuclear bomb

: history, December 23 2020 ▶


On the picture above - [left] Hiroshima, [right] Nagasaki

The lack of information is also information
Literally hundreds of books and websites have been written on the topic of the first nuclear devices to be used. I believe the vast majority completely miss the point or deliberately hide the truth, that it was not the mighty US to first develop, test and use a nuclear bomb. Maybe it is due to the post-war propaganda, or the general speed of information distribution and accessibility, or because of hiding all documents behind the "top secret" wall, or just the "obey mainstream science" syndrome, but 80 years later we have the opportunity to connect the dots. The following should be taken with a heavy dose of skepticism. I am trying to summarize, in the shortest form possible, what I have found after weeks of digging and comparing different stories. You can check them, if you wish to follow any thread, and you will very quickly realize ... the deeper you go, the more incomplete and wrong the conventional history seems.

I took on this journey, following some information about a little-know SS officer, called Hans Kammler. He is 100% worth a story of his own - he was in charge of logistic operations and particularly advanced weapons. At the end of the war the allies (US) staged his death, in return of information on weapon-development and existing infrastructure.

Unofficial history:
~1 October 1944 around Ludwigslust - Hans Zinsser, a pilot and rocket engineer, flying his Heinkel 111, experiences a nuclear blast nearby. Unfortunately, I could not find the exact date.
Zinsser — submitted as evidence to Allied investigators — reads; "In early October 1944 I flew away 12-15 km from a nuclear test station near Ludwigslust (South of Lübeck)... A cloud shaped like a mushroom with turbulent, billowing sections (at about 7000 meters) stood, without any seeming connections over the spot where the explosion took place. Strong electrical disturbances and the impossibility to continue radio communication as by lighting turned up." A second pilot reportedly observed the same thing an hour later, and an Italian correspondent, who saw the blast, reported his observations to Mussolini. Immediately after the early October 1944 blast, the Reich Propaganda Minister reported in a national broadcast that he had just seen a test of Germany’s latest military technology, "the awesome power of which made me catch my breath and stopped my heartbeat."
Some thoughts: if this was complete nonsense, then why the testimonies have been classified? Back then, there was no technology to create an EMP at that scale (scientists were not even mentioning it until 1950s), except a nuclear device. The statements also come from a tech-savvy person.

12 October 1944, island of Ruegen Luigi Romersa, a personal envoy of Mussolini, observed a German atomic test.
On 12 October 1944, he and a few other men–high-ranking members of the German Army, SS and Nazi Party–were conducted by several physicists to a model village of ordinary dwellings surrounded by tall trees and populated exclusively by sheep. After a cursory inspection, the guests walked about one kilometer away to a concrete bunker fitted with a few, small observation ports of very thick glass. Even so, Romersa and company were instructed to wear darkly tinted goggles for what an official described would be "a test of the disintegration bomb. It is the most powerful explosive that has yet been developed. Nothing can withstand it." A series of warning sirens and flashing, red lights announced the imminent detonation, which occurred as "a sudden, blinding flash" followed by "a thick cloud of smoke" that "took the shape of a column, and then that of a big flower," as a tremor went through the concrete bunker. No one was allowed to leave for several hours, until the lingering effects of the explosion had dissipated."The bomb gives off deathly rays of utmost toxicity," they were told.
Some thoughts: IF this was really written in 1944, the person undoubtedly witnessed a nuclear explosion. There is no other way somebody could depict it in such detail.

4 March 1945, Ohrdruf, Thuringia ("Orhdruf" in some sources, which is wrong). Probably the last and most gruesome test. Witnessed by Russian military spies, who immediately reported to Stalin with "urgent priority" message.
...This occurred at the troop parade ground and barracks at Orhdruf, in south-central Thuringia, when two uranium devices were detonated on 4 March 1945. Both were observed by Soviet spies, who radioed the Kremlin that the Orhdruf explosions produced a "highly radioactive effect." As part of their experiment, the SS officers, who supervised the dual test, confined captured Red Army commissars from the nearby Buchenwald concentration camp to barracks at the center of the blast. "In many cases, their bodies were completely destroyed," according to the spies, who added that such a weapon could "slow down our offensive".
Some thoughts: Russians will never declassify such thing, so finding some real documents will not be possible. You do not report to Stalin, with urgency, that something could slow down HIS offensive - either you are right, or you are dead. Kammler personally supervised the construction of Ohrdruf facility and it was so secret, not only it was not documented, but they even removed the train schedules from the railway lists, so no materials can be traced to it. Some researchers argue, that germans did not have the technology to detonate such device...well, they had a betatron, which potentially might be used for such things. The German historian, Rainer Karlsch, describes it best in his 2005 book "Hitlers Bombe". There are some claims, that Oppenheimer was in Ohrdruf in April 1945 himself. So the top-of-the-top-of-the-most-top-secret weapon's research program, casually flies into a war zone, ...right!?

One may immediately say "well, if there was a nuclear explosion, it surely left some nuclear traces". Sure! The problem is the Ohrdruf area is in a natural preserve, and (more precisely) Jonastal is still considered a military site, so German government prohibits any investigation. "Strangely" the area is known to be the region of Germany with highest concentration of background gamma radiation. Ruegen also has an area (Wittow) which pops-up on the radiation screen. What a coincidence!
All of these tests used uranium-fission(#!) material, as in 1942 German command considered enriching plutonium to be problematic, thus not going further in this direction.


Official history starts here - almost 8 months later:
17 May 1945, the captain of U-234 (heading for Japan), decided to surrender his submarine to the US Navy, and arrived two days later at Portsmouth Navy Yard, New Hampshire. It was carrying ten cases of "uranium oxide" of 560 kilograms weight, and several items which were not included on the Unloading Manifest.

16 July 1945 - Alamogordo Bombing Range - "Trinity" - The test was of an implosion-design plutonium(#!) device.

25 July 1945 - Truman signs the bombing order. Unlike the conventional history, which emphasizes on "saving the lives of the American soldiers", he committed with the sole idea to end the war immediately, in the exact state of the Japanese Empire, before the Russians crush it. A nice starting point for another article indeed!


On the picture above - personal archive - "Little Boy" casing in the Imperial War Museum London. I have deliberately left the people's figures in the background so you get a perspective of the size of the bomb.

6 August 1945 - Hiroshima - "Little Boy" - an enriched uranium(#!) gun-type fission weapon. In July 1944, almost all research at Los Alamos was redirected to the implosion-type plutonium(#!) weapon. So...the first combat use of a nuclear weapon, is of one, that had never been tested, you stopped developing it an year ago, and the enrichment facilities suffered numerous setbacks, right!? What if,...just what if, you captured a ready-to-use warhead from your arch-enemy and you want to see how far ahead they really were. Reports claim that "a second Little Boy bomb (using U-235) would not be available until December 1945." The "Little Boy" design also seems better (more compact, easy to manufacture, using existing and proven technologies) than the "Fat Man", pointing to the general German superior technology at the time.


9 August 1945 - Nagasaki - "Fat Man" - plutonium(#!) implosion-type nuclear weapon. Why would you drop another nuke, just 3 days later, unless you have 2 of them, different ones and you do not want some stupid questions on "where do you have the first one from"? Major General Leslie R. Groves Jr. expected to have another "Fat Man" ready for use on August 19, with three more in September and a further three in October...in the meantime, on the very same day, the Russians launched the Manchurian Strategic Offensive, as they knew, the end of the war will follow soon, and they need to seize as much territory as possible.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Sinatra, 1963

: music, December 19 2020 ▶

"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", sang by Frank Sinatra in 1963, is indubitably the most appropriate song for this year's celebration. Very sad, nostalgic, reflecting on some bad times and hoping for better ones, the song may just fit as well in a doomsday scene, like the one portrayed in Terminator3's ending or a Fallout game. Nukes falling in slow motion, total destruction and carnage, radioactive silence...

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
From now on, all our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the yule-tide gay
From now on, our troubles will be miles away
The character went through some terrible stuff lately, it is not a holiday time in his heart, he wishes all best to the others, but his internal suffering goes on. He is longing for his friends, probably the only stable point in his life, but remains very pessimistic of the future, relying only on the Fate to gather them again.
Through the years we all will be together
If the fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough
And have yourself a merry little Christmas now
The "hanging star" replaces even a bleaker line, from the original song: "Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow". Sinatra asked the author, Hugh Martin, if he could revise it with something more joyful. The song was written in 1943 for the musical "Meet Me in St. Louis" and Judy Garland's character is singing it to her sister, anticipating big changes in their life. The 1963 version is used also in an execution scene in the anti-war movie "The Victors", sparkling a lot of controversy.
I chose Sinatra's "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" to be my Christmas song last year (I have one each year), but for 2020 I just could pick a better candidate. Covid-19 destroyed our lives and The World as we know it. Things will never be the same again. We are in a war-like situation, without having a war. The vaccines are just entering circulation, but nobody knows if they are not worse than the disease itself. People lost trust and faith in everything. The politicians hide their real agenda behind inadequate measures and "The Church" dug its head in the sand, instead of helping. I hope they burn in hell for this! And for the normal people: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas!

FinCEN Aftermath

: money, December 14 2020 ▶

As expected, the biggest money-laundering scandal to date ended up with no consequences to anyone. 3 months later, my best guess is, that FinCEN are using every resource to tie-up the leak, find and punish the whistle-blowers, rather than doing their actual job of hunting bad people. Curiously, last week (11 Dec 2020), the US Senate passed the "National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)", which actually includes some measure for fighting back. After quick check, I saw that this bill is voted annually and primarily targets the military expenditures and their handling ... which the current president, Mr.Trump, threatens to veto, because (...yeah, it gets even better...) it also shield social media companies from liability for content that users post on their platform. Apparently some sly congressmen tucked way in the back of it, the minuscule regulation against the so called "shell companies".

Definition:
Shell companies are companies without active business operations or significant assets. They can be set up by business people for both legitimate and illegitimate purposes. Illegitimate purposes for registering a shell company include hiding particulars of ownership from the law enforcement, laundering unaccounted money and avoiding tax.
What changes?
FinCEN has to report to the Treasury Department when they detect foul play.
FinCEN has to improve its tech capabilities ("why our ITs are just 3...oh wait, all the good ones make 6-digits in California").
The Justice Department would have to file yearly reports on why does it give "free pass" to the banks.
And the main one: the companies have to disclose who owns and/or profits from them. This was first proposed in 2008, but in US there is a perfectly legal form of bribing, called "lobbying", which crushed any previous attempts.
At present, anonymous shell companies can be set up with less disclosure than what is required to get a library card. These companies can be used to hide wealth or launder the proceeds of crime through legitimate assets.
Before you get too excited and wonder if the world finally starts getting changed for good, let me bring you back to the harsh reality - there is a back door. If your company has more than 20 employees and $5 million in annual sales (yes, "sales", not "profit"), it is an exempt from the law. Thus making a seemingly good bill, just the next "door in the field". $5mil is a pocket change for the big players. They will not even notice if such amount is missing from the account. Circumventing the new rule will be a child play for any accountant, who can think and breathe at the same time.

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