Saturday, September 21, 2013

Keeping Us Safe

There were always those of us who didn't buy into it.  Naysayers, doubters, questioners.  You know, the ones the FBI kept tabs on.

Of course, there was cause.  Because, as Cernovich says, "Everything I was ever told was a lie."  And the biggest of the lies, the most potent, the one they still trot out every day and every chance, was
TRUST US.
All in caps.  Because they want us to understand.  They'll be telling the truth.  They'll be getting it right.  We'll all be fine.  Even what they don't tell us.  We know, it backs up what they do.

Except, of course, it's nonsense.

  • NSA's spying is all aboveboard.  Nope.
  • FISA warrants are based on honest and accurate information?  Nope.
  • Saddam had weapons of mass destruction? Nope.
  • Gulf of Tonkin incident? Nope.
And then - well, then there's the one about how it's all OK because nothing can go wrong.  Nothing, you know, like at Chernobyl, or Fukushima.  But that was there.  And Three Mile Island?  Only people like me would doubt.  Since they said we were fine.  And we could trust them.  Because . . .

Well, because they said so.  And they were the leaders of the US of A who always knew best and wouldn't do anything that would put us at risk.

Of course, there was that time we dropped a couple of bombs on North Carolina.  Three days after Kennedy was inaugurated.

The story from AP.
Two hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on Jan. 24, 1961 after a B-52 bomber broke up in flight. One of the bombs apparently acted as if it was being armed and fired — its parachute opened and trigger mechanisms engaged.

Parker F. Jones at the Sandia National Laboratories analyzed the accident in a document headed “How I learned to mistrust the H-Bomb.”

“The MK39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne-alert role in the B-52,” he wrote. When the B-52 disintegrates in the air it is likely to release the bombs in “a near normal fashion,” he wrote, calling the safety mechanisms to prevent accidental arming “not complex enough.”

The document said the bomb had four safety mechanisms, one of which is not effective in the air. When the aircraft broke up, two others were rendered ineffective.

“One simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe!” Jones wrote, adding that it could have been “bad news — in spades” if the switch had shorted.
One little switch.  One little fucking switch.

There were, it seems,
at least 700 “significant” accidents and incidents involving 1,250 nuclear weapons were recorded between 1950 and 1968.
Since 1968?  Oh, you can be sure it's been fine.  All problems solved.  All safe.  No worries. Everything got fixed after 1968.   Oh, wait.  No, they just haven't declassified the results for after then.

Which means we don't know shit about where they accidentally dropped a few bombs last week.  Or where they'll be dropped next week.

Feeling better?







1 comment:

  1. We'll meet again
    Don't know where
    Don't know when
    But we'll meet again
    Some day...

    ReplyDelete