Old Timey Movies

Caption: The Alligator People – 1969

Bullet Points:

** (H/T Stringshot) What about offshore nuclear reactors?

** Heat.

** (H/T Ken) Japan can no longer afford to treat nuclear deterrence as an unthinkable taboo. China is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal, intensifying military pressure around Taiwan, and openly challenging the regional order. In a Taiwan contingency, Japan’s territory, sea lanes, and U.S. bases could become immediate targets. Yet Japan’s ultimate survival still depends on another country deciding whether to risk nuclear war on Japan’s behalf. That is an enormous strategic gamble. Japan should seriously consider developing an independent nuclear deterrent or, at minimum, establish NATO-style nuclear sharing with the United States. The purpose would not be aggression. It would be to deter China from changing the status quo by force by making sure China would carry an unbearable cost. Japan knows the horror of nuclear weapons better than any nation. But history also teaches a brutal lesson: weakness does not preserve peace. Credible deterrence does. The debate must begin now, before a Taiwan crisis begins it for Japan.

** Cougars (see below) more here.

** Did the US Cavalry charge with their carbines? Insight.

** Looking for an acceptable cheesesteak sandwich this side of Philly. Yes, Jersey Mike’s is ok. Better than ok, but it’s not at all the same, and it’s not just the meat; it’s the bread too, and the seasoning and the cheese and the – atmosphere. It’s like finding a decent bagel outside NYC – not just a roll with a hole.

** The Politics of Opium – It’s a Tucker interview of John K., and irrespective of what you think of either one of them, it’s accurate. Extrapolate to Iranian and Turkish Kurdistan today (like this very day), and we run into much the same thing – the same and also not quite the same.

** White Powder: A Novel of the CIA and the Secret War in Laos. Is the novel out-of-date? Or is the topic somewhat fungible? There is something intoxicating about a secret. There’s something terrifying about a shadow war. You may not know much about Laos or the world of WHITE POWDER. You aren’t supposed to. Drugs, sex, and murder combined with personal and national agendas to create the hidden world of heroin where governments and drug empires collide.

WHITE POWDER is the story of US Army officer Craig Burton, who became something else. Burton’s metamorphosis can’t be explained except within the context of others whose roles played a part in the outcome. It’s a story of spies from various nations with both personal and national agendas who congregated in Laos and were willing to do ANYTHING to meet their objectives. The end inevitably justified the means. Lastly, it’s also the story of Charlotte Sabon, who met Craig Burton, fell in love, and was willing to commit murder to keep him. In the end, she got both what she wanted and what she deserved.

What Happened to M-3?

He wasn’t tough enough for Arizona.

He should have stayed in California.

It’s not just a metaphor.

 A young male mountain lion designated M3 left the Desert National Wildlife Refuge north of Las Vegas, walked 106 miles through the northern Mojave Desert to the Grand Canyon, got into a fight that left him mortally wounded, turned around, and tried to walk home. He covered 610 miles total. He ate nothing but reptiles on the return trip. He died 21 miles from where he was born.

David Choate, a USGS ecologist who had spent seven years studying cougars on the 1.6-million-acre Desert National Wildlife Refuge, had captured and GPS-collared M3 in the Sheep Range, a long narrow mountain chain that forms the eastern spine of the refuge. The Sheep Range rises out of the Mojave floor into limestone peaks above 9,000 feet, supporting desert bighorn sheep, mule deer, and the small number of mountain lions that feed on them. M3 was a young male. Young males leave. That is what the species does. They walk until they find unoccupied territory or die trying.

M3 walked south from the Sheep Range through Gold Butte, crossed the northern Mojave, and reached the northwestern edge of the Grand Canyon, roughly 106 miles from home. His GPS collar recorded every step. His average pace was about three miles a day. While he was in his natal range, where he knew the terrain and the prey, he made a kill every seven days on average. During dispersal, that interval more than doubled to every 17 and a half days. The desert between the Sheep Range and the Grand Canyon held little to eat for a young cougar moving through unfamiliar ground.

At the Grand Canyon, something happened. Choate’s team examined the evidence afterward and concluded that M3 had likely gotten into a fight with another cougar, probably over food or a mate. The injuries were severe. The territory he had walked 106 miles to reach was already occupied by a resident male, and the resident had made that clear in the way cougars make things clear. M3 did not win.

Then he turned around.

Badly injured, in unfamiliar country, the young male reversed direction and began walking back toward the Sheep Range. He did not wander. He did not circle. His GPS track showed a direct line toward the mountains where he had been born. Choate and his co-authors Kathleen Longshore and Daniel Thompson described this as the first documented evidence of natural, unmanipulated natal homing behavior by a dispersing male cougar. No one had relocated him. No one had pushed him. He chose to go back on his own.

The return was slow. M3 was injured badly enough that he could no longer hunt the way a healthy cougar hunts. A mountain lion kills by ambush, by explosive acceleration over short distances, by jumping onto the back of a deer or a bighorn and bringing it down with weight and claws. An injured cougar that cannot sprint, cannot jump, cannot wrestle a 150-pound animal to the ground, cannot hunt. M3 ate reptiles. Lizards. Snakes. Whatever he could catch on the desert floor without the burst of speed that his injuries had taken from him. Choate’s team found no evidence of any mammalian kill during the homing journey.

He made it to the south end of the Sheep Range. He was 21 miles from where Choate’s team had first captured and collared him. Twenty-one miles from the territory he knew, the water sources he had memorized, the bighorn trails he had hunted as a juvenile. His body was found there. He had walked 610 miles in total across some of the most barren terrain in the lower 48 states, and the last 21 miles were the ones he did not finish.

Choate told Virtual Mirage that M3 had come home to die, then caught himself and added that maybe that was anthropomorphizing a little. The GPS data does not anthropomorphize. It shows a young male cougar that left home, traveled to the Grand Canyon, was beaten by a resident, reversed course, navigated back across 106 miles of open desert on a diet of lizards, and died within sight of the mountains where he started.

Inside the Other Mountain

The facility, codenamed by the military “Deep Layer,” was dug into a mountain at the Scientific Studies and Research Center, known as CERS or SSRC, in the Masyaf area of Syria, west of Hama. The site lies more than 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of the Israeli border, and some 45 kilometers (28 miles) from Syria’s western coastline.

– The site that Iran constructed was 70-130 meters (230-430 feet) underground and thus virtually impossible to destroy from the air.
Iranian digging into the mountain at the research center began in late 2017. The IDF said it had intelligence on the facility from the moment construction began.

– The facility was built in the shape of a horseshoe, with one entrance on the side of the mountain for raw materials and an exit nearby for the completed missiles. A third entrance adjacent to those two was used for logistics and to reach offices inside the facility. The office section also connected to the manufacturing section inside.

– Along the horseshoe were at least 16 rooms housing the production line for the missiles, from planetary mixers for the rocket fuel to missile body construction and paint rooms.

– The facility was not yet completely active when Israel launched its operation against it, but according to the military, it was at the final stages of being declared operational by Iran. At least two missiles had been successfully manufactured as part of testing, and rocket engines were already being mass produced.

– The IDF has assessed that the facility would have been used to produce between 100 and 300 missiles a year, including long-range missiles with ranges of up to 300 kilometers, precision-guided missiles with ranges of up to 130 kilometers, and short-range rockets with ranges of 40-70 kilometers.

– According to the IDF’s assessments, the facility, located relatively close to the border with Lebanon, was meant to replace Iran’s method of trucking missiles and parts from its own territory to Lebanon via Syria. Such convoys were repeatedly struck by the IAF over the years. The distance the weapons would need to travel from the new facility to reach Hezbollah would be far shorter.

– The IDF assessed that it killed some 30 guards and Syrian soldiers during the entire operation. Syrian media at the time reported 14 dead and 43 wounded.

Identify the Military Motorcycle

1

18,695 built

2

Integral two-wheel drive design, with drive shafts to both its rear wheel and the third side-car wheel.

3

Parting Shot

End