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'Thirteen Days'
It's odd to watch the Cuban missile crisis movie "Thirteen Days," a little disorienting. Three decades after the events it portrays, the Cold War is over, but the world has thousands more nuclear missiles armed and ready to launch than it did then. Thanks to the collapse of the Soviet Union and its deteriorating military, the rise of terrorism, and the growing availability of bomb-making materials, they are even more likely to be used.
But not in the kind of nose-to-nose stand off that paralyzed the world during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1962, it seemed for a few days that the U.S. and Russia would actually go to war over the deployment of long-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. Tough lines were drawn, and armies were fully mobilized. The world actually held its breath as the young Kennedy administration grappled with one of history's most intense political crises.
The stakes were breathtakingly high, especially against the backdrop of a ruthless, hard-line Soviet government, a bitter military stand-off in Berlin as well as Cuba, and an American military filled with hubris. Yet government, years before the full blown media explosion and the rise of sophisticated satellite tracking and the Net, operated in much more secrecy than it can today. So much of the political strategizing and maneuvering involved in the pre-digital world were unknown by the general public.
(I was a kid during the stand-off, and about all I remember was our entire block gathered around a black-and-white TV in Providence, R.I., to hear Kennedy's grainy, grim speech declaring a military blockade of Cuba. Everybody was stunned and totally silent. Parents rushed off after the speech to the market to stockpile food. I'd never seen adults scared witless like that. They believed nuclear war was imminent. The next morning, we practiced running to school bomb shelters all morning, as air raid drill sirens sounded for hours.)
"Thirteen Days," dramatizes some of that process, but like a slick history lesson, it still has the aura of an educational exercise. It's certainly interesting and it does, in fact, offer a compelling, behind-the-scenes feeling as John F. Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood), his brother Bobby (Steven Culp) and their trusted adviser Kenny O'Donnell (Kevin Costner) fend off the reliably warlike and conniving Pentagon brass. (When exactly did Hollywood come to hate generals so much? Can you remember a positive recent portrayal of one?) Costner, Greenwood and Culp are all workmanlike, but oddly flat and one-dimensional.
What's intriguing about the movie is our sense of witnessing the handling of a momentous crisis inside the White House. The menacingly interwoven shots of nuclear test explosions are gorgeous and horrifying, as they were in "Terminator 2" and other movies.
But several problems detract from our enjoyment. Some are fairly minor. The movie is too long by about a half-hour. You can see boom mikes at some theaters hovering at the top of the screen in many of the Oval Office sequences (perhaps a projectionist error at the small town New England theater where I saw the movie. Did anybody else see this?).
But then moviegoers should be aware that they aren't getting meticulous history. According to journalists who covered the crisis and historians who've studied it, the Kenneth O'Donnell character played by Costner (a Kennedy crony and special assistant to the president) wasn't nearly as pivotal in the real show-down as he was in this film.
This portrayal is especially generous to the Kennedy brothers, whose wit and sense of responsibility are credited with saving the world. The movie takes no notice of the series of subsequent revelations about both brothers that calls their nobility and even-handedness into question.
Despite that, it's interesting to see the relatively primitive spook technology that political leaders depended on -- high flying but vulnerable U2's and jet spy planes to gather data, slow-moving teletypes, and the low-tech, comparatively miniminalist mass media who weren't quite such a runaway, all encompassing hysteria-machine. They actually worried about national security concerns when they reported news.
And it's fascinating to be cinematically drawn into one of the great collisions between the horrific new technology of warfare -- weapons everybody in government seems to agree are too horrible to be used -- and to contrast that with an era when a terrorist cell or a Ukranian accident can trigger horrendous destruction -- a grim reality some scholars feel is inevitable, that negotiators and governments may be powerless to deal with, and that people seem to have grown almost comfortable with.
The Kennedys weren't. The film and history suggests that John Kennedy was determined to avoid a full-scale nuclear catastrophe, and mustered the confidence and courage to press for a political way out of a confrontation that was within hours of becoming a war. This is the kind of movie high school teachers will be showing history classes for years to come, even if it's hardly as dramatic as the near-Armageddon it seeks to portray.
please remeber that it only takes a few bombs to do ALOT of damage. One bomb could = millions of deaths if set off in the right place.
Why don't you tell us, CokeBear and respondents? What do YOU think would have happened under those other people? Are you trying to imply that disaster was averted only "because Kennedy was so great" and so forth? Just exactly how much do you guys mythologize Mr. Kennedy? What do you think about his secret (at the time) deal with USSR to pull U.S. missiles out of Turkey in response? Assuming you know about that. If you ask me, under Reagan there would have been no "Cuban Missile Crisis" in the first place. This may conflict with your idealized view of Kennedy but the fact is that he was viewed as a weakling and a lightweight by Kruschev, so he thought he could push the guy around and get away with it. (Which he did. And, which resulted in getting those missiles out of Turkey.) Would Kruschev have even tried the same thing against Reagan in the first place, in your view? Do tell.
"Your message (and your faux amusement) is a great example of denial in action."
Great piece of rhetoric, Jon.
It reminds me of Freud's response when his penis-envy theory was challenged by the psychologist Karen Horny: Horny did believe in penis-envy because she had penis-envy.
It was just further proof to Freud that his theory was correct.
(The sad thing about this, is that deep inside Katz probably has a warm glow about being compared--even if in a pejorative manner--to someone of Freud's stature.)
It may infuriate you to note, however, that the idea is played off as a stroke of brilliance on the Kennedys' part, while everyone else, including the Kenny character (i.e., John Q. Public), lacks the vision to see it as anything other than appeasement.
Wise post, my ass.
Jon, when we will you and the deconstructionist leftists who have influenced your perspective ever begin to realize that the uninterrupted cynical attitude to all things American is just as dangerous as the My-God-is-my-country-flag-waving attitude taken by those on the far right?
I have not seem the film so I have no comment as to its accuracy. But, by and large, Western accounts of events over the past 50 years (and I suspect the Cuban missile crisis is included) are far, far more accurate than Russian accounts even to this day. It is only recently that the Russians are starting to sift through the historical record with a critical eye. To do so before was to be shot.
Have you met any Russians, Katz? Have you spoken with them about what their society, and how closed it was under communist rule? Have you read any books about life in Russia over the past 50 years?
To glibly imply that the accounts coming from Russia, a society until recently controlled by a small cadre of men, a society that had no free press, have been as valid as what has been published in the West is absurd. This attitude is as much an impediment to understanding the Cuban missile crisis as is believing one film from Hollywood has all the answers.
Oh, but I forgot. This really isn't about understanding history. This is about sitting in coffee shops, tossing out smug comments. This is about feeling superior to all those lemmings who believe what has been fed to them.
Seeing a boom mike in frame is not a "projectionist error." Think about it--if the man caught the boom mike in frame, it's going to be in the shot, and the film editors either catch it and fix it, or they don't. They're just like proofreaders.
If you spent 8 figures on making a movie, would you really leave the content of each scene to the projectionist? That's like saying that because I'm viewing slashdot in 600x800, I'm not going to see your typos, but if I load it in 640x480, I'll be able to see them at the edge of the screen...
By the way, the nukes are much less likely to be used today. I work at a place that keeps track of those things, and you're as safe as you ever were from missiles. The idea that a terrorist group would (or even could!) go to the lengths required to purchase, calibrate, aim, and fire a nuclear missile, and not be noticed, is absurd. It's a lot simpler to attack assymetrically with conventinal bombs (a la USS Cole). Just because it's not on the news doesn't mean we're not keeping tabs on it. Sleep well, JonKatz--I may abhor your writing, but I'll risk my life every day for your right to keep spewing it out.
Today's graduates of the military academies appear to have taken Sherman's doctrine of "War is hell" to heart. I know a lot of retired military officers (I'm from the South, traditionally one of the heaviest sources of military personnel) and their doctrine appears to be "don't go to war, and if the politicians force you to go to war, bomb the enemy back to the stone age then send in overwhelming force. " The pre-Vietnam hubris appears to be gone. Vietnam apparently traumatized the military establishment to the point where they had to rethink many of their basic assumptions (such as the assumption that the U.S. could easily defeat any little tin-pot dictator with the use of a couple of divisions and a few B-52 strikes), much as the end of the Cold War has led to some soul searching on the part of today's up-and-coming officers as to what the proper role and composition of the military should be.
All in all, I've gotten good vibes off of the retired military officers that I've met. Yes, they're conservative. But they're conservative in the old fashioned sense of the word -- i.e., people who don't believe in hasty actions and who believe in leading a personally upright life (as vs. the hypocrisy of many so-called "conservatives" which is mere mean-spiritedness and spite). Many of them are now teachers, for example. While I'm not going to try to glorify the military, I will state that the folks in the military are as decent and love their country as much as the average American. If only the civilian leadership above them had those qualities.
(BTW, the notion of a military junta absolutely appalled the retired military I asked -- while they complained bitterly about the civilian leadership, they also pointed out that a military junta would inevitably destroy their beloved military as it turned into yet another corrupt banana republic army, just as bad as the politicians that were forced out of office, not to mention that oath they swore to uphold the Constitution...).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I've known a lot of retired military. They think this way. They're not war mongers -- they know that friends and subordinants will die if the country goes to war. They are prepared to pay that price, but not lightly, and not on a whim, and they certainly aren't going to advise going to war when there's an alternative.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I was in the air force during the cuban missile crisis. I was a systems analyst and my job was to aim the minuteman missiles to their target and to program in the launch information about the various target choices available.
Things like whether the target was Moscow or Paris (kidding) and whether it was an air burst (destructive) or a ground burst (dirty).
Missile sites near Malstrom AFB Montana that were still being built by Boeing were comadeered by the air force and missiles and warheads were installed even though everything was not completed within the silo.
Few portable radios were available back in the early 60's and ALL were confiscated by superiors. The only things that we knew was what we were told by our superiors. So we knew little as to what was really happening.
Only that it was imperative we got as many silos into strategic alert (green) as possible in the shortest amount of time because eveyone of them counted.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
Curt Lemay was a tough cookie. He would smoke a cigar while an airplane was being refueled and if someone would mention that the plane could blow up he would say "It wouldn't dare" and keep on smoking.
An old story about a general dying and going to heaven. As he was talking to St. Peter he exclaimed that there was Curt Lemay and how did he get to heaven. St. Peter replied... no, that's god... he just thinks he is Curt Lemay.
Lemay once walked out on a briefing by the military strategists after he ask them how did the Navy targets and the air Force targets interact. A few days later we were out at the missile silo's reprogramming the targets and re-aiming the missiles. It turned out that there was no interaction between these two departments and some targets were overly targeted by both and others were not targeted at all.
The air force was aghast that they had to co-ordinate with the navy, and the likewise for the navy.
I was there.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
Not all nuclear wapons had such safety devices. This is before your time, but a B-52 crashed off the coast of North Carolina back in the 60's. Now at that time there were 6 switches in each warhead that had to all be closed to detonate. When they recovered the warheads after much difficlty, one of the warheads had 5 of the switches closed just from the impact of the crash. If the 6th had closed then we would have blown up a part of North Carolina.
The designers then realized that conditional situations had to be enforced and so various switches were used that could only occur in a normal delivery condition of the warhead such as what you describe.
This was at first top security information, but then this information in great detail was given to the USSR so that they too could safely keep from blowing themselves up and thinking it was us that did it.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
That was the Mann Theater chain's policy during early '99, when people were coming _just_ to see "Phantom Menace" trailers.
I would agree that it's almost certain that sooner or later terrorist groups are going to set off a few nuclear devices here and there. But what we used to be worried about was thousands of missiles being launched from the US and the USSR: A nuclear holocaust. A few scattered incidents won't even come close to that horror. Yes, it's possible millions might die. But I don't think many people are worried about *everyone* dying, as they used to be.
That's my take anyway. Someone want to scare me?
--
"How many six year olds does it take to design software?"
dinner: it's what's for beer
Given that a large terrorist organization or small "rouge state" (euphemism of the week) could obtain a nuclear weapon, how do they get it to the their favorite Great Satan?
The most effective method for delivering a nuclear weapon is an intercontinental ballistic missile. Nobody has an effective defense against a dozen nuclear weapons raining down at Mach 30. The next most effective is the shorter range missles, or medium range missle. This is similar to the weapons in Cuba. These are effective because they can be launched from a boat far out in international waters. Finally, a terrorist can simply carry a suitcase nuke into a sensitive location.
The first method of Nuke delivery, ICBMs, is quite expensive. It takes a huge amount of training, manpower and resourses. Quite frankly, an ICBM installation with an single missile would be rather more difficult to procure that the warhead itself. Also, nuclear launch sites are difficult to build without being visible by the US. And the US has not been hesitant in bombing terrorist camps, like the training camp in Afghanistan.
So, which rouge states can launch weapons at us? An ICBM from a rouge state means a space program. The only non-western country with even the possibility of a space program is China. So, I generally think that a NMD is useless, until China makes a use for one. They don't have an ICBM system yet, as far as I know, but my knowledge in this area is spotty, at best. We do not need a NMD of the scope Bush wants until we see some compelling evidence that China is in fact tooling up to be agressive toward the United States.
Long and medium range missiles are the next biggest treat. However, systems like Aegis (or whatever the USN calls their shipborne missle defense), Patriot and the 747 laser system are largely effective. Operated redundantly, these systems provide effective defense against known threats. However, they are not deployed widely enough to protect against all treats, like the freighter at sea.
There is a tradeoff, though. These medium and short range defenses protect against a known target, but they do not protect against an unknown, surprise assault. By it's very nature, an unknown terrorist assault would be a single missle, or maybe two. New York and Washington are both within range of a ship. So, the only way missiles could get through is if they are not all that dangerous.
And finally, there is the terrorist carrying the nuke. This nuke would almost certainly come from outside the country, and it would be quite the job to get it past customs. Even assuming it could be imported into the country, it would not be a huge nuke.
The threats today are more numerous, but they are less likely to happen and less dangerous. In the fifties and sixties, the threat was that thousands of huge warheads would be raining down over every large city in the United States. Many of these warheads would be Hydrogen bombs, thousands of times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. The total time from launch to detonation would be about thirty minutes, and there was not a single defense.
Today we have few hydrogen bomb threats, and few organizations capable of delivering nuclear weapons. The ICBM assault is laughable: only the US and former soviets have them, and the US gives the soviets huge sums of money to prop them up. Why would the soviets bite the hand that feeds them? Medium range threats are not as dangerous, a handful of missles launched at the coasts is not armageddon. And finally, the low tech "suitcase" delivery is the lowest grade nuclear threat.
I don't see how you can claim that the first scenario--the US and Russia completely decimated with the rest of the world in a nuclear winter--is better than the second--a handful of low grade weapons likely to be stopped before they are launced. Even given this ridiculous argument, you don't even try to back it up. How did you arive at this conclusion?
And further, are you really blindly accepting Powell and Bush's statements at face value? Make no mistake, Powell is a politician, and he's a better one than Bush. Colin Powell would not say the a missile launch against the US is the greatest threat because it's true, but because it serves his interest. (BTW I think the greatest threat is a biological weapon). While I disagree with you, I think you're pompous and condescending and I share almost no interest in you, I have rarely found you to be uninformed. If this is really you, I may have to change my mind.
Yes, I'm still a junky. Are you still a bitch?
You do realize that Bill Clinton holds the record for the most troops deployed during his term as President - right?
GWB probably would rely a lot on his military advisors - that's what (in theory) experts are there for. His job is to distill that knowledge and make the final decisions based on what he is informed.
I'd much rather have someone who listens to advisors than someone who will start dropping bombs based on a hair-trigger reaction to an opinion poll somewhere or to divert attention from a sex scandal.
...and while he probably wouldn't have had the sex scandal problem, Gore lived and died (and lost an election) by the opinion polls. Just watch the three presidential debates for proof of that.
(not saying Bush will be any good - I don't know - but I don't see why anyone should sell him short before he proves himself a good or bad president)
- Jeff A. Campbell
- Jeff
"...and well financed terrorist groups are much more likely to try and get one"
Emphasis mine. Back when the USSR and the US shared all the weapons, each player had a large arsenal at their disposal.
Now that we have two-bit dictators with missles, it would seem quite likely that we'd have a lot more. Due to our greater finances, resources, and even land mass 'mutually assured destruction' is not so mutual. We might lose New York, but they'd lose most of their country.
Yeah, it's still something to worry about. But as another poster said, biological weapons are probably far more cost effective and harder to justify return strikes against.
I'm not sure I agree with your premise that things are necessarily riskier now - we may be more likely to be attacked, but the extent of the attack will likely be far less...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- Jeff
...no man, you've got your stereotype all wrong!
The fashionable stereotype this year is that conservatives sell out to EVIL MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS, most definitely not EVIL CHILD MURDERING DEFENSE CONTRACTORS. It's best to stick with the former this year - as popularized by Ralph Nader and Al Gore - as the latter is so 80's it's not even funny.
Please do keep your stereotypes in sync with your colleagues, though. It's hard to further an agenda when your message is fragmented.
...
BTW: Rumor is that next year they'll be pawns of either BIG TOBACCO or THE LOGGING INDUSTRY. I can hardly wait!
- Jeff A. Campbell
- Jeff
And why not? Simple. It won't live up to its promises. No matter how many of your tax dollars go towards it.
NMD is the direct descendent of SDI, which was the paranoid brainchild of Edward Teller. Teller may be a Nobel Prize-winning physicist (even though he may have used someone else's work to get said honor), but the guy uses fear and secrecy to the extreme. He preys upon the fears of Americans to justify budgets, and uses secrecy to justify hare-brained schemes. (In fact, he rarely submits his "findings" to peer review, which brings his qualifications as a competent scientist in question.)
NMD, if I remember correctly, is now being sheltered by a Teller protege, Dr. Lowell Wood. (I may have the name wrong, sorry.) This guy at least is showing some more political finesse than the hyperbolic Teller, since he's trying to sell NMD (and its "smart pebbles" concept) much like NASA was trying to sell "faster, better, cheaper" probes: getting more for less. (Compare and contrast with the $8 billion flushed down the toilet with SDI in the midst of a Cold War frenzy.) But, Teller & his acolytes still prefer using a veil of secrecy in the name of national security to justify their claims, as opposed to allowing their ideas to stand on their own merit in a public (or at least not so classified) forum, the way real scientists do.
I'll conclude by recommending a great book on the subject of hoodwinking the public with faulty science: "Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud" by Dr. Robert Park. Read about it here .
(If you're real nice, and CmdrTaco wouldn't mind, I'll submit a review of it. Ask me or I'll forget about it.)
.sig a .sog, .sig out loud, .sig out .strog"
".sig,
".sig,
Remember Gen. George C. Marshall in Saving Private Ryan? Spielberg stopped just short of CGI'ing a halo over his head.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
we'd all be gone, I suspect. I'd have to think about Reagan. Clinton would definitely negotiate..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
George Kennan, I think, wrote a good account of the story from the Russian perspective..Khruschev was in trouble the whole day...The Cuban perspective is also totally absent, which is another good point.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
The winners of course. "RFK"s book was roundly criticized for failing to deal with Russian and Cuban perspectives accurately..I think this movie is tepid enuf that it will get into civics classes.
I agree about the portrayal of generals, tho. When did Hollywood come to hate them so? And does anybody know if they are that bad..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
According to the Washington Post, there are more than 2,000 missiles aimed at the Soviet Union today, many times more than thirty years ago. And an equivalent amount aimed back. You may notice from the recent Russian sub acccident that things are not good for the Russian military now. So almost all military and political experts feel that that reality..plus of course terrorism, the Middle East, etc., make it more likely. More bombs, more people eager to use them, poorer maintenance.
Your message (and your faux amusement) is a great example of denial in action.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I sure wouldn't compare this move to Strangelove in anyway, apart from shot pretty nuke shots..This movie is without irony or bite at all...Yes, the shots were pretty great..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
The overrunning of the Berlin Wall was the end of the Us/Soviet pissing match, preceded by the detente engineered by Reagan, of all people, with Gorbachev. There were enormous tensions for years after Cuba, and raging surrogate wars, from Vietnam to Afghanistan to El Salvador..I don't th ink it was nearly the end. I think when those kids came thundering over the wall looking for m usic videos, that would be my nomination.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I'm not nearly the lst to review it..it's been reviewed all over the place..and everybody is welcome to post their own reviews here along with mine..er..that's sort of the point.if I were going to be the lst I'd have done it already..we wanted to wait until enuf people had seen it to talk about it..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I'm not a journalist, and this is a movie review, not a nuclear armaments piece..i don't use sources in reviews..But if you are interested in the subject, to to pieces on this movie in the NYTimes, Washington Post, LA Times, New Republic, Time Mag and about 500 others..There are thousands more missiles deployed now than 30 years ago, and if you follow incidents like the recent sinking of the Russian nuclear sub, or the many warheads the U.S. is trying to get out of the Baltic states left behind by the collapse of the Soviet Union, you shouldn't need much convincing..but that's another piece..easy enuf to check it out for yourself. be your own journalist.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I'd think Providence is more snow-savvy than that..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
According to the Brookings Instituion, and stories in the Washington Post (series in the NYTimes after the Russian sub incident) and many books on military policy (I'm not home, and I don't have URL's..easy nuff to get tho), there are now more than 2,000 U.S missiles aimed at the Soviet Union, and as many aimed back. But the soviet military is deterioriating (as the Russian sub episode and others have revealed) and many of their nuclear warheads have remained behind in breakaway or disconnected Republics like the Ukraine..tons of stories about the money the U.S. is spending to try and disarm them and get them out.
Plus there were not well financed terrorist networks then..the fact that some of you have no idea that this is so is the most interesting thing to me about the movie. It doesn't seem to be an issue, though in fairness, it's the reason George W. Bush and Colin Powell are arguing for a new multi-gazillion dollar missile shield.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
There were portrayals and Interviews with Gromyko, who lied to Kennedy to his face, the Soviet Ambassador to the U.N., and Anatoly Dobrynin, the longtime soviet ambassador who eventually cut a deal with Bobby Kennedy.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
There are many more weapons, they are much more powerful, many more are out of the control of the Soviets and in their former Republics, and well financed terrorist groups are much more likely to try and get one..I disagree completely. This is a form of denial. People have just lost interest in the issue, and want it to go away. But this is why Powell and Bush say their lst priority is a missile shield..I don't have an opinion on whether that' s a good idea or not, but Rumsfield and Powell say a missile launch against the U.S. is currently out greatest threat..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
We decided to wait a week to review Antitrust so that the maximum no of people could see it and talk about it. Lots of people can join in that way. So next Sunday. Come on by.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Bush, Powell and Rumsfield (Cheney too) have all said they perceive the greatest military threats to the U.S. to be launches of nuclear missiles by runaway governments or individual terrorists who get hold of them. That's why they want to fund a new missile shield. I have no idea if these fears are justified or not, and would love to see some comments from people who might know.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I've also gotten some e-mail from people in the South who remember parents brothers, cousins and uncles vanishing and heading for bases. Roads were clogged. In fact, a NWTimes reporter got onto the story partially because towns were emptying out in N carolina and Georgia.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Most of the interviews I 've read say O'Donnell's role in the actual crisis was much less pivotal than portrayed in the movie. And as another poster has pointed out, we have no real clues as to what Soviet or Cuban thinking or feeling was from this movie. Also some military people have said the portrayal of the generals was a bit heavy-handed..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
In RFK's book Missiles of October and other accounts I've read, Kennedy certainly did know that the Soviets had tactical nukes. That's why they did so many overflights. I'm curious as to why you think otherwise.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Dr. Strangelove is probably the most famous example of this plot device, and almost certainly the best. While not a direct satirisation of the Cuban missile crisis, it was almost certainly inspired by it, and remains one of the most biting comments on the craziness of mutually assured destruction. If you haven't seen it, get it out on video *right now*.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
>When exactly did Hollywood come to hate generals so much? Can you remember a positive recent portrayal of one? Well, I remember Independence Day, and it seems that the old general there came of as a good guy, and the real villains were the that was around 1996...
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Actually, building a nuclear device is NOT as simple as people think.
:-(
Getting the fissile material and explosive triggers are one thing, but ASSEMBLING a nuclear bomb is quite something else--it requires an extremely high level of precision machining that very few can afford.
That's why at most a terrorist nuclear device would have a yield of at most 4-5 kT. Mind you, a 4-5 kT device detonated in front of the New York Stock Exchange will still kill many thousands of people.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I'm a freshman at the University of Rochester (not to be confused with RIT [Sorry abou that link!]) and we got to see 13 Days in early December. Whne the movie began to encounter all sorts of weirdness, one of the guys running to show got up and told us that there was nothing they could do since I was just a messup with the satellite signal. This leads me to my question:
Does anyone have any info on the system used to send movie previews to colleges via satellite? Encryption? Any way to hijack the signals?
All I want to know is: How can Katz even say this with a straight face? He is king of hysteria and hype...
EOF
Yes, you're right. Also (I just got back from seeing Traffic), think about the ease with which drugs are smuggled into the country. If somebody put a nuke in a truck, the way Timothy McVeigh did with fertilizer, think how big the explosion could be. Sure, it wouldn't have the altitude necessary for a really wide blast radius, but it would still be plenty potent. Bring in a couple of these, and you could blow up D.C. and New York, if you felt like it.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
Had Thirteen Days been release while still timely, the spontaneous peace-and-love revolution of the late 60's probably would have come sooner and not been crushable by The Man.
Sorry, but I can't agree with this. I'm only 20, but everybody I've talked to who was around at the time of the missile crisis fully realized how close everybody had come to going up in pink smoke. Seeing a movie about it wouldn't have made this any more clear. Also, a successful peace-and-love movement, unless matched by a similar successful movement in the Soviet Union (and you can guess how likely that would have been at the time), would simply have resulted in my first language being Russian instead of English. Making peace and putting down the guns can not be a one-sided thing, and it would have been at that point.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
i saw this last night too - and i have to say it was an ok movie for the most part. parts of it were pretty predictable, and i feel that i had the open source movement shoved down my throat a little too much, but otherwise not bad at all.
i don't think there were a lot of geeks in the theatre i was in last night, b/c a lot of ppl missed out of a ton of "jokes/coinsedenses(sp)" of the movie and microsoft.
i especially liked "bill who?".
-Jae
What would the outcome have been if George W. Bush had been President during the Cuban Missile Crisis?
Al Gore?
Ronald Reagan?
Harry Truman?
Reality has a liberal bias
What if George W. Bush had been president during the Cuban Missile Crisis?
Ronald Reagan?
Would we be here today?
IMHO, rationalism only won out because you had a rational president. I doubt any other President of the last 50 years would have been as rational.
Reality has a liberal bias
I suffered through High School in Norfolk, MA, not too far north of the RI border. I grew up before that in Calgary, Alberta, where we're used to huge dumps of snow throughout the winter.
I was shocked my first winter in MA: 6" of snow overnight and the schools were closed. Don't know if you've ever been around that part of the country, Jon, but it's a LOT of small towns. Most just don't have the budget to react right away to snow storms to get the ploughs out..
I don't know about Providence, though. The stockpiling does seem a little bizarre.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I saw the boom mikes appear on the top edge of the screen also. It happened in 3 scenes in the Whitehouse. My thoughts were:
.5-1.0 seconds. It would have been very easy to paint them out.
a) The boom mike operator on those shots should have a hard time finding another job
b) They could've dropped the $ and had the boom mikes removed digitally. The shots weren't complex--at best there was a slow pan and the mikes weren't visible for much more than
Not. I don't know about the stockpiling, but just about every school in the Providence area closed during the storm before last...1 1/2 inches fell. I kid you not.
Plus, every single fscking person on the road has forgotten how to drive in snow (even sanded/salted snow) before each and every snowstorm. Dicks.
This will sound like a troll, but I just came home from a fairly exciting ride to the Prov. post office. 9 miles, every single fucking mile had a dork playing games. (Like, zip around me at 70+, and jerk in front of me as we're approaching an offramp. Dicks)
Ohhhh.... What a great place to live. Not.
-lf
But there's a vast difference between a dozen cities vanishing and 500 craters across the USA (that's an average of 10 per state, although Rhode Island probably wouldn't get that many). We don't know if there would be weather consequences more widespread than 500 simultaneous short-lived thunderstorms.
Most of the plutonium dust would be wasted on the terrain, clothes, and skin. Not everyone breathing it would get cancer, some would expel it during normal lung clearing, and some dust would be encased in cysts. And any cancer deaths would be spread over 40 years, which makes it rather ineffective. (Right now the D.O.E. is trying to find former nuclear workers to figure out if they were injured -- apparently it wasn't obvious if they were.) Better to drop cigarettes in the streets.
Nuclear devices CANNOT be detonated at any place at any time. Position and timing are essential. "Bridge To Infinity" by Bruce Cathie states on page 170," I had discovered during my research that an atom bomb was an intricate geometric device that could only be detonated by placing it below, on, or above a calculated geometric position in relation to the earth's surface. The geometric trigger that caused the disruption of matter within the bomb was the spacial relationship between the earth and the sun at a given instant of time. This knowledge made it obvious to me that AN ALL OUT NUCLEAR WAR WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE as each bomb would have to be detonated at a certain place at a certain time, which could be precalculated years in advance by an proposed enemy." Explanation... why did the bomber that flew over Nagasaki fly around for over an hour constantly under attack from Japanese fighters until the correct conditions of position and time were arrived at.
IIRC, Rumsfield oversaw the 1976 motballing of the Nekoma, ND Safeguard site. Basically Nekoma was a very limited ABM system, designed to "Safeguard" the ICBM silos dotted around northeast North Dakota, as well as early warning radar (Cavalier Air Station) and Grand Forks AFB. (Google search on it.)
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Don't bother that movie SUCKED, even if it was anti ms it was still lame.
(slightly offtopic)
The LOTR trailer looked really sweet. It looks like they're spending a hell of a lot of money on that thing.
Non gratis rodentus anus
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It could be worse... people made good money to see the pure historical revisionism that was U-571 (or whichever number it was).
"Life is like a sewer - what you get out of it depends on what you put into it" - Tom Lehrer
And it does NOT have to be coherent with the actual fact either.
Yes, the generals were that bad. Kevin Costner's part is dramatized a bit (you need to have someone to tell the story, otherwise people will criticize the movie for jumping around and making no sense), but I don't think people realize that most of the dialogue in this movie is based on transcripts that the Whitehouse kept during this crisis. So most of the comments, attitudes, opinions were on the dot, with the exception of Costner as I pointed out earlier.
I agree with the person who said the movie was 30 minutes too long. I thought it was a really good movie, but, it is hard to hold the audience in suspense for over 2 hours.
I too think it would be interesting to hear about this story from the Soviet Union's perspective, but the chances of that happening anytime soon are nil. This movie was clearly one sided, and they didn't claim that it wasn't.
Dumb luck. Not necessarily my view, but certainly one way to look at it.
The movie acts like its the Kennedy brothers against a vast conspiracy of generals who want world destruction, when it wasn't that at all. Additionally, we never get to see or hear about some of the most important decisions of the crisis, such as Kruschev's two letters to Kennedy and the meetings of the OAS when they decide to back the US. Finally, the UN scenes are a circus, with everyone cheering on Stevenson as he yells at the Russian ambassador.
All in all, an interesting movie with some nice looks at the U2 pilots etc., but not worthwhile for serious history buffs.
So, a sub-culture in Boston (and I'm speaking strictly from classroom experience, so anyone who belongs to said subset can go ahead and correct me), known as the "Brahmins," actually have what we could categorized as Boston/British accent. The people are a small and dwindling number of families that have historically been seen as the highest upper-crust of Boston; the money in the families are very, very old. In a video on accents I watched in Sociolinguistics, we heard one of these people speak, and you couldn't quite tell where the Boston accent ended and the British accent began.
Now, given this information, it's quite a possibility that that was the accent that the Kennedy's had. I don't know, however, since I'm not old enough to have heard either of the Kennedy's speak, and I've only heard the occassional recording of JFK.
Of course, using Occam's Razor, it's just actor incompetence... but it would certainly be interesting to see that.
Speaking of accents, I get the feeling that we're never going to see a President of the United States from the northeast again, especially given the demographics, census, and population trends.
yours,
yours,
kbs
Right on regarding the power -- if they can figure out how and when to intercept. For now, that's a very big if.
The terrorist scenario is a good motivation for boosting the assets of the CIA and FBI for their investigative roles; the primary way of stopping such operations is infiltration and espionage beforehand since you can't possibly search all transport methods. You can, however, take advantage of the fact that people talk, and can also be pressured. Especially with the help of our allies; I have no doubt that the Mossad, for instance, would try very hard if they learned that, say, Hezbollah obtained a nuclear warhead -- and they've been less politically hamstrung than our own agencies.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
And another one --
GRU[*] Col. Oleg Penkovsky, an asset run by both the British and the Americans, passed along such valuable documents as the missile site construction plans early on, allowing them to figure out what exactly was being built on Cuba. In 1962, he was arrested by the KGB, and presumably interrogated and executed...
Source -- Andrew, Christopher. "The Sword and the Shield", Basic Books, 1999.
[*] Soviet military intelligence, which made him a VERY useful asset until he was caught.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
According to whom?
RIers still do that. At the first whisper of a snowstorm that will bring more than an inch or two, everyone runs off to the markets to buy bread, milk, and liquor to stock enough food and booze to last 2 weeks. Oh, and mustn't forget the TP. People will leave work early and pull their kids out of school if there's more than 3 inches on the ground.
Really.
Around here, Art Lake is still God.
Did anyone else find Kevin Costner's accent VERY strained and unrealistic?
I felt like he was doing a (bad) Mayor Quimby imitation the whole time....
Kickin' movie, though...
nlh
Ferrari and other exotic car rentals in New York
The theater I saw the movie in last night had a funny sign up by the ticket counter, which read something like this:
"Due to the extremely high interest in the 'Lord of the Rings' trailer, we regret to inform you that individuals who purchase tickets to 'Thirteen Days' only to see the trailer will NOT receive a refund if they choose not to stay for the remainder of the movie."
And I didn't think it was that good of a trailer, anyway. I think hyping 3 movies 1, 2, and 3 years in advance (respectively) is a setup for disappointment.
nlh
Ferrari and other exotic car rentals in New York
You can hear some of the dialogue between Kennedy and his cabinet members during this crisis at:
http://www.hpol.org/jfk/cuban/
They are taken right from the tapes out of the Kennedy library. Really cool stuff.
Wow, thanks for the informative posts. Too bad you didn't get modded up, though. If I had moderator points, I'd give 'em to you!
Free Hans!
Also, I'll point you to Corona with a bit that I think was a mistake to be left out. Though Anderson was mentioned, and it showed his plane being shot down (along with a bit at near the end about it), a dedication would have been appropriate:
"I am concerned because so little attention has been given to the 'only casualty' of the Cuban Missile Crisis....Maj. Rudolf Anderson, Jr....the U-2 pilot who was brought down by a Soviet SAM.
"The missile ripped through the cabin of the U-2....tearing into the spacesuit...and right arm of Maj. Anderson.
"At that altitude...there was an immediate decompression...do you know what happens to a balloon at high altitude...as his blood began to boil...I need not go on with the gory details...I believe that you get the 'picture' (no pun intended!)
"Maj.(Rudy) Anderson made the 2nd U-2 flight.... the 15th of Oct 1962...was responsible, according to his awards and citations per Gen LeMay for locating the SS-5 missile site, most advanced Soviet missiles.
"Rudy sacrificed his life for the 80,000,000 Americans as refered to in the film...as he was shot down on Sat morning, Oct 27, 1962.
"BOTTOM LINE: I would think that this film would be dedicated to our only casualty who gave his life that ALL of us would see 'another Saturday' according to Robert McNamara....Sect of Defence...
"I have been researching Rudy Anderson for over 10 years and file of research on this subject and his role in the CMC...if anyone is interested.
"Most importantly..I believe that we all owe a debt of gratitude to Maj. Anderson...perhaps this is our opportunity to repay this debt...Dedicate the film to Maj. Anderson.
"I am not interested in any monetary gain...only a means of acknowledgeing what this pilot did for all of us!
"I wonder how this story would have really ended if not for Rudy Anderson...would we all be speaking 'Russian' now?
"You wanted a 'scoop' I can only assume that you got more than you bargained for...."
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Oscarfish.com: tropical fish with attitude. Way t
see subject.
I was doing research for someone on where I work, and trying to find out exactly how old Castro is now (75). Anyway, I came across this in my epic trek through google.
Enjoy.
Rami
--
rJames.org - illustration
There were both C and jave code; c part was some buffe code. java code ( I saw some println)
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Read the book "Dark Sun" by Richard Rhodes. Gen. LeMay, as head of Strategic Air Command, USAF, was keeping his bombing lists from the head of the Tactical Air Command, USAF on the grounds that there was no "need-to-know." As TAC's fighter-bombers were supposed to tactical-nuke pathways for the SAC bombers (all this before long-range ballistic missiles), there should have been full coordination of planning between forces, but no.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Actually, what I found most compelling about the movie was the sense of near-omniscience it had. Sequences at the White House, underwater, aboard a US ship, in a U2 spyplane, in Cuba, were all presented with equal clarity and effectiveness. And yet, the "menace" that was the Soviet Union was conveyed just as effectively, perhaps by the fact that we never saw any Russians (aside from glimpses of missile crews).
:)
The whole Boston accent thing was kinda creepy, especially when Bobby Kennedy's occasionally faded into a british one.
And I saw the LotR trailer. Niiiice.
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Katz seems rather enamored of those big explosions.... But did the nuke sequences (especially at the beginning) remind anyone else of Dr. Strangelove?
Hehe, different ending entirely, but a whole lot of parallels, such as the U2 that gets lost in Russia and especially the line: "There's always some idiot who doesn't get the signal" or some such.
Maybe the coolest nuke was toward the end, when it turns into a sunrise.
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
"I am sick and tired of being told that good, upright people are sick and tired. And I think all good, upright people are too."
Basically, I'm getting to the point where I'll read an article abstract, feel my gorge rise, and be absolutely sure that JonKatz is the author. What I'm really not sure of is where he get's license to speak for or even of geeks and geek culture. Even with a bunch of high-school rejects piping up me-tooism to his tune.
Speaking as an ex-high school reject, Mr. Katz has yet to demonstrate that he knows anything apart from
- How to win the sympathies of fifteen year olds while
- Capitalizing on the madness and deaths of teenagers (teenaged geeks included) and
- angering and offending adult geeks.
That said, I'd like to make it very plain, I for one do not think that JonKatz is theThis column is no better. And finally, I'm tired of indicated the direct errors I see in a Katz-rant, and would rather, in my own, discuss what I see as errors of philosophy: points that I believe echo mistaken ideas about general /. readership that Katz holds, and ones I think are pretty important.
- Geeks believe technology solves everything, and the the future will be better than the present is better than the past. If we though that, why would we read
/.? Voltairian notions like that obviate any sort of activism, or even action. Where do I arrive at the conclusion that Katz believes this? Well, in this article, the emphasis on the technology level, with a "Gosh, it sure is good that we don't still ahve that stuff" attitude, as opposed to "Goddamn it's amazing what they did with what they had." Geekdom is humanistic, regardless of its technocratic stereotypes.
- Geeks are isolationists The idea that there is geek (good) and not-geek (bad). Notice how everything is observed by Katz from the outside, unless he's suggesting that the subject is a fellow geek, in which case he presupposes motives. "When exactly did Hollywood come to hate generals so much? Can you remember a positive recent portrayal of one?" Well, yes. Generals Han Solo and Lando Calrissian. As American generals go, there's this classic film called Patton...But most annoying about the comment is this "Hollywood is not geek" statement implicit in the Katz. A geek would have addressed Hollywood in general, rather than whispering gossip about it.
- Non-geeks are evil and scary What commentary he slips into a movie review (a movie review!) is all about nuke happy politicos, threatening diplomats and (a Katz favorite) the hysterical media. I think each of those stereotypes occurs three times in the review. This is probably the Katzism I hate most; it does nobody any good to suggest to the media and politicians that geeks hate and fear them. What incentive do they then have to justly represent anyone they identify as a geek?
- Geekdom is an identityI'm going to pull a Human Torch here and suggest that Geekdom is Not Identity. In fact, the idea is ludicrous. Anyone who might justifiably suggest as much will by definition object to the label, to any label. My use has always been to suggest some shared qualities and interests, and in part to hijack the word out of negative connotation. But the identification "I am a geek" has zero meaning on it's own. And the day I hear about a Geek College Fund I will laugh my ass off.
As a postscript (level 2) (oh, JK, that was geek humor) I'd like to suggest a new poll: Should JonKatz be removed from Slashdot? .Ushers will eat latecomers.
IP is just rude.
Is there any torture so subl
I'm going to go catch the flick this weekend.
I too was just a kid when all this crap hit the fan. But being a kid growing up in Miami while all this was going down made it really scary. I remember watching what seemed like endless trains carrying tanks and God knows what kind of military hardware through rail road tracks in my neighborhood. I remember the adults scared out of their whits and really thinking that it was the end of the world, or at the very least Miami would become ashes or invaded.
Well, I was able to suspend my disbelief for the 2 1/2 hour span it took for the movie. I rather enjoyed it (even with Costner's usual wooden acting) as much of the backdrop (including the aircraft) was appropriately reminiscent of the'60s. The only things I had problems with were Kenny's son getting a report card in mid-October and the fact that I missed the LOTR trailer. ...DaNA
a bugg
(IIRC, LeMay was the model for the general plotting a military coup in the film Seven Days in May, much as Henry Kissinger was the model for the title character of Dr. Strangelove.
I'm pretty sure Dr. Edward Teller was Strangelove's inspiration - scientist with a German accent, thinks a bout nuclear war a lot, heck I think Teller had even lost a leg to diabetes. Was Henry K. even a well known figure at the time Dr. Strangelove was made?
"Bugger this, I want a better world." - Jenny Sparks
Of course, in Mars Attacks the war-loving military guys were right, so it's not really the same thing...
well, now this makes more sense... /. .... i was kind of surprised that it was rejected, but now i think i know why: katz wanted to be the first to have a shot at reviewing this film... not that i'm bitter or anything, or that i really know this for sure, but it *does* seem a bit suspect... in case anyone's interested, i did post a slightly shortened version of the review on Mad Ink the next morning...
i got to go see a pre-screening of antitrust about a week ago... a good movie btw, and i'd reccommend it... anyway, as soon as i got home i wrote up a no-spoilers review of it and submitted it to
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09
>Ironic that nuclear bombs are much more likely to go off today than 30 years ago, but pols don't worry about it much
/. crowd seemed so gleeful when they bash them.
How do you quantify "much more likely"?
Such rhetoric is typical of a piece not well researched, but written by ear instead.
I am always amused by Katz's pieces : they resemble mega-trolls.
No wonder the
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
The Cuban Missile crisis came about as a direct result of the weakness and immaturity Krushchev perceived in JFK as a result of JFK's irresolution during the Bay of Pigs debacle and the Berlin Crisis of 1961, when what became the Berlin Wall was put up by the Communists (it was just strings of barbed-wire at the time; decisive action by JFK at the time could've prevented the USSR and the East Germans from violating the the Four-Powers Treaty and thereby consolidating their stranglehold on the freedoms of Berliners living in the Soviet Sector of the city).
Krushchev was in an odd position at the time; he'd been the one to expose the crimes of Stalin at the 20th Party Congress (it wasn't done out of a sense of humanity or decency, since Krushchev didn't do anything dramatic like, say, disbanding the KGB; it was more of a tactical maneuver designed to smash the last vestiges of 'Father Joe'-worship within the Party apparat, removing Stalin as the measuring-stick against which Krushchev would be compared by the nomenklatura), and, like Gorbachev, realized that something had to be done in order to provide for economic expansion of the USSR. Also like Gorbachev, he was still a committed socialist - he wanted to find some way of 'humanizing' socialism without allowing the populace the complete freedom of choice which is the growth-engine of free-market societies.
Indeed, we could've had glasnost and perestroika - with the inevitable crumbling of the apparatus of repression, since once people have tasted a little freedom, their hunger for it becomes insatiable - if not for the hollow blustering of the Kennedys. You must remember, JFK was a conservative Democrat who ran to the right of Richard Nixon on national-security issues and the illusory 'missile gap'. Someone with maturity and a nuanced view of the world (someone like Richard Nixon, perhaps, before the stealing of the 1960 election embittered him to the point of paranoia) might've understood this, and given Krushchev the breathing-room he needed to try and implement some kind of reform.
Instead, JFK's apocalyptic rhetoric, coupled with his inner callowness, which Krushshev had sensed, a) forced Krushchev to play the bully in order to maintain his precarious grip on power, and b) by doing so, made it impossible for Krushchev to do anything regarded as 'soft' by the Politburo and the Central Committee.
Being tough, and meaning it, is a legitimate tactic; Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan used it to great effect. Acting tough, but not meaning it, marks one as being unserious, an unworthy adversary who will crumble when push comes to shove. Thus was JFK.
Finally, you need to remember something else not hinted at in the movie - in exchange for removing the IRBMs from Cuba, the US secretly agreed to remove IRBMs pointed at the USSR from Turkey. When all was said and done, Krushchev had achieved a major geopolitical gain for the USSR by playing the game of nuclear brinksmanship during those 13 days in October.
When I got home from the movie, I immediately phoned home to let my parents know that they should go see it... good stuff. I knew my dad had been drafted into the Army and station at Ft. Hood, Texas at the same time as the missile crisis, so I figured it would be interesting to him.
He proceeded to tell me his account of the entire thing from his perspective: from the day they loaded up his entire division and shipped them to Georgia (they got to listen to JFK and LBJ speak to them), to when they were sent to Florida and told to set up camp for 2 days at a Horseracing Track, to when they were all loaded up into large beach invasion type boats to set sail. He said they were floating out there for a day or 2 (out of sight from Florida, even) and being given maps and invasion plans of their sections of beaches when they got the word that they were dismantling the missles.
Well, that happened 5 years before my parents got married, and I wasn't born until '76...
So maybe Costner's character wasn't as powerful as the movie portrayed... I'm just glad cooler heads prevailed in that one.
I challenge anyone to watch The Postman, then Dances with Wolves (4 hour version), then WaterWorld - and still be able to say that! (You'll be lucky to be able to speak at all)
All women want is honesty, if you can fake that, you're in.
I noticed the same findings in my theatre.
-usgrant
Heck Yes...
Kennedy's big problem was saber rattling!
Admittily Regean was scary, but no president before or after Kennedy brought us closer to the brink.
Look at the real facts, we had 10 long range bombers for every one of Russia's, we had ~50 deployed ICBM's vs's Russia's less than 10. We could strike Russia from bases in Turkey, Europe, Japan, and Alaska. We had a large Carrier fleet that they lacked. They would have to launch any attack against the US from Siberia or an ill equiped navy.
Cuba was an attempt to gain parity with the US, remember this whole period can be summed up as Russian's Bluff. They where bluffing to offset weaknesses and hole's in the russian economy and defenses. If the Dem's and Kennedy hadn't been so set on MAD (instead of parity) Cuba would not have happened.
btw. I grabbed the numbers from '...the Heavens and the Earth, a Political History of the Space Age' by Walter McDougal, the book won the 1986 Pulitzer for History. Well worth the read, if it's still in print.
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
What if George W. Bush had been president during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Ronald Reagan?
I don't know about GWB, but if Reagan had been President, they wouldn't have tried it in the first place, because he was perceived by the Soviets as a strong leader. We had the problem precisely because Kennedy was a weak leader.
Fortunately, he managed to stumble his way through it, but it was a clear case of getting lucky.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
...Better red than dead. (Its a joke) It'll be a sad day when films get shown in class instead of real history (ie something closer to the truth). ESPECIALLY when the subject of the film is an event that was as sensitive to Amreican political sensibilities as the Cuban missile crisis. Take it as gospel at your peril, and remember that the Russian account of events is no less and no more valid than your own. jb
Here in Florida the mushroom cloud was depicted over one of our voting machines.
funk
--- rapper/producer/bachelorette party stripper
As is pointed out in the movie even if we had made the demand to have the missiles removed a peaceful outcome still might have ensued. This is because either way the conflict was still an eye for an eye. The cubans removed their missles from Cuba in exchange for our removal of missles from Turkey. Nuclear war would only occur once either side thought it was losing beyond a point from which it could not recover. Thus, even if the US had struck it is not 100% certain.
The other thing is that you have to consider the circumstances under which Regan and Bush were presidents. It was a time of detente as well as improved communication between Washington and Moscow( red line and improved diplomatic relations). To at least some extent it should be taken into account the situation in which Regan and Bush were presidents.
I know one teacher that would play Thirteen Days in class. It's my 10th grade (female) English teacher. You know, the same one who thought that Mel Gibson would be the best way for us to learn Shakespeare.
I can see it now --
Teacher: "Kevin Costner is sooooooo dreamy...I mean, he comes across as such a good historical figure, it's as if you were really there. Class, I want you to write a paper on this. If anyone needs me, I'll be in the teacher's room watching this tape again."
I heartily suggest that you avoid this movie, since it's producer, New Line Cinema is a spammer. They use a 3rd party to send their spam, and the "unsubscribe" link, of course, doesn't work. And yes, I'm sure I didn't give them my email address. They've spammed with ads for several movies over the last few months. I've reported them to spamcop.net but they are so huge I'm sure nothing will happen.
>>>It is the final solution.
Please, please, tell me your post was just a clumsy excuse at satire. If not, you might want to find a different way of summing up your post. As is, you look sorta nuts.
If the sword of Damocles hangs over you long enough, you just go about life as usual.
Maybe the sword will fall, maybe it won't. In the meantime, there's life to be lived.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
"And finally, there is the terrorist carrying the nuke. This nuke would almost certainly come from outside the country, and it would be quite the job to get it past customs. Even assuming it could be imported into the country, it would not be a huge nuke."
As you stated above, New York and Washington are both within range of a ship. More importantly, they both have harbors, or are close enough to one as to make no difference (same with LA, San Francisco, and Seattle...Chicago, maybe, if you can get up the inland straights...and let's not forget Pearl Harbor, San Diego, and Norfolk). So why bother with either missiles or a suitcase bomb? Just put a big humping warhead below decks on an old freighter, pull up as close to your target as you can, and light the proverbial candle. It would be a suicide mission, but those seem to be pretty popular nowadays.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Am I just imagining things or is this real? I started to listen really carefully to what he was saying during the noise because the noise made me extra curious. Then three minutes later they've removed 14 seconds of the tape.
I am starting to realize why a lot of americans are keen on conspirational theories...
Will code a sig generator for food
Was the movie really too long?
;-)
I don't know if they meant for this, but in a way, the length of the movie, along with the atmosphere being held tense for that length of time, helped make the viewer share more of the feeling of exaustion with the characters. I thought it was very fitting, with or without that intention.
The thing that most disturbed me was the microphone always dropping into view every few seconds..
typical american hatemongering. if you know anything about the facts, you know that during the gulf war, sadam was warned if he used chemical weapons, he faced a hugely disporpotionate (threatened nuclear) response. despite the american use of chemical weapons and invasion deep into iraq, iraq did not use chemical weapons against american forces
they may be foreigners, but theyre not stupid. mutually assured destruction is even more powerful now that it is one sided. as long as you can keep your politicians and generals from completely destroying a country with nuclear capability, you shouldnt have to worry about retaliation because the other guy knows he will lose everything
the animal doesnt even have opposable thumbs, focker!
I also saw it last night, and apart from the somewhat stupid HTML at the beginning (as far as I could tell they just had a big table and an image map, and repeated the code over and over) I enjoyed it, and as for it "supposedly" being inspired by the microsoft case, it was obviously 100% inspired by M$, as anyone watching the movie will see from the first minute to the end. Tim Robbins was made to look like Bill Gates, they refer to Gates ("Who?") and they basically mock microsoft throughout. Apart from all this, I'd have to say my favorite part was the 500x (estimate on my part, heh) CD writer that burned a full CD in around 5 seconds.
True, but that was fairly low on Gary's list of offenses, all told.
That said, I loved Antitrust. I loved it loved it loved it. It was refreshingly unselfconscious and un-"ironic". I was hoping to see geeks in the audience but it looked like the main draw for the people in my theatre was Ryan Phillippe.
This posting might have mild spoilers, but nothing terrible -- I've taken everything very far out of context.
In order to reach the non-geek audience they had to make Nurv kill people, which weakens the films utility as GNU propaganda but makes the issue more black-and-white. Black and white is actually the biggest problem in the quality of the film, shifting allegiances notwithstanding. The politics of the Nurv headquarters pits geeks against nongeeks (in the form of Security staff and, to a lesser extent, lawyers) in a way that seems kind of stereotypical, if reflective of the "research" someone clearly did. The extent of geek/nongeek animosity rang false to me, but my experience may be atypical. Ryan Phillippe's orientation buddy says, "Everybody makes fun of the security chief 'cause he's not a geek"; later, we see how the security chief sees computers: when the Nurv product logo shows up on a TV, he asks, like child, "Does that mean we did it?"
But there are things in the movie that filled me with absolute glee. There is a scene involving the release of source code that make me clap, and possibly hoot/holler, without realizing I was doing so. In the preview we see that Tim Robbins has the BillGatesHouse thing with the artwork that changes according to user preferences; later in the movie they are used brilliantly as an element of suspense that had me squirming in my seat.
The ending was very tidy, as were a good many things in the movie, but the movie was enjoyable if lightweight. I'd put it on a shelf next to 'Sneakers' and 'Wargames'.
>distrobution of ideas in the film the company
>behind it all (MGM)is one of the groups sueing
>2600 over DeCSS. Now if thats not hypocricy i dont
>know what is.
That is a good point. I think it falls short of hypocrisy, though: it's not as though screenplays are written by teams of studio lawyers. Well, actually, it can be kind of like that. But the studios are sometimes just distributors of a film that was made independently, though that is not the case with this movie. The screenwriter is credited as Howard Franklin, who also has a credit for "The Man Who Knew Too Little", and who directed "Larger than life." These movies sound pretty bad, and I've never seen them. He seems to have some sort of MGM contract and also has random producer credits and stuff. Hmm, actually, there might not be many things closer to a puppet of the studio than Howard Franklin. But in light of his other credits, I think it's more fair to call it "stupid" than "hypocritical" -- it doesn't seem to me that MGM is trying to align themselves with Free Software hackers, which is why the movie is not good Free Software publicity. Howard Franklin probably doesn't know a whole hell of a lot about DeCSS, if anything, and since he's clearly not a Free Software ideologue he'd probably prefer that the studios had their way. It might be hypocritical if the studio'd received a script treatment from someone and then had Howard Franklin develop it and did not give credit to the person who had the idea. At some point one has to separate the film-as-art or film-as-entertainment from the people who made it. RMS might disagree, and I kind of disagree too, but a movie does have value on its own, independent of the circumstances of its production.
In light of Antitrust's website, one might again cry hypocrisy, what with their (very vapid) interviews with maddog and Miguel. But that's just the work of somebody in the MGM's web department. An organization the size of a studio has all kinds of people working for it, and it's pretty simpleminded to say that the entire movie is bullshit just because people at the top are doing a terrible, terrible thing. At the very least it has entertainment value. When I said I clapped without noticing, I meant to suggest that it was a mindless kind of fun, though empty of real ideological value.
Heh, thats true for non nuclear weapons too...One large fertilizer bomb going off in front of the empire state building maybe(I'm just throwing out ideas here) But what everyone forgets is that an atomic bomb is just a poweful explosive with some neat side effects. And there are bombs with very few of those neat side effects too.
Oops....you'll know what I'm talkin about in a bit.
Disclaimer: if the above was a troll and not your true views, disregard my post. =P Though I must say, it wasn't funny at all.
First off, there are still wars. I think it arrogant of you not to even count the continuing battles in places in central Africa, the Balkans, and the Yugoslav peninsula, most of which have seen near-constant fighting for the last, oh, 50 years or so.
There's something I think you're failing to see. While it's true that nuclear arms are a means of defense (don't attack us or you'll get nuked), they won't save us all as you suggest. Nuclear powers aren't immune to greed or simple human stupidity. The snafu principle alone should indicate that sooner or later, a nuclear "incident" if not a war is bound to happen. Rationalism does NOT always win through even when the stakes are high; one must be irrational to rise high in politics, and usually power-hungry as well. Such people make mistakes easily.
Or, put more simply: Laser and missile defense systems are already very far along in development. What do you think will happen to this "balance of terror" when they start to come online? All of a sudden, these oh-so-peaceful nuclear powers will no longer be afraid of war, feeling (over)confident that their defense systems can shoot down the nukes. They will once again begin to initiate wars. The worst-case scenario is a preemptive first strike against any nation who even ATTEMPTS to put such a defense system online. You can't argue that they won't, because whether out of self-interest or out of true commitment to their citizens' safety, every nation will try to build nuclear defense systems. The reason we have had world peace for so long has been the nuclear impasse and the self-destruction of the soviet union. Take away the Mutually Assured Destruction, and you'll suddenly see wars being fought again.
No one technology is the arbiter of war or peace; human beliefs and motives are. Someday someone will invent some new weapon, let's call it, say, the "plasma bomb", which might be used between warring planets to destroy each other; it cannot be detected or stopped. All war ceases as all the leaders are too scared to be the bullies they'd like to be. Then someone comes up with a deflector screen for it. War recommences, and planets start blowing up.
Education and communication are much safer deterrents to war than technological impasse.
-Kasreyn
I'm hoping your post was just satiric / a troll, or else I worry about you.
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
I don't think we should pay much attention to this silliness. Hollywood movie writers just aren't creative/intelligent enough to come up with anymore more original. Now, I'm not a republicrat and I'm as anti-war as the next guy, but it's getting incredibly old. *shrug*
Anybody who's a missile crisis buff might want to pick up Resurrection Day. It's an excellent alternate history novel that takes place in 1972 in a world where the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted into war. A little slow at points, but an overall good and thought-provoking read that gave me some new insights into the goings on during the Crisis in this world. The next time I caught a Discovery Channel special on the subject, those fresh insights sent quite a chill down my spine.
I wasn't born until 1973, but I've read almost everything I could get my hands on about those days and spoken at length to relatives who remember all too well the sheer terror of October 1962.
I'm looking forward to seeing Thirteen Days for a fresh, albeit dramatic-license riddled (from what I've read) perspective.
~Philly
I read that nine different posters advertising Thirteen Days were made for different regions of the USA, and I'm interested to hear what all of them are. They are all variations of the same iconoclastic concept: A local/regional landmark, with missiles in the air and a particularly photogenic mushroom cloud from an old H-bomb test in the background. The poster sure does its job well with me. They are all over bus shelters in my area, and while stopped at certain traffic lights on my way to work, I can't help but sit there and stare at them and shudder a little.
Anyway, here in the Philadelphia, PA area, the landmark depicted is Independence Hall. I know that the landmark in the New England regional posters is a lighthouse. What are the other seven?
The review is pretty unfavorable, still won't keep me away though.
"My mother works for Microsoft now. A whole other cult."
Ahem. Major unsubstantiable statements. I do agree that the sheer quantity of nuclear weapons owned by the U.S. and C.I.S. are a deterrent, if that is what you are really trying to say. However, this isn't the first time in history. You see, one is never "there", but one is always "going" there. Our relative peace is but a phase between times of war. In just six days, we will have a draft-dodging, crooked, alcoholic, warmonger in the White House. War is in our near future.
As far as your assertion of a negative relationship between quantity of nuclear weapons and the level of violence, that is obvious bosh. Please stop trolling slashdot. Thank you.
I'd rather be a unix freak than a freaky eunuch
Ewige Blumenkraft!
The Cuban missile crisis seems to me like the beginning of the end of the great U.S./U.S.S.R. pissing contest. There weren't any obvious changes reflected in our (U.S.) culture, but the aftermath of a trauma such as impending armaggedon definitely brews quietly in the subconscious mind.
We had The Day After when I was about ten years old. That movie educated an entire American generation in the folly of full-scale nuclear war. Does one's form of government (communism vs. pseudo-democratic) really matter so much that all of life must come to an end, either in a blinding flash or a slow poisoning? Had Thirteen Days been release while still timely, the spontaneous peace-and-love revolution of the late 60's probably would have come sooner and not been crushable by The Man.
I could be wrong, but I think we are still experiencing the slow changes from those thirteen days where our leaders were confronted for the first time with the ugly fruits of the anti-Communist zealots who had planted the seeds not a generation before.
I'd rather be a unix freak than a freaky eunuch
Ewige Blumenkraft!
I think a good proportion of the "hate" for generals can be traced to a couple of things: First, while Hollywood is actually a brutal, authoritarian system, they think of themselves as this cozy, egalitarian, cuddly artist's colony that rejects the chain of command and obedience to orders that characterizes military life. (My brothers, who are "in the business", will attest that those at the bottom of the food chain are serfs at best. If your name doesn't appear in the opening credits, you are a faceless cog - subject to ruthless exploitation like something out of the AFL-CIO's worst portrait of Capitalist Greed.) Second, in the aftermath of the blacklist of the 50s and 60s, a counter reaction set in. A lot of Hollywood was sympathetic to the stated goals of the USSR, if not to the regime then. Some of the military, like the outspoken Curtis LeMay, was very supportive of the goals of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee hearings. Remember, the US had taken a licking in Korea, tension in Europe was still high, Indochina was flaring up, Marxist revolutionaries were stirring in Latin America, etc. Those hearings destroyed a lot of lives in Hollywood. That resentment about the resulting blacklist persists today, even though the fall of the USSR has provided adequate documentation from the KGB files that the US Communist Party was under direct orders from the Kermlin and that there were attempts to infiltrate the media and other institutions of the free countries in the West. (IIRC, LeMay was the model for the general plotting a military coup in the film Seven Days in May, much as Henry Kissinger was the model for the title character of Dr. Strangelove.
As for the attitudes of generals today, I find that most ex-military acquaintences of mine are very reluctant to endorse quick military action. Perhaps Kennedy's desire to avoid a war with the USSR was colored by his experiences in WWII. I know that my father and uncle, who served then, are disgusted with the half-baked missions the military has been given since the Gulf War. Maybe if President Clinton had served in the Army, he'd have been more cautious.
Just incase anyone was wondering, here's a link to the doomsday clock http://www.bullatomsci.org/clock.html . I heard about it in third grade. Check it out if you ever want to know when to duck and cover.
Alas, poor clippy, I loath him so.
Maybe Jon Katz could also put with his movie review; HIS FAVORITE TRAILER! He could have the best one shown before the movie...LOTR for this movie..just a thought
The reason for which we aren't as worried about nuclear war is simple -- it can't happen on a scale as large as it could have between the US and USSR. If the US and USSR started launching nuclear weapons, it was effectively the end of the world. But if a terrorist uses a nuclear weapon, it will be devastating, but will cause much less damage than a full scale nuclear war.
Nuclear weapons have only been used twice in anger. Through the cold war (at least, from the time of this movie on), very few sane people ever thought of repeating the performance. So as terrifying as the threat of large-scale nuclear war was to us all, the probablilty of the actual occurence was near zero (barring an accident or unauthorized launch, both of which could still easily happen in today's "peaceful" world.) We've freed ourselves from the specter of deliberate global nuclear war, but now we have a world in which a second Hiroshima/Nagasaki is perhaps a certainty. Your point above is taken, but I'm not sure we've really made a very good trade.
I think that the terrorists would probably use an attack more like the one shown on Peacemaker... just pull out the core and firing mechanism and toss it in a backpack. Then hand it to some young kid with eyes of fire and ears full of the Torah, Qaran, Bible or whatever the particular zealotry of the day is. It's much cheaper to use a matyr as delivery system than bother with the full machinery of a true nuclear power.
The terrorists are the biggest threats in this realm though... the rest of the world is too busy either trying to get a piece of our action or deflate our power in less dramatic ways.
However, we did talk about an interesting motive for Rummsfield in our poli sci class... Bascially the Chinese (and North Koreans (?) - we don't know for sure) have just few enough missiles for our defense system to work... But the best offense is a good defense, you know. If China, N. Korea and other "rogue states" to be can be thwarted by our defense, then they don't get to participate in the MAD scenario. And if they aren't a part of MAD... then we maintain a LOT of power in the world.
Psersonaly i Dissagree. I feel that this movie is one of the more Hypocrotical movies in existance.
>There is a scene involving the release of source code that make me clap, and possibly hoot/holler, without realizing I was doing so.
You must remember that while they aplude the free distrobution of ideas in the film the company behind it all (MGM)is one of the groups sueing 2600 over DeCSS. Now if thats not hypocricy i dont know what is.
Muerl
Saw this movie the other night, and as a sometime history geek, I wanted to point out a few of the historiacal innacuracies in the film. 1. Use of the "Peace Symbol" in a sign. Although created in England in 1958, the "Peace Symbol" was not popularized in the United States until the Vietnam & Civil Rights Era, a few year later than 1962. 2. This is a big problem... in the movie, the Americans recieve confirmation that the Soviets had tactical nukes in Cuba (the Joint Chiefs then offer to take 'em all out). The truth of the matter is that the United States _did not know_ that the Soviets had tactical nukes until after the missle crisis was over. When Kennedy decided to not invade cuba, he didn't know that if he did, the marines on the beaches would have been vaporized by the thousands. He quite simply inadvertently saved the world that day. And if the russians had nuked the marines, it's a simple matter to escalate to city-busting nukes. This one fact alone disqualifies this film from being history class material. The problem with historical films is that invariably, most people will take the film at literal truth, without seeing that it's been dramatized in order to ENTERTAIN. Generally, films that attempt to tell it really like it is are called documentaries :)
No, the Cuban missile crisis occurred because the US government didn't get Castro proper hotel arrangements when Castro was forming Cuba to be a democratic nation. Thus, while visiting the US to speak with the government regarding Cuba's recognition, Castro had to be subjected to racial segregation, and Kruschev could easily convince him that the US really didn't care about Cuba and that he should make Cuba have a communist government.