(Roughly) Daily

from Dr. Strangelove (source)

Further to “Just when you were beginning to feel a little bit safer…,” this piece by Jeffrey St. Clair of Counterpunch, an excerpt from his forthcoming book, Loose Nukes, in Alternet:

Things go missing. It’s to be expected. Even at the Pentagon. Last October, the Pentagon’s inspector general reported that the military’s accountants had misplaced a destroyer, several tanks and armored personnel carriers, hundreds of machine guns, rounds of ammo, grenade launchers and some surface-to-air missiles. In all, nearly $8 billion in weapons were AWOL.

Those anomalies are bad enough. But what’s truly chilling is the fact that the Pentagon has lost track of the mother of all weapons, a hydrogen bomb. The thermonuclear weapon, designed to incinerate Moscow, has been sitting somewhere off the coast of Savannah, Georgia for the past 40 years. The Air Force has gone to greater lengths to conceal the mishap than to locate the bomb and secure it…

For the strong of stomach, the article continues here.

As we practice “duck and cover,” we might console ourselves console ourselves with grateful thoughts of a Divine communicator, Durante degli Alighieri– Dante– born on this date (or so many scholars believe; the exact birth date might also be June 1) in 1265…  We might also note that this is both Arnold Bennett’s (1867) and Dashiell Hammett’s (1894) birthday, as well.  May 27…a wonderfully eclectic  day for literature!

Giotto’s Bargello Chapel portrait of Dante