cold war

Chris Knight's avatar
Just think: a few years later chunks of that wall were being sold at K-Mart. 

Friends, I have a secret to tell.  I’ve waited decades… decades… for the chance to use the word “perestroika” in a written piece.  Not even during college and my senior history thesis – about the Russian space program and how it had tracked with that country’s politics since Nicholas II’s reign – did “perestroika” get to be employed.

I guess “perestroika” on some weird level is for me, what “smock” was to Hobbes:
Credit: the peculiar genius of Bill Watterson
Anyway, the considerate curators of conservative-ish contemplation at American Thinker have published a second article from me in as many days, and I am extremely thankful for that.  “The Fall of the Deep State and 1989’s Fall of Communism” relates some parallels between the events that transpired across Eastern Europe thirty years ago
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Chris Knight's avatar

Visiting the Reagan Presidential Library over a year ago impressed upon me the Gipper’s charm and cordiality toward Gorbachev.  Yet Reagan was also fiercely resolute in his conviction that people desire to forge their own destinies.  It was the two Cold War leaders riding horses together as much as it was Reagan’s defiance at the Brandenburg Gate that ended the threat of communism in Europe.

It was a fine example of the “neo-noblesse oblige” that had been the template since World War II.  Countless perished in that conflict due in no small amount to the failure of “gentleman diplomacy” on the part of the upper crust.  But for its time, that was sanity.  And then a new sanity dawned with the rising of a false sun over Hiroshima.

Yet Ronald Reagan… was insane.  Or so we were told by pundits and academics.

Speaking of peace while drastically building up the ...

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Chris Knight's avatar
Mysterious bar code on the ground, United States, Cold War, surveillance aircraft, spy satellites
The “bar code” at Walker Field, Maryland

Adjacent to the runway of a Navy airfield in Maryland is a paved rectangle.  And within that area are a series of quadrilaterals painted bright white, in pairs and ascending in size.

By itself its existence would be a mystery, or at least a curiosity.  Except that it is one of dozens to be known throughout the United States, with most of those found near military bases and other restricted facilities.  Some remote locations have entire arrays of the “bar codes” stretching for miles toward the horizon.

So what are these test pattern-ish arrangements?  Based on available evidence, they seem to have been put in place by the government during the first few decades of the Cold War.  With tensions high between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the advent of high-altitude aircraft reconnaissance – and then “spy” satellites – became an important ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Working on a few things behind the scenes, but felt like posting something tonight. And that’s when I discovered that YouTube is hosting Threads.

Sure, why not.

I first saw this movie in July of 1986 but it wasn’t until I was in college a long time later that I found out the title. We were visiting family in Florida and playing a game of Monopoly in our motel room with my cousins and we thought we’d put some TV on. It was a PBS station showing… some very dark and gritty film about nuclear war in England.

I was 12 years old. I soon lost all interest in Monopoly and became transfixed to this film. The image of the young woman chewing through her newborn baby’s umbilical cord is something that has haunted me to this day.

Threads originally aired on BBC Two in Great Britain in September ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

It was built by the East German government in 1961.

It completely encircled what was then West Berlin.

It was one of the most tangible symbols of the Cold War.

It was declared by communists throughout the world that the wall would last forever.

I know of no better additional commentary that can possibly be made besides this picture of the chunk of the Berlin Wall that I have owned since 1993…

Read more about the Berlin Wall on Wikipedia....

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Chris Knight's avatar

Something I came up with after the idea hit me on the drive back from Atlanta last week.

It could also be argued that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without really firing a single shot, or inflicting any fatalities. He defeated the Soviet Union in the only way that it could be beaten: by forcing it to bankrupt itself to death.

Not even twenty years later, his legacy is becoming undone before our very eyes. And millions of people who have never had to know such things may soon be hearing quite a bit about bomb shelters and air raid sirens....

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Robert Ballard has come forward with something very interesting: his successful 1985 search for the Titanic was only a cover story for a mission from the United States Government.

The deal was: Ballard would assist the U.S. Navy in examining the wreckage of two American nuclear submarines – the Thresher and the Scorpion – that were lost at sea in the Atlantic during the 1960s. At the time, there was concern that the Soviet Union might somehow find and exploit the sunken subs. The expedition was funded by the government and upon completion, Ballard would be free to continue his quest for the Titanic. All fine and dandy… except few people expected him to find the thing! Some in the Navy were alarmed that Ballard’s discovery might arouse suspicion, but because of all the publicity about the Titanic itself nobody dared question the purpose of Ballard’s mission.

Head ...

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