To Keep and Bear Arms

Supreme Court majority to D.C. residents: Lock and load!


Read the opinion of the Court.

Real Pirates

Someone who knows of Ballista's fondness for all things pirate (sans the Pittsburgh baseball franchise) informs me of a new exhibit devoted to high seas buccaneers at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. It's doubtful that I will be able to make the trek to the City of Brotherly Love to view the exhibit; however, I decided to check out the web site to see what Ballista might be missing. Through a round-about-way Ballista ended up at a partner site of the exhibit, which features several Flash-based pirate-themed games. I was sucked in for at least an hour! And I didn't even try the "Advanced" level game yet. If you want to plunder some serious time, go here.




The official web site of the traveling exhibit is here.





Update: Ballista can have a pirate-themed party at the Franklin! Rum all around.

Update 2: Shiver me timbers, the parties are for children. Run up the colors and give 'em a broadside.

Close Encounters?

A few weeks ago a big WWII-era bomb was reportedly defused in London. The AP notes:

The bomb, which Metropolitan Police said was the largest found in London in three decades, was discovered Monday by construction workers preparing a site for the 2012 Olympic Games.

The bomb had started to tick at one point but engineers dealt with the problem, Saunders said.

This sounds eerily reminiscent of the film Quatermass and the Pit. (Spoiler alert: read no further if you have never seen this movie and think you might want to someday). Also known as Five Million Years to Earth to blokes in the States because the plot involves the discovery of a "bomb" in the London Tube that is actually a space ship that has been buried for, well, you can figure it out. Seems that all the spooky happenings in that part of the city over the years might be related to an alien scheme for planetary conquest.

Anyway, it's just a silly movie from the Sixties. I'm sure it has absolutely no connection whatsoever to this story from The Sun: Cops chase a UFO over Cardiff.

Maybe Ballista should go check on the readiness of the ol' Doomsday shelter.

I'm Surrounded by...

This is how I have felt all week.

Africa in Turmoil

Robert Mugabe is a tyrant and must be removed from power in Zimbabwe as soon as possible, along with his party apparatus of terror. Liberty and democracy are bleeding in Africa.

The Daily Mail reports on the latest atrocity carried out by the dictator and his thugs:

Dadirai Chipiro, wife of Patson Chipiro who heads the Zimbabwean opposition party in Mhondoro district, had a hand cut off as well as both of her feet before a petrol bomb was thrown through her window.

It gets worse...

Her body was so badly burnt that she was not able to be properly placed in a coffin as her arm was burnt rigid.

Lamentably, she is not the only innocent victim of this politically-inspired mayhem:

Pamela Pasvani, the 21-year-old pregnant wife of a local councillor in Harare was killed in a similar attack, which also claimed the life of the councillor six-year-old son.

Shocking? Absolutely. This is what happens when the Free World turns a blind eye to dictators and fails to support legitimate opposition movements for decades. This is what happens when people are not free.

To be fair, militias linked to the opposition parties have committed horrible crimes, but, at least now, without the support or consent of the party leaders, who seem to be searching for a peaceful solution to removing Mugabe after the recent likely-rigged presidential elections.

As usual, Ballista does not expect the UN to do anything productive to stem the violence or bring about positive change in Zimbabwe.

Oh, by the way, the carnage in Zimbabwe has, not surprisingly, created scores of refugees. They are flooding into South Africa as quickly as possible, leading to rising tensions there, as native South Africans are blaming high unemployment and worsening economic conditions on immigrants and refugees. Mugabe isn't a Zimbabwean problem, or just an African problem, he and his cronies are a global problem.

Update (6/23/08): The opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, has withdrawn from the run-off election. He cited life-threatening violence to his supporters and the "impossible" likelihood of a fair vote. This leaves the path clear for a Mugabe victory. A sad day for liberty and democracy, but a pragmatic decision from a leader who seems to genuinely care more about his country and people than power. Ballista hopes that Mugabe finds himself replaced as president by Tsvangirai very soon.

Decisive Days

Early June saw a conspicuous number decisive events during World War Two. The Battle of Midway transpired over June 4-6, 1942. It's easy for us in the later generations to forget just how vitally important, both strategically and morale-wise, this victory was for the Americans. At the time, the US Pacific Fleet was still reeling from the Pearl Harbor attack, the evacuation of the Philippines and the fall of Corregidor, and the stalemate at the Battle of the Coral Sea, where the aircraft carrier Lexington was sunk. However, with miracle code-breaking efforts from Naval Intelligence, the Americans learned of the impending Japanese invasion of Midway. The early warning allowed the US carriers Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown to surprise the Japanese fleet. American planes destroyed all four of the Japanese carriers (Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu, and Soryu) present at the battle, which represented a loss of over half of the Rising Sun's carrier strength. Just consider, 6 months after Pearl Harbor, the Americans had gained the advantage in the Pacific with a single battle. The totality of the campaign is striking and full of amazing feats, on both sides. For instance, the Yorktown was only able to participate in the battle due to the unbelievable efforts of the dock yard repair crews, who returned the carrier to fighting trim in just 72 hours after she limped into Pearl Harbor following crippling damage at Coral Sea. Yorktown was not so lucky a second time, however, and she sank from significant bomb and torpedo damage at Midway. Remind me to tell you about a gentleman I know who is a veteran of the battle.

Ballista highly recommends the 1976 film Midway starring Charlton Heston, Glenn Ford, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, Pat Morita (Mr. Miagi) and many more famous faces. It's a very accurate portrayal of the events before and during the campaign.

Of course, June 6, 1944 was D-Day, Operation Overlord, the Invasion of Normandy by Allied forces. Ballista will leave it to others to comment on what has been appropriately called the Longest Day.

The Atlantic Theater

Back to the movies. This review will include more than just the submarine films set in WWII because there aren't as many as were set in the Pacific. This time we get some surface action as well.

• Das Boot. (1981). Jurgen Prochnow commands a U-boat on patrol in Wolfgang Petersen's acclaimed story of the conflict between duty and survival and camped spaces. Visually, very striking.
• The Enemy Below. (1957). Robert Mitchum commands a destroyer escort hunting a particularly crafty German sub, skippered by Curt Jurgens. This is a battle of wits as much as firepower. Who will prove the more determined? The way Mitchum and Jurgens portray the respect between two warriors on opposing sides is powerful.
• U-571. (2000). Don't bother.
• Sink the Bismark! (1960). Retelling of the frantic British effort to destroy the Nazi's newest, and most powerful battleship before it can prey on vital supply lines. A nice piece of drama with a solid script, spiced up with some bits of personal tragedy, revenge, and love during wartime. Edward R. Murrow plays himself.
• Pursuit of the Graf Spee (The Battle of the River Plate). (1956). Cinematic recounting of another real battle. Three British cruisers track down the German surface raider, Graf Spee, and engage her off the coast of South America. The Brits are out-gunned but the Germans are out-numbered and out-flanked. A story of determination, cunning, honor, and political intrigue. Unfortunately, this film is hard to find outside of the UK. Ballista recalls that many years ago the local PBS affiliate ran this one during fund-raising sweeps. Now that is some good quality public broadcasting!
  

Note that American submarine operations in the Atlantic during WWII were limited - the Navy need their undersea predators to sink Japanese shipping and defend Hawaii and the West Coast much more than they needed them to patrol for German shipping. The other reality was that by 1942, the Axis sea power in Europe, aside from the U-boats had been pretty well bottled up in France and the Mediterranean. Moreover, subs of the today were not designed to hunt and kill other subs, so American subs in the Atlantic would not have been all that useful against U-boats anyway. All this is a long way of explaining why we don't have many movies about US submarines in this theater.

And yes, there is a rule somewhere that in order to play a German sub captain, an actor must have "Jurgen" somewhere in his name.

Finally, a plug for a blog on everything submarines Ballista discovered whilst preparing this post. Ultraquiet No More.