Adam is back from his vacation/reconnaissance mission in California where he investigates why everything in the State purports to cause cancer or birth defects. Pat addresses gender identity in an interview with friend of the show Sebastien LeBel. Lastly, Darren drops the question, “Which is the most bombed country on Earth?” The answer may surprise you…
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SHOW NOTES
Cali Causes Cancer?
Cancer Warning Labels Based on California’s Proposition 65 – American Cancer Society
California Proposition 65 (1986) – Wikipedia
If Everything Is A Threat, Then Nothing Is – Techdirt
Most Bombed Country on Earth
Guardian
Hi Reality Check,
Darren, on your journey to Laos, if you have a chance in Vientiane, you should visit COPE, the Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise. Given your story on unexploded ordinance, this place will give you an excellent overview of the problem faced by so many people in Laos. I visited there last year and was amazed at what the US did to this poor country.
Gary
Re: most bombed countries and the expression, “bomb them back to the stone age”, I believe this saw most publicity with respect to the attempt to pressure North Vietnam to concessions in negotiations by concentrating enough bombing destruction on Hanoi and its surrounds that leaders and military centers wouldn’t be able to survive there to keep prosecuting the war.
*However*, my recollection is that the term also surfaced in terms of discussions of use of **nuclear weapons**. After all, so many millions of tons of conventional explosives get pretty expensive, and you can certainly measure them in kilotons and megatons, so….
Less facetiously, General Curtis LeMay is most associated in my mind with this Dr. Strangelove approach to strategy, and it seemed to have to be one of the tactical options offered by professional military advisors, who were in charge of all these destructive materiel. Apparently it got some but not much serious consideration by policy makers, who anticipated not only a fierce public relations backlash, but uncorking the nuclear genie as a conceivable weapon for any adversaries.
Anyway, to the “Stone Age”, you see, was not simply hyperbole. It meant the destruction of all industrial capacity. And B-52s dropped loads on Hanoi around the clock for many days — but couldn’t knock the whole thing down. For one thing, they went underground.
Beware my accuracy in these assertions — they draw more from memories of discussions in the press at the time, and not at all from professional or scholarly knowledge. I think some references could be found in The Pentagon Papers (Ellsworth), though. In any case, stone age and thermonuclear bombardment were often linked in usage.
The cast change to your banner made me look at it closely. All this time I thought the round thing with the light line on it was a tennis ball. I’m an idiot.