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[ by Charles Cameron — delighted at his Nobel — with a quick note on antinomianism ]
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So Bob Dylan has at last won the Nobel Prize, which has been — forgive me — a slow train coming.

David Remnick of the New Yorker suggests we “Celebrate Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize in Literature the obvious way: by listening” — and among his suggested selections I found this apocalyptic jewel:

It contains quite a bit of low-key Daniel and Revelation. Dylan recalls being booed for suggesting that Russia would intervene in the Middle East just a few months before Russia invaded Afghanistan.

I read the Bible a lot, you know, it just happens I do, and .. so it says certain things in the Bible that I wasn’t really aware of until just recently.. anyway, in the Bible it tells you specific things. In the books iof Daniel and in the Book of Revelation which just might apply to these times here, and is says there are certain wars that are soon, about to happen, I can’t say exactly when, you know, but.. pretty soon anyway..

He goes on to mention two countries, which he identifies as Russia and China, and with regard to Russia, says:

So anyway, I was telling this story to these people. I shouldn’t have been telling it to them, I just got carried away. I mentioned to them “well you know, watch now, because Russia is going to come down and attack the Middle East. It says this in the Bible. .. These things in the Bible, they seem to uplift me and tell me the truth. I said “Russia’s gpoing to attack the Middle East” and they just booed. They couldn’t hear that, they didn’t believe it. And a month later, Russia moved their troops into Afghanistan it was, and that whole situation changed, you know. And I’m not saying this to tell you they were wrong and I was right or anything like that, but these things that it mentions in the Bible I pay mighty close attention to.

This is pretty much straightforward from a Hal Lindsey era Dispensationalist point of view, though the bit about Russia interfering in the Middle East fits Russia’s campaign in Syria today, thirty-seven years later, better than its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan did back then.

Dylan then follows up with a discussion of the Antichrist, mentions Jim Jones and Hitler along the way.. and closes with a rendition of his gospel song, Slow Train Coming.

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So just one technical note here on that apocalyptic aspect.

Antinomianism is the name given to a common feature of apocalyptic rhetoric — the doctrine that the law (to include the moral law) no longer applies — so that both theft from the rich and sexual anarchism are permitted to “the pure”. Norman Cohn documents this doctrine extensively in The Pursuit of the Millennium, see particularly his chapters VII and VIII on “An Élite of Amoral Supermen” — ie the 12th century “heresy of the Free Spirit“.

Listening to Dylan’s Slow Train with that in mind, these lyrics take on a new significance:

Man’s ego is inflated, his laws are outdated, they don’t apply no more
You can’t rely no more to be standin’ around waitin’

**

To end on a lighter note..

Some critics of the Nobel award seem to feel that “song” is not a category that sits easily within the scope of “literature”. To put it bluntly:

If only he’d thrown away that damn guitar, written his stuff down, and read it out loud as poetry, we might have given Orpheus the prize sooner..

[ by Charles Cameron ]
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**

Michael Yon on Facebook, and (illustrated) on his journal page under the heading Rivers of tears flow tonight:

On one level, there is not much to say other than that one of the greatest leaders in history graced us for so long. He is the Father of Thailand. He was a champion of peace, freedom, and prosperity, and a good friend to America and to American people. His Majesty is loved by many Americans.

Americans normally do not like Kings, but King Bhumibol is a great exception. Those who studied him grew to respect him, then to like him, and finally to share in the love for the King of Kings. The love for His Majesty is so immense that it could fill the Gulf of Thailand.

Thais are among freest people on earth, thanks to His Majesty. He brought his millions of sons and daughters very far, and he taught lessons and brought inspiration to foreigners such as me.

He was a musician, and good, and his photography was excellent. Highly educated, he visited every corner of this great country, into the deepest jungles to help villagers, into the mountains, out to the islands, down the rivers. He went everywhere. His Majesty was a man of the people. He wanted to see with his own eyes, and he did.

Finally his body has worn out. We wish his body had lived to 110 but his body wore out. He spent it working for Thailand. But this is not the end. Only his body is gone. His Majesty is more alive now than ever before.

Strangely perhaps, since I only knew of him from a smattering of press accounts, I too am moved to tears by the death of this man and monarch. May he rest in peace.

Genesis:

1. Announcement, by T. Greer
2. Marching Orders, by Mark Safranski
   
3. Panel of Contributors, by Mark Safranski

Book I:

1. An introduction, by T. Greer
2. Fear, honor, and Ophelia, by Lynn C. Rees
3. The Broken Reed, by Jim Lacey
4. How Group Dynamics Brought Sparta and Athens to War, by Joe Byerly
5. It Would Be A Great War, by Cheryl Rofer
6. Knowing Thyself and Knowing the Enemy, by Marc Opper
7. Political Rhetoric in Book I: Truth or Action?, by Pauline Kaurin
8. Failed Visions of Strategic Restraint, by Mark Safranski
9. Reflections in a Beginner’s Mind, by Charles Cameron
10. Reflections from a Clausewizian Strategic Theory Perspective, by Joseph Guerra
11. Honour or reputation?, by Natalie Sambhi

Book II:

1. Beware Greeks Bearing Faulty Assumptions, by Pauline Kaurin
2. Tactical Patterns in the Siege of Plataea, by A.E. Clark
3. When Bacteria Beats Bayonets, by Joe Byerly
4. Everybody Wants a Thucydides Trap, by T. Greer
5. On Pericles, Strategy and his Regime, Part I, by Mark Safranski
6. Treason makes the historian, by Lynn C. Rees

Book III:

1. Treatment of the Enemy in War: Cruel to be Kind?, by Pauline Kaurin
2. The Most Violent Man at Athens, by Mark Safranski
3. The Medium of Heralds, by Cheryl Rofer
4. A Layered Text, by Joseph Guerra
5. Understanding Stasis, by A. E. Clark

Book IV:

1. “What a Man Can Do”, by Pauline Kaurin
   
2. General Demosthenes, by A. E. Clark
3. History is Written by the Losers, by T. Greer
4. Hoplite Perspective, by Mark Safranski
5. Devastation, by A. E. Clark

Book V:

1. What Would the Melians Do? Power and Perception in a Time of Deep Connectivity, by Steven Metz
2. The Melian Dialogue: Athens’ Finest Hour, by A. E. Clark
3. Men of Honor, Men of Interest, by T. Greer
4. Debating the Dialogue, by A. E. Clark

Book VI:

1. The Diva and the General: Who Wins?, by Pauline Kaurin
2. Spot the Alcibiades Points, by T. Greer
3. The State with the Golden Arm, by A. E. Clark

Book VII:

1. Syracuse Through the Eyes of a Samurai, by A. E. Clark

Book VIII

1. What Do You Mean by “We”?, by A. E. Clark

Concluding Analysis

1. What have we learned?, by A. E. Clark

Addenda:

1. Cleon Revisited, by Mark Safranski
2. Fellow Thucydideans, by Mark Safranski
3. Hoffman on Reading Thucydides, by Mark Safranski
4. Wyne on Revisiting Thucydides’ Explanation, by Mark Safranski
5. Thucydides Roundtable, Addendum: Steve Bannon’s interest in the Peloponnesian War by Charles Cameron
6. Thucydides Roundtable: Daniel Bassill’s comment by Charles Cameron

Vitals:

A survival kit for all time

• The Landmark Thucydides, the official edition
• History of the Peloponnesian War, the book
• Thucydides, the author
• Richard Crawley, the translator
• Robert B. Strassler, the editor
• Victor Davis Hanson, the introducer
• Peloponnesian War, the event
• History of the Peloponnesian War, the HTML
• History of the Peloponnesian War, the plain text
• History of the Peloponnesian War, in Greek and English with notes, spacial coordinates, dictionaries, and glossaries

Other Sources:

A survival kit for some time

• Herodotus, the predecessor:
  • Histories, the prequel
• Aristophanes, the comedic relief:
  • Acharnians
  • Birds
  • Clouds
  • Ecclesiazusae
  • Frogs
  • Knights
  • Lysistrata
  • Peace
  • Plutus
  • Thesmophoriazusae
  • Wasps
• Xenophon, the successor:
  • Anabasis: the scenic route
  • Hellenica: the sequel
• Aristotle or friends, the expounders:
  • Athenian Constitution, the treatise
• Diodorus, the scribler:
  • Bibliotheca historica, Book 12: the exhaustive compilation
  • Bibliotheca historica, Book 13: the exhaustive compilation
• Cornelius Nepos, the biographer:
  • Alciabides, the scoundrel
  • Cimon, the friend of Sparta
  • Conon, the admiral
  • Pausanias, the fallen hero
  • Themistocles, the quisling Churchill
  • Thrasybulus, the comeback kid
• Plutarch, the moralist:
  • Alcibiades, still a scoundrel
  • Cimon, still a friend of Sparta
  • Nicias, still a stiff
  • Pericles, still a visionary leader
  • Themistocles, still a quisling Churchill

[ by Charles Cameron — one picture is worth one paragraph, both perfect ]
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I’ve paired the Annie Dillard paragraph in the upper panel below with an impressively similar paragraph from Haniel Long and a gorgeous slow motion video — now I’d like to pair it with a design in the style of native artwork from the Pacific Northwest, which as far as I can determine is the work of one Mark Gauti:

The image is titled Eagle and Dog Salmon. It gives me pleasure to set these two (figuratively) side by side.

[ by Charles Cameron — two Russian secular saints — and an Australian ]
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It seems we’ve been lucky twice —

Read their two stories, and weep.

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27 October 1962

Thank you Vasili Arkhipov, the man who stopped nuclear war

If you were born before 27 October 1962, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov saved your life. It was the most dangerous day in history. An American spy plane had been shot down over Cuba while another U2 had got lost and strayed into Soviet airspace. As these dramas ratcheted tensions beyond breaking point, an American destroyer, the USS Beale, began to drop depth charges on the B-59, a Soviet submarine armed with a nuclear weapon.

The captain of the B-59, Valentin Savitsky, had no way of knowing that the depth charges were non-lethal “practice” rounds intended as warning shots to force the B-59 to surface. The Beale was joined by other US destroyers who piled in to pummel the submerged B-59 with more explosives. The exhausted Savitsky assumed that his submarine was doomed and that world war three had broken out. He ordered the B-59’s ten kiloton nuclear torpedo to be prepared for firing. Its target was the USS Randolf, the giant aircraft carrier leading the task force.

If the B-59’s torpedo had vaporised the Randolf, the nuclear clouds would quickly have spread from sea to land. The first targets would have been Moscow, London, the airbases of East Anglia and troop concentrations in Germany. The next wave of bombs would have wiped out “economic targets”, a euphemism for civilian populations – more than half the UK population would have died. Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s SIOP, Single Integrated Operational Plan – a doomsday scenario that echoed Dr Strangelove’s orgiastic Götterdämmerung – would have hurled 5,500 nuclear weapons against a thousand targets, including ones in non-belligerent states such as Albania and China. [ .. ]

The decision not to start world war three was not taken in the Kremlin or the White House, but in the sweltering control room of a submarine. The launch of the B-59’s nuclear torpedo required the consent of all three senior officers aboard. Arkhipov was alone in refusing permission. It is certain that Arkhipov’s reputation was a key factor in the control room debate. The previous year the young officer had exposed himself to severe radiation in order to save a submarine with an overheating reactor.

**

September 26, 1983

The Man Who Saved the World by Doing Absolutely Nothing

It was September 26, 1983. Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defence Forces, was on duty at Serpukhov-15, a secret bunker outside Moscow. His job: to monitor Oko, the Soviet Union’s early-warning system for nuclear attack. And then to pass along any alerts to his superiors. It was just after midnight when the alarm bells began sounding. One of the system’s satellites had detected that the United States had launched five ballistic missiles. And they were heading toward the USSR. Electronic maps flashed; bells screamed; reports streamed in. A back-lit red screen flashed the word ‘LAUNCH.'”

That the U.S. would be lobbing missiles toward its Soviet counterpart would not, of course, have been out of the question at that particular point in human history. Three weeks earlier, Russians had shot down a South Korean airliner that had wandered into Soviet air space. NATO had responded with a show of military exercises. The Cold War, even in the early ’80s, continued apace; the threat of nuclear engagement still hovered over the stretch of land and sea that fell between Washington and Moscow.

Petrov, however, had a hunch — “a funny feeling in my gut,” he would later recall — that the alarm ringing through the bunker was a false one. It was an intuition that was based on common sense: The alarm indicated that only five missiles were headed toward the USSR. Had the U.S. actually been launching a nuclear attack, however, Petrov figured, it would be extensive — much more, certainly, than five. Soviet ground radar, meanwhile, had failed to pick up corroborative evidence of incoming missiles — even after several minutes had elapsed. The larger matter, however, was that Petrov didn’t fully trust the accuracy of the Soviet technology when it came to bomb-detection. He would later describe the alert system as “raw.”

But what would you do? You’re alone in a bunker, and alarms are screaming, and lights are flashing, and you have your training, and you have your intuition, and you have two choices: follow protocol or trust your gut. Either way, the world is counting on you to make the right call.

Petrov trusted himself. He reported the satellite’s detection to his superiors — but, crucially, as a false alarm. And then, as Wired puts it, “he hoped to hell he was right.”

He was, of course. The U.S. had not attacked the Soviets. It was a false alarm. One that, had it not been treated as such, may have prompted a retaliatory nuclear attack on the U.S. and its NATO allies. Which would have then prompted … well, you can guess what it would have prompted.

**

Oh, and the Australian. I came by this topic via an article about this man, Professor Des Bell:

A strategist with books — he’s the sort of chap this blog thrives on! And he, too, seems to have saved us from a fiery furnace of our own devising:

Des Ball: the man who saved the world

THAT America could launch a limited nuclear strike against Russia was a fashionable belief in US strategic theory of the 1970s. Policymakers thought that if Cold War tensions boiled over, they could hit selected Soviet targets in a way that controlled further escalation and forced Moscow to back down.

It took the iconoclastic Australian security scholar Des Ball to point out that the theory was bunkum. In his influential essays of the early 1980s, Ball argued that reasoned strategic theory was likely to go out the window once the missiles started flying.

Among the first targets would be the other side’s command and control centres – its eyes and ears. Once blinded, a superpower – consisting of real people responding with human instincts – would not distinguish a ”controlled” strike from a full-scale attack and would retaliate with everything it had.

Thrice lucky? I prefer to call it grace.