April 30, 2024

WHY DID THEY HAVE TO CALL IT “OPERATION MINCEMEAT”?:  On this day in 1943, a British submarine surfaced off the coast of Spain.  As the captain read the 39th Psalm, the body of a Welsh homeless man, dressed up to appear to be a military courier, was gently cast adrift.

It was all part of an audacious plan.  Attached to the body was a briefcase containing documents—false ones—that suggested that the Allies would soon be invading Greece and Sardinia and that the upcoming attack on Sicily was merely a diversion.  In fact, the real Allied invasion was going to be Sicily.

The hope was that the body would wash ashore and that the Spanish authorities would assume that the man had been the victim of an air crash.  With luck, they would deliver the documents to German intelligence, and the Germans would be fooled into shifting reinforcements to Greece and Sardinia. Sicily would be left relatively undefended.

The British worked hard to make the whole thing seem believable.  The body was given the name Captain (Acting Major) William Martin.  He carried a wallet with a photograph of a fictitious girlfriend “Pam”.  Also in the wallet were two love letters from “Pam,” a receipt for the purchase of a diamond engagement ring, and a notice of overdraft from a bank.  The overdraft notice was a nice touch.

The scheme worked.  The Germans did indeed beef up their positions in Greece and Sardinia at the expense of Sicily.  The Allied attack on Sicily was no picnic, but in the absence of Operation Mincemeat, it would have been a lot worse.

And, of course, they made a movie out of it.  How could they not?  The 1956 thriller starred Clifton Webb and was given a wonderful title–The Man Who Never Was. (This had also been the title of the book written about the operation by Ewen Montagu, who had played a leading role in the scheme.)  I just love that title.

Here’s the part I can’t understand.  In 2021, Warner Bros. did a new movie about Operation Mincemeat, which they named … Operation Mincemeat.  What?  Shouldn’t they have come up with a better title?

A few years back, the BBC did a documentary about the operation, which is available on YouTube.  Some of the players are interviewed in it—including “Pam” (or rather the woman in the picture).  I recommend it.

Posted at 6:12 am by Gail Heriot

April 29, 2024

OPEN THREAD: Because I love you and want you to be happy.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

MEANWHILE, IN GEORGIA:

Criminal trespass is still a criminal act in some places.

Posted at 5:18 pm by Stephen Green

THE HIGHER EDUCATION IMPLOSION: Go State U! Why pay a premium for a ‘polarizing’ degree? “He imagines a hiring manager looking at resumes from a recent graduate of Columbia and a recent graduate of the University of the North Carolina. The Columbia graduate, the manager thinks, is ‘more likely to be coddled, more likely to hold strong political opinions that will distract from their work’ and ‘more likely to have benefited from grade inflation and perhaps dubious admissions policies.'”

All is proceeding as Glenn has foreseen.

Posted at 3:48 pm by Stephen Green

THURSDAY IN INDIANA: 33 arrested at IU during protest in support of Palestine.

Today in New York:

Developing but, needless to say, you get more of what you tolerate.

Posted at 2:46 pm by Stephen Green

TWO WAPOs IN ONE!

C’mon – it’s 2024. Surely by now, Raichik knows that if you really want to get huge glowing profiles from the Washington Post, the way to do it is by threatening GOP congresspeople! WaPo Runs 5,000 Word Profile Of Man Imprisoned For Threatening Marjorie Taylor Greene.

In 2022, Josh Barro pondered: Are There Any Adults at the Washington Post? As Iowahawk noted around the same time, Barro was clearly asking the question rhetorically:

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

MARK JUDGE: Ron DeSantis wants to teach young people about communism. He should use rock ‘n’ roll.

Rock ‘n’ roll is an exciting, popular art form geared toward young people. It also has a proud (and largely ignored) history of anti-communism.

In their book, The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America, Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, who both work for the libertarian outfit Reason, reveal the often hidden history of popular music as a weapon against totalitarianism. In the chapter “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World,” they detail how the music helped defeat communism.

As Welch and Gillespie note, Vaclav Havel and the leaders of the 1960s revolt against communism in Czechoslovakia were deeply influenced by American rock and roll, particularly the band the Velvet Underground. A group of young Czech hippies formed the group the Plastic People of the Universe, named after a Frank Zappa lyric, and were soon banned by the government. A fan of the Rolling Stones, Havel saw and heard in rock and roll “a temperament, a nonconformist state of the spirit, an anti-establishment orientation, an aversion to philistines, and an interest in the wretch and humiliated.”

* * * * * * * *

In The Declaration of Independents, Welch and Gillespie note an incredible irony. In October 1989, a month before the Berlin Wall was torn down, rock and roll and hippie icon Neil Young released the album “Freedom.” Young meant the title ironically; the title track was about how the world was collapsing with Reagan-inspired greed and violence.  But when the album was received in Central Europe, the newly free young masses took to it without irony.

It’s an exciting piece of history. DeSantis should add it to Florida’s new pro-freedom curriculum.

Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™

Flashback: Welcome to the PMRC, Neil Young.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA still doesn’t understand root cause of Orion heat shield issue.

NASA officials previously said it is unlikely they will need to make changes to the heat shield already installed on the Orion spacecraft for Artemis II, but haven’t ruled it out. A redesign or modifications to the Orion heat shield on Artemis II would probably delay the mission by at least a year.

The charred material began flying off the heat shield in the first phase of the skip reentry. Engineers are looking at how the skip reentry profile affected the performance of the Orion heat shield. NASA wants to understand how the Orion heat shield would perform during each of the possible reentry trajectories for Artemis II.

“What we have the analysis teams off doing is saying, ‘OK, independent of what the constraints are going to be, what can we tolerate?” Kshatriya said.

Once officials understand the cause of the heat shield charring, engineers will determine what kind of trajectory Artemis II needs to fly on reentry to minimize risk to the crew. Then, managers will look at building what NASA calls flight rationale. Essentially, this is a process of convincing themselves the spacecraft is safe to fly.

“When we stitch it all together, we’ll either have flight rationale or we won’t,” Kshatriya said.

The heat shield worked during Artemis I reentry but didn’t burn off as expected. SLS is stacked and ready for Artemis II and Starship is coming along…

Posted at 1:44 pm by Stephen Green

GOOD NEWS FROM POLITICO!

I mean, I think they intend it as good news from their perspective, given their interest in keeping the population down:

Incidentally, could pundits try to update their language from beyond the Cold War ’50s and ’60s? It’s Sputnik moments and moonshots all the way down!

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

JIM TREACHER: Today’s College Kids Get an “A” for “Antisemitism.”

In the seven years since a bunch of neo-Nazis in polo shirts stomped around Charlottesville with tiki torches, chanting “Blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us” and other caca del toro, somehow it has become acceptable for young people to publicly call for the extermination of the Jews.

As always, the left’s refrain is: “It’s different when we do it!”

It’s happening all over the Ivy League. Our best and brightest, or so we’re told. Now they’re openly parroting antisemitic filth, and the dumber it is, the angrier they get.

Well, I’m getting pretty ticked off too.

It’s obvious that a lot of young people are living in their own little fantasy world. Some grownups are blaming TikTok for this antisemitic garbage spreading so fast, which sounds plausible. If the Chinese Communist Party is evil enough to unleash a deadly virus on the world, why would they balk at spreading the mind-virus known as antisemitism?

I don’t know what can be done to stop it, if the colleges and the local police aren’t willing to do anything. Some of them are finally starting to step up, so maybe that’ll stem the tide.

In the meantime, all I know how to do is make fun of these little idiots. So I think I’ll do that.

* * * * * * * *

Here’s another large child saying something silly:

In accordance with the prophecy:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll