Chaos Manor View, Monday, July 4, 2016
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.
Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983
A Fourth of July Thought
The entire world has a “Fourth of July”. We have Independence Day. Here is an Independence Day thought from the last great President, a President that loved his country more than himself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKsW6c_CgFY
It is not as if we had no warning. Nobel Prize Winner Glenn T. Seaborg, GTS to those who knew him, signed a national blue ribbon commission report on American education stating that the system we had was indistinguishable from an act of war – of foreign occupation – back in 1983. We have the same system, deteriorated and much worse now than it was then, now, 33 years later.
We imposed it on ourselves. When I was growing up, education was a local matter. Local school boards ran the schools, paying for them with locally collected taxes. They varied considerably in quality, and the worst were considered abysmal, but some 90% of American males (according to the Armed Forces qualification test scores from draftees) could read, write, and cipher to some degree, and the vast percentage of those who could not read at all had either never been at school, or in any event had not completed fourth grade.
A few rural areas had no schools or had very primitive ones. When I went to school before and during World War II, Coleville Consolidated in Coleville, Tennessee, a rural community a dozen miles down Federal Highway 78 from Memphis, had four rooms and four teachers for 8 grades. Two grades to the room, about 25 pupils to the grade. My first year in school had been at St. Anne’s in Memphis; it too had two grades to a room. The Sisters were willing to let me enter first grade at age five (birthday in August) because I already knew how to read; the local public school, Messick, had only one grade in each room, but would not admit me to first grade; my parents sent me there for second grade, but it soon became apparent that even though we had one teacher and one grade, I wasn’t learning much, and I returned to St. Anne’s. When I was about to enter fourth grade we moved to the farm in Coleville, so from then on I was in a two grades to the room school. After I got out of the army in the early 50’s I went to the University of Iowa where I knew friends who taught in one-room schools, 6 grades in one room, in very rural districts.
Very few of these schools had four year bachelor degree teachers; most teachers were two year graduates of state teachers’ colleges. My mother was an executive secretary when I was growing up, but she had been a first grade teacher in Florida, graduating with a two year associate degree fro Florida States Teacher school in Gainesville. (It has later become a University of Florida, although I doubt the graduates know more than my mother did with her two-year degree; but that’s another story.)
The point here is that education was compulsory but free, and was taught by teachers the community could afford; and it was effective enough that for all practical purposes America had no illiterates, and 90% of Americans were employable in some capacity or another if they graduated from high school; and most of those who dropped out before high school still passed the Army’s literacy requirements.
Then came Sputnik, and there was a national movement to build schools we could be proud of. There was enormous debate over “Federal Aid To Education.” Proponents said we had no choice, our schools had to be much better; opponents said that nationalizing education and dictating requirements from Washington was a mistake, and would reduce the schools to a uniformly equal low quality.
By 1980 the nationalization was accomplished, and there were many books of the “Why Johnny Can’t Read” variety. It was the era of dick and Jane, and look-say reading instruction, which continues to this day in some colleges of education. It was a national disaster, and can be attributed entirely to the nationalization of the public schools. The “new look” in education was not invented then; it had been around a while; but it was concentrated in places dominated by educational theorists with great resources, and who managed by tutorial work to cover up just how awful their theories – which effectively set back English by two thousand years – were. Phonics were abolished. In effect we were learning to read words in ideographs. Old time teachers predicted disaster, sand wanted none of it, but Federal Aid had pretty well nationalized thing: everyone got the benefit of the new theories.
In about ten years the disaster was evident. We have not got over it yet. But we did one thing: we got used to our schools failing to teach. People could graduate high school totally illiterate; and there were tons of theories to excuse the teachers who had let that happen. It wasn’t their fault. We had gone from nearly 100% literacy to a literacy rate lower than some third world countries, and all this in the name of building school for the future. And the worst was that it was Federalized; it was national. While the schools remained local under local school boards there was a chance that some schools would resist the new intellectual theories (that had been around a while; they weren’t that new); but worth federalization the intellectuals were in charge.
And by 1983 Glenn T Seaborg could conclude that our education system should be considered an act of war.
Since then look-say has been replaced by new theories, none of which have produced the results we had before federalization. By now the Department of Education has been around long enough for the Iron Law of Bureaucracy to take hold. Reagan attempted to abolish it, but he had the Cold War to contend with as well as many other problems; and the Federal Bureau – oops, Department – of Education survived and thrived, and the Iron Law guaranteed that it would be a ship run for the benefit of its crew, not for the benefit of the passengers—students—or the owners (the American people).
‘Broadly missing is sufficient appreciation that this ignorance is the *intended consequence* of our educational system, a sign of its robust health and success.’
<http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2016/02/how-a-generation-lost-its-common-culture/>
—————————————
Roland Dobbins
I do not often read The Daily Beast, but I urge you to read this post by Joel Kotkin:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/03/brexit-and-beyond-the-great-unruly-rebellion-against-the-neo-liberal-crony-capitalists.html
It begins:
The People Speak
07.02.16 10:00 PM ET
Why the World Is Rebelling Against ‘Experts’
An unconventional, sometimes incoherent, resistance arises to the elites who keep explaining why changes that hurt the middle class are actually for its own good.
The Great Rebellion is on and where it leads nobody knows.
Its expressions range from Brexit to the Trump phenomena and includes neo-nationalist and unconventional insurgent movement around the world. It shares no single leader, party or ideology. Its very incoherence, combined with the blindness of its elite opposition, has made it hard for the established parties across what’s left of the democratic world to contain it.
What holds the rebels together is a single idea: the rejection of the neo-liberal crony capitalist order that has arisen since the fall of the Soviet Union. For two decades, this new ruling class could boast of great successes: rising living standards, limited warfare, rapid technological change and an optimism about the future spread of liberal democracy. Now, that’s all fading or failing.
Living standards are stagnating, vicious wars raging, poverty-stricken migrants pouring across borders and class chasms growing. Amidst this, the crony capitalists and their bureaucratic allies have only grown more arrogant and demanding. But the failures of those who occupy what Lenin called “the commanding heights” are obvious to most of the citizens on whose behalf they claim to speak and act.
The Great Rebellion draws on five disparate and sometimes contradictory causes that find common ground in frustration with the steady bureaucratic erosion of democratic self-governance: class resentment, racial concerns, geographic disparities, nationalism, cultural identity. Each of these strains appeals to different constituencies, but together they are creating a political Molotov cocktail.
This essay distills a great deal of truth into a couple of short pages, dealing with globalization, job exportation, and other causes of distress among the populace, all of which are ignored or unheard by the establishments of both parties. Djilas wrote of “The New Class” that ruled Tito’s Yugoslavia, and described a phenomenon that was taking control of not merely Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, but also the United States and Europe. Kotkin expands that description. I very much recommend it to your attention.
Marx wrote of the inevitability of class warfare, which would end by the concentration of all power into the hands of a smaller and smaller ruling class. The end of history would come with the inevitable Revolution that would come after the capitalists devoured each other. Lenin expanded that by adding a new phase: the dictatorship of the proletariat which would hasten that day.
Yugoslavia had its Revolution, and Tito was the Ruler; and as Djilas observed, what came next was a New Class which ruled in the name of the people, but which didn’t much listen to them: it was rule of the New Class, by the New Class, and for the New Class. The same thing evolved in Russia: the Communist Party became dominated and controlled by the Nomenklatura, who ruled without much regard to the wishes of a passive people, who said, in essence, “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”
In the United States it is no longer legal to speak of divine providence, or say things like America is great because she is good, and if she ceases to be good she will cease to be great; that is a religious sentiment. It is only a matter of time before the Star Spangled Banner, with its phrases like “Praise the Power that hath made, and preserved us a nation” and “Then Conquer we must, for our cause it is just, and this be our motto, in God is our trust” will be declared unconstitutional, being an act of aggression against those forced to listen to it. First to be banned in public places, like mangers in the public square; then forbidden anyplace public at all lest someone somewhere be forced to hear it.
The just powers of the government are, in American myth, derived from the consent of the governed, but in fact we are long past that. The governed consent to very little. They aren’t even asked to. Rule now is by consent of the governing; by consent of the New Class. Government has become a ship operated for the benefit of its crew. Not all – perhaps only a small minority – of that crew realize that. Most of those who go into government service do not do so for selfish reasons; the enlightened intellectuals at the top of this pyramid will never say so, and some may not realize it themselves; but they learn, over time.
˜Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
Eric Hoffer
I saw this on PowerLine. thanks and keep up the good work.
Rich Brown
Jerry,
Meta-thought: The biggest mistake you can make about this election is assuming the year is in any way normal.
Polls remain all-over-the-place, but tightening. Range over the last week is from Clinton +14 to Trump +4, with RCP average closing to Clinton +4.5, down from Clinton +7 a week ago. Still a Clinton landslide if voting were today, but less of one than a week ago.
It’s enough to damp down the Dump Trump surge a bit, at least publicly.
Which may be a Hillary agenda. Who else aside from Trump has larger negatives than her? My take is, she and her media allies are currently withholding fire while Trump’s nomination is still in doubt.
But that’s a dangerous game for her – if Trump gets too close, then she too may be dumped, via indictment. The timing I expect for that is still the Friday after the Rep Convention closes, July 22nd, with Biden/Warren parachuting into Philadelphia the following week.
I’m fascinated by the Bill Clinton – Loretta Lynch airport meet. Lots of people have said lots of things about it, but the leaks from the security staffers about the actual mechanics of the meet say strongly that Clinton initiated it and Lynch was surprised – she gets to Phoenix, her plane door opens and her staffers walk out, and suddenly there’s Bill Clinton climbing in the door.
If she *was* involved in arranging the meet, whatever secure comms channels she hypothetically used would have meant no need for the meet in the first place.
And Clinton CANNOT have thought this was a safely covert way to meet.
Never mind all the security people involved, there are dozens of ramp workers, other private pilots, and a state police station all overlooking the area, with the aircraft N numbers easily looked up.
So, it was Clinton’s idea. And either he didn’t care if the meet became known, he was desperate, or both.
My take is, both. I think he (and Hillary) are worried badly about Friday 7/22. They either suspect or outright know Obama has already decided to deep-six her regardless – a reasonable assumption if
(presumably) all the usual covert comms channels have closed. (If they haven’t, again, what need for this meet?) So this was a desperation attempt to either cut a deal with his old protégé Lynch, or failing that to compromise her and buy time. Apparently failed on both counts.
Porkypine
Coal Powers Move
If I worked for the Coal Powers, I would do this on general principle (not the layoffs, the timing):
<.>
Murray Energy Corp., the largest privately held coal miner in the U.S., has warned that it may soon undertake one of the biggest layoffs in the sector during this time of low energy prices.
In a notice sent to workers this week, Murray said it could lay off as many as 4,400 employees, or about 80% of its workforce, because of weak coal markets. The company said it anticipates “massive workforce reductions in September.”
The law requires a 60-day waiting period before large layoffs occur.
</>
http://www.wsj.com/articles/biggest-private-coal-producer-in-u-s-warns-of-massive-layoffs-1467412144
With this president’s war on coal, this will be a good hit for the industry. They can time this with the election and let it gel with the populist sentiment against trade deals, immigration, and everything that raises the specter of a loss of some aspect of lifestyle to an agitated electorate. If these were fastfood jobs, the Democrats would probably get the same benefit wouldn’t you think?
SEIU, isn’t it?
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
Disabled Teen Beaten Bloody by TSA Agents
Pathetic TSA
Officer training is pathetic in this instance. You’re supposed to be aware of or ask about medical problems so this sort of crap doesn’t happen. Yeah, I”m sure the half deaf, half blind, and paralyzed girl who just finished treatment for a brain tumor was pretty scary to some punk kid:
<.>
It’s a trip they’ve made for 17 years.
This time, an unarmed Hannah, set off the metal detector at a security checkpoint
“They wanted to do further scanning, she was reluctant, she didn’t understand what they were about to do,” said her mother Shirley Cohen.
Cohen told us she tried to tell TSA agents her daughter is partially deaf, blind in one eye, paralyzed, and easily confused, but said she was kept at a distance by police.
“She’s trying to get away from them but in the next instant, one of them had her down on the ground and hit her head on the floor. There was blood everywhere,” said Cohen.
Hannah was arrested, booked and on the night she should have been celebrating the end of her treatment, she was locked up in Jail East.
</>
http://wreg.com/2016/06/30/disabled-st-jude-patient-sues-airport-and-tsa-after-bloody-scuffle-with-airport-police/
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
Why we voted Leave :Voices from northern England
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
Here’s a survey of Leave voters in Yorkshire. I think you will find it well worth your time, if you can spare the ten minutes to watch it.
https://vimeo.com/172932182?outro=1
Essentially, while immigration is a part of it the much larger part is that the English poor are on the losing side of globalization — their mines are drying up, their jobs are being exported. Their is a widening gulf between wealthy London, which benefits from trade, and the northern counties, which suffer the brunt of it. And if someone doesn’t like it, the Londoners don’t care — if you don’t like your job, there are millions of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis and everyone else who would crawl over nails to do it instead.
Leave was the north’s way of telling King’s Landing that the system is not working.
And there’s a great deal of irony in that high-minded Guardian readers and Labour party members, those who profess their concern for and solidarity with the working class, are the ones so determined to ram the [sour] sandwich called Remain down that same classes’ throat.
What was it Orwell said about the pigs in Animal Farm? Hard to tell them from the farmers?
Respectfully,
Brian P.
EU vs. Britain
It has begun. The EU leadership is declaring that there is no right to leave the EU and that the is no room for any such concept as Democracy. This is EXACTLY what Britain was and is escaping.
President Of The European Parliament: “It Is Not The EU Philosophy That The Crowd Can Decide Its Fate”
www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-27/president-european-parliament-it-not-eu-philosophy-crowd-can-decide-its-fate
Note that Deutsche Bank declares this Brexit vote is class warfare. The undertone is clear. If the British are allowed to leave the EU disintegrates.
The German elites seem to see the EU as their FINALLY conquering all of Europe.
The British citizenry seems to feel this is not a satisfactory situation. More power to them.
{^_^}
sc:bubbles]
Hopeless Focus on Race
Jerry,
Our Republic has been led down the hopeless path of the slicing and dicing of the Electorate by Race, Religion and anything else that might be seen as providing Political Advantage. We have been trained to see the minutia of our differences and forget the much larger body of our commonality. How did this happen and why have we allowed it?
I could see some of this back in the late 1960’s when I was completing College. There seemed to be the fear that the Cultures of minority groups would be lost if steps were not taken to make changes to the traditional approach to the Humanities. This fear failed to recognize that the American Melting Pot was doing an admirable job of including major portions of these minority cultures into what might be called the American Culture. These fears gained a strong foothold in Academia and started what I call the slicing and dicing of the Electorate by Race for Political advantage.
The Politics of Race have had a corrosive effect on our Country. Our unifying view that we are Americans first and foremost has been stolen from us by our Political Machines and our Academics. Rather than having open debate about the direction and future of our Country and Government, we engage in “my way or the highway” demands that the desires of scant majorities be shoved down the throats of all. (See the Affordable Care Act, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”)
What can we, as Citizens, do? The current situation may seem hopeless, but it is not. There are things that can be accomplished at the State level that can make significant changes at the National Level.
Unlike the arguments put forward to justify an active Judicial Branch that the Constitution needs to be a “Living Document” and reflect the current Mores of the Country, The Constitution is a “Living Document” through Article V that allows the Amendment of the Constitution. Yes, there is a way to reflect the “Will of the People” rather than the will of a majority of the unelected Supreme Court Justices. All that is required is for the Legislatures of 2/3 of the States to call for a Constitutional Convention and “We the People” can take back control of our Country.
Bob Holmes
Our public schools no longer teach that sort of thing, and you may be sure that the tax supported universities will explain to their students why consent of the governed is not really the same as “what they would consent to if they understood as well as we do”; which is of course what is taught in most university political science classes.
The Trump and Sanders phenomenon shows the distrust many – I’d say most – middle class Americans have in the Establishment. The voters gave the Republicans control of both houses of Congress and many state legislatures, but they used it to cement their own positions while “reaching across the aisle” rather than opposing the Democrat Establishment and crony capitalism.
Adam Smith warned that capitalists are prone to use government to raise the cost of entry into the marketplace, thus greatly restricting newcomers, and thus preventing innovative competition. The past 8 years with growing regulations are a good example of this; the Republican House gave the government the funds to pay all these regulators. This is known in the media as growing in office, or just more reaching across the aisle.
The Constitution provides for a new Convention, but who will the Establishments – Republican or Democrat – send to it? And the “Conservative” media, National Review and The Weekly Standard chief among them, are now acting to make certain that there will be no real change; they obviously prefer what we have.
If Benghazi doesn’t matter, what does?
by DR. ROBIN MCFEE June 30, 2016
For me, these names matter: Christopher Stevens, US Ambassador to Libya, Sean Smith, career diplomat, Glen Doherty, former Navy Seal, and Tyrone Woods, former Navy Seal. All died in the service of the United States. They left behind loved ones who are owed the truth, and the sincere support of a grateful nation. But are we grateful?
In the last few days much of what I have heard has been disgusting. Comments like “it’s over” or “it is merely a partisan ploy to keep Hillary from the White House” or “mistakes happen in war, let’s move on.”
I’m not sure what makes me sicker; the notion that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama allowed to die a US ambassador and brave Americans trying to protect him. Or the notion that both of them, Hillary especially, tried to cover up the mistakes, and activities that allowed Americans to be slaughtered, just to protect their campaigns, and legacy. Or the recognition my fellow citizens and much of the media are willingly providing political cover, excuses and support for Hillary Clinton – just so their candidate can win the presidency.
To be sure, there were lots of mistakes made – from the Arab Spring to the disastrous efforts at nation building in Libya. But at the end of the day, leaders must always be mindful these immortal words of the late, great, Harry Truman, “the buck stops here” For better or worse, whether complicit, or buffoonery, knowing, or not, the captain of the ship, or leader of the enterprise is always responsible, and in this case, it was President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Watching CNN broadcast Congressmen presenting the final Benghazi report, you would think the investigation concluded without key revelations or damaging evidence how badly our leaders failed those they swore to protect – fellow Americans. The ticker tape message floating across the bottom of the CNN screen seemed designed to mislead; it conveyed all was well for Hillary and no new discoveries found against her. Beyond dishonest and biased reporting – shameful is a good word – is the callous disregard for their fellow citizens who were murdered, and their families. [snip]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/if-benghazi-doesnt-matter-what-does?f=must_reads
Read more: Family Security Matters http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/if-benghazi-doesnt-matter-what-does?f=must_reads#ixzz4DTdrJnHX
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
Benghazi doesn’t matter, neither does a private email server. What matters is preserving – Hope and Change?
Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Road to Rationalia
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/437324/neil-degrasse-tysons-rationality-pipe-dream
[quote]
Professor Tyson, who may be the dumbest smart person on Twitter, yesterday wrote that what the world really needs is a new kind of virtual state — he wants to call it “Rationalia” — with a one-sentence
constitution: “All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence.”
This schoolboy nonsense came under withering and much-deserved derision.
Conservatives, who always have the French Revolution in their thoughts, reminded him that this already has been tried, and that the results are known in the history books as “the Terror.”
[end quote]
Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com
Adventures with Windows 10
Jerry
Microsoft says it will support Win7 until 2020. Will you be using your machine then? I would have said no, but my wife is still using her 2008 machine. Hmm. Maybe I could save some money and convert us to Win 10.
After running Windows 10 on my laptop and my testing machine, I decided to try the free Microsoft gift and upgrade my upstairs machine. The difference is that those were Win 8, then Win 8.1 machines, so not only was the UI similar but Win 10 is a definite improvement over what they were running. My family room machines are different; they are Win7-64 machines. I have a Haswell. My daughter has my old i7 875. And my wife is running a Core 2 duo from 2008. We all have SSD’s. When I swapped out my wife’s half gig spinning disk for a half gig SSD, it brought new life to the thing. Now she won’t give it up.
So yesterday I swapped OS’s on my rig. Result? I reverted back to Win 7 today. Why? UI. As someone who has meddled with all sorts of UI’s since 1982, I can firmly say that they let children loose with no adult supervision on Win 10. The worst was that they removed choices. For example, when you import files on your flash drive, the only choice they give you is to ask you what you always want to do with the files, not what you do today (and tomorrow might be different). And memory cards! Well, I have a card reader for my cameras. There is an import pictures script, but it no longer lets you chose the folder’s name, or that of the incoming files. And it does not tell you when it was done deleting stuff from your card. These are things I didn’t do in the basement, so I didn’t test drive those features before I installed Win 10.
Win 10 is faster, but its UI is a regression. If you have the option of going with Win7, I would say to stay with it.
Ed
I have resigned myself to Windows 10 everywhere, although 7 with Office 2010 would be more than good enough.
Time for another diatribe
And this time I will lead with an EU story rather than a Mohammedan story. It seems the EU boffins in their infinite wisdom have decided that water does not provably prevent dehydration. I think dehydration means what they think it means.
EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8897662/EU-bans-claim-that-water-can-prevent-dehydration.html
And now back to the more usual agenda, that stellar peak of consistency and cogent ratiocination “The Religion of Peace”. It seems Malaysia, a peaceful loving Muslim dominated nation, decided to hold an interfaith event. But a hitch developed along the way.
Malaysia: Muslim/Christian interfaith event cancelled after threat to participating Christians https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/07/malaysia-muslimchristian-interfaith-event-cancelled-after-threat-to-participating-christians
This is the same nation in which you can lose your job if you are too accommodating to non-believers. But, trust me, these are nice pleasant neighborly Muslims, as Muslims go.
“Moderate” Malaysia: Mosque official fired for allowing non-Muslim into prayer hall https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/07/moderate-malaysia-mosque-official-fired-for-allowing-non-muslim-into-prayer-hall
Meanwhile, back in France, we notice that peaceful Muslims celebrating the renewal of their faith during Ramadan get slightly overly exuberant with some elements of their peaceful everyday attire.
Ramadan in France: Muslim couple screaming “Allahu akbar” stabs man in stomach https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/07/ramadan-in-france-muslim-couple-screaming-allahu-akbar-stabs-man-in-stomach
And in Bangladesh we learn that loving peacefulness does not need ISIS to incite it or commit acts of love, such as hacking a Hindu priest to death. Let’s see, is this “workplace violence”?
Muslims hack to death ANOTHER Hindu priest in Bangladesh http://pamelageller.com/#sthash.7hrM2MIP.dpuf
Of course Bangladesh and Malaysia are not backwaters of Islamic love. They are fully as au courant as these Egyptians who loved a Coptic Christian to death in a hail of bullets. Admittedly the Egyptians used more modern tools for their loving care. But the attitudes are fully the same. Perhaps there is something in Islam, one of the common factors here, that leads to this sort of kindness and tolerance?
Egypt: Coptic Christian priest killed in ‘hail of bullets’ outside church http://pamelageller.com/#sthash.7hrM2MIP.dpuf
I am pointedly not looking for what these kind people think of the death of Elie Weisel. Personally I feel the world has lost someone whose experience these loving followers of Islam tend to deny ever happened. May Mr. Weisel rest in peace in the lap of God.
{^_^}
‘NATO’s assumption that the war would gradually escalate to nuclear weapons would have been fatal against an adversary that planned to use them on Day One.’
<http://nationalinterest.org/feature/revealed-how-the-warsaw-pact-planned-win-world-war-three-16822?page=show>
I knew the Soviet ‘No first use’ pledge was nonsense from the start.
It’s depressing that NATO planners and member militaries bought into it.
—————————————
Roland Dobbins
For what it’s worth, none of us cold warriors in the force design and maintenance business took that pledge seriously. Our goal was to see that there never was a day when the PolitBuro could ask “Comrade Marshal, if the war started next week could we win it?” and hear “Da, Comrade Chairman.” Better would be if it was always obviously ridiculous to ask that question.
Persecuting climate skeptics: The cover-up continues
Not only are various state attorneys general seeking to target global warming skeptics using racketeering laws, they are engaging in what seems suspiciously close to racketeering themselves.
“But we’re doing it for your own good!”
“Seventeen attorneys general got more than they bargained for when they held a March 29, 2016 “publicity stunt” press conference to announce, with former Vice President Al Gore by their sides, a campaign to target opponents of the global warming agenda under racketeering laws.
It wasn’t long before several batches of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) emails, obtained by the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) and Free Market Environmental Law Clinic (FME Law), revealed that the AGs were working behind closed doors with professional “climate” activists, from both pressure groups and law firms. If that isn’t bad enough, they also show a plan for the AGs to coordinate efforts to stonewall public records requests that threaten to expose their scheme.” [snip] http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/06/29/persecuting-climate-skeptics-cover-up-continues.html?intcmp=hphz05
But it’s all for our good. The experts – well, those that we talk to – all agree.
Thoughtpolice Update
We’re still closer to the Thoughtpolice. I’m awaiting an Executive Decree any day now:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/06/29/this-new-device-can-visualize-your-thoughts-sort-of/
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
Jerry
Ed
Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.
