More Reason’s And Facts Why You Shouldn’t Trust Social Media, The Chinese Are Using It Against The West

It’s a time suck for some, it causes mental illness in teenage girls and is a propaganda tool now.

It’s being weaponized against the users and they don’t know it.

While I think that it has crossed the Maginot line of some not being able to shut it off, it is being used as a weapon against us now. It probably has for a long time. It was a political football that was kicked around when they started banning people for not thinking the same way the Silicon Valley tech moguls think.

Before the meat of this story, let’s not forget that Tik Tok is also a Chinese spy tool.

Now, Chinese Companies Help CCP Manipulate Global Opinion on Social Media.

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) cyber-influence campaigns against Western democracies on social media have become more frequent, sophisticated, and effective in recent years, with more Chinese government agencies, such as Qi An Xin, becoming involved.

Named “Gaming Public Opinion,” the report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) included data collection spanning Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Sina Weibo, and ByteDance products.

It reveals previously unreported CCP cyber-influence operations, such as one called the “Spamouflage network,” in which inauthentic accounts are used to spread claims that the United States is irresponsibly conducting cyber-espionage operations against China and other countries.

“The CCP has used these cyber-enabled influence operations to seek to interfere in U.S. politics, Australian politics, and national security decisions, undermine the Quad and Japanese defence policies, and impose costs on Australian and North American rare-earth mining companies,”  the report said.

A Spamouflage account called Erin Chew claimed to live in Sydney. (screenshot/ASPI report)

The most notable Chinese party-state agencies involved include the People’s Liberation Army’s Strategic Support Force, which conducts cyber operations as part of the army’s political warfare; the Ministry of State Security, which conducts covert operations for state security; the Central Propaganda Department, which oversees China’s domestic and foreign propaganda efforts; the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), which enforces China’s internet laws; and the Cyberspace Administration of China, which regulates China’s internet ecosystem.

Chinese state media outlets and Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials are also running clandestine operations that seek to amplify their own overt propaganda and influence activities.

The account of user 7763546981 has a headshot of a public security bureau. (screenshot/ASPI report)

Private Chinese Companies Assisting Government Agencies

In addition, the authors found that private Chinese companies collaborate with CCP agencies in their operations.

In a recent coordinated CCP propaganda campaign named “Operation Honey Badger” (蜜獾行动) by Chinese government-linked entities, for instance, Chinese cybersecurity company Qi An Xin (奇安信) supporting the influence operation.

“We uncover new evidence to suggest that the MPS, with the support of cybersecurity company Qi An Xin, may be involved in this campaign,” they wrote.

“The company has the capacity to seed disinformation about advanced persistent threats to its clients in Southeast Asia and other countries… It’s deeply connected with Chinese intelligence, military, and security services and plays an important role in China’s cybersecurity and state security strategies.”

As of April 2023, the “Operation Honey Badger” campaign continues to attribute cyber-espionage operations to the U.S. government.

Evidence that Chinese officials and state media retweeted tweets from Spamouflage accounts. (screenshot/ASPI report)

Clive Hamilton, the Australian academic who authored “Silent Invasion,” said he agrees with the arguments made in the ASPI report.

Hamilton said he believes the CCP’s goal of manipulating public opinion remains the same, but the way it actually does it is changing.


As countries such as Australia have strengthened legislation and law enforcement to counter foreign interference, it has become more difficult for Beijing to carry out on-the-ground missions in those countries. That’s why underground work through networks is all the more important, he told Radio Free Asia.

Clive Hamilton, author of “Silent Invasion,” speaks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in “A Conversation on Chinese Influence in Australia and Beyond” in Washington on Oct. 18, 2018. (Wu Wei/Epoch Times)

Solution: Strengthen legislation, intelligence sharing, and cooperate with social media

The authors suggest governments review foreign interference legislation and consider mandating that social media platforms disclose state-backed influence operations and other transparency reporting to increase the public’s threat awareness.

In addition, they appeal to partners and allies to share more intelligence with one another on such influence operations.

“Strong open-source intelligence skills and collection capabilities are a crucial part of investigating and attributing these operations, the low classification of which should making intelligence sharing easier,” they argued.

Whole Cows No Bugs

On the other hand, social media platforms are urged to remove access to those analytics for suspicious accounts breaching platform policies, making it difficult for identified malicious actors to measure the effectiveness of influence operations.

Woke Definitions, Fail And The Usual Crap

I wonder if the rest of the world is getting tired of the MSM egging on the mentally deficient or deranged people. They gang up like the mean kids on the playground who got together to bring someone down to build themselves up.

Anyway, here is some woke crap because that is what it is. Look below for definitions from the left who try to ruin our lives with speech restrictions. Here’s your woke hint. If it’s about straight, white, christian men, it’s bad, ergo woke.

The word “woke” has become synonymous with leftism. At its core, “wokeism” is essentially a cult-like religion for the far-left, who think everything that is pro-America or pro-tradition is somehow an attack on specific, marginalized groups. “Woke” people parade throughout the nation as professional victims and make everything about them, and take narcissism to a whole new level. The Media Research Center defines the word “woke” or “wokeism” as people or ideas who are committed to the most extreme left-wing views on issues like race, gender, crime, climate, the economy, and more. Woke people think that burning down buildings is a way of peacefully protesting. Woke people believe that abortion is healthcare and that you can pick any gender you want to be. They think Antifa is a myth and that we should stop using existing, reliable, and abundant domestic sources of energy. In practice, woke people push against common-sense morals and values and promote the perpetual victimhood of groups they’ve deemed “marginalized.” While it’s evident these ideologies are nuts, the media has become obsessed with these woke ideas while vilifying traditional values and normalcy. They silence opposition through censorship or by ignoring and dismissing other people’s opinions as “racist” or “hateful.”

Trying to silence someone for their beliefs is a cross between 1984 and Communism.

Critical Race Theory = anti-white positioning, or negation of people of European descent.

Fanatically pro-Abortion = critical birth theory.

Multiculturalism = critical culture theory.

Global Warming = critical climate theory.

Transgenderism = critical sex theory

Feminism = anti-men theory

Facebook = showing the filtered and best rather than the real you, also a place to Sh*t on other people.

LinkedIn = Faux bragging and fake compliments, shit posting


Title 42 is about to expire right when the Hunter laptop investigation is going on.

MORE DEFINITIONS

Lowlights in the Woke Capture of Our Institutions

‘Woke’ DOD official Kelisa Wing reassigned after GOP highlights anti-white tweets

It didn’t pay for her to hate white people.

WASHINGTON — Self-described “woke” Defense Department schools official Kelisa Wing, whose anti-white social media comments garnered national attention last fall, has been reassigned to an unrelated role, The Post has learned.

The Defense Department in October launched a 30-day review of Wing — the now-former education activity chief diversity equity and inclusion officer — after her Twitter posts with disparaging comments about white people resurfaced.

Nolte: Marvel Fires Exec Who Pushed Disastrous Trans Agenda

Marvel used to make good movies. Mimicking real life, the guys were the hero’s with support from others. There was good story telling and we liked the hero’s, faults and all. They came through for us every time. Now, this:

Naturally, Alonso was a woke quota queen who lobbied to ruin Marvel movies with homosexuality, transvestites, and outright idiocy like changing the X-Men to the “X-People,” or some such nonsense.

Anyway, it looks to me, based on the box office numbers, that Alonso was pretty successful at ruining the Marvel juggernaut. Thanks primarily to woketardery, Marvel’s box office is down, and so is the audience’s goodwill. Marvel feminized Thor, gave us a hairy man-on-man kiss in the Eternals, desexualized everyone, and introduced new characters who are no fun at all because they are too busy whining about racism, sexism, and getting misgendered.

So cut the woke crap. Look what it is doing for Bud Light, Fox News, Maybelline, Smirnoff and others.

Equality Isn’t Real Life For Females (Plus Why They Don’t Trust Each Other)

Everything is about equality these days. The reality is that Males and females are not equal and will never be. It’s why men pretending to be girls are terrible at it (and look ugly while trying), except for kicking ass in sports. Ergo not equal. It’s why girls aren’t good superhero’s. I wish they would stop it, along with the woke thinking that they are in real life. A girl is a girl and a guy is a guy.

Let’s look at it.

Source

First, girl action hero’s are not believable. In no world is a girl going to kick ass on a guy. Girls believing they are hero’s or are going to out fight a man are going to learn a hard lesson.

Hollywood is laying out an image of woman that is far more unrealistic and harmful than even the old Barbie doll image, which really could inspire women to pursue beauty and health if interpreted positively. Whereas there is no positive spin on encouraging women to see themselves as capable of going toe to toe with big men in a fight.

It is remarkably foolish. It is not just bad entertainment, it is not just bad and unrealistic and unimaginative writing, it is dangerous messaging. Messaging which has been taken up and believed by many women today who pursue combat roles in the army, conflict roles in the police and sport and many other things.  

Messaging matters and this messaging needs to be challenged.

The Dangerous Message (lie) of the “Strong Female Protagonist”

The stereotypical “strong female protagonist” that many modern movies and television shows, books and comics want to foist on the general public are not just bad writing or uninteresting characters, they are dangerous messaging.

We have to remember that people are more often emotional rather than rational, and are far more likely to be convinced by consistently pushed rhetorical messaging than reasoned facts. This is a polite way of saying that many people are not that bright, and not that thoughtful about what they believe.

Therefore, presenting women consistently as being able to go toe to toe with men, is planting dangerous messages, anti-civilizational messages, in the minds of young men and women.

John C. Wright explains:

“If Supergirl is from Planet Krypton, fine, she can punch goons through solid brick walls, no problem. Ditto for Starfire of the Teen Titans. If Buffy the Vampire Slayer is possessed by all the strength of the ghosts of all the Slayers back to the First Slayer, fine, she has super duper strength and it is magic. Fine. That is all fine with me. (Supergirl is a horrible character, especially the latest one. Even Super dog is better)

But when the heroine is Hit Girl or Batgirl or some leggy blonde selected for her cup size rather than fighting ability, such portrayals of wispy little she-adventuresses able to tackle boatloads of thugs built like linebackers not only as absurdly unrealistic, they have the sinister tendency to make it socially acceptable for boys to hit girls.

Source

This leads to girls getting their asses kicked: (note by me here, I studied martial arts for decades. I never had to go full speed ever against any female. In fact I had to take it easy on them in stand up sparring or on the mat. I was always faster, stronger and could out think them in strategy without much effort. It was like playing with kids)

Back to the source article and discussing why it isn’t misogynistic. Not one, but two girls of my close acquaintance both had this happen to them.

They had been convinced, and everyone had told them, and all the movies and television shows had shown them, that girls could fight boys and be victorious. One girl was shocked when a male friend of hers, just horsing around, pinned her down with one hand. She had always thought she’d be able to fend off an attacker. Not without an equalizer, she wouldn’t. The other friend was equally shocked when the boy she was with was walking down the beach with her, and he picked her up, (I do not know whether bride style or Tarzan style), and ran full speed down the beach with her. She realized with a shock that she could not have picked him up no matter what, not even in an emergency, not even if he was helping. These were not even linebackers built like Conan or men on the leading edge of physical strength for men, they were ordinary boys of ordinary strength.” Wright, John C.. Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth (pp. 325-326). Still Waters Books. Kindle Edition.

Back to me. It’s why I never believed that the Black Widow was a real or even a good Avenger. She was window dressing and best only when talking to the hero’s. Captain Marvel was a terrible movie and character. No one saw her as a hero and she didn’t even act like one, even with CGI. She was so woke they cut her out of Avengers Endgame except at the end.

In real life, if I were a soldier, I’d be mighty worried that if I got injured, that a girl would have to fireman carry my ass out of the battle. I’d rather have men around me that are big, strong and could fight and would save your life. That is reality.

Why Girls Shouldn’t Trust Other Girls About Relationships

Megha

Megha

Read on Twitter

Sitting around my mom while she was fixing one of her saris, giving us some life advice. Here is what she told us:

She was telling us all about how it’s important NEVER to ask a girlfriend about relationship problems. Because girls more often than not will lead you astray. And especially when girls are young they will knowingly or unknowingly ruin your life.

She has an employee who is a cute little 26yo newly wed. The girl complained to her about her husband and my mom gave her the other perspective from her husbands point of view. Made her rethink her whole position with more maturity. Girlfriends don’t do that. Matriarchs do

Girls want to win your favor. They want you to like them. So they will say whatever they can to be on your side. They don’t have the ability or experience to see the situation from all points of view, and they don’t have the integrity to disagree with or counter you to your face. (They are lying, which they are good at)

But the thing is, 50% of the time you ARE wrong and there are very few, perhaps one in a thousand girls, who will tell you the truth, even if it is not what you’d like to hear. And most women don’t have the experience of good relationships to give good advice

Another person to never take advice from are older women who have been unsuccessful in their relationships in life. I remember a woman I knew who had gotten divorced and she was lecturing me in her man hating bitter ways every time she talked to me. In one ear out the other! They are bitter (almost always liberal) cat ladies that carp about everything, men and other women.

The girl complained to my mom that her husband never took her out. My mom reminded her that he’s a truck driver and wants to be home because he’s out all week. She complained about not getting gifts and my mom reminded her he’s providing for her so she can work just for fun

Back to me. A girl I rode bikes with (and had to hold back not to drop her) told me that girls are mean. They’ll say you look good when it is a lie so you’ll keep wearing that outfit or dress that way. They lied on purpose to be mean to the other girl, then talked behind their backs. She turned out to be a bitch also.

Why can’t we let girls be girls and stop telling them to act like men? Conversely and I’ve written about it already (see the Bud Light posts a few down) that men make terrible pretend girls. It’s just ruining females for everyone, especially them.

Life isn’t equal and neither are the sexes.

Here Is The Equipment Biden Gave The Taliban, They Are Trolling Him

We had them defeated before Biden. He let them back in the game making the USA less safe. It’s what happens when you put a politician instead of a leader in charge.

The US Army – Another Get Woke And Go Broke

You know they were trying to undermine the military by weakening the forces and morale. The recruiting numbers are way down.

You have a military to protect the nation. You want the biggest, baddest and best to fight, not a bunch of pansies they have been trying to create.

War is about killing people and blowing stuff up. The sooner you get that over with, the shorter the war. You can’t predict the outcome, despite congress wanting to secure the outcome before it is decided. Pulling out of Afghanistan and letting soldiers die in Benghazi is not the way to support your troops.

The real story is that the left love war as it promotes spending and money laundering.

Stop the tranny, race hustling, DEI, CRT and other alphabet morale killing programs. Let’s go back to what an Army is.

Recruit and train soldiers who want comradery and develop the fighting spirit we deserve.

Oh, and the Chinese have to be laughing at us as the expand in the South Pacific. Another Oh, we need a real Commander in Chief, not one bought by China and Ukraine kickbacks.

See the story below the memes.

Now this:

By Micaela Burrow
Daily Caller News Foundation

  • The U.S. Army’s new brand and ad campaign largely omit reference to woke identity politics and could be just what the service needs to overcome historic recruiting obstacles, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
  • Prior advertising efforts alienated conservative families that once served as the Army’s primary recruiting base, according to experts.
  • They “forgot that the primary market for Army recruiting is young men from traditional families, looking for a challenge,” Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, told the DCNF.

The Army’s new branding campaign, unveiled Wednesday, shied away from social justice and diversity themes as it seeks to overcome a historic drop in recruiting, military experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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The service’s buy-in on identity politics could turn off conservative families, which have traditionally served as the military’s largest recruiting base, and exacerbated the service’s recruiting woes in fiscal year 2022, experts and lawmakers warn. But, the years-in-the-making rebrand, with a goal of showcasing the Army’s role in defense and innovation throughout American history and encouraging soldiers to push their limits, could help the Army meet its ambitious recruiting goals for 2023, experts in military readiness told the DCNF.

“I think the new brand and commercial better appeal to young people’s desire to be part of a big, important effort larger than themselves,” Thomas Spoehr, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense, told the DCNF. “I think that is the right approach to take.”

The Army has come under fire for embracing perceived left-wing values in branding, according to Task and Purpose. One example is a 2021 advertising scheme that emphasized the different kinds of people who could join the service, highlighting a same-sex family.

Left-wing trends in the military’s education and personnel policies — including emphasizing inclusion of LGBTQ+ servicemembers, doubling down on outreach to minority communities, and teaching CRT and giving pronoun advice at the military academies — to support “diversity as a strategic imperative” could cause conservative, often white families to believe they “are not welcome or appreciated in the military,” Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, told the DCNF in June.

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“Parents and Army veterans who are ‘influencers’ are not recommending military service to the next generation, and recruiting numbers show the deterioration,” she added, as the Army was beginning to realize it might not make its recruiting goals for 2022.

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The new rebrand, however, has so far nixed emphasizing the background or identity of future soldiers or the supposed systemic disadvantages each has faced, though two commercials unveiled Wednesday did feature an ethnically diverse cast. At an event with Army officials promoting the rebrand, the word “diversity” was only mentioned once, and that was in reference to the array of career fields available in the Army.

“The Army’s identity-based marketing has been a disaster for recruiting, which is why they’re shifting away from it. … The Army and every other branch needs to focus on appealing to all Americans, regardless of their political beliefs or background,” Republican Indiana Rep. Jim Banks, who chairs the military personnel subcommittee on the House Armed Services Committee and has sworn to crack down on wokeness in the military, said to the DCNF.

The campaign resurrects the “be all you can be” slogan that served marketing and recruiting efforts from 1981 to 2001 and speaks to the possibilities for personal and career development the Army holds, according to Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville and Sgt. Maj. Michael Grinston. It also involves nixing the box around the Army’s recognizable five-pointed star logo.

Two new 90-second ads accompanying the rebranding guide the viewer through the history of the U.S. Army, from the colonial militias of the Revolutionary War to modern missions aimed at countering a rising China. They highlight themes of “overcoming obstacles” and pushing toward the future with new technologies that better the lives of civilians as well as serving the nation’s defense.

“You could say that the new brand is “non-woke” because it is completely absent of any suggestion that the Army is interested in any one demographic than another,” Spoehr said.

“The images of history in the new ad ring true, but I hope that woke Critical Race Theory (CRT) activists don’t get the chance to ruin what could be progress in reconnecting with traditional families who see America as a great country, not a racist country,” Donnelly told the DCNF.

Two prior marketing campaigns under the most recent branding scheme seemed to alienate some target audiences, Col. John Horning, who leads marketing and strategy for the Army Enterprise Marketing Office, explained to Army Times.

The “What’s Your Warrior” ad series rolled out in 2019 aimed to showcase the wide variety of career fields available in the Army, but it’s belligerent overtones turned away some hopeful audiences, Horning told the outlet. However, The Calling, an anime-style video series released in 2021, sparked condemnation from some conservative audiences.

“Even with The Calling, we found that there was a prospect audience that absolutely identified [with it], but we’re all very aware that it struck a nerve,” Horning told Army Times. “Some other people didn’t identify with what we were trying to do, and it became a distraction.”

One video in the series depicted a future recruit named Emma attending a wedding for her “two loving and inspiring mothers.”

The Army intended the commercials to broaden its appeal to Gen Z audiences and present a range of relatable scenarios as the recruiting pool grows increasingly shallow, Task and Purpose reported. Instead, detractors launched barrage of criticism against the videos for representing what they saw as a “woke” and “emasculated” military.

The ads “forgot that the primary market for Army recruiting is young men from traditional families, looking for a challenge,” Donnelly told the DCNF. “Last year’s recruiting crisis was partially fueled by that colossal mistake.”

The Army missed its recruiting objectives for 2022 of 60,000 new members by 25%; to make up for that offset, the service set a “stretch goal” for 2023 to 65,000 recruits, according to Wormuth.

The Army accelerated launch of the new branding effort to help with recruiting for 2023, Wormuth explained at the event Wednesday. The new campaign cost roughly $117 million to execute, she said, and is a result of extensive work that included focus groups with relevant stakeholders. But leaders are confident that a data-driven approach will yield results.

The U.S. needs an Army that shows itself to be a capable, hard-hitting force that can defeat and deter enemy aggression, not one that prioritizes inclusion over competence and lowers standards to accommodate more self-described identities, GOP lawmakers argue.

As recruiting appeared to slow in the spring and summer of 2022, the service surveyed Americans between the ages of 16 and 28 to find out why young people were choosing options besides serving in the military. Respondents cited as their number one concern that they “would be putting their life on hold,” Grinston, the Army’s top enlisted leader, testified to Congress on Thursday.

He denied that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives hurt recruiting.

“They just don’t perceive the Army as being in touch with the modern, everyday culture that they’re used to,” Army head of marketing Maj. Gen. Alex Fink told The Associated Press in context of the survey results.

At the same time, propensity to serve has fallen to the lowest levels in 15 years. Only 9% of young people demonstrate a desire or willingness to join the Army, and of those, only 23% meet physical, academic and legal qualifications — down from 29%, Grinston said.

The Army doubled down on messaging about benefits and career opportunities available to soldiers in 2022 and into 2023, offering bonuses in the thousands of dollars for successful referrals and new recruits’ willingness to ship out within 45 days of enlistment. It invested in health care, education support and vacation while pleading with lawmakers to set aside funding for housing assistance, child care and spousal career assistance, to hold on to the recruits.

It also plans to expand opportunities for willing prospects to complete pre-enlistment programs that offer supplemental fitness training and academic tutoring for those who fall short of the Army’s requirements in those areas.

However, none of those efforts appeared to meaningfully move the needle on recruiting, Spoehr said.

“I think the Army (and the other services) are learning that recruiting messages that stress compensation and benefits are falling short,” Spoehr told the DCNF.

About 84% of new recruits come from military families, according to Gen. McConville.

“So we’re becoming a military family business. We want to be an American family business,” he told reporters Wednesday.

“We need every young person in this country, we need every parent in this country, to know that the United States military is a pathway to success,” McConville said.

The Air Force is getting into the act now too.

Nuclear Base Focuses on Diversity, Fails Nuclear Inspections

Taliban, Once Almost Dead Now Controls This List Of $83 Billion Of US Assets To Fight Against The USA

We listened to claims of starting WWIII for 4 years by the screeching media and politicians. In the last 2 years, we just armed the other side to fight against us. It’s as if those in charge want our nation to fail, or want a hand in taking us down. I’m sure they got their 10%.

How are we safer? How did they preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States?

Here is a more complete list of US-supplied and left behind equipment list now controlled by Taliban:

-2,000 Armored Vehicles Including Humvees and MRAP’s
-75,989 Total Vehicles: FMTV, M35, Ford Rangers, Ford F350, Ford Vans, Toyota Pickups, Armored Security Vehicles etc
-45 UH-60 Blachhawk Helicopters
-50 MD530G Scout Attack Choppers
-ScanEagle Military Drones
-30 Military Version Cessnas
-4 C-130’s
-29 Brazilian made A-29 Super Tocano Ground Attack Aircraft 
208+ Aircraft Total
-At least 600,000+ Small arms M16, M249 SAWs, M24 Sniper Systems, 50 Calibers, 1,394 M203 Grenade Launchers, M134 Mini Gun, 20mm Gatling Guns and Ammunition
-61,000 M203 Rounds
-20,040 Grenades
-Howitzers
-Mortars +1,000’s of Rounds
-162,000 pieces of Encrypted Military Comunications Gear
-16,000+ Night Vision Goggles
-Newest Technology Night Vision Scopes
-Thermal Scopes and Thermal Mono Googles
-10,000 2.75 inch Air to Ground Rockets
-Recconaissance Equipment (ISR)
-Laser Aiming Units
-Explosives Ordnance C-4, Semtex, Detonators, Shaped Charges, Thermite, Incendiaries, AP/API/APIT
-2,520 Bombs
-Administration Encrypted Cell Phones and Laptops all operational
-Pallets with Millions of Dollars in US Currency
-Millions of Rounds of Ammunition including but not limited to 20,150,600 rounds of 7.62mm, 9,000,000 rounds of 50.caliber
-Large Stockpile of Plate Carriers and Body Armor
-US Military HIIDE, for Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment Biometrics
-Lots of Heavy Equipment Including Bull Dozers, Backhoes, Dump Trucks, Excavators

Much of the information included in the above list is public record.

But that was not enough.

Now the Biden administration is going to send the Taliban terrorists millions in humanitarian aid.

It really is as if we lost the war and now we’re paying reparations to the terrorists.
You just can’t make this up!

Newsmax reported:

The U.S. has agreed to provide humanitarian aid to a desperately poor Afghanistan on the brink of an economic disaster, while refusing to give political recognition to the country’s new Taliban rulers, the Taliban said Sunday.

The statement came at the end of the first direct talks between the former foes since the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops at the end of August.

There was no immediate comment from the U.S. on the weekend meeting.
The Taliban said the talks held in Doha, Qatar, “went well,” with Washington freeing up humanitarian aid to Afghanistan after agreeing not to link such assistance to formal recognition of the Taliban.

Source

I Like This Dick Measuring Contest

Because that is what it is. It’s like the longest drive, fastest car, number of wins your team got, name it.

There are some that are hard to top. They are conversation stoppers, also one of my favorites.

I won’t compare it to my schools because I put as much distance as I can from both my high school and college, both school and people. Those people would lose every time to the non-woke army.

If it weren’t for the Nazi thing, this would be the ultimate dick measuring contest for a school. Based on my work experience, I’ve noted how overrated the Ivy League schools are, and you can include others like UNC-CH, Duke and most California schools. They turn out losers now that are more concerned about gender and race than history and education.

Still, if it came down to it and someone started giving me the Harvard or Notre Dame speech. I’d like to say I’m from the Panzer School and we’d blow your doors off, literally. That’s a show stopper.

It’s like someone bragging they play golf and you answer, Hi, I’m Tiger Woods.

More On Artificial Intelligence, The Robots Kill The Humans For Real Now

I’ve written before, tongue in cheek about this, but here we are. Who thought this was a good idea? Who is going to control these killer bots? What if they become sentient, then they kill on their own.

Sure it’s in the shit hole San Francisco, but once there is a hole in the dike, the dam bursts. If they allow it there, it goes everywhere.

In a dystopian turn of events, the San Francisco Police Department is considering giving robots the license to kill.

Last week, San Francisco’s rules committee unanimously approved a version of a draft policy stating that robots can be ‘used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option’.

Members of the city’s Board of Supervisors Rules Committee have been reviewing the new policy for several weeks as reported by Mission Local.

The original version did not mention robots until Aaron Peskin, the Dean of the city’s Board of Supervisors, initially added that ‘robots shall not be used as a Use of Force against any person’.

However, the SFPD amended Peskin’s addition and replaced it with a line that could give robots the authority to kill suspects if the life of public or police was at risk.

According to Mission Local, Peskin eventually decided to accept the change because ‘there could be scenarios where deployment of lethal force was the only option’.

The equipment policy states that the SFPD currently has 17 remotely piloted robots, of which only 12 are functioning.

In addition to granting robots the ability to use deadly force, the proposal also authorizes them for use in ‘training and simulations, criminal apprehensions, critical incidents, exigent circumstances, executing a warrant or during suspicious device assessments’.

While most of the robots listed in the SFPD’s inventory are primarily used for defusing bombs or dealing with hazardous materials, newer models have an optional weapons system.

The department’s QinetiQ Talon can also be modified to hold various weapons — a weaponized version of the robot is currently used by the US Army and can equip grenade launchers, machine guns, or even a .50-caliber anti-materiel rifle.

Story here

If they can multiply, humans are doomed.

Veteran’s Day No More For Pearl Harbor Survivors – The End Of An Era

Here is one that I remember. When I went to Pearl Harbor, I had a similar feeling when I was at Dachau. The souls of the dead seemed to be there looking at you, hoping you will remember.

How quickly we forget. Here is the story of the last survivor. I met some of them when I was there. None will have that chance again

The end of an Era: Ed Hall, The last known Pearl Harbor survivor in Nevada died in his sleep this week at the age of 99.

Hall was in the U.S. Army Air Corps and only 18 years old when Japan launched a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor that left 2,403 Americans dead.

Hall’s longtime friend Mannarino visited him on Tuesday, the night before he passed.

‘He passed away peacefully in his sleep,’ Mannarino confirmed. ‘He joked with the nurses last night. Before I left he said “I love you.” He seemed still full of life.

The doctor told me that “When we went to check on him, he was unresponsive.” I just fell over completely. He was the greatest guy, from the greatest generation. Those men were cut from a different cloth.’

Hall had told the Review-Journal in an August 2020 interview that he was saddened to hear that he was believed to be the last living Pearl Harbor survivor in the state of Nevada.

In the interview, he also said that December 7, 1941 was a day he would never forget.

‘It’ll be forgotten, just like the Civil War, or the Spanish American War,’ Hall said. ‘This country better wake up or it’s going to happen again, that nobody will pay attention to the warning signs, like that day of December 7, 1941.’

On that fateful day, the former Army private was on kitchen duty and cleaning a frying pan, he has said, when he heard what he thought was a malfunctioning air compressor.

But when he walked outside the mess hall at Hickam Field (now Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam), he was met with the sights and sounds of a full-blown attack.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ he remembered yelling as fighter planes roared above him. A fellow serviceman pulled him down and shouted, ‘Do you want to die?’

‘There was shooting going on like you wouldn’t believe,’ Hall told the paper decades later. ‘I’m still amazed I didn’t get hurt.’

While they took cover, Hall said he remembers seeing an explosion that he later learned was the USS Arizona being struck, killing 1,177 sailors and Marines.

Lest we Forget!

Election Time Meme’s, Climate Lies, The Media And On, And On….

How much government waste?

In Global Warming lies:

Burying the blades of wind turbines because they can not be recycled. Very Earth friendly move by the climate crowd. They don’t tell you this part of the lie.

The Media

“Every human has four endowments—self awareness, conscience, independent will, and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom … The power to choose, to respond, to change.”

– Stephen Covey

And Finally, we are right:

One Year After The Withdrawal From Afghanistan, What We Will Face When We Have To Go Back

As we just past the one year anniversary of one of the top military, political and budget blunders of history. We left $84 Billion of arms that are now showing up around the world. It was blamed on the prior president, but history shows that all the plans by the previous president were ignored, yet they blamed him. We dropped everything and left. We left our respect, our weapons, our faith in the military and a lot of other things there that day.

I for one, want a tax break for this. It was unnecessary to withdraw the way it was done and was a rudderless action. It will go down with Viet Nam as our worst military actions. In both, the people left behind suffered the most by the brutal people who ruled.

I read that it’s likely that we will have to go back to Afghanistan. That area is destabilized and the 12th century barbarians are taking over again.

China has moved it to take over the area for their expansion against India. There are a lot of rare earth elements they can harvest for cheap. There are plenty of poppies for drugs. China moves a ton of Fentanyl into the US over the Mexican border. They now have an endless supply to make it with.

Here is a list of what was left. We get to fight against our own technology when we have to send troops back in.

It was a royal screw up.

-2,000 Armored Vehicles Including Humvees and MRAP’s

-75,989 Total Vehicles: FMTV, M35, Ford Rangers, Ford F350, Ford Vans, Toyota Pickups, Armored Security Vehicles etc

-45 UH-60 Blackhawk Helicopters

-50 MD530G Scout Attack Choppers

-Scan Eagle Military Drones

-30 Military Version Cessna’s

-4 C-130’s

-29 Brazilian made A-29 Super Tocano Ground Attack Aircraft

=208+ Aircraft Total!!

At least 600,000+ Small arms M16, M249 SAWs, M24 Sniper Systems, 50 Calibers, 1,394 M203 Grenade Launchers, M134 Mini Gun, 20mm Gatling Guns and Ammunition

-61,000 M203 Rounds

-20,040 Grenades

-Howitzers

-Mortars +1,000’s of Rounds

-162,000 pieces of Encrypted Military Communications Gear

-16,000+ Night Vision Goggles

-Newest Technology Night Vision Scopes

-Thermal Scopes and Thermal Mono Googles

-10,000 2.75 inch Air to Ground Rockets

-Reconnaissance Equipment (ISR)

-Laser Aiming Units

-Explosives Ordnance C-4, Semtex, Detonators, Shaped Charges, Thermite, Incendiaries, AP/API/APIT

-2,520 Bombs

-Administration Encrypted Cell Phones and Laptops ALL operational

-Pallets with Millions of Dollars in US Currency

-Millions of Rounds of Ammunition including but not limited to 20,150,600 rounds of 7.62mm, 9,000,000 rounds of 50.caliber

-Large Stockpile of Plate Carriers and Body Armor

US Military HIIDE, for Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment Biometrics

-Lots of Heavy Equipment Including Bull Dozers, Backhoes, Dump Trucks, Excavators

Hat tip by Ronald E. Yates

Happy 4th Of July From The White House

This was last year. This year, the price of gas is up $3 a gallon and the BBQ is a lot more than the 16 cents you saved last year.

Bring back the mean tweets, or start revving up the DeSantis machine.

Someone needs to save us from the people trying to destroy the USA and obviously have put Americans last.

We fought hundreds of years ago to make the greatest country who lifted the lives of more people than any nation in history.

As Reagan said, we are only one generation away from this tyranny.

This is something I tried to explain to Maricio Godoy, but he back stabbed me instead.

Thanks Irish.

Some Sanity on Gun Control

Once again, my friend George missed the boat and thinks that more gun laws would actually apply to bad guys. These laws only restrict law abiding citizens. I feel sorry for those who read the alphabet news sources of propaganda. He, like others should be better educated at this point in life on these matters.

Go down to the part about socialism and guns. Learn from history.

Better yet, read this and you will get a detailed discussion of the actual facts from both sides of the argument on what can be done.

We went to the same American History classes growing up before they re-wrote the facts.

Anyway, here goes. Steal and re-post as much as possible.

An estimated 65 million Chinese died as a result of Mao’s repeated, merciless attempts to create a new “socialist” China. Anyone who got in his way was done away with—by execution, imprisonment, or forced famine. https://t.co/RBxIPnxXwm— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) June 17, 2022

Because he took away their guns first, like Stalin, Kim, and the rest of socialist dictators who killed 100’s of millions once the people couldn’t defend themselves.

I have out-law relatives in the socialist paradise of Scandanavia, more precisely in the home of Jante’s Law (also one of the stupidest assumptions about people’s nature). I told them that if you take away guns, people will use knives. If you take away knives, they will use rocks. It progresses to sticks and anything else. Just ask Cain and Abel.

All of this happened right after I told them, but did they listen? No. Guns are bad (to liberals) because conservatives and students of history aren’t afraid of them and built the greatest country in history. They only support leftards and liars like Hillary, Obama and Pocahontas and anyone who wants to tear down America. Bashing the USA is Europe’s favorite sport.

They get to enjoy inflation and lack of prosperity now that that the current administration is screwing the world and them because of it. They are getting a good education in trickle down economics, even in their socialist paradise. It’s just that it’s like plumbing with Biden or socialism, shit flows downhill.

They say they are the happiest country only because of the lowest expectations. They need guns because of the Islamic invasion sucking dry their money that they give 70% to the their government.

My favorite is the half breed James Governor who wondered on twitter who is, why do we need a well armed country and who are we fighting. We are fighting to keep our freedom from people who want communism like James. I’m surprises that you hold a US passport but don’t understand this. Russia, China or Cuba are good places for your dream country.

A president who hated America being great

So George, would you do this?

What Do We Need In Our Next President

We’ve had a variety of personalities parade through the Oval Office. Some have been effective, others not. They have come from different angles though. Recently there has been 3 governors, 3 politicians, a businessman and an actor/governor.

Before we get to the crux of the matter, this thought dawned on me in the mid 1990’s, but I didn’t realize it at the time. When I was at IBM, I saw Lou Gerstner turn a $9 billion dollar loss into a $9 billion profit in 2 years. IBM was in 160 countries with different laws, customs, politics, personalities, mores and religions. Every decision affected something directly to the problem at hand, but at the same time,affected many other issues, people, countries and competitors somewhere else around the world.

At that moment, I said I would vote for him for president because of the decision making, people skills, boldness of action and the understanding of the 3D chess that every action affects something other than it’s intended purpose. He never ran. Most likely he was too smart to take such a thankless job with half the population hating you, and the other deciding if they love/hate you based on the day.

First, it is clear that politicians are trained to work the system, but not lead the free world. We found this out with almost all of the senators who have been president in the recent decades. They were good at enriching themselves, political maneuvering and working the deep state system because they are swamp creatures.

They don’t have the people skills (look at the advisors of all of the recent administrations), profit and loss responsibility (look at the deficit since Carter) and most of all, how one action affects many others either directly or indirectly. Our first mano a mano was Carter vs. the Iranian terrorists. We haven’t had a Cold War mano a mano since Reagan and Gorbachev squared off, although Trump wasn’t a war president and did keep other countries from acting out. The bad actors have since resumed after 2020.

For personal mano a mano, I saw Gerstner force Cisco to buy the IBM Networking Hardware Division, it’s direct competitor in what turned out to be a dick measuring contest with John Chambers. It wasn’t Reagan/Gorbachev, but the stakes were hundreds of millions. Chambers wanted a contract with IBM Global Services, the mainframe leader at the time and said no to buying NHD. Gerster told his Senior VP’s and staff that if anyone talked to Cisco, they were fired on the spot. Within a week, Cisco completed the purchase of NHD, and Chambers put his dick away while Gerstner got rid of an IBM problem and showed he had a bigger dick than those at Cisco.

This is how it is on the world stage. Trust but verify. Strength leads to peace. You are a leader or a follower. The WEF great reset and the One World Government, socialism and other current power grabs make most world leaders just junior managers. We need to elect a leader.

Many recent presidents have become very rich while in office. I don’t fault people for wanting to earn money, but when you can be bought like the Clinton Foundation or the recent Burisma or China buying politicians and college professors has tainted the office. If you can be bought, you aren’t in charge. You are now just a debtor owing something. The lobbyists couldn’t buy Trump which upset the deep state swamp to this day.

I’d love to have someone who loves our country and is a patriot. I miss that.

So, the list includes not being a politician. It includes being able to manage people, world situations, building a competent staff and having the 7th sense of being able to see what are the affects of a decision or action 3 steps away from that decision. That is 3D chess.

Building a proper staff is critical. I fault Trump for trusting the existing swamp creatures like Sessions, Meuller, Strzok and his paramour, Barr, some generals and Fauci. He should have fired them all because most of Washington is made up of back stabbers. I’ll give the politicians the ability to sniff out the rats first, given that is who they really are to begin with. Biden just brought back Obama’s criminals and liars (circle back Psaki) and his staff is a group of clowns. The biggest joke of all is Harris. Affirmative Action has failed us when we need a leader there.

Playing the world leaders is tougher. Reagan was the benchmark. He got the Soviet Union to crumble without firing a shot. China and Xi bought the administration of the current administration as well as congress including Feinstein, Swalwell and others who are well documented. As I said before, Trump was already rich and couldn’t be bought. They got to him through Covid and owning Silicon Valley so no one is immune. Obama was a coward who went on a surrender tour at his first trip.

Putin is a tougher leader than what we have now, yet he didn’t act up between 2016-2020. He was matched or outwitted by the leader at that time, after just having taken the Crimea in 2014. Kim Jong Un stopped firing missiles during that same time.

So while it excludes some financially, if they can be tough morally we need a person who can’t be bought by lobbyists or another country. We need someone who is a tough negotiator. Looking at the Iran deals that were in place and those being re-negotiated are bad for America. I want a president who puts Americans first, not money.

Speaking of money, not a one of them recently has done anything to stop the deficit.

Being able to handle tough economic situations, like reducing inflation instead of causing it. Making us independent of other countries for energy, chips, manufacturing and other things that bring economic followed by military strength.

Most of all some one that we can respect. Everyone knows Biden is being abused and shouldn’t be mistreated like he is this far along in his dementia. Clinton is the #metoo poster boy. Trump made personal grievances too public. He should have shown more grace in ignoring the press, Hollywood and those who hated for hates sake.

The election process is really going on now, not just for mid-terms, but also 2024. The mid-terms should make a 2 year lame duck out of Biden. Then, we need someone who will take our country back and make Americans first rather than other countries.

Well, Solving The High Gas Prices Looks Easy

It’s as if they want higher prices. I wonder why? The country does great and they bitch about mean tweets, grill every hair out of place and cover the kids of President 45 like they were flying to the moon for the first time.

Now, failure upon embarrassment in a year. Oh, and Hunter Biden is providing more material than was ever covered in All The Presidents Men, yet all we get are crickets. Sound fair or unbiased? I didn’t think so, no matter which side you are on.

Almost All Of The Covid Evil In One Picture

Missing are some celebtards, some governors who let power get to their head, and one US president who cluelessly let power get to his head and mishandled and mis-managed Covid at almost every point. It could have been over in 2020, but no, so would the power and control. Also not pictured are the MSM, the propaganda arm of the current government as well as the woke social media, which ruins everything it touches, but was fully behind restricting people and locking us down.

What The MSM, Celebtards And Youngsters Who Think Socialism/Communism Is The Way We Should Go Don’t Realize

Communists get rid of them first. People who are famous that don’t get in line? Gone. Journalists? Work for the Government they way they want it reported or you’re gone. Celebrities who speak out, gone. Look at China and their tennis star (or Jack Ma). Those who are in the commie movement (in the USA, this would be college professors, the youth who have bought into this by ignoring history and of course Hollywood), all gone. These are the first because they are easy to locate by their public spewing of beliefs. They just disappear. Their choice would be to get in line, but then they’d have to give up fame, fortune and freedom. That’s the disconnect.

Don’t believe me? Look at what Stalin did, or Hitler, or Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Il Sing/John Il/Il Sun. They become puppets of the state, or disappear. The woke will be woken up and hauled off.

Democrats hate privately-owned vehicles because POV’s (and cheap gas) give us freedom of mobility.
Ultimately, that’s what the Green New Deal agenda is about: control.— Jake Bequette (@JakeBequette91) March 7, 2022

The Three Men Trying To Dominate The World

Recently, there has been a power struggle to take over countries, people, beliefs and the masses by three men in different ways.

Klaus Schwab of the WEF is trying to play the Covid Game into the great reset.

Is the Great Reset a conspiracy theory imagining a vast left-wing plot to establish a totalitarian one-world government? No. Despite the fact that some people may have spun conspiracy theories based on it—with some reason, as we will see—the Great Reset is real.

Indeed, just last year, Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF)—a famous organization made up of the world’s political, economic, and cultural elites that meets annually in Davos, Switzerland—and Thierry Malleret, co-founder and main author of the Monthly Barometer, published a book called COVID-19: The Great Reset. In the book, they define the Great Reset as a means of addressing the “weaknesses of capitalism” that were purportedly exposed by the COVID pandemic.

But the idea of the Great Reset goes back much further. It can be traced at least as far back as the inception of the WEF, originally founded as the European Management Forum, in 1971. In that same year, Schwab, an engineer and economist by training, published his first book, Modern Enterprise Management in Mechanical Engineering. It was in this book that Schwab first introduced the concept he would later call “stakeholder capitalism,” arguing “that the management of a modern enterprise must serve not only shareholders but all stakeholders to achieve long-term growth and prosperity.” Schwab and the WEF have promoted the idea of stakeholder capitalism ever since. They can take credit for the stakeholder and public-private partnership rhetoric and policies embraced by governments, corporations, non-governmental organizations, and international governance bodies worldwide.

Ever wonder how 190 Governments could operate in “Lockstep” enforcing Lockdowns, Social Distancing, Mask Mandates, Vaccine Mandates over a 99.9% survivable “Virus” nobody has a genetic sample of? Their leaders may be one of 1600 who graduated from Klaus Schwab’s Young Global Leaders School. Schwab was mentored by Bohemian Grove, 33 deg Freemason, Jesuit, Vietnam War architect Henry Kissinger. Famous grads: Mrs Schwab Nicole Schwab, Bill Gates (Microsoft), Rockefeller Foundation CEO Rajiv Shah, Angela Merkel (Hitler’s daughter), Rhodes Scholars Tony Blair (Knight Noble Order of the Garter) and Pete Buttigieg, Nicolas Sarkozy, Emanuel Macron, Viktor Orban (Hungarian PM), Sebastian Kurz (Austrian Chancellor), Jeff “Burning Man” Bezos (Amazon), Jack Ma (Alibaba; CCP Alipay), Richard Branson (Virgin), Peter Thiel (PayPal, Palantir), Leonardo DiCaprio (Global Climate Change Actor), Anderson Cooper, Bono, Steffi Graf, Tony Hawk, Meghan Rapino, Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Sergei Brin and Larry Page (Google), Elon Musk (Tesla, Space X, StarLink), Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Ashton Kucher, Charlize Theron, Maria Bartiromo (Money Honey), Jacinda (Jason) Ardern, Kirill Dmitriev (Russian Direct Investment Funding of Gamaleya Sputnik V) Gavin Newsome (CA Fires), Chelsea Clinton, Bobby Jindal (Geo-engineered Hurricane Katrina), Tulsi Gabbard. Mentors: Christine Lagarde, Edomite Queen Rania of Jordan, BlackRock Group CEO Crypto Jew Larry Fink, Carlyle Group War Profiteer David Rubenstein, Inconvenient Liar Al Gore, Bain & Company Israeli money launderer Orit Gadeish (took over from Mitt Romney), Turkish Sultan for life Reccip Tayyip Erdogan. Network: Druid Collective (Druid: Dru=Tree of Knowledge) Purpose: “Shape the Future” by collapsing global economies and “Building Back Better” to effect the “Great Reset” through GESARA (Global Economic Security and Recovery Act)

Putin and Russia

Next is Putin. He’s made his play for the Ukraine, but is also giving the middle finger to NATO, who is supposed to protect the world from Russian dominance. He also owns the EU countries as they were dumb enough to cede their source of energy from his. If he shuts off the supply, countries like Germany have no backup. They stopped their nuclear plants and bought into the sustainable energy lies.

What is interesting is that Putin used to be in Schwab’s WEF cult. It seems that ultimate power corrupts and his loyalty is to himself. It is hard to bow to another leader so he’s rolling his own for now.

Putin warns the WEF in a January 2022 presentation that social stratification and polarization could lead to an “all against all” war of the ages. And here we are now. Was he ignored deliberately? #cdnpoli @fordnation @YellowVestsCA https://t.co/TSMxxzLtbN

From the WSJ:

Western powers and their allies have lined up to oppose Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. They can’t say he didn’t warn them.

Fifteen years ago, the former KGB officer railed against U.S. domination of global affairs and assailed the post-Cold War security order as a threat to his country. In the years that followed, he grabbed portions of Georgia, annexed Crimea and sent troops into Ukraine’s Donbas region.

Mr. Putin sent repeated signals that he intended to widen Russia’s sphere of influence and cast the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s eastward expansion as an existential threat to Moscow’s security. He made plain he viewed Ukraine as part of Russia.

Yet until recently few Western leaders imagined Mr. Putin would go through with a full-scale invasion, having miscalculated his determination to use force—on a scale that recalls the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968—to restore Russian control over the nations on its periphery.

How do you think the West should have handled Putin from the start? Join the conversation below.

Russian forces moved by air and land to attack Kyiv on Friday after launching an invasion Wednesday. A Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Russia was ready for negotiations, but the goals of its combat operation to “demilitarize” Ukraine remained.

“It was strategic narcissism and an associated failure to consider the emotion, ideology, and aspiration that drives Putin and the Siloviki around him,” said H.R. McMaster, the retired three-star Army general who served as former U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, referring to the small circle of hard-line advisers around the Russian president.

Next is the China (CCP) and Xi

He has been executing a plan of subversion for a long time by stealing technology, buying off US politicians, academicians and celebrities. He also has used his population to manufacture much of what the US needs critically like cheap technology, medicines and household goods. Buying influence from the corrupt is easy.

He unleashed the China Covid-19 virus on the world and is committing genocide on his population.

For weeks, China’s foreign-policy establishment dismissed a steady stream of warnings from the U.S. and its European allies about a pending Russian invasion, and instead blamed Washington for hyping the Russian threats.

Now, China is trying to regain its balance after making a calculation that could seriously undermine a position it has tried to build for itself as a global leader and advocate for developing nations.

As late as this week, with signs looming of an impending invasion, when a well-connected foreign-policy scholar in China gave a talk to a group of worried Chinese investors and analysts, he titled the speech “A War That Won’t Happen.”

“We see little chance of Russia unilaterally declaring war on Ukraine,” Shen Yi, a professor of international relations at Shanghai’s Fudan University who advises the government, said at the Tuesday teleconference held by a securities firm, according to people who dialed into the call.

Less than 48 hours later, Mr. Putin launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine.

Here are a few of the headlines I’ve found – the only ones allowed on the internet recently.

  • “China says US creating ‘fear and panic’ over Ukraine” – AP
  • “China refuses to call Russian attack on Ukraine an ‘invasion,’ deflects blame to U.S.” – CNBC
  • “China nods to Russia’s interests in attack on Ukraine” – WSJ
  • “China refuses to condemn Russian attack, deflects blame to U.S.” – Bloomberg
  • “Biden takes veiled swipe at China in condemning Russia backers on Ukraine” – Reuters

What does this mean?

It means that Russia is allied with China – and so is Iran. Think of it as a tripartite alliance – an anti-American and anti-Israel one.

Do you think they fear each other – the two largest countries next to each other in the world? They don’t anymore – and have not for a long time. They both have business to take care of in the short term. China has usurped Hong Kong and has Taiwan in its immediate crosshairs. Russia is reassembling the former Soviet Union starting with Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus and then the Baltic nations.

No one in the United States bothers to talk about the China virus anymore – especially the radical left. It’s one of the topics you can’t talk about in polite company. They are bought off by the CCP.

Nor can we talk about the Uyghurs, a people living in Chinese concentration camps and marked for extinction through forced abortions.

If I lived in Taiwan, I’d feel like a giant bullseye was on me as Xi doesn’t fear what the rest of the world will do. He took over Hong Kong and Biden cowardly surrendered Afghanistan in one of histories greatest blunders by a leader. It is comparable to what Neville Chamberlain did with Hitler.

Why can’t we talk about it?

Because we don’t have a free press anymore thanks to Big Tech – another one of the allies of the Chinese Communists.

All Joe Biden would say about the Chinese insofar as their position on Russia and Ukraine is that they will be “stained” by it. He was careful to say nothing further because Beijing has the goods on him. He was former business partners with Russia, China and Ukraine.

No where in this post is the US being one of the world leaders. At best, those governing are either bought off by the Chinese, or are WEF converts. That means for the first time in one hundred years that the USA isn’t worrying anyone trying to take over the world. Much of congress has ties to either the CCP or the WEF. Biden obviously has received money from the Chinese, the Russians and has obeyed the WEF Covid church with the vaccine mandates which are just a power grab.

So it’s Xi vs Putin vs Schwab. They are intertwined, and battle each other for their portion of the world they wish to dominate. Usually, power hungry leaders eat each other. The Chinese will surely backstab anyone. Putin has to battle the WEF and Schwab’s army is lead by idiots, like Trudeau and Biden.

All three want to rule the world, just in 3 different ways. As always, it’s the people that will suffer greatly. Schwab let Covid kill instead of helping stop it. Putin and Xi are killing right now People are just playing cards to these guys.

Protect yourself. Know your enemy better than he knows you.

Steven King On Putin, Trump and Biden

Well, this tweet didn’t age well did it? This is 180 degrees wrong in less than 12 hours.

Stick to writing fiction. There is a real world out there.

Really, this is like Thomas Friedman saying the stock market would collapse when Trump was elected. These guys are so deluded by ideology that they can’t live in a factual world.

Putin knew he was free to make move when Biden collapsed in Afghanistan. There is no telling what Xi is planning, but it is safe to say that it doesn’t look good for Taiwan right now.

The reality is that Putin didn’t do anything when Trump was the Commander in Chief. He knew there would be strategic consequences, not political maneuvering.

The Covid Scare Is Wearing Off, So Now They Are Inventing VAIDS, Too Bad the Damage Is From The Jab

Seriously, Vaids? It is an excuse for the damage that the jab has done. It has ruined immune systems so they are claiming Vaccine Acquired Immune Syndrome. How you know anything is bullshit these days is if the media is pushing it, they are. If it bleeds, it reads.

The VAERS system run by HHS is now reporting over 23,000 deaths following COVID-19 vaccinations. When multiplied by the well-documented Under Reporting Factor (URF) of 41, this means we now have nearly one million Americans killed by COVID vaccines (so far).

Around August / September of last year, I publicly predicted we would see one million dead Americans by the end of March 2022. It seems we have already nearly reached that horrifying number before the end of February.

Get ready for vaccine-induced AIDS to explode globally

As bad as the one million deaths already are, that number is going to explode over the next several years as vaccine-induced “AIDS” explodes. As Ethan Huff wrote:

Evidence continues to mount showing that Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) “vaccines” are causing recipients everywhere to develop AIDS.

Source: https://thecovidworld.com/media-pushing-hiv-variant-narrative-as-cover-story-for-vaccine-induced-immune-system-collapse/

COVID-19 Vaccine-Induced Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or VAIDS, appears to be one of the more serious long-term adverse effects caused by the injections. In essence, the shots are destroying people’s immune systems over time, leaving them prone to infections of all kinds.

Source: https://thecovidworld.com/media-pushing-hiv-variant-narrative-as-cover-story-for-vaccine-induced-immune-system-collapse/

A website known as The Expose (UK) found that COVID vaccines demonstrate negative effectiveness, meaning they cause illness rather than preventing it:

Using Pfizer’s vaccine effectiveness formula, the Exposé found that the real-world effectiveness of the jabs is -183 percent, on average. This is absolutely astounding and highly disconcerting.

‘The lowest COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness was seen in the 40-49 age group in England throughout January 2022, recorded at minus-209.4%, with the 50-59 age group not far behind,’ it was determined.

As COVID vaccines destroy immune function, people experience “AIDS” with high vulnerability to common infections

The more COVID vaccines people take — and the more time that passes since the injections — the greater the destruction of their natural immune function. Over time, their immune systems approach zero practical functionality, potentially causing them to be diagnosed with AIDS which simply means an acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. It can be acquired from vaccines, it turns out.

With several billion people around the planet having taken these AIDS-causing vaccines, it means we’re looking at a global explosion of AIDS diagnoses that makes people extremely vulnerable to common infections such as colds and flu.

The very same vaccine manufacturers who caused this problem are at the ready, rolling out new “AIDS vaccines” using mRNA technology, supposedly to “treat” those who have suppressed immune systems caused by the first vaccines. In effect, this entire process involves destroying the natural immune system and replacing it with regular, high-profit vaccine injections that are FDA approved for annual use.

It is a sideways way to describe that people are vaccine damaged and it is now a pandemic of the vaccinated. Just admit that instead of trying to make up new viruses.

It’s hurting the military also. Here is a list of the increase in damaged caused by the jab:

The DMED (Defense Medical Epidemiology Database) is a subset of data from the DMSS (Defense Medical Surveillance System). While VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) relies on the mandatory but notoriously under-reported accounting of injuries clearly associated with “vaccination,” the military’s analysis targets a captured audience and has a long and credible history of precision.

Statistical graphs appeared at the end of January from the DMED’s annual report, showing 2021’s enormous spikes in the incidence of injuries associated with the known COVID-19 vaccine “side effects,” 200-900% above the averages of the pre-vaccination years of 2016-2020. Yet, despite its reputation for accuracy, necessitated by the military’s essential needs for planning, supplying and establishing appropriate medical protocols, the Pentagon quickly claimed that, while the 2021 report remained unchallenged, a “glitch” had occurred in all data from all the reports from 2016 through 2020, which were miraculously corrected in a day, to show that a similar number of injuries had occurred in the five years previously. That fooled no one because 1) they only “corrected” the data pertaining to these specific injuries and diseases, assuming we’d believe all the others were “un-glitched”; and 2) the pre-correction numbers from 2016-2020 were entirely consistent with those going back to 2005. Our apologies to the Chief General in Charge of Military Hogwash, but even the lowest potato-peeling buck private can tell which potatoes are rotten.

Essentially, before and after the vaccine:

  • miscarriages – 200% increase
  • cancer diagnosis – almost 300% increase
  • neurological issues – 1,000% increase
  • myocardial infarction – 269% increase
  • Bell’s palsy – 291% increase
  • congenital malformations (for children of military personnel) – 156% increase
  • female infertility – 471% increase
  • pulmonary embolisms – 467% increase

The word “Ambulatory” appears on all these reports – meaning what? That these are the military personnel still walking around. We’ve yet to see the reports of deaths from these injuries. Any further information on mortalities in the military would be appreciated.

How many citizens and how many soldiers will ever hear about these reports and recognize the homicidal intentions of those who would lie and deny, for the sake of their New World fantasy?

Algorithms are being applied to every chapter and verse of every story. How little can be shown and how many times over must the denial be spread, in order to maintain the correct and effective narrative? It seems, according to Algorithmic Propaganda 101, that this particular story is being flagged for a particularly high degree of suppression.

With each subsequent injection, of course, vaccine victims are being exposed to blood clot-inducing spike protein nanoparticles. These nanoparticles also cause myocarditis, neurological disorders, strokes and the accelerated growth of cancer tumors.

This means in addition to seeing an explosion in vaccine-induced AIDS in the coming years, we’re also going to see an explosion in cancer deaths.

We predict that cancer deaths for 2022, when they are finally tallied, will exceed over one million Americans. That number may double again by 2023 or 2024.

In all, these COVID vaccines are quite literally poised to kill millions of people over the next few years through a variety of mechanisms (immune suppression, cancer growth acceleration, vascular inflammation, blood clots, etc.). And this will all spell record profits for hospitals and drug companies whose “treatments” for all these conditions are granted monopoly protections by the FDA (which is funded in large part by Big Pharma itself).

This entire scheme is a murderous, criminal, junk science profiteering scam that’s designed to carry out genocide against humanity while enriching the pharmaceutical giants.

This is bullshit. They should have never pushed the vaxx this hard. It was a money laundering scheme from Big Pharma to Big Government, censored by Big Tech. The losers are the sheep who agreed to get jabbed.

The Two Sets Of Rules

Some call it the haves and the have nots, the rich and the poor, the rulers and the ruled.

I see it as those who seek power and the others who don’t. I see both sides and have noticed more and more that there are those who disregard the law because they think they are above it, and everyone else.

There is enough evidence to know that the meeting on the runway with the AG and Bill Clinton wasn’t about their kids. It’s coming out that the Russia gate scandal was just an insider job to not let Trump take their power away. Those who claim a crime was committed are the ones who did it.

They are criminals, and will probably get away with it, unlike Jeffrey Weinstein, who didn’t hang himself.

The Epoch Times reports that the democrats are behaving like the KGB

John Durham, the man chosen by former Attorney General William Barr as special counsel to unearth possible malfeasance before and during the Trump–Russia investigation, is a sly fox, in the best sense.

Just when people, including Donald J. Trump, have written him off, complaining that he wasn’t doing anything, that his investigation was a sham, he quietly dumps information that creates a political earthquake.

That those known Trump–Russia liars—The New York Times and The Washington Post—have, as of this writing, and it’s been a few days, not even dared to report Durham’s latest court filing is a sure sign that it’s indeed a serious quake, with potential aftershocks to come.

But before I go further, I would like to call attention to the principle of jurisprudence “Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus” (False in one thing, false in all). Although written in Latin, it’s English common law from the early 17th century, stating that “a witness who testifies falsely about one matter is not credible to testify about any matter.”

While this may not always be true, it frequently is and most people apply it in their daily lives. When someone lies to us, we cease to trust them. It’s common sense from common law.

So back to Durham’s latest filing. Jack Phillips reported right here in The Epoch Times.

“Special counsel John Durham’s team alleged on Feb. 12 that a tech executive aligned with the Democratic Party spied on former President Donald Trump’s residences and the White House when Trump was president,” Phillips said.

“Durham said in a court filing that the spying took place in order to establish an “inference” and “narrative” to tie Trump to the Russian government.”

There is a string of dead bodies behind the Clinton’s and they won’t do a day of time behind bars because there are 2 sets of rules.

The rest of us would never see the light of day for the crimes these people committed.

I gave up caring. They want power and money. Sooner or later they will be moved out of the way for the next power grab. I just want them to take their money and go away and leave the rest of us alone.

Stop trying to play God or king/queen. We don’t need rulers and are getting tired of it. You know how I know? Look at the truckers in Canada. Look at the 30 representatives not running for re-election in November. They have been moved out and people get tired of them sooner or later.

It is just history repeating itself.

Here is a glimpse at the next round of people playing god with the one world order by using Covid as the switch to control the population. It’s not new. It has happened since the beginning of time.

The pattern here is the great re-set and Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum. Take a look at who goes to Davos and those are the ones who have their set of rules.

Here are his list of recent flying monkey graduates who think they will take over the world:

Anyone can scroll through the list of the Young Global Leader’s class of 2021 by region. Here is the list representing North America:

  • Daniel Ahn, Global Fellow, The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, USA
  • Peter Biar Ajak, Visiting Fellow and Adjunct Faculty, Africa Center for Strategic Studies, USA
  • Adriana Cargill, Independent Radio Journalist, USA
  • Arvan Chan, Senior Vice-President; Chief Operating Officer, International, Centene, USA
  • Alexis Crow, Global Head, Geopolitical Investing, PwC, USA
  • Abasi Ene-Obong, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, 54gene, USA
  • Jocelyn Formsma, Executive Director, National Association of Friendship Centres, Canada
  • Garlin Gilchrist II, Lieutenant Governor, State of Michigan, USA
  • Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, Senior Vice-President, Delivery, Uber Technologies, USA
  • Megan Greenfield, Partner, McKinsey & Company, USA
  • Jessica Jackson, Chief Advocacy Officer, Reform Alliance, USA
  • Gadeer Kamal-Mreeh, Senior Special Envoy, North America, The Jewish Agency, USA
  • Brian Kaufmann, Head, Private Investments; Portfolio Manager; Member of the Management Committee, Viking Global Investors, USA
  • Conrod Kelly, Managing Director, Chile, Merck & Co., Inc, USA
  • Ibram X Kendi, Director of the Center for Antiracist Research, Boston University, USA
  • Haley Lowry, Global Sustainability Director, Dow, USA
  • Lukas Nelson, Band Leader, Promise of The Real, USA
  • Amit Paley, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director, The Trevor Project, USA
  • Emily Serazin, Managing Director and Partner, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), USA
  • Liam Sobey, Vice-President, Merchandising, Sobeys Inc., Canada
  • Vasudha Vats, Vice-President, Pfizer, USA
  • Hitesh Wadhwa, Vice-President, Sales and Strategic Initiatives, Tech Mahindra, USA
  • David Alexander Walcott, Founder and Managing Partner, Novamed, USA

In the end, they will die. Their places in hell are reserved. I just wish they would leave the rest of us alone and stop ruining our lives. We’d rather not have to deal with them, but like the truckers, we can if we have to.

I may write more about this, but don’t want to get on their radar really. I know that I obey the law and they act like they are above it, but in the end they are not.

John von Neumann, Nearly every computer built to this day, from mainframe to smartphone, is based on von Neumann’s design

More than anyone else, John von Neumann created the future. He was an unparalleled genius, one  of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century, and he helped invent the world as we now know it. He came up with a blueprint of the modern computer and sparked the beginnings of artificial intelligence. He worked on the atom bomb and led the team that produced the first computerized weather forecast. In the mid-1950s, he proposed the idea that the Earth was warming as a consequence of humans burning coal and oil, and warned that “extensive human intervention” could wreak havoc with the world’s climate. Colleagues who knew both von Neumann and his colleague Albert Einstein said that von Neumann had by far the sharper mind, and yet it’s astonishing, and sad, how few people have heard of him.

Just like Einstein, von Neumann was a child prodigy. Einstein taught himself algebra at twelve, but when he was just six von Neumann could multiply two eight-digit numbers in his head and converse in Ancient Greek. He devoured a forty-five-volume history of the world and was able to recite whole chapters verbatim decades later. “What are you calculating?” he once asked his mother when he noticed her staring blankly into space. By eight he was familiar with calculus, and his oldest friend, Eugene Wigner, recalls the eleven-year-old Johnny tutoring him on the finer points of set theory during Sunday walks. Wigner, who later won a share of the Nobel prize in physics, maintained that von Neumann taught him more about math than anyone else.

Johnny’s plans (and by extension, the modern world) were nearly derailed by his father, Max, a doctor of law turned investment banker. “Mathematics,” he maintained, “does not make money.” The chemical industry was in its heyday so a compromise was reached that would mark the beginning of von Neumann’s peripatetic lifestyle: the boy would bone up on chemistry at the University of Berlin and meanwhile would also pursue a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Budapest.

In the event, mathematics did make von Neumann money. Quite a lot of it. At the height of his powers in the early 1950s, when his opinions were being sought by practically everyone, he was earning an annual salary of $10,000 (close to $200,000 today) from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the same again from IBM, and he was also consulting for the US Army, Navy and Air Force.

Von Neumann was irresistibly drawn to applying his mathematical genius to more practical domains. After wrapping up his doctoral degree, von Neumann moved to Göttingen, then a mathematical Mecca. There was also another boy wonder, Werner Heisenberg, who was busily laying the groundwork of a bewildering new science of the atom called “quantum mechanics.” Von Neumann soon got involved, and even today, some of the arguments over the limits and possibilities of quantum theory are rooted in his clear-eyed analysis.

Sensing early that another world war was coming, von Neumann threw himself into military research in America. His speciality was the sophisticated mathematics of maximizing the destructive power of bombs — literally how to get the biggest bang for the army’s buck. Sent on a secret mission to England in 1943 to help the Royal Navy work out German mine-laying patterns in the Atlantic, he returned to the US when the physicist Robert Oppenheimer begged him to join America’s atom-bomb project. “We are,” he wrote, “in what can only be described as a desperate need of your help.”

Terrified by the prospect of another world war, this time with Stalin’s Soviet Union, von Neumann would help deliver America’s hydrogen bomb and smooth the path to the intercontinental ballistic missile.

As he scoured the US for computational resources to simulate bombs, he came across the ENIAC, a room-filling machine at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania that would soon become the world’s first fully electronic digital computer. The ENIAC’s sole purpose was to calculate trajectories for artillery. Von Neumann, who understood the true potential of computers as early as anyone, wanted to build a more flexible machine, and described one in 1945’s First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC. Nearly every computer built to this day, from mainframe to smartphone, is based on his design. When IBM unveiled their first commercial computer, the 701, eight years later, it was a carbon copy of the one built earlier by von Neumann’s team at the IAS.

While von Neumann was criss-crossing the States for the government and military, he was also working on a 1,200-page tract on the mathematics of conflict, deception and compromise with the German economist Oskar Morgenstern. What was a hobby for von Neumann was for Morgenstern a “period of the most intensive work I’ve ever known.” Theory of Games and Economic Behavior appeared in 1944, and it soon found favor at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, where defense analysts charged with “thinking about the unthinkable” would help shape American nuclear policy during the Cold War. They persuaded von Neumann to join RAND as a consultant, and their new computer was named the Johnniac in his honor.

Since then, game theory has transformed vast tracts of economics, the wider social sciences and even biology, where it has been applied to understanding everything from predator-prey relationships to the evolution of altruistic behavior. Today, game theory crops up in every corner of internet commerce — but most particularly in online advertising, where ad auctions designed by game theorists net the likes of Google and Amazon billions of dollars every year.

More at this link

Queen Elizabeth Has Been On The Throne For 70 Years, The Last Great Monarch

A lot of respect should be paid to someone who has been through so much. She has been the steadying force for the royals over decades of war, innovation, change and strife in the monarchy.

While everything is taken care of for her by aides, I don’t envy someone who has to live a life in such a bubble though. It’s tough to get out and live in the real world. I’m sure that’s what inspired the Prince and the Pauper story.

Why I say she is the last great Monarch is that her successor, Prince Chuckles is a laughingstock. His Islam loving, climate change hype shows the idiot that he is. This is someone who didn’t survive the bubble very well and should have gotten out more.

Spewing that the rest of the world should stop causing global warming while he converts a Rolls Royce to run on uber expensive red wine, while traveling on private jets and yachts is the dichotomy of intelligence.

I feel sorry for Princess Di and Andres Parker Bowles (Camilla Parker Bowles ex-husband whom chuckles stole her from) are just casualties of this clown. Both are probably lucky not to have to deal with Chucky anymore.

Elizabeth is hanging on the crown as long as possible because she knows Chuck is a problem. This does the rest of the kingdom a favor by cutting the time that chuckles will be king. If he were the least bit worth, she would have ceded the crown earlier. Even she is smart enough to know this idiot is a stain on the monarchy.

The Queen then had to put up with Andrew, the child molester with Jeffrey Epstein. There is a lot of evidence that shows he’s a pervert. She was smart enough to cut him off from any royal titles and privileges.

Next, her grandson Harry and his wife Sparkles continue to embarrass the crown with their idiocy of victimhood. It’s good thing he’s about 6th in line and never will be king. How hard is it to keep your mouth shut and accept a life of free money, servants, a castle to live in and do whatever you want? But no, miss uppity got into his pea brain and ruined a good thing and blamed the royals for not doing things her way. Chuckles genes must run strong.

I, like a lot of people hope that future king William doesn’t go off the deep end and maybe we can just skip to him as the next king. He seems to be the sanest of the bunch and knows how a royal is supposed to act.

She’s not going to last much longer, but deserves every accolade that is given. She served in WWII and has dealt with a string of PM’s that range from great to equals to Chuckles.

She has shown grace and queenliness (not really a word) that has protected the crown for a long time from scandals and idiots. I respect what she has done to keep things on the level despite the crap that was handed to her for a family.

I hope she can hang on a lot longer. They deserve her a lot more than what is to come.

Who Is The Well Armed 2nd Amendment Militia?

The conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty.

– Antonin Scalia

It is the amendment that protects citizens against the government.

An analyst that I used to work with tweeted his commie statement about wanting to know just who were this militia? Well James G., there is your answer from one of if not the constitutionally best informed minds.

I left twitter a long time ago because of hate and snark just like this and other anti-American crap put out by people like James Governor, but I didn’t forget that it needed answering. I’m finally getting around to it.

You also claimed to be an American because you had a passport, but you are a Brit with dual passports. I don’t care because, only living the ideals and believing in America makes you an American. I know in your heart not only do you not love this country, your words indicate your disdain for it. I didn’t forget that either. You asked me if I questioned whether you are an American and yes, I do. Actions speak louder than words. In UK snark, you are what our execs called you, a wanker.

This goes for the rest of the liberal haters on what makes this country great. A lot of them are born US Citizens with generations of family who came here for a new life. Why you hate it is because you don’t understand what it took to make it great.

So James – read this:

Just look what happened to the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, China and anywhere else they took away guns from the people. It’s just that the sheep and the idiots don’t grasp the concept of freedom, and the concept of what communism and socialism do to the population of a country.

You are a democrat

Oh, they’ve banned guns in Australia, and now have kicked Djockovic out of the Aussie Open for not being jabbed. The people can do nothing about it. He had Covid twice so he has immunity. Same for Canada. Freedom is fleeting.

When Pressed Conservatives Can't Name One Reality Based ...

Update: Russia invaded Ukraine:

So James, here’s this:

Mandatory Vaxx Law Hurting Employment, Some Are Striking Back – Pilots and ATC

Southwest Airlines cancelled 1400 flights yesterday. They blamed it on weather and other things. No other airlines cancelled flights because of weather. Air traffic controllers gave them the flying fickle finger of fate also and aren’t showing.

It just came out that 200 members of Congress used Ivermectin instead of the jab, hypocrites. Do as I say, not as I do.

From Social Media:

Why Not To Use Or Trust Google and Why Smart People Don’t

Besides the obvious that they track you and sell your soul to the world, now they are being forced to turn over searches to the Government. This sounds eerily like the 3rd Reich or Stalin or Mao.

Eric Schmidt (then CEO) told me he’d sell his mother’s info. It was all I needed to know. I’m pretty sure I thanked him for being honest.

Accidental leak reveals US government has secretly hit Google with ‘keyword warrants’ to identify ANYONE searching certain names, addresses, and phone numbers

This is what they say they are doing:

  • Investigators are secretly using keyword warrants to help track down criminals 
  • The relatively new style of warrant orders Google to track and provide user data on anyone who searches specific names, addresses or telephone numbers
  • Cybersecurity experts fear that keyword warrants set a precedent for breaching the fourth amendment protection against unreasonable searches
  • Google, however, has defended its decision to respond to the federal government’s keyword warrants and claims they protect users when doing so
  • Both the FBI and Department of Homeland Security have been cited as entities that have or may use keyword warrants 

They can get whatever they want and if you are on their bad Santa list, whatever you put in can and will be used against you.

Of course they have done the same to Microsoft and Yahoo. It’s why everyone should use Duck Duck Go instead, but then you’d have to be smart.

9/11 Fail In 2021

This is pitiful, as is the handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal that allowed this. Those that hated us then, still hate the US and still want the same thing, destruction of what we stand for and why. Now they have been outfitted to carry out their plans.

The 5 terrorists released from Guantanamo for Bergdahl now are in positions of control in Afghanistan. They have more Blackhawk Helicopters than any country other than the USA. We don’t have anybody on the ground for intelligence so that we can identify and neutralize any terror attacks.

These are the same conditions that set up the 9/11 attacks.

Do you feel safer now? I don’t.

History, Learn From It Because It Can’t Be Changed

This is for the mush-heads who are tearing down statues or Colleges trying to teach a different story than what actually happened.

Teach the warts and the successes so that the next generation can decide for themselves.

Instead, they want to blame and disparage, for what? As always, it comes down to power and control. That’s another history lesson.

You can’t make yourself better by tearing others down.

Do I expect them to learn this in Portland, SF, Seattle, Chicago, NY and other like places? Of course not.

Worst of all, look at Washington DC and Afghanistan right now. How well is that going? They got their power and control, probably a lot of money also.

A lot of good that will do them when they die. The real book that should be there is the Bible. A history lesson is there also.

I wish the next generation luck. If they don’t learn the real lesson, there will be a new book about another country that was the greatest, for a while.

Basement Biden Will Likely Take The Blame For the Afghanistan Debacle, But It Was Lost By Congress Years Ago

I’m going to piss some people off here, sorry but not sorry. I’ll go back to humor and sarcasm soon enough.

The USA has egg on it’s face over Afghanistan. We now look weak. No one is afraid of the strongest world power who should protect the world. We can’t protect anything now, and global tyrants now can start their plunder.

WHAT IS WAR

First, it’s not pretty. War is about killing people and blowing up things to stop the evil goals of power and control. If you don’t believe me, look what the Taliban are doing right now (they include raping though). There is too much history to ignore it. You win by unconditional surrender, or you waste time and money, accomplishing nothing.

You either fight to win (WWII) or chase your tail. Vietnam was won until we pulled out. Never forget Saigon. The Tet offensive was a success and the Viet Cong were all but defeated, yet we pulled out and an untold number of South Vietnamese were slaughtered. Guess what is going to happen to the Afghan’s soon, especially women?

The hostages in Iran could have only been held for 4 hours or 4 days, not 444 days if we had any guts.

Wars are won by those on the ground (figuratively and actually) who see the situation, take action and be decisive.

CONGRESS, THE CULPRIT

Congress took control because they are power hungry, or afraid of not gaining more and passed useless regulations hamstringing the troops from being able to execute.

The dumbest thing I every heard was them saying we need to win/secure the outcome. Who the hell knows what the outcome of a fight is until it is fought?

It is the get principle. Get in, get it (victory) and get out. You win or you don’t.

They each blame the other side (R’s and D’s) so they can put into place restrictions on being able to win a war (taking control out of the hands of the soldiers). Pilots have the enemy in sight, but have to call in whether they can take the shot. The assholes in Washington don’t want to look bad with any collateral damage to their re-election, or upsetting a Mullah who wants to kill us anyway. Those bastards don’t hesitate and rape, murder, cut off heads and will wait for centuries to win when they know the opposition is weak. Ever hear of death to America or that we are the great Satan?

If congress would have given the power to win back to the military, this didn’t have to happen. They used Abu Ghraib to take power and we got Benghazi and now Afghanistan as a result.

The other reason congress wants an unwinnable war is to divide the nation and create an endless bank for them to spend.

They have reduced fighting to win to wheel spinning and appearances.

Recently, ISIS was all but eliminated when we were allowed to actually fight to win. There is an example of how it works.

Congress never understood the tribalism or the reality in Afghanistan. It cost the USSR and now the US(S)A trillions, for nothing gained. The Taliban now has control. They hate the Western world and it’s a base for the next wave of terrorism. Where do you think 9/11 was hatched?

MORE INTERESTED IN BEING WOKE

China must be laughing at us now, with General Mark Milley as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff more concerned with CRT, the alphabet soup of LGBTWXYZ (I can’t keep up with the changes to this) and anything other than actually putting a fighting force together that can win.

We’ve shown (ask the soldiers) that there is no color problem, especially when you are being shot at. You want to have the best soldier beside you and be able to trust his ass that he’ll save yours.

Guess who is going to suffer the most? Afghan women. Where is Megan Rapinoe standing up for women now? Instead, she’s demanding more money for playing a kids game.

Or this loser

WHO’S NEXT

Look out Taiwan, you are next. Xi isn’t afraid of us doing anything now that he has bought off congress and know we won’t act. Putin has Hunter Biden’s laptop as blackmail to stop Biden from doing anything (ok, my speculation but think about it).

Don’t believe me? Look at Hong Kong being steamrolled into oblivion. They are being assimilated by the Borg that is China.

Are we doing anything about the island building in the South China Sea? No, it’s a military expansion while we twiddle our thumbs.

Japan is next. They have been pacifists since WWII and depend on the USA to protect them (like Taiwan). I hope they take a lesson from this and start arming themselves.

NO END IN SIGHT.

Congressmen and Senators have one main goal, to get re-elected. They don’t care about the country anymore and will sellout anyone for this goal. That’s you and me, the military, Taiwan, Japan, Europe and anyone who gets in their way.

Have they ever given up power once they voted it to themselves? Look at history to find the answer is no.

CAN WE GET OUT OF THIS

Where we stand today, the answer is no. The commander in chief is Congress, not the president. We need a leader, something I’m not sure we’ve had in a while. The last time we won on the world stage was when Reagan defeated the Soviet Union, without a shot fired.

The world was afraid of what Trump was going to do because he was unpredictable. That didn’t make him a great C-I-C, but there was a deal negotiated to not abandon all our equipment to terrorists. They now have the best US technology to use against us. I don’t know that I agree with either Trump or Biden about leaving. Neither wanted to win, but that doesn’t matter now.

Take power away from Congress and give it back to the military. Give us real leaders and soldiers. Quit worrying if we look the right way to some minuscule section of the population that dominates social media and develop a fighting force that doesn’t have to worry which bathroom to use.

Star Trek, Life Imitates Art

It would be iconic to call him that over a 2 way radio. The jokes write themselves sometimes don’t they.

I’ve met William Shatner. He was an ok guy. I’m sure meeting people like me over and over is tedious, but he was good about it.

He still is my favorite Captain and there would be no Picard, Janeway, Sisko or others without the real Kirk.

Here we are, in Vegas of course.

Most shocking to me is that I was taller. I’m also a 3rd degree blackbelt so I could kick his ass no matter how many Romulans he’s killed.

Stuff Only Older Guys Will Recognize

I built a million of these things. It was cars, planes, engines and more cars. I got model glue on everything.

Actually, I’m surprised that my brain isn’t mush from all the glue. This was before people were sniffing it to get high.

Most of the fun is in the building, then you just look at them until you built another.

I learned more about how to build an engine and how things work than today’s mush heads, who are killing monsters or shooting anything that moves.

I now see that I was alone for hours when building these guys. It is a trait that I recognize for life and embrace.

One of the Greatest Meme’s For A Guy

First, you have to know what brrrrttttt is. It is the sound the 30 MM cannon makes from an A-10. If you don’t know the sound or are female and want to know what the big deal is (read, how childish men can be at any age) it is very important to know the sound to actually get the meme.

It will help you understand your man though as this stuff goes through our heads, its only 37 seconds.

For those who know the sound and are a guy, enjoy and I hope you laugh. Get you some.

Beware Of AI, The Robots Always Kill The Humans

2001: A Space Odyssey, Terminator, Aida of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the robots always want to take over in the end and kill the humans.

See below the meme on stupidity so I can get to the point.

Yes, this woman is an idiot. My robot vacuum is so stupid it doesn’t know where it’s going. I named it Jarvis after Ironman’s AI assistant (Paul Bettany). It is my dearest form of sarcasm. So the vacuum isn’t going to kill me, but that isn’t my point.

The AI in the wrong hands is dangerous though.

For example, what if an AI-bot creates vaccines for diseases by predicting what the next strain will be. What if the next strain is the one that causes humans to shut down all the robots. There you have the premise for how it goes with AI taking over. Kill the humans.

I could bore your with many other examples like using AI to enhance a soldiers armory. It would be controlling your actions, making you more invincible in war. If it sensed a danger that didn’t exist, it could fire up the code to kill everyone in the way and you have created a murderer out of an innocent man. Kill the humans.

Fortunately, I’ve been around AI development. That danger isn’t exactly around the corner yet.

I worked at IBM and knew that Watson was a gimmick. The Chairman told me it was. They are trying to sell it now because it’s usefulness in medicine paled in comparison to it winning Jeopardy. It was a lot of wasted money because they could to sum it up.

Some of the team have moved to Quantum Computing because Watson was a dud.

Microsoft, Google and Facebook are much different and apparently more evil. IBM is too bureaucratic to turn it into a killer robot. However, if you’ve read any of my social media rants, you know that I trust these three companies less than almost anything, except Congress and the media. I will say they are equally evil though. (Another shot for the censors to see if they are watching here). They are the ones that will kill the humans.

Now, imagine if it got into the wrong hands. What could some guys who want to either take over or blow up the world do with that kind of power? Those bastards are evil. At least the robots just went bad.

And there you have it. Like many things we can create, there is always someone hanging around to put it to bad use.

Bull Halsey On Being Extraordinary

There are no extraordinary men… just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are forced to deal with.

William Halsey

This man had to lead a range of military men in WWII ranging from high school drop outs to business men doing their patriotic duty. They fought for our freedom with little to no training for the horrors of war.

Leading is different than ordering people around.

Why Not To Cancel (Culture) History

I first learned this when I visited Dachau, the concentration camp outside of Munich. It was a gloomy day and I could feel the pain and suffering that went on 70 years prior. It was a reminder of what men can do when led by the most cruel and deceiving of governments and leaders. They tried to ban a lot of things because they didn’t like them also.

I don’t have any connection to issues like the Civil War Statues, and didn’t think about them until they started tearing them down. I’m not defending either side here. I’m defending the side of history. If you aren’t proud of it, maybe you need to be reminded why not to do it again, rather than pretend it didn’t happen.

I’m sure it makes a snowflake feel better to tear down history, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Our best lessons are those that come from mistakes.

Is China Creating A Master Race Of Super Soldiers?

Didn’t anyone watch The Wrath Of Khan? Don’t we already know that trying to engineer a master race always goes wrong. Isn’t Russia kicked out of world competition? Do we even have a James T. Kirk who can defeat a superior enemy?

Gene Editing Through Crisper-Cas

We are witnessing the manipulation of DNA through eRNA as a Covid-19 vaccine. We have no idea what the long term effects are going to be.

Crisper is a gene editing technology that allows for cutting, inserting or deleting DNA in an individual. It can be used to cure diseases or potentially eliminate defects or perhaps create immunity to disease.

These are the potential upsides.

Potential Downsides

When editing DNA, if you are not ethical, one could create a six million dollar man in effect. You think you can build them bigger, faster, stronger. We have no idea what this will do to people.

Think of it, you might give someone the superior intelligence, strength and physical capabilities that can take over the world.

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.YwH51ipL7TSrx2XYh80SVAHaJl%26pid%3DApi%26h%3D160&f=1

Is China Creating Super Soldiers

Here is what we know. Remember that China withheld the Wuhan virus from the world until it had spread so we have no idea how far they have advanced really.

  • “U.S. intelligence shows that China has conducted human testing on members of the People’s Liberation Army in hope of developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities,” wrote then Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, in a December 3 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “China Is National Security Threat No. 1.”
  • All these Chinese moves are meant to obtain “biological dominance.” “There are,” as Ratcliffe noted, “no ethical boundaries to Beijing’s pursuit of power.”
  • The experiment evoked the eugenics program of the Third Reich to create a “master race.”
  • Shenzhen’s He [Jenkui], after an international uproar caused by news of his dangerous and unethical work, was fined and jailed for “illegally carrying out human embryo gene-editing,” but in the Communist Party’s near-total surveillance state he obviously had state backing for his experiments…. Beijing’s prosecution of He, therefore, looks like an attempt to cool down the furor and prevent the international scientific community from further inquiry into China’s activities.
  • “What is most disturbing about these endeavors is that China has gleaned access to CRISPR and advanced genetic and biotech research, thanks to their relationship with the United States and other advanced Western nations. American research labs, biotech investors, and scientists have all striven to do research and business in China’s budding biotech arena… because the ethical standards for research… are so low.” — Brandon Weichert, author of The Weichert Report and Winning Space, interview with Gatestone Institute, February 2021.

Biological Dominance

It is not clear how far Chinese military researchers have gone. They are, however, advocating use of the CRISPR gene-editing tool to enhance human capabilities, and the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission is “supporting research in human performance enhancement and ‘new concept’ biotechnology.”

The People’s Liberation Army has gone all-in on gene editing of humans. As leading analysts Elsa Kania and Wilson VornDick report, there are “striking parallels in themes repeated by a number of PLA scholars and scientists from influential institutions.”

All these Chinese moves are meant to obtain “biological dominance.” “There are,” as Ratcliffe noted, “no ethical boundaries to Beijing’s pursuit of power.”

It is clear that the Communist Party is thinking about more than just soldiers. A Chinese researcher is also the first — and so far only — person to gene-edit human embryos that produced live births.

He Jiankui, while at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, used the CRISPR-Cas9 tool to remove gene CCR5 to give twin girls, born in late 2018, immunity to HIV but perhaps also to enhance intelligence. The experiment evoked the eugenics program of the Third Reich to create a “master race.”

When was the last time we heard of creating a master race? Does anyone remember what the Nazi’s tried already?

Finally, I was taught by a Chinese-American how to survive in life and the business world in China. He told me throw out the 10 commandments and you are on even ground. They will not adhere to them so you will lose (I am not suggesting that you break the 10 commandments, this is what I was told on how to survive negotiations with the Chinese).

China’s regime does not have ethics or decency, is not bound by law, and does not have a sense of restraint. However, with its rapid weaponization of biotechnology, it does have the technology to start a whole new species of genetically enhanced, goose-stepping humans. Pictured: Soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army march on October 1, 2019 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

They have proven that they are willing to cheat in the Olympics, Life, technology and so forth. The question is now how far and what will it cost the others? The CCP clearly has no respect for human beings. The Wuhan research is coming out.

You’ve been warned.

The WikiLeaks Dump, Come and Get It

Here is a link to the files below. I looked at some and there is a lot of incriminating information. I’m sure if due diligence were actually done, some crimes could be solved.

There is other informational and odd things such as I didn’t know that Steve Jobs was HIV positive according to the records here. He had a tough life that wasn’t worth the fame and money. There are a lot of other people doing a lot of other things if you care.

Someone mentioned that the Las Vegas shooter was an FBI sniper, but I never found that file.

It has the secret rituals of some of the College Greek institutions. I guess if you are a rival fraternity, it would be interesting to look at.

The filenames are descriptive enough to see what’s in it. Have fun.

I hope it was worth it to all of those who got the information together and those who leaked it.

Here is the link.

Friday’s Saying – Henri Fredrick Amiel

“The man who insists on seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.”

 

A more common version of this is he who hesitates, hesitates.

No one knows the outcome of any decision.  We only have a few scientific theorems that are somewhat certain, for now.  They could be proven incorrect (Einstein’s Theory of Relativity) if we use scientific methods.

The same can be said for our everyday lives.  We usually think we are right, but we don’t know how it will turn out.  Many times our decisions help or harm others in ways we never intended them to.

Nevertheless, most of the time, making a decision is better than not making one, or procrastinating.  I’m in favor of getting the best intel you can to make a good decision, but in the heat of the battle you have to make one.

This is why some are better leaders than others.  They have the right instincts or have been through enough to have history and experience on their side to make a better decision.

There have been good young leaders, it’s just that most don’t have the wisdom of a life lived to not know when to shut up.

We’ll never have perfect clearness because we can’t see the future.  If we did, life wouldn’t be worth living.

Memorial Day 2020 Roundup – Freedom Is Not Free

I will continue to update this during the day as I run across relevant posts

 

The Patriot Post – Memorial Day

Lost Memories of The Black American Soldier

Memorial Day Lest We Forget

Memorial Day – Connecting The Past With the Present – American Thinker

America At the Crossroad on Memorial Day 2020

Happy Memorial Day 2020 – Freedom Isn’t Free – The Gateway Pundit

Normandy Speech – 40th Anniversary of D-Day – Proof Positive

The Fallen Soldier – Moonbattery

How Soldiers Die in Battle – The Art of Manliness

Memorial Day – Sacrifice, Legal Insurrection

Video’s for Memorial Day by the US Military

 

 

Great Sayings – Simon Sinek

“Panic causes tunnel vision. Calm acceptance of danger allows us to more easily assess the situation and see the options.” — Simon Sinek

 

It’s a practiced skill, although true leaders seem to be born with it the ability to put aside feelings and deal with it.  It’s why Army Rangers and Navy Seals can enter a hostile situation and execute.  Many drives by sports teams to the winning score are by level headed leaders who see the goal and understand the situation. Adding perceived danger only clouds the situation and adds complexity.

 

Covid-19, It’s Another Pearl Harbor – We’ve Been Through This Before And We Do It Best

Update:  On April 5th, the Surgeon General compared the Corona Virus to Pearl Harbor.

There are events in history that cause a divided nation to come together.

Some have been pandemics and others have been wars, but there are times defined by history that people put their selfishness aside and gather to do what is best.

As an example, I could pick the Spanish Flu, SARS, MERS, H1N1, Y2K, the Swine Flu, the Space Race to the Moon or any number of events, but I’m going to use Pearl Harbor.

I wasn’t there, but our nation was divided as to whether we should enter another World War or isolate ourselves and hope the problem would go away or others would solve it.  This all changed on December 7, 1941 when our country was forced into the events of the world.

We could have cowered to the attack and ask them not to do it again.  Neville Chamberlin tried to appease Hitler this way and it didn’t work out so well.

THE MIGHT OF THE USA

Admiral Yamamoto, the architect of Pearl Harbor knew that a surprise attack to take out our Navy was the only real chance for Japan to stop the USA so they they could expand their reach in the Pacific Rim.  After all, he had studied and lived in the USA and knew that our forces were depleted after WWI.  He also knew that he couldn’t attack us on our own soil.

What also turned out to be true was that if the attack didn’t work, that he would awaken the might of the greatest industrialized nation in the world and unite our country to defeat evil.

On December 8th 1941, men young and old were lined up to enlist to fight for our survival.  They knew that they would be leaving loved ones behind and there was a distinct possibility that they wouldn’t return alive.  They put their fears aside and were willing to fight for our survival and the future that we enjoy today.

Not long after, women went to work in the factories.  We had to ration rubber and metal for war supplies, but everyone did their part.

Companies changed their direction.  Auto makers went from making cars to building bombers.  Scientists invented new weapons to win, not to just survive and suffer.  Our nation came together as one because we had a cause to fight for.

After the war, the greatest achievements in technology, medicine and space exploration happened at a speed heretofore never accomplished.

WE’VE BEEN COMPLACENT AND DIVIDED

All of that progress created wealth, comfort and abundance and we lost our focus.  It’s no secret that we’ve been a divided country.  I’m not here to point fingers because there is enough of that going on through the tradional news and social media.  All of it has a bias one way or the other and it has been pulling us apart.

We haven’t had a common enemy to rally against since the downfall of the Soviet Union.  Instead, we’ve been feeding on ourselves instead of pulling together.  There is a strain of hatred for what we have been that defies the achievements that built our country.  I have read celebtards and sports figures that say we have never been great.  This just proves that they have no appreciation for the sacrifice and achievements that gave them the fame and fortune to preach from their soapboxes.  It also denies our ability to do it again.

We as humans need a cause to believe in and to fight for, whether we are handed or invent it ourselves.  Conversely, politicians have been poisoning us with their desire for power and control.  They have been playing a game of capture the flag on their own islands and haven’t put the good of the country and the people first.  They have been building their power base by taking away our freedom through regulation.

Our government was set up with a system of checks and balances to ensure that no one had the power like the monarchy who we defeated to become what we are.  We now potentially suffer from what the history of the world has suffered from since the beginning of time.  That is the selfishness, greed and desire for power that has aflicted man since the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

There also has been a faction for globalization that has tried to deplete our greatness by moving manufacturing offshore to the point that we could be held hostage for medical supplies.  Our spirit of nationalization has been tested by the border fight and ideology fueled by hate of the President.  It has ratcheted up these last few years in a power struggle because there was no enemy other than from within.

We have been eating ourselves instead of fighting together.

THE CORONA/COVID-19/CHINA/WUHAN/WHATEVER VIRUS

We now have a new Pearl Harbor.  We have been attacked by a new enemy who ambushed us again.  It is time for us to realize that we have a fight on our hands  Opportunity for success or failure knocks at the door of the fate of our country.

To do that, we need to go back to the spirit of 1941.  It was the people who came together in both the public and private sector, not the control of the Government that helped us save ourselves.

We can go back to being the humans that have struggle to fight against, rally together and overcome (both the virus and the overbearance of the governement regulations).

THE SILVER LINING

There is a great opportunity if we do the same as our forefathers.  Manufacturing in America again can help us right ourselves to help reunite our country and help other countries as we’ve done before.

We are beginning to see the automakers making ventilators, factories starting to make facemasks and other birth pains of our possible re-emergance to self-sustainment.  It can be done.

Before you manufacture in the USA instead of cheap labor offshore, there needs to be a construction boom to prepare production facilities.  After that, the job creation of made in in America is limitless, profitable and will help us help ourselves and others if they want it.

We already have become energy independent by producing enough oil so as to not be dependent on countries who hate us.

Our pharmacuticals are all made offshore by countries that have threatened to cut us off.  We need to do the same in the drug industry to continue our trend of independence and strength.  Through this can we help the rest of the world and save our nation from being held hostage for needed medical supplies and energy.

Most of all, we need fix our goverment and make them serve us instead of us serving them.  Companies and individuals need to be let loose to invent, design and create to defeat this latest Pearl Harbor instead of being told when and what we can or can’t do.  It’s time to limit their power and continue the greatness that history proves is inside of us.

Great Sayings – George Patton

“I don’t fear failure. I only fear the slowing up of the engine inside of me which is saying, ‘Keep going, someone must be on top, why not you?’” — George S. Patton Jr.

 

Love him or hate him, he got things done and was feared by the enemy, so much so that they had a respect for his command.  In these times of the Covid-19 virus, we need to keep going and not give up.  Stay on top and don’t give up.

Great Sayings – Abraham Maslow

“If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I’d still swim. And I’d despise the one who gave up.” — Abraham Maslow

 

I’ve been in some dark places before either in life or just competition.  They say in the Marines that there is always an end to whatever pain you are going through so don’t give up.  You’d be amazed at what you can accomplish.

They train Seals until exhaustion, but it’s said that they are only at their 60% level and have a reserve.  How do I know?  If someone pointed a rifle at them, they could still run some more.  It’s said if you get to your end and someone offered you $100 to go 30 seconds more, almost everyone can and will do it.

 

4th of July 2019 Tribute

 

It is the celebration of the birth of our nation.  People died for our freedom to start a new country that would arguably become the greatest ever.

My mom was born on the 4th of July.  Captain America, the comic book hero fittingly was also born on the 4th, in 1918.

Nothing is more patriotic to me than the Star Spangled Banner and the Stars and Stripe forever, so here they are.

God bless the USA

11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month the sounds of the guns went silent

Today is Veteran’s Day. the 100th anniversary

World Leaders gather to mark the 100th anniversary of WW1

The commemoration is the centerpiece of global tributes to honor the 10 million soldiers killed during the 1914-18 war and mark the moment the Armistice, signed in northeastern France, came into effect at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1918.

World leaders, including Trump, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin, will be seated under a glass canopy at the foot of the Arc de Triomphe, built by Emperor Napoleon in 1806, for the ceremony.

Macron is expected to speak and light a flame in honor of an unknown soldier who was killed in the war and whose remains are buried with others under the triumphal arch. Afterwards, Macron will host a lunch for the dignitaries at the Elysee.

We honor and remember those who fought for the Freedom of our country and fought side by side with those who are now or were friends of ours.

Remembering WW1

It is important to never forget that Freedom isn’t Free. Political Cartoons by Michael Ramirez

Man has been at war since he was put on the face of the earth.

We appear to be on that track until the end of our existence. While I don’t advocate war, pacifism has always lead to tragedy because of the ruthlessness of those who seek power, ignore borders and human rights.

Here are links to Veterans Day that I found interesting:

From John Ray: Click on it to see these pictures.

The 11th of November in 1918 was when the First World War officially came to an end. And that day has been formally marked every year since in remembrance of those who died. When I was growing up it was known as Armistice Day in Australia and I still think of it as that. It is however now formally Remembrance Day. It is Veterans Day in the USA. It is perhaps a little more significant this year as the 90th anniversary of the event. Britain certainly seems to have been engaging in more than the usual amount of commemoration in the last few days.

Anything by Blackfive (a 4 part series this time)

Likewise for Murdoc

A great Picture from Knowledge is Power

Dedicating the Intrepid. A Carrier that saw plenty of action and sacrifice.

Michelle Maulkin Linkfest

December 7th, 1941; Sex, Drugs and Incompetency In Washington

pearl202a1.jpgRevelations of what happened leading up to and following this tragic day inform us of  a backstory of the events that took place in Washington.

Let me go on record to state that I am patriotic and an avid admirer of what the men of our nation did to overcome the tyranny of the Japanese and Germans in WWII.  If you click on the military category of my posts, you will see that when I get cut, I bleed red, white and blue.  I believe in the greatness and considerable achievements of the United States as well as it being the largest contributor for the betterment of others by any country in history.

However, as an amateur historian and an observer of the (in)competency and motives of bureaucrats  in Washington, what our government did leading up to and on that day shows the weaknesses of humans. It should be noted that the Americans and more especially the soldiers who fought the war are held as honorable in my opinion.  This post is not written to tear down any of the bravery accomplished during the war.  They fought valiantly and protected freedom with the Allies.

This event brought together the country so that good overcame evil and I have the utmost respect for what was accomplished in that war.

Much of this was inspired by “History Honors Pearl Harbor” on the History Channel as well as other documented sources.

A historical documentation and the actual speech can be found here.

Incompetency

America was woefully unable to protect itself by December 6, 1941.  It is not unlike today, December 7, 2016, as our current military has been decimated, or the decay of the military before the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center Towers by the administration in charge during the decade of the 1990’s .

On the day of the attack, Roosevelt was viewed by his son as frozen at times because of the thought of what it would do to his legacy.  Just like the 42nd and 44th president, their legacy was more important than the nation.  The worst attack on American soil would be under his watch and he would be unprepared to deal with it.  Fortunately, by 8 am on 12/9/41, brave young men around the country were lined up at the draft offices, but it would take the monumental effort of the country to overcome the government’s lack of responsibility to have a force that could protect our borders.

Next was the communications between Pearl Harbor and Washington.  Roosevelt couldn’t get information about what was happening.  Granted, the communications infrastructure was not what it is today, but there weren’t even secure lines or even direct lines to Washington. The Naval commander in Hawaii who tried to communicate information to the Chief Naval officer Admiral Stark at the War Department couldn’t give specifics as he wasn’t sure if the Japanese were listening in.

Further, the American leadership greatly underestimated the mental acuity of the Japanese thinking that they weren’t technologically capable of such an attack.  It was speculated that the Germans had given them assistance.  Hitler later admitted he had no idea that the Japanese were planning to, or had attacked Pearl Harbor despite what was taught at Faber College.

Douglas MacArthur couldn’t be reached in the Philippines for most of the day.  General Marshal of the Army tried for the better part of the day to warn him of the happenings in Hawaii and to prepare for a similar attack.  Washington wasn’t sure of where he even was or if the Japanese had already attacked.  MacArthur boasted that he had special insight into the oriental mind. When he finally was reached, his response was that he was on full alert and that “We are ready, we have our tails in the air”.  History documents that the Japanese attacked and drove him out of the Philipines shortly thereafter as MacArthur did virtually nothing and lost the islands in an embarrassing defeat.  He was woefully unprepared, but his ego wouldn’t let him admit it.

Finally, the government couldn’t spend more than $750 on an automobile so they couldn’t get a bullet proof car for the President to be transported from the White House to the Capitol to give the speech.  The Treasury Department had confiscated Al Capone’s car earlier so that one was used instead as they couldn’t be bothered to have proper protection for the leader of the free world.  That would haunt Washington as recently as November 22, 1963.

Roughly 6 hours after the attack, FDR approved Executive Order 9066 which imprisoned 92,000 Japanese to internment camps for no reason other than their might be a fifth column attack within.  It was supposed to be limited in scope to arrest any spies but morphed into what was one of the lowest points of FDR’s term of leadership.  Little to no evidence is ever recorded that there was any treason on their part and no one was convicted of espionage or disloyalty.

They were deemed guilty rather than innocent in one of the greatest acts of prejudice by an administration.

MORE INCOMPETENCE AND DID WASHINGTON KNOW ABOUT THE ATTACK BEFOREHAND?

As I’ve stated, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I am for facts.  FDR ordered an investigation headed by Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts of the attack 18 days after the attack.  Some interesting things were revealed.  You can read further about it in the book A Matter of Honor, Betrayal, Blame and a Family’s Quest for Justice.

Admiral Kimmel, head of the Navy in the Pacific had asked Chief of Naval Operations Harold Stark six months before the attack to keep him apprised of latest intelligence regarding what the Japanese were up to.  Washington knew that Pearl Harbor was vulnerable to attack as early as November 1940.

Stark held back the information that aerial torpedos capable of being deployed in waters shallower than at Pearl were being used, despite Stark reassuring Kimmel that the water in the harbor was too shallow for a torpedo attack.  How this wasn’t an act of treason is curious.

The FBI had intercepted information that the Japanese had made inquiries as to the depth at Pearl and whether anti-torpedo nets had been deployed there, but again Kimmel was never informed.  Not sharing this with the command was grossly incompetent or an act of political chess.

Code-breaker Lawrence Safford visited Kimmel after he had resigned.  He then told Kimmel about project Magic that broke coded Japanese diplomatic messages.  Washington failed to inform Kimmel what they knew prior to the attack. It reveals the Japanese had spies informing the Imperial Forces where the exact location of the ships anchored as recently as 3 months before the attack.  The code breakers who discovered this in Magic was only shared by as few as 10 men who couldn’t or wouldn’t tell anyone else.  It was a power play by political operatives in Washington instead of military strategists who would have warned the fleet in Oahu and had the capability to defend against a surprise attack.

A message to the Japanese embassy was decoded instructing them to move to negotiations that had to be completed by 11/5/41, or things will happen automatically beyond that.

The Japanese fleet set sail on November 25th.  There was no turning back at this point.

FDR was aware that the Japanese were going to break off negotiations and 10 days prior to the attack, Admiral Stark issued a warning that there could be an attack, unfortunately not mentioning or notifying the Hawaiian Islands that they were a possible target.

Three hours prior to the attack, Stark received a message that indicated what was about to happen but failed to notify Kimmel.  By the time the message was placed into Kimmel’s hands, it was 8 hours after the attack and was not marked priority.

The intelligence was available, but Washington failed to connect the dots.

I hope that the administration which has meandered it’s way around the safety of our country hasn’t set the table for a repeat by those who have lost their respect for our capability to defend ourselves.

SEX

Missy LaHand, FDR’s assistant for 21 years contacted him on December 7th.  She was closer to the president than Eleanor during that time, some speculate in many ways other than a secretary.  With everything that was going on, the last thing he needed was to hear from a woman he’d had a relationship with.  Eleanor allegedly pushed for a divorce after discovering hat FDR had an affair with her social secretary,  so the last thing he wanted to do was push the envelope unnecessarily by contacting her.  With the decisions that would change the world in front of him, all he needed was additional drama from his wife and another woman.  He decided not to return her call from Warm Springs where she was recovering and it devastated her so greatly that she attempted suicide shortly thereafter.  Presidents have had trouble keeping their pants zipped.

As a side note, but belonging in the sex category, Edward R. Murrow interviewed FDR that night.  Not that it has anything to affect the situation, Murrow carried on a wartime affair with Churchill’s daughter-in-law Pamela Digby Churchill when he was a reporter in London.  He had a close relationship with the Leaders of the Free World and an even closer relationship with some of their relatives.

DRUGS

Roosevelt had a chronic sinus condition from which he suffered most of his life.  Shortly after the attack, he had a headache and was congested, so he was wheeled into the office of his physician, Dr. Ross Macintyre where he was treated with cocaine.  It can be argued that it may have affected his decision-making that day.  Since it was legal, it wasn’t an issue.  Drugs used to be a political show stopper until Obama, who admitted he snorted it got elected.

ROCK AND ROLL

Fortunately, the attack woke up the nation and kick-started the industrial might the US.  Some of the greatest human, scientific and technological achievements happened during the war.

Most important though was the lesson on how wars should be fought and won, something that has been lost on the leadership today.  You fight to win and settle only  for unconditional surrender.  At that point, you set the terms of how the relationship will proceed.  Germany and Japan have become industrial and world leaders, built up by the USA after the war unlike Vietnam and the middle east where our troops were strangled by congress rather than let soldiers fight the war.

4th of July 2014

My mom was born and died on the 4th, so it is a day that gives me mixed emotions.

One thing not in question is that we should be patriotic.  I don’t believe that artists should play it any other way than how it was written.  It reminds me of winning the Gold medal and how proud I am to hear it over and over again.

On that note, enjoy…

 

70th Anniversary of #D-Day – Round Up of Coverage #DDAY

On the anniversary of one of the most historic battles and largest amphibious landing, here is a round up of coverage and events taking place.

I’ll be adding links throughout the day.  If you have a suggestion, please leave a comment and I’ll add it.

 

Remembrances of the men who were there

The War that had to be won to make D-Day a success

D-Day photo’s still haunting after the invasion

WSJ – D-Day Veterans Gather to remember

D-Day Memorial Anniversary Events

WWII Vets Travel To Normandy to Remember

BBC –  Staged Landing and Remembrances Event

D-Day Historic Battle Re-created

Videos of D-Day Anniversary

70th Anniversary Parade

The Darkroom, pictures and video’s of D-Day

Blackfive – The President’s Prayer, Eisenhower 

Blackfive – Courage beyond measure

France will never forget what it owes these soldiers

What does D-Day Stand for and other facts?

The eyes of the world were upon us on the longest day

One of the finest speeches ever delivered at Pointe-du-hoc

93 year old re-creates parachute jump over Normandy

89 year old veteran sneaks out of nursing home to attend ceremony

WSJ – The debt owed to the hero’s of D-Day

WSJ – The last of the D-Day veterans battle time to bear witness, moving from personal experience to history.

#D-Day 70 Years Later, The War That Had To Be Won Before Operation #Overloard

I’ve written about D-day before here and here, but I’ve recently found research about the planning and the pre-landing war at 25,000 feet. One of the issues that the strategists had to deal with was the mighty Luftwaffe.  Almost a year before the landing in Normandy, Operation Overlord or D-Day would have been much different if air cover had been used against the Allied landing force. They had to find a way to get rid of German air superiority before the landing or it would be unsuccessful.

300px-Color_Photographed_B-17E_in_FlightIn the month after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the US Army’s Eight Air Force was established in Savannah, Georgia.  Less than a year later, it is tasked with defeating the most powerful air force in the world, the German Luftwaffe.  By the end of the War in Europe, there were thousands of B-17’s and fighters produced.  Unfortunately, the early fighters couldn’t match the bomber range so they flew without cover both to and from the target until the fighters could find and protect what was left of the Bomber squadron.  It was thought that with 17 machine guns protecting each plane, they would be self defending against the Messerschmitt’s. Unfortunately, it was a turkey shoot for the Germans.  Almost 75% of the airmen would fail to complete the 25 missions which would complete their duty in the European theater. (Authors note: I have the greatest respect for the contribution and sacrifice of the other countries who participated.  Their efforts can be found by other authors and should be read and celebrated for what they did).

p51Much of this was proved on Big Week which ended on February 25, 1944 when more than 2,000 American airmen failed to return from their mission. The U.S. fighters were not able to engage the German fighters deep over Europe until the advent of the P-51 Mustang which was faster, better armed and had the range to protect the B-17’s the entire mission.  It was discovered that the Mustangs could win the battle against the German fighters, but they had to beat the deadline of D-Day to stop the Luftwaffe.

It has been written in documentaries that with the knowledge that the German’s would come after the B-17’s (the Germans used radar) and that the P-51’s would win, they used the bombers as bait to knock out the enemy’s air power. This was a certain death sentence for the crews of the bomber squadrons, but knowing that the landing at Normandy and the entire Operation Overlord would fail unless this was accomplished sealed the fate for the Eighth. Nevermore was this apparent when the Eight was ordered to bomb Berlin on March 6, 1944. This was the center of German government and the most heavily fortified city against air attack with an estimated 70% of the Luftwaffe fighters and 750 anti-aircraft weapons were placed.  Although ten’s of thousands of pounds of bombs were dropped, 69 bombers were lost.  The goal of reducing the Luftwaffe was accomplished as more than 179 German Fighters were destroyed.  The difference was that American planes and pilots could be replaced, the Germans couldn’t produce any more and these were their best pilots.

Two more raids were then ordered on Berlin, some say to draw out the fighters so they could be eliminated.  It was the beginning of the end of the Luftwaffe.  This strategy ensured the goal of Allied air superiority over Normandy, but at a very high cost.

By the end of the war, the 8th Air Force would suffer 26000 combat deaths.  This was more than the Marines suffered in all of World War II.

We honor the soldiers who gave their all, many with the ultimate sacrifice to secure freedom in Europe and likely for the world.  We know from history the amphibious landing and the issues and outcome.  It all came at great cost and reminds us that freedom is never free.  It always comes at some cost.  For the year prior to the landing at Normandy, there was a great cost at 25,000 feet.

For more on D-Day at 70, you can read about it here.

University of Texas at Austin 2014 Commencement Address – Admiral William H. McRaven

This is not only very inspiring, it is some of the best advice on the Interweb. For those in a good way, it will make you better, for those in a bad way it will show you how to begin to pick yourself up.  If you are young, it is a good lesson in how to live your life.

Navy SEAL Admiral Bill McRaven University Texas Austin Commencement Hook 'Em

AP Photo/The University of Texas at Austin, Marsha Miller

UT alum Adm. William H. McRaven gives students the “hook ’em horns” at the university’s commencement last week.

 

U.S. Navy admiral and University of Texas, Austin, alumnus William H. McRaven returned to his alma mater last week to give seniors 10 lessons from basic SEAL training when he spoke at the school’s commencement. 

McRaven, the commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command who organized the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, stressed the importance of making your bed every morning, taking on obstacles headfirst, and realizing that it’s OK to be a “sugar cookie.”

All of his lessons were supported by personal stories from McRaven’s many years as a Navy SEAL.

“While these lessons were learned during my time in the military, I can assure you that it matters not whether you ever served a day in uniform,” McRaven told students. “It matters not your gender, your ethnic or religious background, your orientation, or your social status.”

 

Memorial Day 2014 – Freedom Is Not Free…..Ever

memorial-day-2014-small

We remember those who served for our country, sometimes fighting for the freedom of other countries.  Most of all, we honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Never forget, Freedom is not Free.

1. Why we observe Memorial Day

Memorial Day is a day of remembrance of those who have died serving our country.

2. It started with the Civil War

Memorial Day was a response to the unprecedented carnage of the Civil War, in which some 620,000 soldiers on both sides died.

3. It was first known as Decoration Day

From the practice of decorating graves with flowers, wreaths and flags, the holiday was long known as Decoration Day. The name Memorial Day goes back to 1882, but the older name didn’t disappear until after World War II. Federal law declared “Memorial Day” the official name in 1967.

4. The playing of ‘Taps’

The 24-note bugle call, is played at all military funerals and memorial services.

5. Flying the Flag

It is customary on Memorial Day to fly the flag at half staff until noon, and then raise it to the top of the staff until sunset.

6. Flowers and Flags

These are the two most popular items people use to remember soldiers.

7. The last Monday of May

Memorial Day is observed on the last Monday of May.

 America’s Top 10 Deadliest Wars. 

From Blackfive: The Gates of Heaven

What is Memorial Day really about?  While we are busy gearing up for the weekend, I thought I should post this annual reminder about the holiday.  It may surprise some of you.

If you are relatively new to Blackfive, you should read this story about a Memorial Day eleven years ago – Mathew Schram’s Memorial Day.  And, unfortunately, we’ve posted many memorials to our Fallen Americans.

The words to “Taps” are:

Day Is Done,
Gone the Sun,
From the Earth,
From the Hill,
From the Sky,
All Is Well,
Safely Rest,
God Is Nigh

When Taps is played at dusk, it has a completely different meaning than when Taps is played during the day.  No soldier really wants to hear it played during daylight.  For when the bugle plays Taps in the daylight…that means a soldier has fallen…There is a belief among some that Taps is the clarion call to open the gates of heaven for the fallen warrior and letting them know to “Safely Rest”…

Of course, Memorial Day is about remembering the sacrifices that our military men and women have made over the last 237 years.    We are still a young nation, but one that has made many sacrifices to remain free.  We should also take time to remember the families who have lost loved ones.

We have focused on just a few of the fallen over the last few years.  I’ve lost good friends during the War on Terror.  And I write about the others to ensure that we don’t forget their sacrifices – I do that for me as much as for anybody.

Click on the link to read the entire blog post.

Top 11 Memorial Day Museums

AOMDA Honors War Vets Buried Overseas 

There will be many Memorial Day observances here in the U.S. this weekend, but loved ones of service members buried abroad can rest assured their veterans will not be forgotten.

The American Overseas Memorial Day Association (AOMDA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to honoring the memory of those who gave their lives in World Wars I and II, whose final resting places are in American military cemeteries or separate graves all over Europe and even Africa…….

Read more at this link

Memorial Day 2014

Memorial Day, the day to honor those who gave their lives for the freedom we all enjoy. We must protect our country so they did not die in vain.

While he was not an American, he was a great leader that sums it up…

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life. —Winston Churchill

TOP POSTS OF 2013, DEWALT AIR GUN ASSAULT RIFLE, EUPHEMISMS FOR STUPID

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 35,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 13 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

In 2013, there were 51 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 460 posts. There were 24 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 1 MB. That’s about 2 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was February 25th with 1,894 views. The most popular post that day was

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 35,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 13 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

In 2013, there were 51 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 460 posts. There were 24 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 1 MB. That’s about 2 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was February 25th with 1,894 views. The most popular post that day was:

Here is the post, click on this link

Views: 1,894?
Visitors: 1,545

Views per Visitor: 1.23

Next was WD-40  interesting facts

9/11 facts and pictures was next most popular

How to be happy

 

My all time number one hit though in any search engine, especially Google is:

Euphemisms for Stupid, because it is funny and witty.

C.S.S. John Simonds Was a Confederate Ship

USS John Simonds

I have half of my relatives on one side of the Civil War and half on the other.  I have equal respect for both.

I searched my name and was surprised to find a ship with my name.  It fell on the Confederate side of my family.

John Simonds, a 1024-ton side-wheel river steamer, was built at Freedom, Pennsylvania, in 1852. The Confederate Army used her as a support ship on the Mississippi River, where she was sunk off the fortress at Island Number Ten on 7 April 1862.  It was sunk to prevent it from being used by the Union forces.

You should search yourself to see what is in your background.

Omaha Beach June 6 1944 – The Longest Day

Anniversary of D-Day b the Army

On D-Day, 6 June 1944, the Allied nations landed around 156,000 troops on the Normandy coastline. The American forces landed numbered 73,000: 23,250 on Utah Beach, 34,250 on Omaha Beach, and 15,500 airborne troops. In the British and Canadian sector, 83,115 troops were landed (61,715 of them British): 24,970 on Gold Beach, 21,400 on Juno Beach, 28,845 on Sword Beach, and 7900 airborne troops.

The War Years has created a range of D-Day commemorative designs and merchandise. Each of our designs incorporates QR barcodes that enables anyone with a smartphone or similar web-enabled mobile device to connect to our digital content, such as this Omaha Beach video. We also use 2D QR codes so that you can connect to our social media pages on Facebook and Twitter. Checkout our website: http://www.thewaryears.co.uk

The Assault on Omaha Beach
On D-Day, the untested 29th Infantry Division, joined by nine companies of U.S. Army Rangers redirected from Pointe du Hoc, were to assault the western half of the beach. The battle-hardened 1st Infantry Division was given the eastern half. The initial assault waves, consisting of tanks, infantry, and combat engineer forces, were carefully planned to reduce the coastal defences and allow the larger ships of the follow-up waves to land.

However, the assault on Omaha Beach did not go to plan. Almost all the specially designed amphibious DD tanks, that were to provide much needed covering fire for the infantry assault waves, sank off shore. Navigation problems caused the majority of landing craft to miss their targets throughout the day. The defences were unexpectedly strong, and the Germans inflicted heavy casualties on landing US troops. Under heavy fire, engineers struggled to clear beach obstacles; later landings bunched up around the few channels that were cleared.

Many troops were drowned or killed the moment they hit the beach. Many landing craft hit under water obstacles or were destroyed by mines. The surviving assault troops could not clear the heavily defended exits off the beach. This caused further problems and consequent delays for later landings.

Eventually small groups of Rangers and infantrymen scaled the heavily defended bluffs commanding the beach. Allied naval gunfire supported these improvised assaults. By day’s end, two small footholds had been won, which were subsequently exploited against weaker defences further inland, thus achieving the original D-Day objectives over the following days.

By The War Years Online http://www.zazzle.com/trumpess

Memorial Day 2013 Round Up of Patriotic Posts #MemorialDay2013

Remembering that Freedom is never Free.

Thank You Memorial Day Hero’s!

Memorial Day 2013

May we be worthy of their sacrifice.

“If you are able, save for them a place inside of you and save one backward glance when you are leaving for the places they can no longer go.

Be not ashamed to say you loved them, though you may or may not have always. Take what they have taught you with their dying and keep it with your own.

And in that time when men decide and feel safe to call war insane, take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind.”

Major Michael Davis O’Donnell
1 January 1970
Dak To, Vietnam

Have A Good Memorial Day Infidels

When I’m GoneTOP THREAD

The Last Full Measure – Wilmington Cemetary

And I Won’t Forget The Men Who Died

Memorial Day Tribute – Video

In Honor of Memorial Day: War and Battle, the Great Quotations

Memorial Day 2013: Honor the Fallen

Memorial Day, an Honest Man vs. a Liar

Silence on this Day

The Debt We Owe Our Servicemen and Women

Video: Memorial Day Tributes

Citizens With Guns and Concealed Carry Statistics

  • Mass shootings rose between the 1960s and the 1990s, and dropped in the 2000s. Mass killings actually reached their peak in 1929. (According to Grant Duwe, criminologist with the MinnesotaDepartment of Corrections.)

  • “States that allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns enjoy a 60 percent decrease in multiple-victim public shootings and a 78 percent decrease in victims per attack.” John Lott, Jr. and Bill Landes, “More Guns, Less Crime.”

  • “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”– John Lott, Jr. Co-author with Bill Landes of “More Guns, Less Crime.”

  • “Until the Newtown horror, the three worst K–12 school shootings ever had taken place in either Britain or Germany.” [John Fund, NRO. “The Facts About Mass Shootings.”]

  • Total violent crime from 1973 to 2009 decreased 65%, or is about one-third as high. (Bureau of Justice Statistics)

  • The U.S. murder rate decreased 8.1% between 2008 and 2009, and has fallen every year since 2006. (Bureau of Justice Statistics, based on FBI data).

  • The United States ranks 24th in the world in terms of its murder rate. It also has the most highly armed civilian population.

  • “International evidence and comparisons have long been offered as proof of the mantra that more guns mean more deaths and that fewer guns, therefore, mean fewer deaths. There is a compound assertion that (a) guns are uniquely available in the United States compared with other modern developed nations, which is why (b) the United States has by far the highest murder rate. Though these assertions have been endlessly repeated, statement (b) is, in fact, false and statement (a) is substantially so.” (Kates & Mauser, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Vol. 30, No. 2)

  • “The political causation is that nations which have violence problems tend to adopt severe gun controls, but these do not reduce violence, which is determined by basic sociocultural and economic factors.” [Then why does Luxemburg have nine times the murder rate of Germany?] (Kates & Mauser,Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Vol. 30, No. 2)

  • “The Middle Ages were a time of notoriously brutal and endemic warfare. They also experienced rates of ordinary murder almost double the highest recorded U.S. murder rate. But Middle Age homicide “cannot be explained in terms of the availability of firearms, which had not yet been invented.” (Kates & Mauser, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Vol. 30, No. 2)

  • The odds of being in a victim of a mass shooting are far less than that of being struck by lightning.

Yamamoto’s Master Plan for Pearl Harbor Attack

Yamamoto was educated in the US and knew us well.  He also knew that we were a sleeping industrial giant.  He was well aware of the 2nd Amendment and how much we believed in it (We still do for the Islamic Jihad Terrorists).  He also knew he couldn’t attack the US, but a surprise attack would and could cripple us for a while until the industrial might of a sleeping giant was woken up.  Luck was not on his side that day as the US Carriers were out at sea and the Battleships (an aging, but vital weapon) was all that was harbored in Pearl Harbor.

Here is the take by the Pacific War.com

JAPANESE PREPARATIONS FOR THE ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR

Admiral Yamamoto plans the Destruction of the United States Pacific Fleet

These aircraft are superb reproductions of the Nakajima Type 97 carrier torpedo bombers (Allied code-name “Kate”) that attacked the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. They were used in the gripping and historically accurate 20th Century Fox film Tora, Tora, Tora! (1970).

In conformity with this traditional approach to naval warfare, the Japanese Naval General Staff intended to limit naval operations in support of Japan’s military thrust into South-East Asia to offensive actions against local American, British and Dutch naval forces defending their country’s colonial possessions in South-East Asia. To the conservative admirals of the Naval General Staff, a direct confrontation in the central Pacific Ocean between their navy and the United States Navy was unthinkable.

In early 1941, Vice Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was appointed Commander-in-Chief of Japan’s Combined Fleet, and he immediately took issue with the cautious policy of the Japanese Naval General Staff. Yamamoto did not believe that the United States Pacific Fleet would remain idle at Pearl Harbor while Japan attacked and seized America’s Philippines, and British and Dutch colonial possessions in South-East Asia. He believed that Japan must cripple the United States Pacific Fleet at the same time as it launched its attacks on countries of South-East Asia.

With this firm conviction, Admiral Yamamoto began to consider a surprise carrier-launched air attack on the United States Pacific Fleet at its Pearl Harbor base timed to coincide with Japan’s military aggression in South-East Asia. Yamamoto instructed Rear Admiral Takijiro Onishi, Chief of Staff of the 11th Air Fleet, to assess the feasibility of an attack on Pearl Harbor by carrier-launched aircraft. Onishi enlisted the assistance of Commander Minoru Genda, a brilliant staff officer and tactician serving with Japan’s 1st Air Fleet. Genda studied the problem and came to the conclusion that an attack on Pearl Harbor could succeed if (a) the attack took the Americans completely by surprise, (b) the attack occurred early on a Sunday morning when American defence preparedness would be at a low level, (c) all six of Japan’s best aircraft carriers were used, and (d) highly skilled aircrews were used in the attack. To ensure complete surprise, Genda’s plan precluded alerting the Americans to their danger by a prior declaration of war.

Admiral Yamamoto’s plan for a surprise peacetime attack on the United States Pacific Fleet at Hawaii would involve a strike force which included Japan’s six largest and most powerful aircraft carriers. His task was made much easier by President Roosevelt’s decision to relocate the United States Pacific Fleet from California to Hawaii. As Yamamoto saw it, the destruction of the American Pacific Fleet would give Japan time to seize the Philippines, Malaya, British Borneo, Burma and the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia), and gain access to the oil, minerals, rubber and other resources that Japan needed to sustain its aggressive war machine. He was hopeful that, with its Pacific Fleet destroyed or crippled, the Americans would be willing to accept a peace settlement that allowed Japan to keep its new conquests in South-East Asia.

The Japanese Naval General Staff initially rejected Admiral Yamamoto’s plan for an attack on Pearl Harbor as being too great a gamble. They doubted that surprise could be achieved when the strike force would be at sea for two weeks before the attack. Japan had eleven aircraft carriers, and the admirals felt that Yamamoto’s plan could put at risk their six best carriers. They also felt that diverting Japan’s six most powerful aircraft carriers to Hawaii would leave the southern attacks on the Philippines and British Malaya dangerously unprotected. In the end, Yamamoto only overcame their opposition by threatening to resign.

Although the admirals of the Naval General Staff were reluctantly persuaded by Yamamoto to abandon the policy of defensive naval war in favour of attack, the years of night warfare training and the highly accurate, long range torpedoes associated with the defensive policy would give the Japanese Imperial Navy a significant edge over Allied navies in night actions during the Pacific War.

Training for the Pearl Harbor Attack

Early in 1941, despite the fact that the Chief of the Naval General Staff, Admiral Osami Nagano, had not yet approved a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Admiral Yamamoto directed that intensive planning and training for such an attack was to be undertaken.

Japanese naval aircrews had already honed their war skills flying sorties against the poorly equipped and trained Chinese air force and army. However, Pearl Harbor offered special challenges to an enemy force proposing to use air-launched torpedoes. The harbor was comparatively shallow and a large area in the centre of the harbor was occupied by Ford Island. The American battleships were moored on the eastern side of Ford Island. The water area between the battleships and the eastern shore of the harbor was narrow. Japanese torpedoes would have to be redesigned for use in shallow harbor waters, and torpedo aircrews would have to learn to drop their torpedoes with great precision so that they would land in the narrow stretch of water between the eastern shore of the harbor and the battleships. The Japanese aircrews went about this training with great enthusiasm and dedication. By November 1941, they were ready for the attack.

On 3 November 1941, the Chief of the Japanese Naval General Staff finally gave his approval to Admiral Yamamoto’s plan to attack the United States Pacific Fleet at its Pearl Harbor base.

The Japanese Carrier Strike Force departs for Hawaii

To distract the American government while it secretly positioned a powerful aircraft carrier strike force for the “sneak attack” on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese government had ordered its envoys in Washington to engage the American government in intensive diplomatic negotiations.AdmiralYamamoto’s aircraft carrier strike force, under the command of Vice-Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, left Japan on 26 November 1941.

The fast and powerful aircraft carrier Akagi was regarded as the “Queen” of the Japanese Imperial Navy. It is shown here in 1941. It was the flagship of Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo for the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Preserving strict radio silence, Nagumo’s carriers steered well clear of normal shipping lanes and headed for a stand-by point about 1,000 miles (1,600km) north of Hawaii. The carrier strike force comprised Japan’s six largest fleet aircraft carriers, Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku, and Zuikaku. Each of these aircraft carriers would later play a role in the major sea battles closely related to Australia’s survival in 1942. The last two would take part in the crucial Battle of the Coral Sea. The first four would take part in the pivotal Battle of Midway. The carriers were supported by battleships, cruisers, destroyers and submarines.

Japan’s Prime Minister Tojo threatens Britain and America with War

In the last week of November 1941, at a time when Admiral Nagumo’s aircraft carriers were sailing towards Pearl Harbor with hostile intent, Japan’s militarist Prime Minister, General Hideki Tojo, issued a blunt warning to Britain and the United States that Japan would “purge East Asia of US -British power with a vengeance”. General Tojo’s threat appeared on the front page of the New York Herald Tribune on Sunday, 30 November 1941, exactly seven days before the Japanese attack on America’s Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Despite the clear threat of war contained in Tojo’s warning, and despite having no knowledge of the whereabouts of Japan’s six largest fleet aircraft carriers, no steps were taken at Hawaii to bring the United States Pacific Fleet or the United States Army Air Corps to a state of war alert.

The Americans had broken the Japanese diplomatic code in September 1941, and were able to read coded messages from Tokyo to Japan’s embassies in Berlin and Washington. The United States government knew that Japan had warned its diplomats in Washington that certain unspecified events would occur after 29 November 1941. However, the Americans believed that the warning fore-shadowed possible aggressive moves by Japan against the Philippines or British or Dutch colonial possessions in South-East Asia. Although they did not believe that an attack on Pearl Harbor was planned by the Japanese, the American commanders in Hawaii took steps to guard against possible hostile action by Japanese submarines and sabotage to military aircraft or installations on the main island of Oahu. To guard against sabotage, Major General Short lined up his aircraft on the runways as if for an inspection. They would prove easy targets for Japanese aircraft when the attack came.

The Order to attack the United States Pacific Fleet

When the Japanese aircraft carrier strike force reached its stand-by point north of Hawaii, it waited to receive either final confirmation to proceed with the attack on Pearl Harbor or an order to return to Japan. On 1 December 1941, the Japanese government reached a firm decision to make war on the United States. On 2 December 1941, a radio signal containing the code words “climb Mount Niitaka” was received by Vice Admiral Nagumo aboard his flagship Akagi. The code message was an order to attack Pearl Harbor on Sunday, 7 December 1941. The Japanese were well aware that most Americans at this time observed Sunday as a holy day, and they had carefully timed the surprise attack to occur when many Americans in Hawaii would be preparing for or attending church services.

Surprise was considered vital to the success of the attack on the American fleet. There would be no prior declaration of war to alert the Americans to their danger.

Admiral Nagumo’s carrier strike force refuelled at sea on 5 and 6 December. Its approach to Hawaii was screened from American reconnaissance aircraft by low, dense cloud cover.

Japanese intelligence informed Nagumo on 6 December that the American battleships and a large number of smaller warships were in Pearl Harbor. However, Nagumo’s primary targets were the American aircraft carriers, and they were all absent from the harbor. The Japanese believed that the American aircraft carriers Lexington, Saratoga, Enterprise and Yorktown were all based at Pearl Harbor at this time. Their intelligence was faulty. Having undergone routine dry-docking, Saratoga was at San Diego on the American west coast. Yorktown was stationed with the newly commissioned Hornet in the Atlantic at this time. Only Lexington and Enterprise were actually based at Pearl Harbor on 6 December 1941, and fortunately for the United States and Australia, both carriers were at sea when the Japanese attack took place. Despite this setback, Nagumo was under orders to proceed with the attack.

On 6 December 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt intervened personally in the cause of peace by sending a direct appeal to the Emperor of Japan. It fell on deaf ears in Tokyo. The Japanese government was determined on war and had no intention of recalling the Japanese carrier force.

Review of 20th Century Fox Pearl Harbor attack film “Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

PEARLINDEX

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World’s Most Emotional Countries and Why

emotional-map2This is not my data, rather a Bloomberg study. What I can’t figure out is how the US is so emotional except for the political discord recently (the article below says they are happy).  I much more expected it from the Latin countries.

According to Bloomberg, the source of this map, here are the real reasons:

Singapore is the least emotional country in the world. ”Singaporeans recognize they have a problem,” Bloomberg Businessweek writes of the country’s “emotional deficit,” citing a culture in which schools “discourage students from thinking of themselves as individuals.” They also point to low work satisfaction, competitiveness, and the urban experience: “Staying emotionally neutral could be a way of coping with the stress of urban life in a place where 82 percent of the population lives in government-built housing.”

The Philippines is the world’s most emotional country. It’s not even close; the heavily Catholic, Southeast Asian nation, a former colony of Spain and the U.S., scores well above second-ranked El Salvador.

Post-Soviet countries are consistently among the most stoic. Other than Singapore (and, for some reason, Madagascar and Nepal), the least emotional countries in the world are all former members of the Soviet Union. They are also the greatest consumers of cigarettes and alcohol. This could be what you call and chicken-or-egg problem: if the two trends are related, which one came first? Europe appears almost like a gradient here, with emotions increasing as you move West.  (their emotions are sedated)

People in the Americas are just exuberant. Every nation on the North and South American continents ranked highly on the survey. Americans and Canadians are both among the 15 most emotional countries in the world, as well as ten Latin countries. The only non-American countries in the top 15, other than the Philippines, are the Arab nations of Oman and Bahrain, both of which rank very highly. (they have it good there)

English- and Spanish-speaking societies tend to be highly emotional and happy. Though the Anglophone nations of the world retain deep cultural links, it’s not clear if Spain’s emotional depth has anything to do with Latin America’s. According to Gallup, “Latin America leads the world when it comes to positive emotions, with Panama, Paraguay, and Venezuela at the top of that list.” Yes, even Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela is apparently filled with happy people. (they have to say that or be imprisoned)

Africans are generally stoic, with some significant exceptions. The continent is among the world’s least emotional, though there is wide variation, which serves as a non-definitive but interesting reminder of Africa’s cultural diversity. Each could be its own captivating case study. It’s possible that South Africa’s high rating has to do with its cultural ties to Western Europe, for example, and Nigeria’s may have to do with the recent protest movement in the south and sectarian violence in the north.  (life is tough for them, they cope)

The Middle East is not happy. Gallup notes, “Negative emotions are highest in the Middle East and North Africa, with Iraq, Bahrain, and the Palestinian Territories leading the world in negative daily experiences.” Still, that doesn’t quite fully explain the high emotions in the Levant and on the Arabian peninsula, compared to the lower emotions in Libya, Algeria, and Morocco. Perhaps this hints at how people in these countries are being affected by the still-ongoing political turmoil of the Arab Spring.  (they are rife with terrorists who brim with hate)

What am I missing? Every color-coded national boundary here tells a story. Why is Haiti so bereft of emotion compared to its neighbors? Why is Angola so heavy with feeling? Leave your thoughts in the comments or reach me on social media. (Haiti was founded on voodoo so they believe in the devil).

Benghazi Issues and Facts That Are Being Put Together Like a Jigsaw Puzzle

Back in the 70’s, we had Watergate.   Some people broke into an office of the opposing party and it was scandalous.  People went to jail, a president resigned and we had morals.

Benghazi has happened and 4 people died despite prior attacks and cries for more protection before and during the attacks.  It will probably be swept under the rug except for the sex scandal.  Although people may go to jail it is unlikely.  The president will be protected by the biased media and this will slide off of him like Teflon.

The attorney general who appears to be complicit in this and other scandals will also likely be untouched.  The Secretary of State to whom the embassy reported to will also escape justice as she has in the other times she has broken the law (Whitewater, travelgate……)

For now, here is a collection of where we stand.  Hopefully history will document the injustice that was done.

The scandal timeline

Anecdotal: This has happened before.  JFK had mistresses who were spies and may have leaked intelligence.

Don’t ever use Gmail if you want privacy

Patraeus could be prosecuted for Adultery, he might sing like a bird if offered a deal.
Hillary was informed about the Benghazi debacle on 8/16

To no one’s surprise, Eric Holder knew about Benghazi reports for months

Classified documents found on Broadwell’s computer

FBI suppressed Beghazi scandal to protect Obama 10/10/12

The veteran agent related to me that FBI agents assigned to the case were outraged by what were they were told by senior officials: The FBI was going to hold in limbo their findings until after the election.
“The decision was made to delay the resignation apparently to avoid potential embarrassment to the president before the election,” an FBI source told me. “To leave him in such a sensitive position where he was vulnerable to potential blackmail for months compromised our security and is inexcusable.”

Petraeus might have leaked secret prison information to Paula Broadwell

On Saturday, The New York Times reported that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor spoke to an FBI whistle-blower two weeks ago who accused Petraeus of not only having an extramarital affair but potentially jeopardizing the security of classified information.

During the same university speech, Braodwell may have also divulged information that Petraeus knew “within 24 hours” of CIA annex’s request for reinforcements, reported Israel National News.

“The challenging thing for Gen. Petraeus,”she stated, “is that in his new position, he’s not allowed to communicate with the press. So he’s known all of this – they had correspondence with the CIA station chief in Libya, within 24 hours they kind of knew what was happening.”

Earlier she had said the military could have sent reinforcements.

“They were requesting the – it’s called the C-in-C’s In Extremis Force – a group of Delta Force operators, our very, most talented guys we have in the military. They could have come and reinforced the consulate and the CIA annex.”

Patraeus successor Allen caught up in scandal

Guys, keep your zipper shut!

Senator Feinstein wants to get to the bottom of this.

“It’s been like peeling an onion,” she said.

Petraeus’ resignation follows an FBI investigation that, as Mitchell said, “morphed into an investigation about the possibility of national security secrets” as Petraeus’ alleged extramarital affair with biographer Paula Broadwell was revealed.

According to NBC News:

Officials tell NBC News that the affair was revealed because Broadwell sent anonymous, threatening emails to Jill Kelley, 37, described as a close friend of the Petraeus family. Kelley, who lives in the Tampa, Fla. area, was a volunteer social liaison to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.

Investigating who sent the emails to Kelley, the FBI discovered the connection between Petraeus and Broadwell, officials say.

As Mitchell summarized NBC News’ reporting on the relationship between Broadwell, Kelley, and Petraeus, Feinstein interrupted: ”Well, this is all news to me. We were not told this. This is the first time I’ve learned of this. This makes me think, ‘Well, how many other things are there, too?’”

NBC News also reports:

According to reporting by NBC’s chief justice correspondent Pete Williams, a senior law enforcement official said a call to a congressional staffer came from an agent who was initially involved in the investigation but who was later removed from the case because he knew an associate of one of the people being investigated.  The agent knew someone on the Hill and called that person, a Republican staffer, according to the official. But that phone call had no effect on either the course of the investigation, the involvement of Mueller — who was following it closely long before Cantor called him — or the decision to notify Clapper, the official says.

November 10, 2012; The 237th Anniversary of the Marines

First to Fight, the Marines are one of the 5 Military Branches that protect and serve our country.  They have protected our freedom and the countless lives of many around the world.  I am a big supporter of the military and celebrate each branch for what they offer.

BACKGROUND

Marine Corps History

On November 10, 1775, the Continental Congress passed a resolution stating that “two battalions of Marines be raised” for service as landing forces with the fleet. This established the Continental Marines and marked the birth of the United States Marine Corps. Serving on land and at sea, early Marines distinguished themselves in a number of important operations, including their first amphibious raid on foreign soil in the Bahamas in March 1776, under the command of the Corps’ first commandant, Capt. Samuel Nicholas. The 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War and as the last of the Navy’s ships were sold, the Continental Navy and Marines disbanded.

Following the formal re-establishment of the Marine Corps on July 11, 1798, Marines fought in conflicts with France, landed in Santo Domingo and conducted operations against the Barbary pirates along the “Shores of Tripoli.”

Marines participated in numerous operations during the War of 1812, including the defense of Washington at Bladensburg, Md. They also fought alongside Andrew Jackson in the defeat of the British at New Orleans. Following the War of 1812, Marines protected American interests around the world in areas like the Caribbean, the Falkland Islands, Sumatra and off the coast of West Africa, and close to home in operations against the Seminole Indians in Florida.

During the Mexican War, Marines seized enemy seaports on both the Gulf and Pacific coasts. While landing parties of Marines and Sailors were seizing enemy ports, a battalion of Marines joined General Winfield Scott’s army at Pueblo and marched and fought all the way to the “Halls of Montezuma,” Mexico City.

Although most Marine Corps service during the Civil War was with the Navy, a battalion fought at Bull Run, and other units saw action with blockading squadrons at Cape Hatteras, New Orleans, Charleston and Fort Fisher. During the last third of the 19th century, Marines made numerous landings around the world, especially in the orient and the Caribbean.

Following the Spanish-American War in 1898, Marines fought during the Philippine Insurrection, the Boxer Rebellion in China, in Nicaragua, Panama, The Dominican Republic, Cuba, Mexico and Haiti.

In World War I, Marines distinguished themselves on the battlefields of France, as the 4th Marine Brigade earned the title of “Devil Dogs” for actions at Belleau Wood, Soissons, St. Michiel, Blanc Mont and the final Muesse-Argonne offensive. Marine aviation, which began in 1912, was used for the first time in a close-air support role during WWI. More than 309,000 Marines served in France and more than a third were killed or wounded in six months of intense fighting.

During the two decades before World War II, the Marine Corps began to more completely develop its doctrine and organization for amphibious warfare. The success of this effort was proven at Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Tarawa, New Britain, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Saipan, Guam, Tinian, Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. By the war’s end in 1945, the Corps had grown to include six divisions, five air wings and supporting troops, about 485,000 Marines. Nearly 87,000 Marines were killed or wounded during WWII and 82 earned the Medal of Honor.

As the Marine Corps attempted to modify the Fleet Marine Force (FMF) for operations in the nuclear age, the Corps began a decade long struggle to save the FMF and, in affect, its own existence. The Marine Corps had peaked in strength in 1945 at nearly half a million men in six divisions and five aircraft wings. The postwar Corps shrank to fit federal budgets rather than adjust realistically to fit the contingency needs of the Cold War era. Available manpower fell to 83,000 men in 1948 and dropped to just over 74,000 by the spring of 1950. About 50,000 men were assigned to the operating forces, but the FMF had only about 30,000 men in the two skeltal divisions and aircraft wings. Fewer than 12,000 Marines comprised FMFPac which included the 1st Division at Camp Pendleton and the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing (MAW) at El Toro, California. On the East Coast, the 2d Division at Camp Lejeune and the 2d MAW at Cherry Point, making up FMFLant, numbered just under 16,000 Marines. At the outbreak of the Korean War, no Marine unit of any size was based or deployed in the Far East.

The Corps’ supporting establishment was so small and its tasks for maintaining Marine Corps bases so extensive that many FMF troops spent more time housekeeping than training. The Marine Corps share of the federal budget was simply not enough to buy adequate manpower, training, or new equipment. The main threat to the nation was seen in inflation and unbalanced budgets rather than in the Soviet armed forces. On the eve of the Korean War, the FMF seemed doomed to fall to six battalion landing teams and twelve squadrons in 1950.

While Marine units were taking part in the post-war occupation of Japan and North China, studies at Quantico, Va., concentrated on attaining a “vertical envelopment” capability for the Corps through the use of helicopters. Landing at Inchon, Korea, in September 1950, Marines proved that the doctrine of amphibious assault was still viable and necessary. After the recapture of Seoul, the Marines advanced to the Chosin Reservoir only to see the Chinese Communists enter the war. In March, 1955, after five years of hard fighting, the last Marine ground forces were withdrawn. More than 25,000 Marines were killed or wounded during the Korean War.

The realities of the Korean War brought major changes in the basing and deployment of Marine Corps forces. The Corps strength ballooned to 192,000 men in June 1951, to 232,000 a year later and nearly 250,000 by June 1953. More than half the troops actually served in the operating forces, and the 1st Marine Division and 1st MAW, operationally employed in Korea, were kept up to strength. In the meantime, the 2d Marine Division and 2d MAW reached full strength for their European contingencies. In June 1951 Headquarters activated the 3d Marine Brigade, built around the 3d Marines at Camp Pendleton. In 1952 the brigade expanded to become the 3d Marine Division, and the same year the 3d MAW formed and occupied a new base in Miami. In another important reorganization, Headquarters in 1951 formed an organization known as Force Troops in order to provide the heavy artillery and other combat support and combat service support units necessary to sustain a Marine division in a land war.

The three-division/three-wing force structure decreed by the June 1952 passage of the Douglas-Mansfield Act, gave legislative support to the stated roles and missions of the Corps. The defense assumptions and programs of the Eisenhower Administration, however, left the Marine Corps role, and the corresponding basing and deployment strategy, less clearly defined. The emphasis on strategic forces over conventional forces, coupled with domestic economic implications of high defense costs and unbalanced federal budgets, challenged Marine Corps leaders of this period.

During the years 1953 to 1955, significant changes in the basing and deployment of Marine forces were realized. The 3d Marine Division deployed from Camp Pendleton to the Far East in the summer of 1953. Based in Japan, the Division followed regimental landings in Japan and Okinawa with a full-dress division landing exercise on Iwo Jima in March 1954. Significantly, the division began redeploying from Japan to Okinawa in 1955 and by February 1956 the Headquarters of the 3d Marine Division was moved to Okinawa where its remains today. Teamed with the 3d Division, the bulk of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, in Japan with headquarters at Atsugi, provided the air portion of a ready U.S. expeditionary force in the Far East.

The 1st Marine Division, meanwhile, which had been in Korea since the summer of 1950, was returned to Camp Pendleton in 1955. The 3d MAW during the same period moved from the East to the West Coast to support Pacific deployments.

In 1954, the 1st Provisional Marine Air-Ground Task Force, built around a reinforced infantry regiment and a reinforced air group, was established at Hawaii in response to strategic requirements in the Pacific Theater. One reinforced regiment of the 3d Marine Division, together with elements of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing were shifted from the Far East to Oahu to build the task force, later called the 1st Marine Brigade, to desired strength.

On the other side of the world, the commitment of a Marine battalion landing team to the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, which began in 1948, continued except for brief periods in 1950-51 and 1955. During the Korean War, this practice was briefly interrupted due to wartime needs and during 1955 a reduction in amphibious shipping forced the termination of the rotating assignment for nearly a year. The deployment to the Sixth Fleet was designed to give the fleet commander a ready landing force in an area left unstable in the aftermath of World War II.

Events in the Far East from 1955 on likewise pointed out the need for a ready battalion of Marines afloat with the fleet, and from 1960 on, the 3d Marine Division maintained such a floating battalion under Commander Seventh Fleet.

In July 1958, a brigade-size force landed in Lebanon to restore order. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, a large amphibious force was assembled, but not landed. In April 1965, a brigade of Marines landed in the Dominican Republic to protect Americans and evacuate those who wished to leave.

The period from 1956-1960 witnessed the Corps’ continuing development of a permanent base structure to support its force in readiness mission as well as the procurement of supplies and equipment for a wide range of contingencies. Bases were developed stateside for cold-weather training at Pickel Meadows, and for desert warfare and supporting arms training at Twentynine Palms, both in California. Budget cuts and resulting reduced end strengths, however, became formidable obstacles to meeting desired manning levels for FMF units. The reductions resulted in all three divisions being placed on reduced manning levels in 1957 and total Marine Corps strength fell below 200,000. Commandant of the Marine Corps Annual Reports for the years 1957 through 1960 reflect the reduced manning levels throughout the FMF, stating of the Divisions and Wings, “their capability for sustained combat has been seriously diminished.” Reserve training also suffered during this period due to lack of funding.

By 1960, Marine Corps strength had fallen to 170,000 – down 30,000 in just three years. Over the same period the Marine Corps “green dollar” budget dropped from an already austere $942 million in FY1958 to $902 million in FY1961. Certain elements of the FMF had to be placed in cadre status. Perhaps just as damaging to the Corps’ readiness posture was the low priority given in the “blue dollar” budget to the construction of amphibious shipping and particularly helicopter-carrying ships, which threatened the development of the vertical assault mission.

To improve readiness in the Pacific, a system was implemented to rotate infantry battalions between the 3d and 1st Divisions. Beginning in 1959, the “transplacement” program had battalions forming and training in the 1st Division, then deploying to Okinawa for fifteen months’ service as a cohesive unit. The 2d Division began a similar program in 1960 which aided personnel stability and continuity, but as in the Pacific, it meant that several battalions could not be easily deployed in a crisis.

Nevertheless, in 1960 the Marine Corps began a five-year surge in its readiness that brought it to its highest level of peacetime effectiveness by the eve of the Vietnam War. The results of the Presidential election of 1960, coupled with internal redirection in the Corps, combined to form the highly favorable conditions for the Marine Corps to consolidate its amphibious force in readiness mission. The “Flexible Response” strategy of the new administration was ideally suited to the Marine Corps — stressing conventional force improvements in manpower, equipment modernization, and strategic mobility. Marine Corps budgets grew, as did the strength ceilings, and just as significantly, improvements were realized in obtaining amphibious shipping. During this period, as well, Headquarters enhanced the readiness of the Reserve with the formation of the 4th Marine Division and 4th Marine Aircraft Wing in the Marine Corps Organized Reserve.

The combination of increased amphibious exercises and contingency deployments kept the tactical units of the FMF busy during the early 1960s. The size of the possible Marine role in Europe grew as Headquarters aimed at a larger role in NATO. In 1964 II MEF conducted Operation Steel Pike I, an amphibious exercise in Spanish waters that exceeded all earlier exercises in both the size of the Marine force deployed and the distance covered. An amphibious force of 60 ships carried 22,000 Marines and over 5,000 vehicles to the amphibious objective area.

While FMF Atlantic forces were being exercized in Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa, FMF Pacific units trained throughout the Far East, Hawaii, and California. In 1964 there were 45 landing exercises worldwide, and by the beginning of the major U.S. involvement in Vietnam, in 1965, the FMF, both regular and Reserve, was as effective a force as the Corps had ever fielded in peacetime.

The landing of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade at Da Nang in 1965 marked the beginning of a large-scale Marine involvement in Vietnam. By the summer of 1968, after the enemy’s Tet Offensive, Marine Corps strength in Vietnam rose to about 85,000. The Marine withdrawal began in 1969 as the South Vietnamese began to assume a larger role in the fighting. The last ground forces left Vietnam by June 1971. The Vietnam War, the longest in the history of the Marine Corps, exacted a high cost, with more than 13,000 Marines killed and 88,000 wounded.

The Vietnam War proved to be the ultimate test of the Corps’ basing and deployment decisions of the 1950s and early 1960s. From the March 1965 landing of Marine ground troops as Da Nang until the departure of the last large Marine units in June 1971, the war impacted drastically on all Marine forces within and outside the III Marine Amphibious Force. Peak Marine strength in Vietnam was reached in 1968 when more than 85,000 Marines were in Vietnam out of a Marine Corps numbering just over 300,000.

By 1972 the Marine Corps was once again down to 200,000 men and post-Vietnam redeployments had returned the Corps to the same basing and deployment patterns that had been in effect from 1960 to 1965. The 3d Marine Division was back on Okinawa and the 1st Marine Brigade had been reconstituted in Hawaii. The 1st Marine Division was back in Camp Pendleton and the 3d MAW remained at El Toro. On the East Coast, the 2d Marine Division and 2d MAW remained in North Carolina.

In July 1974, Marines evacuated U.S. citizens and foreign nationals during the unrest in Cyprus.

During the 1970s, the Marine Corps assumed an increasingly significant role in defending NATO’s northern flank as amphibious units of the 2nd Marine Division participated in exercises throughout northern Europe.

As it moved into the 1970s, the Marine Corps once again faced close scrutiny of its missions, force structure, and personnel policies. The Marine Corps continued to emphasize global strategic flexibility and reemphasized the Corps’ amphibious mission, developing the concept of “sea-basing,” which aimed at greatly increasing sea-borne logistic support. At the same time, FMF Atlantic launched its first time NATO exercise outside the Mediterranean when a Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU) conducted maneuvers in Norway and northern Germany in 1975. These exercises, which became annual and expanded to brigade size, and their underlying mission of preparing to assist in the defense of NATO’s Northern flank, represented the Marine Corps single most significant change in deployment patterns until the end of the decade.

The revolution in Iran, the seizure of the U.S. Embassy and hostages there, and the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 gave impetus to a Department of Defense plan to improve U.S. non-NATO military capability. The Rapid Deployment Force was created in response to the realization of the range of contingencies short of general war that faced the United States. In particular, the CONUS-based joint task force, with designated forces from all four services, was created with responsibility for operational planning, training, and exercises for designated rapid deployment forces worldwide with the initial focus on Southwest Asia and the Indian Ocean. The new force widened the FMF’s force in readiness role without compromising its amphibious mission.

The Corps played a key role in the development of the Rapid Deployment Force, a multi-service organization created to ensure a flexible, timely military response around the world. The Maritime Pre-Positioning Ships (MPS) Program was instituted in late 1979 with the goal of providing three Marine amphibious brigades ready for airlift to potential crisis areas where they would unite previously positioned ships carrying their equipment and supplies. The MPS concept gave the Marine Corps and the U.S. a significant new dimension in mobility, sustainability, and the global response.

An increasing number of terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies around the world took place in the 1980s. In August 1982, Marines landed at Beirut, Lebanon, as part of a multinational peacekeeping force. For the next 19 months these units faced the hazards of their mission with courage and professionalism. In October 1983, Marines took part in the highly successful, short-notice intervention in Grenada.

In December 1989, Marines responded to instability in Central America during Operation Just Cause in Panama to protect American lives and restore democracy.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 led to the largest movement of Marine forces since World War II. Between August 1990 and January 1991, 24 infantry battalions, 40 squadrons (more than 92,000 Marines) deployed to the Persian Gulf as part of Operation Desert Shield. The air campaign of Operation Desert Storm began Jan. 16, 1991, followed by the main overland attack Feb. 24 when the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions breached the Iraqi defense lines and stormed into occupied Kuwait. Meanwhile, the threat from the sea in the form of Marine Expeditionary Brigades held 50,000 Iraqis in check along the Kuwait coast. By the morning of Feb. 28, 100 hours after the ground war began, the Iraqi army was no longer a threat.

In December 1992, Marines landed in Somalia marking the beginning of a two-year humanitarian relief operation there. In another part of the world, land-and carrier-based Marine Corps fighter-attack squadrons and electronic warfare aircraft supported Operation Deny Flight in the no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina. During April 1994, Marines once again demonstrated their ability to protect American citizens in remote parts of the world when a Marine task force evacuated 142 U.S. citizens from Rwanda in response to civil unrest in that country.

Closer to home, Marines went ashore in September 1994 at Cape Haitian, Haiti, as part of the U.S. force participating in the restoration of democracy in that country. At the same time, Marines were actively engaged in providing assistance to America’s counter-drug effort, battling wildfires in the western United States, and aiding in flood and hurricane relief operations.

WORLD WAR II

Not to diminish any other time in their history, but to call out a particular time of sacrifice before technology and exemplifying hand to hand combat to save the world from oppression, I found this:

World War II

Color photo of the USMC War Memorial, a bronze statue of six men planting a flagpole with an American Flag into the ground.

Photograph of the USMC War Memorial, which depicts the flag-raising on Iwo Jima. The memorial is modeled on Joe Rosenthal’s famous Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.

In World War II, the Marines played a central role in the Pacific War. The battles of Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Tarawa, Guam, Tinian, Cape Gloucester, Saipan, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa saw fierce fighting between Marines and the Imperial Japanese Army.

Philip Johnston proposed the use of Navajo as a code language to the Corps. The idea was accepted, and the Navajo code was formally developed and modeled on the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet.

During the battle of Iwo Jima, photographer Joe Rosenthal took the famous photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima of five Marines and one Navy Corpsman raising the American flag on Mt. Suribachi. Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, having come ashore earlier that day, said of the flag-raising, “…the raising of that flag on Suribachi means a Marine Corps for the next five hundred years.” The acts of the Marines during the war added to their already significant popular reputation. By the end of the war, the Corps expanded from two brigades to six divisions, five air wings, and supporting troops, totaling about 485,000 Marines. In addition, 20 defense battalions and a parachute battalion were set raised.[43] Nearly 87,000 Marines were casualties during World War II (including nearly 20,000 killed), and 82 were awarded the Medal of Honor.[44]

Despite Secretary Forrestal’s prediction, the Corps faced an immediate institutional crisis following the war due to the low budget. Army generals pushing for a strengthened and reorganized defense establishment attempted to fold the Marine mission and assets into the Navy and Army. Drawing on hastily assembled Congressional support, and with the assistance of the so-called “Revolt of the Admirals,”the Marine Corps rebuffed such efforts to dismantle the Corps, resulting in statutory protection of the Marine Corps in the National Security Act of 1947.[45] Shortly afterward, in 1952 the Douglas-Mansfield Bill afforded the Commandant an equal voice with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on matters relating to the Marines and established the structure of three active divisions and air wings that remain today.

Finally, what makes the title Marine so valuable?  Click to find out!

SEMPER FI

 

9/11, 11 Years Later…A Roundup of Posts

Today we remember the 11th anniversary of the worst attack against America on our home soil.  This year, it is mildly different as the perpetrator, Osama Bin Laden is now dead due to the bravery of Seal Team 6 (video of the actual operation here).

I congratulate the president on executing the mission to attack him, although it would have been better if we had been able to waterboard him for more information.  I believe that except for the most rabid of pacifists, most Americans would have been happy to give the same order.

Likewise, we should give credit to the Bush administration for setting up the intelligence network and the extracting and the correlation of the intelligence that lead to his demise.  So a great number of people who contributed should share in the credit and be praised for a job well done.

Here is a round up of coverage during the day regarding this anniversary.  I’ll gladly include any other coverage that is respectful and accurate.

9/11 And a shining city

We could have captured Osama before 9/11 but let him get away

Fortunately, we didn’t close Guantanamo Bay

Enhance interrogation on KSM helped find OBL

How and why we failed to coordinate the evidence about 9/11

The Path to 9/11

The makings of the next attack which could be nuclear

Rudy Guilinani: The Pain Stays, the Fight Goes On

9/11, A day of remembrance

9/11, Good vs. Evil

American’s prepare to mark the anniversary of 9/11

9/11 at 11: A Patriots day

United Airlines Flight 175 South Tower 9:03 a.m.

American Airlines Flight 11 North Tower 8:46 a.m.

5 words and 2 numbers – the note from the 84th floor

9/11: Remembrance, Resolve, Action

9/11: Americans remember attacks on 11th Anniversary (Photos)

A Tribute to 9/11 victims

Allen West’s statement on the 9/11 Attacks

The Pain never dies

Game Over, Evil Is Revealed

I post this to remind those like Junaidah Dahlan, who got offended because I blogged that Islam produced the terrorists, but the facts show that it is true. Almost every terrorist attack is Muslim Junaidah. Go be offended somewhere else and for a real reason.

Gun Control and Our Constitutional Rights, Once Politicians Get Their Foot In the Door…It is the Beginning of the End of Our Rights

My deepest sympathy goes out to the families in Colorado.  The killer was an idiot, but if we didn’t have guns he would have found another way to do what he did.  He was evil and had his mind made up already.  I am not afraid to call evil what it is and history shows they will do what they do with whatever tool they can find.  People blow themselves up in the middle east which he may have done the same thing last week.  Booby trapping his apartment showed he thought he was going to die anyway.

THE POINT OF THIS POST

What galls me is the politicizing of this tragedy by some who have an agenda.   I do not wish to get into left vs. right on this discussion as it is about protecting our constitutional rights.  Once they take one away, they can take any or all of them with precedent

I disagree with  Mayor Bloomberg, Attorney General Holder, and those who are using this event in order to get rid of our 2nd amendment rights, and we know who they all are.  Here are some sentiments from others who agree on the T shirt below. The box is the IQ level of those who think gun control works and would have stopped this madman.  Even the UN is trying to take away our right to bear arms.

Steve Chapman discusses it further here:

When someone is ill or anxious to avoid illness, he may be open to any possible treatments. That’s why quack remedies, untested formulas and obvious placebos often find takers. When a mass shooting occurs, the urge to find a cure is powerful. As a rule, though, those that emerge are sugar pills.

A nation with very few guns, exceedingly tight firearms restrictions and little interest in such weaponry would not experience these atrocities as often as ours does. But in a society with hundreds of millions of guns and huge demand for them, as well as high rates of violent crime of all sorts, the challenge borders on the insurmountable.

The tactics of the alleged killer in this case serve gun control supporters as a roadmap to what should be done. He had an AR-15 “assault weapon,” proving we should prohibit these guns. He had a magazine that can hold 100 cartridges, dramatizing the need to restrict magazine capacity. He bought some 6,000 rounds over the Internet, suggesting that the government should outlaw large purchases or monitor anyone who makes them.

All these conclusions sound perfectly plausible. And none of them offers any prospect of averting the next massacre.

Take the danger posed by “assault weapons.” It turns out the one recovered in Aurora, Colo., might have been illegal under the federal ban that was in effect from 1994 to 2004. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., calls for reviving that law on the ground that “these are weapons that you are only going to be using to kill a lot of people in close combat.”

What she and many others don’t realize is that “assault weapons” are functionally indistinguishable from ordinary semi-automatic hunting rifles. They don’t fire more rapidly, they don’t deliver more lethal rounds, and they don’t “spray” bullets. They only look like military arms.

The features that disqualified a gun under the federal ban were ones that didn’t affect destructiveness, such as pistol grips and bayonet mounts. If accused killer James Holmes had been prevented from buying this gun, he could have found plenty of others that would have served his purpose just as well.

Almost everyone who buys an AR-15 uses it to hunt small game or perforate targets. The number of customers who obtain guns like this only “to kill a lot of people in close combat” is just slightly above zero — a market that would be far too small to induce a company to make them.

Holmes reportedly equipped his rifle with a 100-round magazine — compared to the maximum of 10 allowed under the old federal law. But limiting magazine size would most likely be an exercise in futility.

In the first place, a halfway competent shooter can quickly replace an empty magazine with a fresh one, or else switch to another gun. (Holmes allegedly used three and had a fourth.)

The brief interruption a killer needs for reloading is helpful only if someone can seize the moment to subdue him — something more common in movies than in real life. Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck says he knows of only one mass shooting in which that happened, in 1993. In the 2011 Tucson shooting, the suspect was overcome when his gun jammed after he reloaded.

Tracking anyone who makes large ammunition purchases? David Kopel, research director at the free-market Independence Institute in Denver, points out that more than a billion rounds are sold each year in the United States — many of them in bulk by target shooters who burn through hundreds or thousands every month.

If the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were to investigate each of these buyers, it would have little time to do anything else. And it would probably catch no criminals, since they would buy in smaller lots to avoid detection.

Besides, most of the rounds that Holmes allegedly bought lay idle. The quantity of ammunition he is said to have used could have been obtained in a few purchases that would set off no alarms. The rest of his fearsome stockpile had no bearing on the outcome.

Ideas like these are proposed anytime a mass shooting takes place but lately, at least, never go anywhere. Supporters take that as proof of the vast, unhealthy influence of the National Rifle Association. But it could be Americans just have no appetite for solutions that don’t solve.

How well did that work out for those countries?  Bad guys have guns and if we take them away from those who are responsible and will defend others, the bad guys have already won.   History has proven that.

July 4th 2012, Top Posts Round-up

First of all if you read the dates on the gravestone, Happy Birthday Mom.

So it’s Independence Day, declared in 1776 from the rest of the World.  The USA has in its short life (compared with other countries) given more to others in benevolence, freed and saved more people, helped former enemies to recover, sacrificed more than others and established a new way of running a country other than a Monarchy.  Unlike the Monarchy’s around the world, the land wasn’t taken from others in a border dispute war or outright takeover like those we declared freedom from….. and has contributed more development, medicine and technology than most other countries combined.  So why are our leaders trying to run it in a way that has failed?

Ronald Reagan said, “The American dream is not that every man must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man must be free to become whatever God intends he should become.”

Most of this is a blessing from our Creator, mentioned in all the documents of the Founding Fathers, yet the government of today is trying to leave that model and get back to the type of behavior we declared independence from.  Why?

First, let’s start off with the Star Spangled Banner.

Here is a round-up of the best posts for today.

Michelle Malkin – Happy 236th Birthday

John Ransom – Washington’s First Fourth

America joining the One World Crappola from the Daily Kos instead of celebrating why we are different (see our Judeo-Christian history) I tried finding something patriotic just for fairness, but it’s just a different world view I guess

America Haters from the Usual sources, Hollywierd

The other America Haters – The Media

Paul Greenberg – The American Idea

Rasmussen poll – Liberty and Justice for all

Speaker Boehner’s Independence Day Tribute: “Here’s to the Spirit of ‘76”

Joshpundit – America’s Birthday Edition (lots of links here)

Robert Samuelson – Love of Country 2012

Fleming: What Life Was Like in 1776

For levity, The Hot Dog eating contest where an American is the favorite

Finally, here is the Declaration of Independence, from tyranny and taxes.  Have we come full circle?

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long-established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.


The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Column 1
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

Column 2
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Column 4
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

Column 5
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

Column 6
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton

Memorial Day 2012 Round Up of the Best Posts

Memorial Day, when we remember that many sacrificed for our freedom, many made the ultimate sacrifice.

It pains me to see those who protest against those who serve and served, when their ability to make mendacious and hateful comments against our military are protected by those who defended that right to free speech.  Except for Jane Fonda who was over in Viet Nam and conspired with the enemy, John Murtha and John Kerry who served and later demeaned our soldiers, most of these protesters haven’t been there and have no idea of the hell these people go through.

Rep. Allen West

Remembering our guardians at the gate

by Rep. Allen West
05/28/2012

The solemn act of honoring those who have fallen in battle is a custom that seems to have faded in importance to our nation over time.

Nowadays, many Americans have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day. At cemeteries across the country, the graves of the fallen are sadly ignored, and worse, neglected.

While there are towns and cities still planning Memorial Day parades, many have not held a parade in decades. Some think the day is for honoring anyone who has died, not just those fallen in service to our country.

Perhaps they do not know how deeply our nation once appreciated those who sacrificed their lives in defense of the principles we hold most dear. Perhaps those very principles of individual sovereignty, freedom and liberty are no longer so important.

It was not always so.

In 1868, on May 5th, Memorial Day, originally called “Decoration Day,” was officially proclaimed by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11.

General Logan asked that we cherish “tenderly the memory of our heroic dead, who made their breasts a barricade between our country and its foes. Their soldier lives were the reveille of freedom to a race in chains, and their deaths the tattoo of rebellious tyranny in arms. We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance. All that the consecrated wealth and taste of the nation can add to their adornment and security is but a fitting tribute to the memory of her slain defenders.”

Freedom is never free.

Here is a round-up of coverage.

The importance of Memorial Day

Presidential proclamation

If you leave the blog here, watch this short video narrated by John Wayne on taps:

Honoring the Fallen

Memorial Day by Blackfive, a MilBlogger

Times Free Press, note it has the casualties from each war.

US Department of Veterans Affairs listing of Events

The Patriot Post

Memorial Cemetery in Belgium

Arlington Cemetary

The meaning of Memorial Day

The Sacrifices We Salute

More on the Gitmo Trials

Trying  not to cooperate, the terrorists accomplished their jobs.  What is ironic is that in 2008, they already pleaded guilty so they could die as martyrs.  If the trial had not been stopped so Attorney General Holder could put them on display, this would have been over.

To provide balanced coverage, I picked a site that is the opposite in ideology from yesterday’s source.  I will let the readers make a decision on who covers it fairly.  I only care about justice.

The other defendants — Ramzi Binalshibh, Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa al Hawsawi – joined Mohammed in refusing to answer questions from Army Col. James Pohl, the judge presiding over the proceedings.

At one point, two defendants got up and prayed alongside their defense tables under the watchful eyes of troops arrayed along the sides of the high-security courtroom.

Bin Attash was put in a restraint chair for unspecified reasons, then removed from it after he agreed to behave.

Lawyers for all defendants complained that the prisoners were prevented from wearing the civilian clothes of their choice, in a proceeding equally slowed by technical legal questions about defense complaints about the court’s authority and access to evidence and translators.

Brigadier General Mark Martins, the chief prosecutor of the Pentagon’s Office of U.S. Military Commissions told Fox News that he “understands the skepticism” about access to evidence, but some still remains classified.

Mohammed’s civilian lawyer, David Nevin, said his client was not responding because he believes the tribunal is unfair. He also suggested Mohammed was not wearing the earphones because it reminded him of being tortured.

All 5 men occasionally looked through what looks like the Koran, magazines, and other reading materials.

9/11 Terrorist Trial

I’ll try not to take sides and let justice be served.  I’ll post events that are being covered as they occur.  I don’t know if KSM was really the mastermind as he claims or has delusions of grandeur.  Either way, he has all the appearances of being a troublemaker.

At least it is a military trial instead of a civil trial (he’s not a citizen of the US, rather an enemy) in the US with the ability to get off on a technicality.  We should see it to conclusion.

He and the others want to die as martyrs, for the only guarantee in the Koran of reaching heaven is dying in Jihad, although Gitmo may not qualify.

I caught shit from the Muslims at IBM who said they were offended by my calling Muslims Terrorists.  Junaidah Dahlan from Accenture started in on my blog and I just said I’m calling it like it is.  The terrorists were and almost always are Muslims Junaidah.  Take your offense elsewhere

From the WaPo:

This weekend’s arraignment marks the beginning of the third major effort to bring the 9/11 conspirators to justice. The Obama administration dropped earlier military-commission charges against them when it decided in late 2009 to bring the 9/11 case to federal court in New York. But Congress, not wanting Guantanamo detainees brought to the United States, blocked the civilian trials. Meanwhile, the administration’s own view of the institution was evolving. When President Obama first took office, he froze commission proceedings with the apparent intention of shutting them down. But later that year the administration shifted gears and worked with Congress to make small but important adjustments to the Bush-era Military Commissions Act. These left commission proceedings more closely resembling the norms of a federal court trial.

Live or die from Wired

It’s been a long time since KSM was last in court. In 2008, during an arraignment for a commission that ultimately got cancelled, he quickly pled guilty to multiple murder counts. “This is what I want,” he told the court, in English. “I’m looking to be martyr for long time.”

That case was interrupted for a variety of procedural reasons, and KSM never got his chance. In the intervening years, Congress and the Obama administration reformed the controversial military trials — making it easier to seek capital punishment, by providing detainees with so-called “learned counsel” lawyers specifically skilled at death-penalty cases, which makes such sentences less likely to be reversed on appeal. Last month, after flipping a key detainee to testify against KSM, the government brought charges against KSM and four alleged accomplices for the 9/11 plot. “If convicted,” the Defense Department clarified, “the five accused could be sentenced to death.”

However much the commission procedures have changed, KSM’s ambitions probably haven’t. “He wants to die because it fits into his massively egotistical narrative,” says Josh Meyer, author of the recent book The Hunt for KSM. “He’s like Napoleon. Wasting away in a cell is not his style. Going out in a bang of glory is.”

That calculation means that the 12 U.S. military officers who will decide if a convicted KSM lives or dies will face more than a narrow legal choice. They’ll also, however unfairly for them, have the burden of a policy choice. Should KSM be put to death, it might simultaneously provide a measure of closure for the families of his victims and allow al-Qaida’s remaining acolytes to portray him as a martyr.

D-Day 2011, Remembering 67 years Ago

First, let’s start with President Reagan’s speech about D-Day on the 40th Anniversary

For the most graphic description of what took place, read BlackFive

Next, let’s look at the view of the beach that was taken

Here is the visual provided by the Army

It was one of the bloodiest days of WWII with the Germans cutting down our soldiers from pill boxes as they hit the beach, many seasick.  The sea was red with blood and it took days to clean up the beaches, but this was the beginning of the march to Berlin.  It was the “surge” that won the war.

As I’ve commented before, you do not negotiate the end of a war, nor the exit strategy.   You win and gain surrender, then negotiate the terms of surrender.  Pulling out just lets the enemy know how long they have to wait, then where to re-group.  Today’s enemy’s, terrorist Muslims hate the US and the West mostly because of the liberal values that are against their beliefs.  I especially blame Hollywood, MTV, College professors and the hippies of the 60’s for this.

Once, the world counted on America to know that if all else failed, they could count on us to be there.   With our leadership today, they don’t have that assurance.

D-Day was one of our greatest and most terrible moments in history.  I salute those who showed bravery and fought for the freedom we have today.

Memorial Day 2011

I am so proud of our country and honor those who paid the ultimate price for our freedom.  It peeves me to no end when some who have been our allies take shots at our country just because we are not like them.  We are not.  We are our own country, based on a Judeo Christian set of principles that have made the exeptionalism of our country great.  It peeves me worse when it is internal. America has been more benevolent, contributed more to the welfare of mankind in it’s short history than any other country in history.  The USA is the only country that built itself rather than conquer another.   We have made sacrifices for the freedom of others our mission.  We have joined with some countries and fought against the same either with bullets or words.

So on this Memorial Day, we remember those who fought the fight for freedom that others trample and don’t appreciate.  I for one, honor them and understand how tough it must have been to go where you didn’t want to go, fight with and on behalf of others who wanted to take freedom from the world.

America has been a uniquely productive nation: a font of invention, creativity and economic dynamism. In America, tens of millions of people have risen from poverty. The United States has been a singularly generous, if not always effective, provider of assistance to other countries including those where Americans are not popular.

My father saw Europe tear itself apart in the 40’s, a continent that has been at each others throats for hundreds of years.  My uncle saw the atrocities of the Pacific Theater as a B-29 bomber Captain.  We now face attack from radical terrorist Muslims from the outside and socialism attacking Capitalism or those who invent faux issues like Anthropogenic Global Warming from the inside.  Now, other religions are trying to take our holiday from us.

We must stand on the principles that made this country great, honor the memory of those who gave their lives to make us free and stand up to those who wish to defeat us now, or tear us down because we are not like them or are able, willing and ready to defend ourselves  and our freedoms This is unlike the pacifistic and appeasers and even some of our current deleterious leaders who didn’t understand what Patton, MacArthur, Nimitz, Bradley and others knew.  You fight to win, then you negotiate the terms of surrender and how business will be conducted.  Even on my blog, there are some that just have no clue as to what we are about as demonstrated in the absurd comments of this entry.

Others feel this way also like Ricky Gilleland, quoting from this article:

Quiet, soft-spoken 17- year-old Ricky Gilleland spends most weekends surrounded by tombstones, as he walks through Arlington National Cemetery just outside Washington, D.C. looking for the burial sites of those individuals who have died in the line of duty since September 11, 2001. Gilleland has taken on the job that the historic cemetery has not been able to do itself.

Through his website, preserveandhonor.com, Gilleland has cataloged the thousands who are laid to rest in Section 60 of Arlington Cemetery. With a camera in hand, Gilleland shoots a photo of both the front and back of the headstone, “to provide a virtual place for loved ones and friends to both locate the graves of the fallen and reflect on the memory of their sacrifice.”

Or these great American’s who realize why we have Memorial Day:
 GM’s Place The Last Battle
So I don’t wish a happy Memorial Day, although I hope you enjoy the hot dogs and family celebration.  Rather, remember those who fought so that you could live free

The 65th Anniversary of the Hiroshima Bomb

August 6, 2010 is the 65th anniversary of the introduction to the nuclear age.  Since then, over 1000 nuclear bombs of various configurations have been detonated by multiple countries, but only 2 have been in wartime.

Some say it was barbaric, I’m taking the position that it saved millions of lives.  At that time “while the infrastructure and industrial capacity of Japan may have been ruined, the army was committed to and capable of suicidal resistance to the end.”

That is difficult to comprehend unless you understand the dedication to the emperor as a god, and the Samurai code of death by suicide before capture.  Even when the Allies fought the Germans in the European Theater, both sides wanted to live and many surrendered before death.  Not so in the Pacific theater where many Japanese were dropped off on Islands without provisions and told to live (as cannibals), documented in “Flyboys”.  In fact, very few Japanese prisoners were taken as they either died fighting, or committed seppaku.

History notes the use of the bomb was first and foremost used to end a war against an enemy who was determined never to surrender.

While the Americans and their fellow countries were preparing for the Japanese invasion, they predicted the loss of life on both sides to be north of 2 million.

Ultimately, there had to be a statement of finality to convince this mentality of the utter futile nature of continuing.  The bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki did this.  My uncle, then a B-29 Pilot told me that far more damage and more lives were lost by the fire bombing, but it didn’t break the will of the Japanese people.

Victor Davis Hanson explains:

Japan still refused to surrender and upped its resistance with thousands of Kamikaze airstrikes. By the time of the atomic bombings, the U.S. Air Force was planning to transfer from Europe much of the idle British and American bombing fleet to join the B-29s in the Pacific.

Perhaps 5,000 Allied bombers would have saturated Japan with napalm. The atomic bombings prevented such a nightmarish incendiary storm.

The bombs also cut short plans for an invasion of Japan — an operation that might well have cost 1 million Allied lives, and at least three to four times that number of well-prepared, well-supplied Japanese defenders.

World War II was the most deadly event in human history. Some 60 million people perished in the six years between Germany’s surprise invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, and the official Japanese surrender on Sept. 2, 1945. No natural disaster — neither the flu pandemic of 1918 nor even the 14th-century bubonic plague that killed nearly two-thirds of Europe’s population — came close to the death toll of World War II.

Perhaps 80 percent of the dead were civilians, mostly Russians and Chinese who died at the hands of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Both aggressors deliberately executed and starved to death millions of innocents.

World War II was also one of the few wars in history in which the losers, Japan and Germany, lost far fewer lives than did the winners. There were roughly five times as many deaths on the Allied side, both military and civilian, as on the Axis side.

Further, evidence was found that the Japanese had their own nuclear bomb and tested it on the Island of Hungnam days after the “bomb” was dropped on Hiroshima. So this act not only saved millions of lives, it now appears to have stopped a nuclear war. Reporter David Snell has documented this.

American soldiers found and destroyed a cyclotron in Japan shortly after the attack.



So ultimately, the goal of all war and the way it should be fought was achieved, to win.  You fully defeat your enemy, then negotiate the terms of surrender.  I only wish that today’s political correctness would go away and we would let the soldiers do their job without the meddling of an incompetent congress and inexperienced leader and put in a man like Harry Truman who said “We will unleash a rain of terror from the air”.

We face this again and will continue to face it as everyone will challenge the top dog.  It is up to the free world to deliver what the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack knew.

This was both an important event in history and a lesson we should learn so that the next Hiroshima is not named New York.

September 11, 2001, Good vs. Evil

Another day that will life in infamy? The comparisons are there. America was attacked, on our home soil, and we retaliated.

I like to watch human nature. Here are my observations. Bully’s attack the weak. No response to 8 separate terrorist attacks on US in 8 years starting in 1993 emboldens anyone to take the next step. They even declared war on the USA in 1996 with no response.

Cowards attack and run and hide, or surrender.

Hero’s stand for what is right and do the right thing, despite what naysayers will snipe at.

Here’s another comment on human nature, from the beginning of man (actually since the fall of Lucifer from Heaven, but I’ll keep it to man for non believers in God), there has been a struggle with good vs. evil and/or right vs. wrong. There is too much evidence permeating our archives of history to deny it. We all have to face it daily, you can look within yourself to see the internal struggle to know it exists.

The Parameters of Good and Evil

We judge based on what we are familiar with. Here is what the world generally views as the good side.

Here are three of the biggest mass murderers in history, who most generally view as evil.

Mao.jpg hitler.pngStalin1.jpg

Deliberately plotting to kill other innocent people without provocation or to protect oneself is evil (not to mention the 6th commandment). So I’ll put the act of 9/11 in the evil column. Now most don’t want to face this decision… that we shouldn’t judge. Worse, some want to politicize it or dream up conspiracy theory. But don’t most think that the murder of 6 million Jews as evil, or 10’s of millions of Russians or Chinese murdered at the hands of Stalin and Mao evil? So the evidence equates the hideous attack on the twin towers as evil with evil intent.

Here is a timeline to the attack of the Wold Trade Center Towers.

To many people are afraid to call evil evil, to excuse… or worse to forget. You have to treat a coward, a bully or evil the same. You must stand and fight back, to stay the course for right vs. wrong until you overcome and fully defeat it, or it will come back time and time again. So we either stop this evil or our way of life, freedom of religion, women’s’ rights, democratic society and yes, even the right to dissent will be gone, and we will wear burkas and cower to evil.

This is a tough fight that is not like a battle over borders. It is an enemy that peeks in and out of caves and safe houses. But we must overcome the political overtones and stay on the side of good and right, or suffer the fate of the alternative. Besides being evil, they clearly state that they want to kill Americans and all infidels (those that won’t convert to Islam). That’s all Americans (and other countries for that matter) regardless of race, creed, religion, gender or whether they are adult or child.

Not politically correct I know, but neither was 9/11. We have the chance to right a great wrong. Let’s not miss the opportunity.

September 2, 1945, The End of the Pacific Theater, WWII

300px-MissouriSurrender.jpg

After a long battle with an enemy that would fight to the death rather than surrender, Japan signed an unconditional surrender to end WWII in the Pacific Theater.

Unlike the battle in the European theater which had previously ended, the Japanese fought on even when the result was known to both sides. It was a greater honor to die fighting, and the ultimate dishonor was to surrender. The US had to make an ultimate statement to convince Japan of the futility of fighting on, that total destruction awaited them if they didn’t give up the fight.

180px-Vjday_kiss.jpg

There was much happiness in the streets that it was over, but much work remained. The Allied forces occupied western Europe and Japan for some 10+ years (and still have a military presence) to help rebuild them and turn both into economic success stories as they embraced freedom, democracy and capitalism. I wonder if these lessons will be learned in the middle east?

Hiroshima, August 6, 1945

Truly a turning point in the history of man with the ushering in of the nuclear age. Fortunately, it hasn’t been used again, but we’ve lived under the threat of nuclear “mutual self destruction” since then. Through the cold war to the bullying threats of North Korea and Iran, it stays in the back of our minds that the splitting of the atom is either an environmentally useful source of energy or a terrible weapon.

While many died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (the second bomb did not strike it’s intended target so casualties were less than the first bomb), historians agree that it saved civilian lives by stopping the invasion of Japan by the Allied forces from fighting an extended battle. The Japanese have a proud history of being great warriors going back to the times of the Samurai, so giving up was not in the battle plan. Their will to perservere had to be broken or the invasion was inevitable.

I ran across an archive of the story dated August 7, 1945 from the Orlando Sentinel when going through my father’s archives, which even then didn’t describe the magnitude due to the secrecy of this project. We had to hide the development from our enemy and use our ingenuity to create it before Hitler had the weapon, our then greatest fear.It’s a good thing the NY Times didn’t know about it and publish the story prior to attack. Interesting that it describes the target as an Army city.

It is known that the fuse for the bomb fuse was radio proximity technology, which my father helped develop during the war.

USS Indianapolis

On July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis was sunk after delivering the Hiroshima bomb on a super secret mission. So secret, it was days before it was even noticed missing.

When it was hit, 900 of the 1196 men went into the water. Less than 300 came out when they were sighted by accident and rescued after those horrible days. If you recall the movie Jaws, Quint told the story of what happened to the men. Although some died from the torpedo blast, most drowned or were taken by sharks. I always thought as a kid that being eaten was the worst way to go, but I was thinking Lion at the time.

I watched a show on the History Channel about this fateful voyage. Most of the men didn’t even know that they were delivering the “bumb” as Quint called it.

quint.jpg

Here’s the description from the movie that tells the gruesome details:

Hooper: You were on the Indianapolis?
Brody: What happened?
Quint: Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin’ back from the island of Tinian to Leyte… just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn’t see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that when you’re in the water, Chief? You tell by looking from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know, was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin’, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know, it was kinda like old squares in the battle like you see in the calendar named “The Battle of Waterloo” and the idea was: shark comes to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin’ and hollerin’ and screamin’ and sometimes the shark go away… but sometimes he wouldn’t go away. Sometimes that shark he looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. And, you know, the thing about a shark… he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be living… until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then… ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red, and despite all the poundin’ and the hollerin’, they all come in and they… rip you to pieces. You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don’t know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday morning, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boatswain’s mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up, down in the water just like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist. Noon, the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us. He swung in low and he saw us… he was a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper. Anyway, he saw us and he come in low and three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and starts to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened… waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water; 316 men come out and the sharks took the rest, July the 30th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

In 2017, a search from Paul Allen of Microsoft has found the wreckage of the Indianapolis 3 miles under the surface on the ocean floor.  It is for some an undersea tomb as is the USS Arizona.

Here is a picture of the Fat Boy bomb that was on the Indianapolis.  I recently visited ground zero and the Hiroshima museum.  It made it clear from the pictures of women, kids and old people who were being trained to fight as both sides anticipated an invasion.

fatman a bomb hiroshima

Ground Zero where it was dropped:

2014-03-19 23.12.06Shortly after this, the bomb was dropped and the war in the pacific theater was over. God bless those men who made the ultimate sacrifice for peace and freedom.  They saved millions of lives as the Japanese were preparing to kill or die in an invasion.  Upwards of 2 million lives were saved.

Nagasaki was chosen as the next target as it was mainly occupied by military forces, so it was both strategic and civilian collateral damage was held back.

Further, evidence was found that the Japanese had their own nuclear bomb and tested it on the Island of Hungnam days after the “bomb” was dropped on Hiroshima. So this act not only saved millions of lives, it now appears to have stopped a nuclear war. Reporter David Snell has documented this.

DID IT SAVE LIVES?

If you look at the last battle before dropping the bomb which was Okinawa, it was one of the most bloody battles of the Pacific.  Japan would have been worse for both the US and the Japanese.

Victor Davis Hanson describes it below.

There were also some 2 million Japanese soldiers fighting throughout the Pacific, China and Burma — and hundreds of thousands of Allied prisoners and Asian civilians being held in Japanese prisoner of war and slave labor camps. Thousands of civilians were dying every day at the hands of Japanese barbarism. The bombs stopped that carnage as well.

The Soviet Union, which signed a non-aggression pact with Japan in 1941, had opportunistically attacked Japan on the very day of the Nagasaki bombing.

By cutting short the Soviet invasion, the bombings saved not only millions more lives, but kept the Soviets out of postwar Japan, which otherwise might have experienced a catastrophe similar to the subsequent Korean War.

World War II was the most deadly event in human history. Some 60 million people perished in the six years between Germany’s surprise invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, and the official Japanese surrender on Sept. 2, 1945. No natural disaster — neither the flu pandemic of 1918 nor even the 14th-century bubonic plague that killed nearly two-thirds of Europe’s population — came close to the death toll of World War II.

Perhaps 80 percent of the dead were civilians, mostly Russians and Chinese who died at the hands of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Both aggressors deliberately executed and starved to death millions of innocents.

World War II was also one of the few wars in history in which the losers, Japan and Germany, lost far fewer lives than did the winners. There were roughly five times as many deaths on the Allied side, both military and civilian, as on the Axis side.

It is fine for Secretary of State Kerry and President Obama to honor the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims. But in a historical and moral sense, any such commemoration must be offered in the context of Japanese and German aggression.  What the president forgot were these actions that were stopped at Hiroshima:

He forgot the Bataan Death March conducted by the peaceful Japanese war machine.

He forgot the Sandakan Death March

He forgot murder and cannibalism on the Kokoda Track.

He forgot conscripting women for sexual slavery in Japanese Army brothels.

He forgot the mutilation and murder of Dutch civilians in Borneo.

He forgot the murder and cannibalism of captured American pilots.

He forgot the murder of American pilots and air crew at Midway.

He forgot the bombing of the hospital ship Manunda.

He forgot the sinking of the hospital ship Centaur.

Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan started the respective European and Pacific theaters of World War II with surprise attacks on neutral nations. Their uniquely barbaric war-making led to the deaths of some 50 million Allied soldiers, civilians and neutrals — a toll more than 500 times as high as that of Hiroshima.

Update:  The last surviving member of the Enola Gay died at age 93 in July of 2016.  Theodore Van Kirk was the navigator.  a brief excerpt regarding the issue of War and dropping the bomb is as follows:

The crews that dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were seen by Americans as saviors for ending the war. But over the years, the morality of atomic warfare and the need for the bombings has been questioned.

Mr. Van Kirk joined his fellow crewmen in unwavering defense of the atomic raids.

“We were fighting an enemy that had a reputation for never surrendering, never accepting defeat,” he said. “It’s really hard to talk about morality and war in the same sentence.”

He continued: “Where was the morality in the bombing of Coventry, or the bombing of Dresden, or the Bataan Death March, or the Rape of Nanking, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor? I believe that when you’re in a war, a nation must have the courage to do what it must to win the war with a minimum loss of lives.”

UPDATE 2: I ran across this article recently discussing “A Reality Check For Those Who Deplore The Nuking Of Japan”.  It’s a good read and another intellectually intriguing article on the morality of bombing vs. fighting.

Excerpt:

Nowadays, many question whether those bombs were necessary.  Given that they killed almost exclusively civilians and that the second of the two was dropped only two days after the first, many people have concluded that the attack was immoral.  Today, the typical American is likely to react to the words “Hiroshima” and “Nagasaki” with a vague sense that our country did something wrong.

But the nuking of Japan was a moral act: war is hell for those who do the actual fighting, so those two bombs put an end to their suffering.  This was true for the soldiers on both sides (even a Japanese soldier must have felt relieved to know he was going to survive unscathed).  A purely theoretical model for explaining why dropping nukes was bad appeals only to those who have no skin in the game.

The Japanese war had already killed millions, most of whom were civilians.  The two nukes killed 140,000.  Do the math.  It is a distasteful application of arithmetic, but it is an application that soldiers have to do all the time in their struggle to win a war.

IED's, explosives and explosive behavior

IED – Improvised Explosive Device

IED – Intermittent Explosive Disorder, better known as road rage.  Just renamed this week.
How can it be that these two have the same acronym?  Maybe it is the result is the same – either death or destruction of property?  I know when I lived in Miami, you had to be very careful about who you got mad at and gave the 1 finger salute to.  Since there are a lot of drug bad guys there, people got shot for road rage.  A lot of cars got run into and a lot of fights happened.
A study was released Monday in the June issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, and was based on a national face-to-face survey of 9,282 U.S. adults who answered diagnostic questionnaires in 2001-03.   It showed that about 5 percent to 7 percent of the nationally representative sample had the IED disorder, which would equal up to 16 million Americans. That is higher than better-known mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, Coccaro said.

The average number of lifetime attacks per person was 43, resulting in $1,359 in property damage per person. About 4 percent had suffered recent attacks.

Lot’s of people, soldiers and civilians have died because of IED’s in the middle east.   Seems to be a link between the two –  bad guys and a bad attitude.

Now I’ve been as mad as anyone else at someone cutting me off, but I’ve learned that getting mad doesn’t do any good.  But when it happens, some times I wish I had an IED for my IED behavior.

June 6, 1944 – Operation Overlord

I’m taking a quick break from RSDC to pay homage to a very important day in history, without which we might not be here blogging at Disney. D-Day was a turning point in World War II where so much could have changed for the worse except for the bravery of so many men from many countries to fight for Freedom.

For History buffs, here is the battle plan. So much could have gone wrong, including the weather which didn’t cooperate. Many died in the surf never having made the beach due to the fortified Nazi bunkers. But soldiers who were high school students and factory workers just weeks ago, showed courage that in a way saved the world. They took the beach, then fought to Germany and secured the European theater.
Here is a visual of the battle plan.

normandie2us.gif

So I salute those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the rest of us. May we be thankful for their efforts and appreciate their contribution to our freedom.

Here is another link to the memory of those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom.

We Remember

Today is Memorial day here in the states. It is the day that we remember the 800,000+ who gave their lives, paying the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom of America and other countries. Although this is an American remembrance, many from other counties also died for our freedom.

ARLINGTON.jpg

I shed a tear in church yesterday, the first since my fathers funeral. They called up the soldiers who were in either the Army, Navy, Airforce, Coast Guard or Marines and played their theme song. I was very proud to be an American and thought of the many they served with who couldn’t make the walk to the front of the church. It was a wake up call that we live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. We were also reminded that another paid the ultimate sacrifice for us 2000 years ago on the cross for our freedom.

But today is the day we stop to recognize that freedom is not free. It is defended by those who are brave. Many went to serve their country and didn’t return so that we can think and say what we want without a cruel dictator or regime censoring it, and many have tried over the years. I for one am grateful.

I’m also lucky as two generations of soldiers before me served and lived so that I can type this. My Grandfather who was in the Calvary in WWI….
si soldier.jpg

and my Father who served in WWII.

dad soldier 2.jpg

I was going through some old clippings and found one from the AP that documented my Dad’s efforts..

proximaty fuse article.jpg

Today at 3 PM, there will be a moment of silence to honor and to remember these who didn’t ask to be chosen, but went anyway. Here is the text:

The White House Commission on Remembrance is an independent government agency whose missions include:

  • Promoting the spirit of unity and remembrance through observance of The National Moment of Remembrance at 3 PM local time on Memorial Day;
  • Ensuring the nation remembers the sacrifices of America’s fallen from the Revolutionary War to the present;
  • Recognizing those who served and those who continue to serve our great nation and reminding all Americans of their common heritage.

So while we splash in the pool, eat at a cook out and enjoy our activities, let us not forget that it was paid for with a heavy price.

IBM Bloggers, Who are we – Grady Booch

grady.jpg

As always, I really like doing these bloggerviews, this one especially. A lot of it is because I get to talk to some of the smartest people at IBM and in this case, the industry. For as much as he’s done, Grady has the right to enjoy celebrity status being an IBM fellow and a leader in the IT world, yet he is very down to earth and we had a very enjoyable conversation. I know you’ll enjoy reading this as much as I did learning from him.

A bit of history, when we first thought of the concept of the developerWorks Blog, the discussion came up that we needed blogger of rock star status to gain notoriety. The first name that came up was Grady. I knew when I started my blog, that this was one of the discussions I wanted to have, now you can too.
Note: Grady is hosting a blogger meetup at the Rational Users Conference June 6th from 6-8 pm, see you there.

Were you a rebel as a kid?
In a different way. I built my first computer from scratch when I was 12. I had borrowed a book called Computer Design, and used it as a manual to create my first computer. I saved my allowance to buy discrete transistors and so I built from scratch. My parents didn’t really know how to deal with me. In addition to the computers, I built my own laser and I was into model rockets. You could say I was a classical geek. In fact, I was a geek before it was cool to be a geek.

I built my computer because I really wanted to program. The computer did four function math and had 256 bits of memory. I thought it would be cool to program so before high school I wanted a job in computers and I went knocking on doors of all the local computer companies, to no avail. I then went to the local IBM sales office and a sales guy sat with me at a lunch table and gave me a book on Fortran. He probably thought that I would go away after reading it, but a week later, I came back with some programs I’d written and I asked for computer time. He got time for me on weekends on an IBM 1130 used by the Amarillo Public Utilities. My first program was a simulation of particles colliding at subatomic speed and a calculation of the release of energy. I still have the original deck of cards. Perhaps the one event that started me on computers was an article in Life magazine about a robot named Shaky built by Marvin Minsky. A few years ago, I approached the trustees at the Computer History Museum in California, urging them to also become a museum of software. While I was getting a tour of the emerging facility, John Toole told me to turn around too look at the original Shakey, sitting in a display behind me. That was so cool and it gave me a pleasant sense of closure.

One thing that my friends and their children are surprised at is these days that I always knew that I wanted to be a computer scientist.

How did your military career help you with what you do now?
So I was self taught until I went to the Air Force Academy. I had many scholarship offers including West Point, but chose USAFA because they had an incredible computer science program. Also, I knew that when I graduated, I would be involved with some amazing technology in the real world from which I could learn. Some of the things I did in my first assignment was to help build systems in support of missile programs such as the Minuteman, Titan and Shuttle. One of the last things I did was work on a range safety system for both the West and East coast military ranges. Through this work, in my early 20’s, I learned what it means to build complex systems. We had hundred’s of thousands of lines of code, running on distributed computers, and so the issues of scale and complexity hit me early.

I’m proud to report that in 1979 I had my first email address on the Arpanet..

Around that time, I was also doing some Ada work and got involved as an instructor at USAFA. I was asked by Larry Druffle who was involved with the Ada Joint Program Office and later went on to found the Software Engineering Institute to consider how one would apply modern software techniques to Ada. It at through this work that I coined the phrase object oriented design.

It has been a long journey for me with in complex software, far before it was an issue in industry.

You say on your blog that you like to read. What interests you in your book selection?

My book listings on my site are mostly professional books. I have a spreadsheet includes all the books and journals I read there. Frankly, one of the reasons I built my current home is that wife and I ran out of space for our over 8,000 books.

I enjoy writers who are good story tellers like Michael Chabon and Terry Pratchet. Right now I’m reading Wuthering Heights, and I just finished reading a book on the history of Islam and another on prayer. I’m attracted to authors who have a command of the language, such as Umberto Eco, and I try to learn from them. As a result, I think I’m a curious combination of a geek albeit an articulate one.

I read more nonfiction than fiction. I like history, especially covering medieval and renaissance periods. In fact I play the Celtic harp.

Why did you become a blogger and How did/does that affect your job?
I started blogging before IBM asked me to. It happened in conjunction with the handbook on software architecture I decided to write. Being involve as a software architect in a multitude of systems in various industries across the world, I wanted to fill a serious gap in the body of knowledge of software engineering, by codifying the architectural patterns that are used in the world. I realized it then that it would be a journey instead of a discrete issue, so thus the blog as a forum for discussion during that journey.

So I began the blog but I couldn’t find any software out there that did what I wanted, so I wrote my own blogging software so I could work on the Handbook anywhere in world. I added an RSS feed to push XML to the IBM developerWorks site, so now it posts to both that site and mine..

What blogs do you read?
This will certainly reflect my political views, but I read crooksandliars.com. Slashdot is also a must have. My Handbook site lists the many that I read from time to time.

Do you like Sci-Fi, for example are you a trekkie?
Yes actually, in my office every copy of Star Trek, the Next Generation, episode so you could say I’m a trekker.

What are your favorite video games?
This is interesting as I just came back from a gamer convention. I just finished Halo 2, and am currently stuck inside the gates of hell in Quake 3. All things being equal, though, I’d rather read a good book.

Speaking of the game community, I’m attracted to it because this is an industry that’s really discovering the problems of building complex software.

Your job Title is IBM Fellow, but what does that mean to the man on the street

It means two things. My role as a Fellow is to invent the future and to destroy bureaucracy, I’m a designated free radical for IBM, and it’s my job to disturb the norm, to think outside of the box, to make people uncomfortable with the status quo, plus have I have a license to do so. It is to IBM’s organizational credit that it recognizes it needs such people.

If you weren’t an IBM fellow, what other job would you be doing, or what company would you be working for?
Now there is an interesting question. I’d probably be an poor itinerate musician or a priest. Baring those more radical career choices, I’d otherwise still be in the software world, doing the same things as I am doing now. My professional passion is how to improve and reduce the distance between vision and execution in delivering complex software-intensive systems.

What are you working on now?
I work on many things, some I can talk about, most I can’t. The Handbook is an important project for me, I spend a lot of time with customers, I help to manage Rational’s relationship with IBM research, and that involves me in efforts about radical simplification and what to do when Moore’s law dies.

What do you talk to Sam Palmisano about?

I don’t talk to Sam that much – he runs the business and I’m essentially a geek – but I do work with Nick Donofrio who works directly for Sam, We talk about various customer engagements, improving industry/academic relationships, and various issues of technical strategy.

What is your vision of the future, next year, 5 years 20 years?

Software has been, and will be always be fundamentally hard, In the future, we’ll be facing yet greater complexity . Open source, the commodization of operating systems and middleware, disposable software (that which is created by non developers), the presence of pervasive devices are elements of this growing complexity. Furthermore, the world is flat. No political or geographical boundaries limit creativity and complexity in software-intensive systems, and thus it’s also increasingly a problem of collaboration.

How long do you see yourself doing what you do now?

Until my heart stops beating.

What is your relationship with analysts? What would you say to them?

I have an A/R handler, I go where they tell me to go, What i talk about though is where I spend my time, namely worrying about the future, the primary horizon being 3-5 years out, with consideration of the forces that are morphing us.hat we need to get us there.

If you could write your legacy, what would it be?
There is a question I’ve never been asked before. How about “he’s not dead yet.”

Seriously through, I hope people will have viewed me as kind and gentle man who lived fully.

Everything else is just details.

What’s on your iPod?
Surprisingly, I don’t have and iPod, but I do have 9 Macs along with a Google Mini and two terabytes of storage, on which I’ve ripped all my music. I’m currently listening to Adiemus, , Dead Can Dance, Tori Amos, Loreena McKinnett, and Twila Paris.

What is the final frontier for users?
It’s curious what we do as software developers: at its best, be build things that are invisible. If we do it right, our work evaporates into the background and remains unnoticed, yet still providing socially and individually useful functionality.