More on the NW Syrian border.

Imagine a Kurdish unification corridor [in Syria] – running from Afroin to the rest of Rojava. This means Turkey cut off from Syria; crucially, the end of the Jihadi Highway; the end of Turkish secret services offering lavish logistical support for Daesh, from Big Macs to holidays in Turkey; the end of the Syrian stolen oil Daesh Highway. Not to mention the YPG – allied with the PKK – controlling a semi-autonomous province with the status of a proto-state.

Make no mistake: the Sultan will go no holds barred to prevent it. ISIS was never an “existential threat” to Ankara. On the contrary; it was always a very useful indirect “ally.” Ankara will continue to plug the myth that the road to Daesh’s [ISIS's] defeat goes through Assad regime change.

Russia exposed the bluff. Yet the lame duck Obama administration is still uncertain; should we use Erdogan even as he recklessly tries to pit NATO directly against Russia? Or should we dump him? The answer lies in who, and how, wins the break for the border.

"The Race for Syria's Northern Border." By Pepe Escobar, Russia Insider, 12/21/15.

The Jury Has Returned

     One jury, two cases:

     In Denmark, lawmakers are pushing to have such sex education included in mandatory language classes for refugees. The German region of Bavaria, the main entry point to Germany for asylum seekers, is already experimenting with such classes at a shelter for teenage migrants in the town of Passau.

     By “sex education,” the Times is referring to classes that seek to teach Muslim immigrants that rape is wrong. But read on.

     Norway, however, has been leading the way. Its immigration department mandated that such programs be offered nationwide in 2013, and hired a nonprofit foundation, Alternative to Violence, to train refugee center workers in how to organize and conduct classes on sexual and other forms of violence. The government provided funding for two years to pay for interpreters for the classes and is now reviewing the results and whether to extend its support....

     Many refugees “come from cultures that are not gender equal and where women are the property of men,” Mr. Isdal said. “We have to help them adapt to their new culture.”

     Note that critical phrase: “cultures that are not gender equal,” etc. We’ve been told this “culture” lie over an over again. But do please read on.

     The first such program to teach immigrants about local norms and how to avoid misreading social signals was initiated in Stavanger, the center of Norway’s oil industry and a magnet for migrants, after a series of rapes from 2009 to 2011.

     Henry Ove Berg, who was Stavanger’s police chief during the spike in rape cases, said he supported providing migrants sex education because “people from some parts of the world have never seen a girl in a miniskirt, only in a burqa.” When they get to Norway, he added, “something happens in their heads.”

     “Something happens in their heads” -- ? Excuse me? The “something” that “happened in their heads” happened when they were children. It’s called Islam, and it is most emphatically not a “culture.”

     That’s the first case.

---

     Religious dictates, once accepted, can only be rejected along with the religion that dictated them. Moreover, as most religions claim that one’s fortunes in the afterlife depend upon one’s conduct in this world, there’s no way for any law or other temporal inducement to compete with them.

     Islamic doctrine essentially dehumanizes women. According to Islamic teaching, women are untrustworthy, controlled by their lusts, must always be under the hand of a man, have no rights, and when unclothed constitute a justification for rape. Remember this incident from a few years back?

     In a Ramadan sermon that has outraged Muslim women leaders, Sydney-based Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali also alluded to the infamous Sydney gang rapes, suggesting the attackers were not entirely to blame.

     While not specifically referring to the rapes, brutal attacks on four women for which a group of young Lebanese men received long jail sentences, Sheik Hilali said there were women who "sway suggestively" and wore make-up and immodest dress ... "and then you get a judge without mercy (rahma) and gives you 65 years".

     "But the problem, but the problem all began with who?" he asked.

     The leader of the 2000 rapes in Sydney's southwest, Bilal Skaf, a Muslim, was initially sentenced to 55 years' jail, but later had the sentence reduced on appeal.

     In the religious address on adultery to about 500 worshippers in Sydney last month, Sheik Hilali said: "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?

     "The uncovered meat is the problem."

     The sheik then said: "If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred."

     He said women were "weapons" used by "Satan" to control men.

     What the sheik said above is Islamic doctrine. It’s the will of God that women who dare to go about “uncovered,” or without the protection of a male relative, should be abused. A Muslim believes himself to be doing God’s will when he rapes such a woman – and note that in Islam-dominated countries, the victim cannot even complain to the law about having been raped for fear that she’ll be stoned to death for “adultery.”

     Yet Norway, Denmark, and no doubt other Scandinavian countries hope to “teach” Muslim immigrants, wholly dedicated to the teachings of Islam, that rape is wrong. We shall see.

---

     But I did say “one jury, two cases,” didn’t I? Note that the Times article I cited implicitly endorses the Norwegian and Danish efforts. The Times has never been terribly friendly toward traditional moral teachings. It causes me to wonder whether there’s anyone on its editorial staff who could frame a coherent argument why murder, for instance, is wrong.

     I was told some time ago of a philosophy class whose professor challenged his students to construct such an argument: “Why was it wrong for Cain to murder Abel?” The students floundered, one after another, until the professor called a halt to the exercise, and provided the answer:

     “Why was it wrong for Cain to murder Abel? Because it was.”

     Alternately, we have Herbert Spencer:

     I asked one of the members of Parliament whether a majority the House could legitimize murder. He said no. I asked him whether it could sanctify robbery. He thought not. But I could not make him see that if murder and robbery are intrinsically wrong, and not to be made right by the decisions of statesmen, then similarly all actions must be either right or wrong, apart from the authority of the law; and that if the right and wrong the law are not in harmony with this intrinsic right and wrong, the law itself is criminal. [From his series of essays on “The Proper Sphere of Government”]

     Or if you prefer, there’s C. S. Lewis:

     This thing which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgements. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgement of value in the history of the world. [From The Abolition Of Man]

     The project of the modern anti-moralist, regardless of whether he calls himself a “liberal,” a “progressive,” a “socialist,” or anything else, is wholly founded on the rejection of the Moral Law as it’s written into the nature of Man. The Times is owned and operated by such persons, and the peoples of Scandinavia accepted their school of thought long ago. And today they grapple with this incomprehensibly difficult proposition – teaching Muslims, who believe that to rape the “uncovered” woman is licit in the eyes of Allah and might well even merit praise, why rape is wrong – and find themselves unable to get a purchase on it.

     The “refugees” probably laugh at them when class is over. But God, the Author of the Moral Law, will have the last laugh. Ironically, the most pungent expression of that principle comes from an atheist who denounced religion itself:

     “Senor D’Anconia, what do you think is going to happen to the world?”
     “Just exactly what it deserves.”
     “Oh, how cruel!”
     “Don’t you believe in the operation of the moral law, Madame?” Francisco asked gravely. “I do.”

     [From Atlas Shrugged.]

     It’s happening to Scandinavia today...and perhaps all too soon it will happen here in America.

Make Obama Furious

     ...by circulating the following video:

     Few American politicians came out of 9/11 looking good. New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was one – and what he has to say in the above should be disseminated far and wide.

     Giuliani made New York City a place whose residents could take pride in it once again. It was his desitny to oversee the city’s response to the Islamic terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Here he is with Mark Steyn, to remind us about the facts of that day, and other matters of the present that could prove equally weighty.

Is this something staring us in the face?

The ultimate plan is to smash any homogeneity that exists and replace it with a US-led imperial system that relies on brute force to maintain "peace and order."

This is much easier achieved if people no longer have anything remotely in common with their neighbors. The microcosm of this demonic system is already playing out on Main Street, USA, where local police forces are actually receiving military-grade weapons to use against the American people - while our national borders remain open to killers, rapists and drug traffickers from South America (!).

In Europe, the very same tragedy is playing out like a cold-blooded murder in broad daylight. Thanks to America's reckless foreign policy agenda, which went absolutely insane following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, NATO countries are being helplessly dragged into battles and regardless of the public outcry and protests against these illegal wars, which have already happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and now Syria - all of which have resulted - or soon will result - in failed states.

But the real failed states will eventually be the old colonial powers of Europe, which sit on the front line of the refugee tsunami provoked by the US that is now crashing across the region, threatening to engulf every city from Lisbon to Helsinki.^[1]

The above is, shall I say, somewhat "out there" but is it really that far fetched? Is it far fetched compared to the insane "normal" way of conducting business?

Ask yourself what it is about multiculturalism, open borders, adulation of the foreigners, fawning over minorities, subversion of the constitution, and immigration madness (in Europe especially), among other things, that could have their origin in love of one's own people?

Applying the Holmesian principle I've discussed before, I conclude that once you eliminate here the impossible – love of one's own people as a motivating force – what you are left with, no matter how improbable, is the truth – hatred of one's own and a desire for the destruction of their homeland.

Step 1: eliminate homogeneity. Check.

Notes
^[1] "US Elites Are Trying to Destroy Europe with Immigrants." By Robert Bridges, Russi Insider, 12/20/15.

Neocon hell – elections.

To the chagrin of the [Washington] Post’s editors, Obama finally ceded to the more democratically defensible position that the Syrian people should pick their own leaders. After all, if Obama is right about how much the Syrian people hate Assad, elections would empower them to implement their own “regime change” through the ballot box. But that uncertain outcome is not what the Post’s editors want. They want a predetermined result — Assad’s ouster — regardless of the Syrian people’s wishes.^[1]

P.J. O'Rourke observed that "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." It's a witty thought that doesn't begin to describe the unbearable tragedies that politicians create.

The current U.S. obsession with "regime change" has been the cause of much suffering since the days that we encouraged a coup d'etat to remove Ngo Dinh Diem. Or removed Mosaddegh in Iran in 1953. The latter committed the unpardonable sin of nationalizing the Iranian oil industry. I dimly recall reading that he was considered a "leftist" but I rather think that what he advocated then now looks like a gift from God to the world compared to the snake who there, in later years, became, so to speak, top dog.

I don't know enough about Iranian history to connect the dots from that coup to the dour and murderous Ayatollah but it doesn't seem unreasonable to think that Iranians might have had a sour taste in their mouths where the U.S. and Britain were concerned in the future. I will say on this point that the Cold War had many stark imperatives that I am reluctant to dismiss out of hand. At least the decision to go after Mosaddegh was an honest attempt to continue exporting cut-rate oil from Iran rather than a class project to achieve international goodness dreamed up by some coeds or aging leftists with fantasies about braving sniper fire.

Notwithstanding that, somewhere I think we still think that foreigners are basically okay with having Americans run their lives for them. Don’t we all just love it when national and supranational globalist pricks tell us how to live, what to say, and how many foreigners we need to import to take our jobs?

Clever people think they can be like Santa and determine who in the world is naughty or nice, but it's much more difficult than they imagine. For some reason, Vladimir Putin is seen by the silk drawers wizards as particularly odious and hell bent on foreign military adventure. That's not been proved to my satisfaction by a long shot and I'd be more willing to entertain the thought if we didn't have 800 some air bases, naval bases, army bases, tank parks, and fortified PXs scattered around the world in some locations that seem to have little to do with protecting or asserting the national interests of the United States. Nor have Russian policies been responsible for the destruction and death in Syria (and Iraq and Libya) that have unleashed a human tidal wave now washing over Europe and, if Obama gets his fondest wish, us too. Eleven weeks of Russian operations in Syria as of today are not remotely comparable to the damage that U.S. and European lackeys have caused.

Marcus Aurelius thought that fortune was hard to divine and that "that men will do the same things nevertheless, even though thou shouldst burst." It's a healthier alternative strategy for the U.S. to embrace, that of not trying to pick winners and losers. Chavez was a socialist jerk whose daughter ended up, coincidentally, being one of the richest women in Venezuela. Vintage socialism one can have no doubt. He was an irritant for several years but the majority of the people there liked him well enough. Now they're lining up for toilet paper and soap. That's probably a more educational experience than our having removed him. And the only irritant from the U.S. was the correct, "Knock yourself out."

Frankly, that's the way to go – letting people choose their own lives. At this point in the history of the world liberalism, socialism, communism, dirigisme, statism, interventionism, and all manner of elite posturing and wine and brie partying is what the people of the world want. Reason and history aren't making a dent in that thinking, so there you are. H.L. Mencken said "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." In these times of the universal franchise, that's what's for dinner.

This is not an argument for living a passive life in all respects but a better case for activism is needed that the ones made by Clinton, Clinton, Obama, Kerry, Cameron, Hollande, and Merkel. Sometimes there something almost sacred about "what is" and something vile about "Assad must go."

Notes
^[1] "The Washington Post Throws a [Tantrum] Against Syria Democracy." By Robert Parry, Russian Insider, 12/23/15. Originally published at Consortium News.

Creating children vs. protecting them

Thanks to a post a few days ago at Western Rifle Shooters, which revealed the Nanny-Statist mentality to me in a whole new way, I reacquainted myself with the NRA's "Eddie Eagle" four step gun-safety program. Here's where I discuss the UK's "Stay Safe," guncrime safety program. All the pertinent links can be found below the YouTube video.

Really Quickies: Anachronism By Typo

     In a long but worthwhile article about U.S-Islamic relations throughout American history, specifically in the section about President Thomas Jefferson’s entreaties to the Barbary pirates before he authorized Decatur’s expedition, I found this most excellent typo:

     They sent peace missions laden with gifs...

     Why GIFs? Hadn’t JPGs been invented yet? Or were the Berbers fixated on lossless compression?

Dangerous Men

     The older I get, the more acutely sensitive I become to the meanings of words. In that light, Consider the following passage from AllahPundit at HotAir:

     The actual thought process here, I think, goes something like this: Cartoonish right-wing populism is the worst thing they can imagine in their own personal Overton window of American politics, therefore any cartoonish right-wing populist proposal must necessarily be enabling ISIS, the world’s worst, most dangerous group of people. It may not actually be true, and it might make no sense when you think about it for five minutes, but this is Larger Truth material if ever there was any.

     AllahPundit’s intended point is well taken, and his essay should be read in full. However, what I flashed on was his nomination of ISIS as “the world’s most dangerous group of people.” It prompted my inner lexicographer to set to work.

     Danger, as we use the term colloquially, isn’t the same as the military’s conception of threat. In the military lexicon, “threat” is solely about capabilities; it omits intention as something that could change in a moment. “Danger” partakes of other considerations. For Smith to regard Jones as dangerous, all the following must be approximately true:

1. Jones possesses the ability to inflict harm;
2. Jones is unopposed or inadequately opposed;
3. Jones is near enough to Smith to do him harm;
4. Jones is targeting Smith, his property, or his loved ones, perhaps explicitly;
5. Jones is difficult to spot as he advances, or is moving too quickly for Smith to defend against him.

     These conditions aren’t “perfectly conjunctive;” i.e., one or more of them could be untrue, or only weakly true, yet Smith could still rationally evaluate Jones as a danger to him, especially if his horizon of evaluation is distant in space, time, or both. The point is that Smith’s own perspective is at least as important as Jones’s armament.

     Consider Farmer Davis in rural Nebraska. Would he have a good reason to regard ISIS as “the world’s most dangerous group of people” to him? I would argue against it. From Davis’s perspective, while he might concede condition 1, the others are either false outright or so weakly true that they become irrelevant.

     Now consider Schoolteacher White, a resident of Paris. In his evaluation of ISIS as a possible danger to him, conditions 2 through 5 are much more strongly true than they were for Davis. He has much stronger incentives to prepare a defense, or to advocate for his government to act in his defense, especially given recent history.

     In analyzing the political will of various groups of people to “do something” about ISIS and the danger it represents, it’s the considerations above that we must address. The matter of targeting is particularly important, as groups known to employ terrorists and terrorist tactics have obvious incentives to target concentrated groups of people rather than thinly spread populations or isolated individuals.

---

     There are other dangers in the world than men who wield guns and bombs. Some of them travel under a veneer of benevolence, as Ronald Reagan pointed out when he said that “The nine most frightening words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” Consider the ways in which government actions claimed to be beneficent in intention can increase the dangers to you:

• By weakening your ability to look after yourself or your loved ones;
• By weakening your defenses against predators;
• By overloading the regional defenses that help to protect you;
• By causing predators to take a particular interest in you or your region;
• By actively transporting predators into your vicinity.

     I could make an airtight case that all five of those endangerments are effects of recent government policies in these United States. The irony becomes unbearable when one notes that resistance to those policies can get you the attention of government agents with guns – the unfriendly attention.

     (Perhaps we should add a sixth, particularly sinister endangerment: the creation of predators in our own households by the “public schools” and their systematic social-fascist indoctrination of American children. But I’ve been trying to quote Orwell a little less frequently, so I’ll let it pass for now.)

     Unlike ISIS, the government is uncomfortably near us all. No matter where you live in these United States, within a few miles there are men with badges and guns, some of whom will seize on any pretext to shoot you as an “imminent threat” -- to them.

---

     If I have a central point today, it’s that many a “protection” bestowed upon us by the Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnibenevolent State is actually an endangerment. But they do love to “protect” us. They must; they use the word so frequently. But really, what “protection” inheres in a deliberate policy of forbidding us the use of American natural resources, as is the case when Congress “protects” a huge swath of oil and gas-bearing land? What “protection” can we find in not being permitted to choose our own medical insurance, or in not being permitted access to certain drugs or therapies until the FDA has “approved” them? What “protection” is there in not being permitted handguns, semiautomatic rifles, or high-capacity clips and magazines?

     Who such edicts actually benefit is worth just as much thought as the nature of the “protection” itself.

     “There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men,” wrote Robert A. Heinlein in Starship Troopers. And it just might be that the most dangerous men of all to Americans are the “public servants” who undermine our individual rights and well-being from well-upholstered, air-conditioned offices, whose minions arrive unannounced, wreathed in brilliant smiles, proclaiming that “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

Bringers of death.

However, many people in their 70's today (and older) were caught in the maelstrom of cultural change and were unable, however hard they tried, to stop the destruction. Because back then, it was a microcosm. It had to become a macrocosm, it had to spread, metastasize, and threaten the very existence of civilization, the very existence of Christianity, before an awakening happened. This is because the billions of individuals on the earth are not all simultaneously at the same level of evolution, some being terminal thumb-suckers, others born mature and quick to face reality, and every other nuance in between. So it takes time - too much time, and look at how much time has been wasted with treasonous rulers and media - all bringers of death.

"An axis of good." By Tiberge, GalliaWatch, 12/22/15.

Bogus Western narrative in Syria.

From an interview with Sheikh Hassun in Damascus, Summer 2013:

[Sheikh Ahmad Badr Al -Din Hassun, Grand Mufti of Syria, and close confidant of Syrian President Bashar al –Assad] Hassun debunks the story of the alleged "popular uprising" in Syria as a cheap fairy tale. Information is circulating in politics and media about plans in which Syria ceases to exist as a nation state. Instead, the country with a long history would be split in various religious entities. The talk among other things is about an Alawite state on the coast, a Kurdish region in the north and a kind of Sunni caliphate in Damascus. The approximate two million Syrian Christians only have the opportunity in these simulations to pack their bags. The basis of such ideas to crush the Syrian nation-state is the assumption that one can no longer expect to have a secular state in which Sunnis (about 70 percent of the total population), Shiites, Alawites, Christians and Druze live together. The "Syrian uprising" was portrayed as a rebellion by the allegedly "oppressed Sunni majority" demanding its rights. The logic of many Western politicians: In a country with 70 percent of Sunnis, this quota should also apply to politics and business, everything else is brutal oppression. And they call this sectarian idea “democracy”. There is a considerable nuisance when this theory is shut down by the highest Sunni authority in the country, therefore, they try to hush him now in the West, and kill him in Syria.

"Father of the Nation." By Manuel Ochsenreiter, Manuel Ochsenreiter – Journalist, 10/21/15.

Russia's goals in Syria.

Therefore, Russia is fighting in Syria on a number of levels: we are actively taking up the fight against global and hegemonic aspirations of the U.S.; we are protecting our own national and Eurasian security interests by fighting the enemy before it can come to us; we are preserving Europe ahead of its decline because such a development would be harmful to us as well.

"Why we fight in Syria." By Alexander Dugin, Manuel Ochsenreiter – Journalist, 11/12/15.

"We are Turks."

He talks about his visit to the Turkish-Islamic communities. Many Turks there were German citizens, says Hassun. He wondered about why they spoke almost exclusively Turkish. Hassun asked them whether they saw themselves as Turks or German – they had German passports after all. "We are, of course, Turks" was the reply. "If that is so, then why don`t you go back to Turkey?"

~ Sheikh Ahmad Badr Al -Din Hassun, Grand Mufti of Syria, and "close confidant" of Syrian President Bashar al –Assad.

"Father of the Nation." By Manuel Ochsenreiter, Manuel Ochsenreiter – Journalist, 10/21/15.

Food for Thought

In military doctrine, there is something that resembles the old food pyramid, but actually pertains to cognition rather than nutrition.  Rather than illustrate the proportional intake of the various food groups recommended for sound health, the pyramid of cognitive hierarchy illustrates the relative levels of cognition necessary to make sound decisions.  The doctrinal publication puts it this way, “Commanders and staff require not only information to make these decisions, but also the knowledge and understanding that results in the wisdom essential to sound decision making.”

Think of the trouble that could be avoided if we (or our leaders) simply have wisdom.  Think of the satisfaction in always making the wise choice.  Knowing we have chosen the right option, taken the right path, or selected the most advantageous course of action.

If the optimal number of servings from each of the basic food groups to be put in our stomach each day is important, how much more important is that material we put in to our mind?   

Instead of grains and breads as found at the base of the food pyramid, the cognitive pyramid has “data” as its base.  It is interesting that both pyramids have as their foundation relatively innocuous items.  However, what should not be missed is that there is something lower than data, in fact, it is far worse than data – and that is junk food for the mind and misinformation.  Reality TV, the biased mainstream media, and liberal-secular education camps masquerading as places of higher learning will all wreck or rot the mind.  They are so unhealthy and counterproductive that they do not even have a place on the chart.  

The second level on the food pyramid is fruits and vegetables; second on the cognitive hierarchy is information.  Today we are inundated with data; the World Wide Web has tons of information.  Between blogs, banners, web pages, and pop-ups we are flooded with data and information.  The challenge each of us faces is turning the plethora of information into “useful knowledge through filtering, fusing, formatting, organizing, collating, correlating, plotting, translating, categorizing, and arranging so that it is useful for immediate application.”  

Third up on the food pyramid are meat and dairy; the cognitive pyramid’s third level is knowledge.  In the context of the cognitive hierarchy, “knowledge is information analyzed to provide meaning and value, or evaluated as to implications for the operation.”  Above knowledge is understanding -- that is, “knowledge that has been synthesized and had judgment applied to it in a specific situation to comprehend the situation’s inner relationships.”

The left talks about food deserts.  The USDA describes food deserts as, “urban neighborhoods and rural towns without ready access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food.”  I do not know about food deserts, but I do know there are many folks starving for knowledge.  In fact, it's not just knowledge, they are also low on information.  Unfortunately, we have all experienced the devastation that low-information voters can produce when they are allowed to be unsupervised in a voting booth.    

The highest tier on the food pyramid is oils; on the cognitive hierarchy, it is wisdom.  Perhaps it’s more than mere coincidence that the Bible often uses oil as a metaphor for the Holy Spirit.  It is only the Spirit of God that can make one truly wise.  I completely understand that some people find this hard to believe, but the fact of the matter is when it comes to God; you have to believe in order to understand.  

Here’s where there’s some good news and some bad news.  The good; there is a source of knowledge that is available to everyone.  The bad; very few find it.  It’s wrapped up in a relationship with the true and living God.  The same God who humbled himself and came to earth as a man.   

King David, a warrior and man after God’s own heart prophetically penned these words, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’  God looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.”  Seeking God is evidence of understanding.  

King David obviously didn’t get the memo on sensitivity and political correctness.  He’s pretty clear about it, denying God’s existence makes one a fool.  

David’s son Solomon put it this way, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

There’s no better time to taste and see that the Lord is good.  Wise men still seek Him.

Quickies: Incredible Surprises Dept.

     Who in the audience couldn’t see this coming?

     The anti-Christian Human Rights Campaign is asking the federal government to harass Christian schools that have asked for or been granted waivers that would allow them to live out their Christian faith.

     The 1972 Title IX amendments prohibiting sex discrimination in hiring, housing, and employment at schools receiving federal funds is at issue. The law allows religious schools to opt out of the requirements.

     On the heels of their huge Supreme Court win in the Obergefell v. Hodges decision mandating homosexual marriage coast to coast, the radical LGBT establishment is looking for their next win. They believe they have found it in going after religious companies and employers who may hold that accepting a normalization of the homosexual agenda is against their religious beliefs.

     You knew the whole “gay marriage” thing was a “camel’s nose under the tent” deal, didn’t you, Gentle Reader? Same-sex marriage was a thinly rationalized con job from the first. Yet after Obergefell v. Hodges we immediately saw it creep forward. We saw it destroy Brendan Eich for a political donation. We saw it try to sink the Ender’s Game movie because Orson Scott Card, a devout Mormon, opposes same-sex marriage. Did you really think that any institution that wanted to be left out of the swamp of homosexual perversion would be left alone for very long?

     When the “gay rights” stormtroopers screamed that “all we want is for our marriages to be recognized,” many of us were taken in. But the campaign for "marriage equality" was never about marriage or equality; it was just another part of the Left's quest for power and its determination to destroy every important Western institution or tradition.

     When a Left-aligned group says “All we want,” normal people should immediately translate it as “We want it all.” Because it's a lead-pipe cinch that they do.

Unities And Disunities

     I was dithering among a dozen assorted topics for an essay when I chanced upon the following video of a brief speech by legendary thriller writer Frederick Forsyth:

     Yes, it’s about Britain and the EU, it’s sixteen minutes long, and – horror of horrors! – it’s in British English. Watch it anyway. I promise that your time won’t be wasted.

---

     Among the most enduring fantasies of government worshippers has been the notion of a single, all-encompassing world government. I remember being intrigued by the idea myself, when I was much, much younger. But the aspect of the proposition that’s remained with me over the subsequent half-century is the way its proponents always characterized it as “inevitable.” Inevitable. Remember that word. It’s the one the Left is forever using about subjects like national health insurance. Its sole purpose is to silence, or at least weaken, resistance to the “inevitable” idea.

     In that most feared and despised of all venues for the clash of ideas, Reality, nothing is inevitable but death. Yet thinkers such as Bertrand Russell repeatedly promoted the idea of a world government as “inevitable,” mainly because they disliked or distrusted the Westphalian nation-state. Leftists’ ardor for the idea is understandable, as their dislike of small, independent polities free to deviate from their designs is a continuous thread through the history of collectivism. Yet even some intelligent men on the side of freedom, such as A. E. Van Vogt, have said that a single world government would be preferable to an array of independent nation-states.

     As passionate as the world-government camp has been, its leading lights have acknowledged, albeit grudgingly, that “you can’t get there in one step.” The League of Nations and the United Nations have demonstrated the difficulties rather starkly. So they’ve promoted regional federations and similar alliances as an intermediate state. The most recent sally in that direction is the European Union.

     The strains being put on Europe as a result of the EU have made unbelievers out of many Europeans who were once strongly in favor of complete, continental political unification. The sense that “we ought to have known better” is becoming ever stronger, especially in those countries that have suffered economically or have experienced significant cultural dilution as a consequence of the EU’s no-internal-borders policy. British sentiment for a complete withdrawal from the EU is strong and rising. Whether it will attain majority status, and whether the British political class would respect a majority vote to leave the EU, remain to be seen.

---

     What creates a stable polity? It’s a question without a definitive answer. Polities have formed and dissolved in innumerable ways over the centuries. There have always been arguments about the reasons for both, and there always will be.

     A single common language has been regarded as indispensable. Yet the bloodiest and most brutal wars in history have been civil wars, in which the sides shared a single language. Borders demarcated by Nature have been extolled as a critical factor, yet nations have come together without or despite such borders. Race, uniformity of technological attainment, cultural or ideological commonalities...the list goes on. No one really knows.

     What appears to be well established is that an enduring political union cannot be imposed “from above:” i.e., by the will of a political elite upon an averse population. Such a polity can only be held together by military force, and once a sufficient fraction of the subject population is determined to rebel, there’s no amount of force that can keep it together.

     The EU was formed by its political class, against the will of a fraction of the people of Europe that verged on a majority. It might well be to the EU’s advantage that there is no military force capable of perpetuating it. That will make the process of dissolution a good deal faster and more peaceful than it would otherwise be. Should the British vote themselves out, and should the British political class respect the referendum, all Brussels will be able to say is “goodbye and good luck to you.”

     I predict that should Britain depart the EU, Ireland will follow just behind it, Irish notions of independence from their British cousins notwithstanding.

---

     Among writers of fantasy and science fiction, few names are nearly as honored as that of the late Poul Anderson. Many of his novels and stories were either politically themed or bore important political subtexts. I consider the most powerful and thoughtful of them to be his Hugo Award winning novelette No Truce With Kings, which concerns an attempt by an alien race to “encourage” Mankind toward a world government. Here’s the climactic confrontation between one of the aliens and a representative, not of a particular state (though he is that), but of the human impulse toward self determination:

     “Listen, listen,” the being pleaded. “We came in love. Our dream was to lead you—to make you lead yourselves—toward peace, fulfillment...oh yes, we would also gain, gain yet another race with whom we could someday converse as brothers. But there are many races in the universe. It was chiefly for your own tortured sakes that we wished to guide your future.”
     “That controlled history notion isn’t original with you,” Speyer grunted. “We’ve invented it for ourselves now and then on Earth. The last time it led to the Hellbombs. No, thanks!”
     “But we know! The Great Science predicts with absolute certainty—”
     “Predicted this?” Speyer waved a hand at the blackened room.
     “There are fluctuations. We are too few to control so many savages in every detail. But do you not wish an end to war, to all your ancient sufferings? I offer you that for your help today.”
     “You succeeded in starting a pretty nasty war yourselves,” Speyer said.
     The being twisted its fingers together. “That was an error. The plan remains the only way to lead your people toward peace. I, who have traveled between suns, will get down before your boots and beg you—”
     “Stay put!” Speyer flung back. “If you’d come openly, like honest folk, maybe you’d have found some to listen to you. Maybe enough, even. But no, your do-gooding had to be subtle and crafty. We weren’t entitled to any say in the matter. God in heaven, I’ve never heard anything so arrogant!”
     The being lifted its head. “Do you tell children the whole truth?”
     “As much as they’re ready for.”
     “Your child-culture is not ready to hear these truths.”
     “Who qualified you to call us children—besides yourselves?”
     “How do you know you are adult?”
     “By trying adult jobs and finding out if I can handle them. Sure, we make some ghastly blunders, we humans. But they’re our own. And we learn from them. You’re the ones who won’t learn, you and that damned psychological science you were bragging about, that wants to fit every living mind into the one frame it can understand.
     “You wanted to re-establish the centralized state, didn’t you? Did you ever stop to think that maybe feudalism is what suits man? Some one place to call our own, and belong to, and be part of; A community with traditions and honor; a chance for the individual to make decisions that count; a bulwark for liberty against the central overlords, who’ll always want more and more power; a thousand different ways to live. We’ve always built supercountries, here on Earth, and we’ve always knocked them apart again. I think maybe the whole idea is wrong. And maybe this time we’ll try something better. Why not a world of little states, too well rooted to dissolve in a nation, too small to do much harm—slowly rising above petty jealousies and spite, but keeping their identities—a thousand separate approaches to our problems. Maybe then we can solve a few of them...for ourselves!”
     “You will never do so,” the being said. “You will be torn in pieces all over again.”
     “That’s what you think. I think otherwise. But whichever is right—and I bet this is too big a universe for either of us to predict—we’ll have made a free choice on Earth. I’d rather be dead than domesticated.”

     Perhaps the imminent fragmentation of the EU will provide another lesson of that sort. Concerning the implications for the future of these United States, I prefer to reserve judgment.

Is Europe dying?

Probably.

I constantly point out that European voters only give grudging, reluctant support to nationalist, salvationist parties. Fine in the long run as the pathetically small numbers do seem only to head upwards.

But the nature of Islam is so clear that really telling predictor of the future of Europe is what is missing. It's possibly my favorite analytical tool. What is someone NOT doing or saying?

What Europeans are NOT doing is flocking to the polls to hand overwhelming majorities to their nationalist parties. Obviously they do not like them. Ergo, they are choosing suicide or slavery.

Where Europeans DO show energy is in their wish to ferret out "Nazis," crucify the "far right," remain blissfully ignorant of the crimes of communism, criminalize free speech, lick the boots of deranged feminists, indulge in fantasies about human nature, worship foreigners and minorities, fawn over government, and steal from their more productive "fellow" citizens.

That's where the energy lies.

Doing something about millions of arrogant pricks in their midst does not enter into their daily schedule. Look at Germany. Over a million Muslim invaders have entered this year and Merkel is still in power. Yes, yes. There's some support for PEGIDA and AfD but it's nothing that a few hundred AntiFa thugs called out by the government can't deal with. Someone at Oberlin College should write a term paper on the paving stone as an adjunct to the democratic process.

The Swedes positively grovel at the feet of the scum who rape their women. The Italians use their navy as a taxi service for the invaders who will destroy their country.

Another take by Stanislav:

Europe is flooded, flooded by the people of the third world, to such a degree that there is absolutely zero chance of ever assimilating them. This is in part because the people who are flooding in, through the happenstance "walls and fences" are not coming for the better life through hard work and becoming part of a better system, but are coming as a wave of parasites to leech off of the system that can not in any rational mind, support them without buggering its own people to death. Further, in this mass of humanity is an army of terrorists Hell bent on the destruction of this very body, swimming like fish in a pond of humanity which will in turn defend them and hide them and many of whom approve of them, even as they themselves will suffer when their host is pulled down.

"Is Europe [Too] Dead to Revive?" By Stanislav, Mat Rodina, 11/14/15.

The U.S. really is allied with the loathsome ISIS.

In summing it all up, it also becomes evident that the Syrian "civil war" never really was one. Rather, the terrorists were supported by the West from the very beginning, for the purpose of overthrowing Assad’s government (as I’ve written in previous articles). When faced with a terrorist defeat, the sponsors will throw all their political weight behind the terrorists, no matter what it costs.

Ultimately, this is proof that the hegemonic ambitions of the US / the West in this region were the reason behind the creation of IS. It was never a fight against IS. It was the targeted, planned, intentional creation of Islamic extremism, in the form of the Islamic State.^[1]

Thus the most loathsome group of humans on the planet are a creature of U.S. policy, no doubt devised at the behest of the equally loathsome Saudis and Qataris.

Mr. Lehner has an interesting insight into the Russian and Syrian strategy. Apparently the Syrian army controls the border east of the Euphrates River and Russian attacks on ISIS supply convoys coming from the border crossing town of Öncüpınar in NW Syria are thus attacks on ISIS's remaining supply line.

Map courtesy U.S. Air Force, Office of Public Affairs.

Lehner thinks U.S. alarm over this development is the reason for the Turkish attack on the Russian aircraft. That the U.S. requested this Turkish action is more plausible than that the Turks decided to risk Russian retaliation on their own. It just is.

Do read Lehner's thoughts on the likely Russian-Syrian strategy which will sever the ISIS supply line so deviously left intact by the U.S.^[2]

This flow of "aid" from Turkey into Syria has been well known to the U.S. (or "NATO" if you prefer). JSTARS aircraft were used in Libya and it beggars the imagination that they have not been used in Syria a mere 1,300 miles away (or a mere 67 miles from Incirlik AFB). These were the aircraft used during the Gulf Wars that clearly could track every bicycle and jackrabbit on the roads of Iraq.

Even without that, it's rumored that the U.S. has pilotless drones, as well as an extensive network of surveillance satellites on the moon that surely could not have missed the extensive truck traffic necessary to supply a terrorist "army" of, what?, tens of thousands of troops. Don't mind me. I'm just an amateur intelligence analyst here, but isn't the scale of that kind of resupply effort classifiable as "noticeable"?

Unless you've been in a coma for the last two years, it's sort of obvious that the fix was in:

• low-level U.S. intelligence analysts' reports were doctored at higher levels to show a success against ISIS that was a fabrication;
• U.S. pilots over Syria have been ordered to "stay silent" about "oil tanker convoys 4 lanes wide at times";
• Russian planes destroyed ISIS-to-Erdogan oil tanker trucks at a rate 800 times that of the U.S. "effort" to destroy them;
• U.S. pilots have been prevented from attacking oil trucks because (no laughing!) of Obama's concern for "environmental damage";
• U.S. planes dropped leaflets on ISIS oil truck drivers warning of imminent attack "to kind of shoo people away without harming them"^[3];
• Turkey, without protest from the U.S., is in league with ISIS; and
• where assessing allegiance and combat capability is concerned, the U.S. foreign policy establishment is clueless ($500 million wasted).

Vladimir Putin put the kibosh on this Punahou kabuki con job and it will now soon appear that he is the new Hitler bent on world domination. And Bill O'Reilly can go back to calling him Pooty Poo. To Charles Krauthammer's great relief.

Notes
^[1] "Washington Is Panicking That Putin Is Breaking the ISIS Supply Line." By Michael Lehner, Russia Insider, 12/2/15.
^[2] We were "shocked" to find out ISIS resupply operations were freely running up and down Syria's sparse network of roads. I mean, who the fuck knew that ISIS trucks would stay on the one asphalt road instead of stealth drive overland through the desert in the sand? Or is it two roads? Whoa. A 100% increase in the complexity of the intelligence assessment! I'm thinking the Russians read the Journal of the North American Sunbathing Association and had it all figured out on the back of an envelope within two days of the mobile officer's club serving its first drink in Latakia. Za zdorovie, bichez!
^[3] People who drive trucks for an organization that burns captured pilots alive, rapes hostages, makes sex slaves of Yazidi women, and revels in chopping off heads of captured soldiers and shooting them are not "innocents" but that's just me. But not in the view of the U.S. government. By their standard, Obama and the U.S. political leadership who have created misery and destruction in aid of their unclean "regime change" campaign in Syria are innocents as well, which is not likely to be discussed by the MSM anytime soon. I suppose we should be thankful the drivers weren't offered a green card and an Earned Income Credit if they file by April 15.

Original article here: NEO Presse.

Correction (12/23/15): Öncüpınar is in NW Syria not the NE as I wrote initially. Corrected to NW.

Quickies: Cautionary Words

From Oregon Muse at AoSHQ:

     Personally, I've always distrusted "the cloud". The point of having your own computer,personal computers they used to be called, is that the computer is your property that you own, therefore you control it. But now, I think, they're boiling the frog: little by little we're ceding final control over our personal information and e-texts to whoever is running the cloud. And if one fine day some Obama-fueled agency pounds on Microsoft's door (or Apple's or Google's) demanding all the files stored on their servers for you, do you think they'd put up even token resistance? I think you can bet that your data would be in the hands of the feds faster than you could say "enthusiastic voluntary compliance".

     Oregon Muse, whoever he is, has the right of it. The entire appeal of “cloud storage” is being able to access files when away from your computer...yet a flash drive or pocket disk drive would be far better for the purpose, without compromising your files or your property rights in them.

     Smart people eschew the “cloud.”

The Party’s Over...?

     Is it?

     If there was any question about the relevance of the Republican Party, this week’s budget deal removes all doubt. The Republican Party might as well close up shop and merge with the Democrats. Not as a merger of equals, but more of a capitulation, a surrender, a sellout. There is no need for two parties in Washington DC as only one party is relevant in terms of advancing an agenda. The irony is that the agenda driving party is in the minority and despite losing badly in two midterm elections, the Democrats are still running Congress.

     Author Brian Joondeph provides “a long train of abuses and usurpations,” all of which can be found in the omnibus spending bill that just passed Congress. He closes in a very dark fashion:

     If the [Republican] establishment manages to destroy Trump and Cruz, then it’s lights out for the Republican party. The base will stay home and the Founding Fathers will roll over in their graves. As for any future support for the GOP, my answer will be a Mrs. Clinton refrain, “What difference does it make?” The Republican Party will be six feet under and we will have one-party rule in Washington, DC.

     That “Clintonian refrain” is indeed the question of the day.

---

     How did one-party politics get this far advanced? The events of the Twentieth Century suggest two principal geneses:

• The demise of the original Constitutional constraints on the powers of Congress;
• The rise of perpetual warfare and unlimited American involvement.

     Before the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments and the creation of the quasi-private Federal Reserve system, federal politics was not a particularly enticing avenue toward personal power or wealth. Granted that there were career Senators and Congressmen even before 1913, their ability to porkbarrel in their districts’ and states’ favor was sharply limited. Similarly, there was essentially no regulatory “fourth branch” to support the favored tactic of the federal legislator for securing the support of his constituents: “constituent service.”

     Before the fatal amendments and the Federal Reserve, the sort of blatant vote-buying federal legislators practice today was almost entirely confined to the state legislatures, whose constitutions and charters allowed them, in Madison’s classic phrase, “numerous and indefinite” powers. Neither could governmental overreach be concealed by lodging it in an alphabet agency whose faceless functionaries could not be made to answer for their sins. Not coincidentally, the staffs of federal legislators were small...when they existed at all.

     The Great Depression and the two World Wars firewalled the accelerator. In his fine study of government growth Crisis and Leviathan, Robert Higgs delineates the emergence of the “crisis Constitution:” the proposition that in the midst of a “crisis,” however determined, the federal government acquires powers far beyond those delegated to it in the Constitution. Those powers did not lapse at the ends of the “crises,” despite adverse popular expectations. More, they gave Washington an incentive to “go looking for trouble.”

     If, pace Lord Acton, power tends to corrupt, its corrupting influence surely increases as the power itself increases – and if the evidence of the Twentieth Century is on point, much faster than linearly. Thus, the Nightmare Century produced America’s first true class structure:

• The federal political elite, whose positions became ever less vulnerable as their power swelled;
• The “insiders” who could bargain effectively with the political elite for federal favor;
• The rest of us.

     Today, that class structure dominates politics, government, and everything they touch. There seem to be no bounds to it that anyone can rely on. Given the ease of re-election enjoyed by federal legislators of both parties, it is inarguably more important than any federal politician’s party affiliation.

---

     The evidence is unambiguous. We must accept that things are as bad as they seem:

• That the GOP has annexed itself to the Democrat Party for the sake of the power, pelf, and prestige of its members;
• That the nominal separation of the two merely gives the illusion of an opposition, without the substance;
• That therefore, as matters stand the Republican Party is not a true friend to freedom or the Constitution.

     Can anything be done to restore electoral efficacy to the two-party system?

     One suggestion, which hasn’t yet been tried on any great scale, is to vote exclusively for Democrats regardless of any other consideration, so that the Republican Party would perish from irrelevance. That would clear the way for a new party, though there would be no guarantee that the new party would be any better. Indeed, it might well be merely a revenant of the GOP. There’s also the possibility that once the Democrats came to believe themselves powerful enough, they could erect legal barriers to prevent the emergence of a new, Constitutionally oriented party. Neither outcome would be a pleasant one.

     Another explicitly political approach some have recommended is complete electoral disaffiliation: to refrain from voting in any election, and to encourage others to refrain as well. The reasoning is that aura of legitimacy enjoyed by the existing major parties flows from the willingness of the majority of the electorate to cast ballots; without that support, disaffiliation from them would follow naturally. This runs up against the incentives in place to keep people voting. Former New York Libertarian Party chairman Bill McMillan reported the prevalence of this response in his efforts to popularize the LP in New York State: the dairy farmers in continental New York would routinely ask him “What about my subsidies?” Retirees want to know about the Social Security payments; welfare clients want their dole to be secure; government employees and vendors to governments have rice bowls to protect; and so on. When so great a part of the electorate is a net beneficiary of the regime, it’s effectively impossible to persuade enough people not to vote.

---

     Some, disgusted with the uselessness of electoral politics, have recommended what Glenn Reynolds calls “Irish democracy:” simply to ignore the political class and the regime generally. This is practical on the small scale, but it has an atomizing tendency: one must constantly be on guard against infiltrators and quislings. On the large scale – i.e., organizations of sufficient size to be unable to conceal themselves or their operations – it fails. Granted that the corporations that dominate the American economy today – roughly speaking, the Fortune 5000 – are clients of the political class and deserve to fail, perhaps half of the population of the U.S. is economically dependent upon their viability.

     While it is true that there have been cases of whole cities going “underground” in Italy and some other Latin countries, it’s unclear whether the results justify the tactic. Those cities are effectively owned by the large criminal organizations that make possible their de facto invisibility to the national government. Granted that there’s clarity in being ruled by criminals who make no pretense of being anything else. However, the practical aspects of the situation differ little from more orthodox arrangements.

---

     I assume that the true goal is not merely to have two markedly distinct political parties, whose turns in power are easy to distinguish. The true goal, at least among us in the Right, is freedom: whatever kind and degree of government is necessary (if any) to protect individual rights, national sovereignty, and public safety, bounded by constraints it cannot break. The above segments list the non-violent approaches I know of. All of them look like longshots at best. If we assume that there are no electoral or quasi-electoral approaches with a higher probability of success, what follows?

     The approaches that remain are to flee or to fight. Geographical flight is impossible at this time, though “virtual” flight – i.e., taking one’s life and enterprises underground – is possible for some. We know by direct observation that as bad as things already are, not enough Americans are willing to “take the musket down from the mantel.” How much worse things would have to get to change that condition, no man can say – but whatever the threshold might be, carnage would surely follow.

---

     In the above, I’ve largely repeated or rephrased arguments I’ve made in other places and at other times. It doesn’t matter; there are always persons unfamiliar with such ideas, and who are ready, perhaps even eager, to make their acquaintance. All the same, it often saddens me that they should be familiar to so small a minority in a nation that calls itself the Land of the Free.

     Quite a long time ago, libertarian writer Todd Seavey argued that the government-dominated mixed economy / welfare state might be much more stable than freedom advocates have assumed. The empirical evidence for his argument is distressingly copious; the de facto Democrat-Republican alliance in maintaining that state while railing against one another pro forma is the most ominous item of all. However, there’s no such thing as perfect stability. Even baryons decay. Freedom and tyranny are both temporary conditions, as is each of the possible states between them.

     If “the party’s over” for those of us who’ve hoped to use the Republican Party as a vehicle for restoring Constitutional government, we must either look in other directions or surrender our hopes. Though I’ve said it often enough and about enough other things, I find myself reluctantly compelled to say it again today: We shall see.

In case it wasn't clear.

Business days for processing are Monday-Friday. Please note Saturday, Sunday and holidays do not count as business days.

Source: camera merchant's web site.

After stealing much lunch money from school kids and cash from old ladies at the ATM, as well as engaging in disability (Dx: bad attitude) fraud, the Colonel will soon be receiving a dandy Panasonic FZ1000 camera with which to document the decline of Western civilization, the coming civil war in America, and, hopefully, numerous parties with women of loose morals. Pictures will be posted.

Or not.