PIZZA AND AMMO

We got an announcement today from a pizza place we ate at on our drive back home from San Diego. It was the first I received from them in almost a year. They're not exactly beating the drum. It was though, excellent wood fired pizza and the atmosphere was friendly and inviting so we recommend it.

The place is also across the street from a Walmart that seemed to contain all the guns and ammo in Christendom. That may be no big draw for some, but living here in MetroParkCentralis and coming from San Diego, guns were scarce and ammo was even more conspicuously not available at either end. If I hadn't loaded up with ammo at the Post Exchange at Fort Riley that morning, I'd have squeezed in some more .45 ammo.

WHITHER THE GREAT SCOTTISH HAGGIS HUNT

Will there be a Great Scottish Haggis Hunt this year? The world wonders. We missed it last year because they were looking for a new host that can handle 8 million page hits.

EUROPE ABLAZE, AGAIN

Having buried Germany up to its waste in gasoline, Führer Angela Merkel asks, "is there nobody who will light a match for Germany?"

UPDATE: 11/13/2015 It looks like they threw the first match into Paris. Sadly, it is just the first from the second box of matches and there are plenty more where that came from. C'est domage. Quelle pitie.

Nuremberg 1945; a few years before I was born there.

UNSUNG HERO

Found at Ace of Spades

A NIGHT FOR DOVER BEACH

Dover Beach

BY MATTHEW ARNOLD

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

It is almost impossible to read the news anymore.

AND THEY WORRY ABOUT DRONES

A WORD OF SUPPORT

3 Words actually.

Curt's corollary #2

Cake Fixes Everything Else

It has to be PAoGI though.*

*It has to be Pre-Age of Gluten Intolerance or it doesn't count. It must also be PAoV. Pie and and cake only works on the tolerant.

THE HAPPY SOUR QUIZ

1. Selling or giving high tech weapons to muslims is:

a. Stupid on the face of it
b. Justified by the pumping of tax dollars back into the deep corporate pockets of Lockheed and    General Dynamics
c. Worth it for the endless follow-on training required to keep anything more advanced than a  blowgun operational in muslim hands
d. Worth it for the follow-on training involved in hunting those weapons down and dropping a 1000  pound bomb on them.
e. Equally worth it for the same reason if we track them down and snuff them with a HELLFIRE

2. A sensible peace plan for the middle east involves:

a. Arming the shit out of all of our friends there and their friends who don't actively hate us  (remember, only idiots arm muslims)
b. Inking a deal with palestinian terrorist leaders
c. Inking a deal with the Taliban and withdrawing from territories under their control
d. pulling back to orbit and nuking it just to be sure
e. Widespread employment of tailored biologic weapons
f. Let NATO and the EU do it

3. What 'tell' do democrats, global warmists, Carlists, Russians, arabs, muslims, progressives and CNN have when they are lying to you?

a. Their lips are moving
b. They look really sincere and convincing.....to a 3 year old
c. The cloud of spittle spewing from their lips is so thick they are lost in the haze
d. They do everything including run away to avoid answering any direct yes or no questions
e. Claim that Obama supports them and therefor arguing against it is racist

4. What is pictured in the photo below?

a. Iraqi army TOW missile launch vehicle
b. Afghani air force on roadside interdiction mission
c. A man who profoundly doesn't care if that blimp tears apart the entire New England power grid
d. SURFLANT messenger carrying vital documents to SURPAC for urgent consideration in PPBS
e. USS Shenandoah heading for its rendezvous with destiny in Noble County, Ohio

NO GUESSING!       NO CHEATING!         SHOW YOUR WORK OR NO CREDIT!

WHEN ALL ANSWERS ARE CORRECT, PICK THE MOST CORRECT ONE I always hated that one.

WINTER IS COMING

Inspired by Naval Air Cowman, here are a few, just a few, cows.

MONDAY QUARTERBACK QUAGMIRE

In the other news today we learn that Saudi Arabia is on course to run out of money in 5 years if the current price for oil holds and they continue to spend like a bunch of American politicians. I suppose there are a few people that rejoice at the news but we have to take the longer view and ask ourselves what insanely stupid idiotic thing the witless fools at State Department will demand the United States do if it looks like Saudi Arabia is going to lie prostrate at the feet of their good islamic buddies, shiite Iran? You know what the people who make Hillary look good will demand then, don't you?

If Saudi Arabia collapses or even moans dramatically and wipes its brow with a damp cloth, the State Department will demand that we subsidize, arm, train and equip Saudi Arabia and the Emirates at any cost to us so that they can be our 'bulwark' against the rising tide of the OTHER extremist nuclear armed islamic power on the other side of the Persian Gulf.

It will be a pathetic repeat of the Cold War imbecility that led us to fight pointless wars in worthless and meaningless hellholes to nominally keep them from going communist. Imagine the power a communist Cuba could wield in the Caribbean! Now we'll be prodded with sticks wielded by Harvard and Yale educated morons demanding that we keep atop the volatile mix of nuclear-armed islamic states in the middle east rather than allow them to simply incinerate each other.

Some people are still worrying about the impact of a nuclear-armed middle east and boatloads of islamic terrorists armed with atomic and thermo-nuclear weapons. I'm not. I can see pretty clearly what is going to happen and you can to. We saw it when they decided to launch a vicious and murderous attack on our airliners in order to crash them into our tallest buildings in a plan to kill as many innocent Americans as possible. The vicious islamic terrorists tend to strike at symbols first so one should keep that in mind when considering a move to the Big Apple or the District of Columbia.

Fat Man Bomb ~ 21 kilotons

or New York City;

Fat Man Bomb ~ 21 kilotons

You can go to the links and nuke any city with megatons of nuclear destruction. We'll see if the turds thugs in Iran exercise any judgement or if they allow themselves to put business before pleasure and nuke Riyadh before the Great or Little Satans. It's likely to be a tossup because if there is anybody more insufferable than a Saudi, it is an Iranian mullah.*

You just know that when it happens, our State Department is going to blame Israel and insist that if Israel had only traded land for peace, the great killing would never have happened. Fortunately, we'll be spared hearing it from the echelon that floats atop the sewer that is Foggy Bottom.**

*U.S. policy is not carried out with any evil will or intent, it is just so damned incompetent that it always looks that way. Even after WWII, the Marshall Plan, NATO, etc, western Europeans loath Americans. We on the other hand can simply allow typical European diplomacy to work unchecked and they will soon find themselves locked in a war of mutual extermination. Americans are divided on the best course of action in such an event. Decisions, decisions. And all we have to guide us now is the thoroughly corrupt and incompetent ruling class that aren't sure which end of the computer should be pointed at the enemy. Oh well, in five years Europe will be predominately muslim so we can't go wrong whatever we do.....or don't do.

**Foggy Bottom is well within the blast and thermal zone for even a small nuke in DC.

MORE BOWING AND SCRAPING

This one was pretty good. Our Washington correspondent reported seeing the Pope taking a lap at the Rotunda of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum but was unable to get any pictures. These are from the Daily Mail. I don't know why all the best and most accurate news in America comes from the British press but I'd be ashamed to work for our media of the lame stream.

We celebrated Halloween with a couple of fire pits in the front yard at the neighbors and about 20 bottles of wine. The neighborhood kids came and went, their parents stuck around for the food and wine. It was a nice and spooky evening.

CULT OF MEDIA LIARS

If looks could kill, they probably will,

Hillary's crumbling frontier of lies and deceit. 

It's interesting watching another, once respected journalisto, so in the bag for Hillary and the democratic narrative in this war on Truth. It's like the journolists cannot learn anything from the past and are doomed to repeat it.

SKYNET IN EFFECT

There was an interesting item at online Washington Post today. It concerned a case where a man shot down a drone and was let off by the judge in his case because she considered the drone to be an invasion of the defendant's right to privacy. This is interesting because of the way the article uses legal references to convey the drone's sovereign immunity.

The issue is whether [18 U.S.C.] § 32(a)(1) covers shooting down a drone or whether that statute is best understood as applying solely to the destruction of manned aircraft. Section 32(a)(1) makes it a crime punishable by up to twenty years in prison to willfully destroy “any aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States or any civil aircraft used, operated, or employed in [commerce subject to federal regulation].”

The Post's correspondent continues his line and states, "In any case, it seems unlikely that federal prosecutors will get involved here."

I don't know....what if it was a black drone? Had he considered that?

DON'T WORRY, ALL DRONES ARE PERFECTLY SAFE

FADED GLORY

I couldn't find last night's debate being live streamed anywhere so I missed what could have been a normal debate where massively biased ignorant pissants question men and women who have actually achieved something with the background and real, marketable skills, the very concept of which, eludes the moderators. It looks like even the candidates had had enough of the micro-aggressing little democratic weasels and turned the tables on them. As usual, any novelty of argument confuses a liberal and they got all surly and upset.

I listened a little to the Diane Reims show this morning and she had three of the liberal progressive democratic snowflakes on to tell us how the debate went last night and they, two of the three, agreed that there was just a tiny tinge of bias but that was simply because conservatives are too stupid to recognize the natural superiority and intelligence of people like Quick and whossnames. It only looked like the three CNBC prima-twitterati were asking biased, stupid, inane questions because conservatives are so shallow they don't realize that the real media moves in depths beyond their comprehension.

Of course, they sucked up the late movie, TURDS TRUTH like it was all real with only the tiniest dash of "fake but accurate" media bias. They're reliable and consistent. I'm just amazed that there were people in Boulder, of all places, to come out and watch the actual debate and applaud the likes of Cruz when he body-slammed the moderators and did the happy dance all over Slow, Slower and Halfwit.

I see the GOP machine is all upset that the NBC moderators turned out to be a steaming vile pile of ignorance and Hillary talking points. (but I repeat myself)  I don't understand why anybody would ever give a dime to the GOP. Talk about "stuck on stupid."

I did a google search for news media logos and this came up. I didn't modify it at all.

UPDATE: GOP ditches the NBC debate scheduled for February. Says it may be stupid but it's not that stupid.  (I'll bet the GOP caves within a month and decides to give NBC back a debate.

There's a network logo missing. Soon CNBC will join CBS and vanish

CURRENT INVASION MAP

There is an amazing map at Take Part. It shows the migrant problem that Europe let Germany and Sweden create. It is fascinating. Drop you cursor in the sea to sea all of the migrant flow and then on each country to see the intake and the outflow of migrants.

No No, Not This Map. Go to the Link above

FAIR TRADE

It was announced today that the Democratic Party has raised the funds to repair and embellish the National Cathedral in Washington DC. As you know, the Cathedral was damaged by a mighty earthquake. The repairs include shipping off the superannuated Dean and replacing him with a high energy exhibit that shows the Church and Party's rededication to their fundamental principles.

Expert negotiations by 'Top Men' in the State Department have led to a deal with the Soviet Union Russia which was recently inked by Vladimir Putin who declared himself foursquare for the dead Romanov's and eager to shed the dead hand of communism. The Hindmost rejoiced at the imminent prospect of livening up the National Cathedral with some light and gaiety and getting a 'messenger' he could agree with about everything.

Yes America, Lenin's Tomb is coming soon to the National Cathedral.

Enter the new Dean of National Cathedral, Lenin on his Palanquin 

DEAD WHITE COMMON CORE MATH PROBLEMS

I've heard about the common core math requirement but I don't really understand it despite being the father of a 12 year old. Not really anything new. I was never particularly good at math. Good enough, mind you, to fool the teachers, but not myself. I know the difference since I was unable to fool the music teacher into believing I could read music. The proving was a dismal melody.

One of the drawbacks to a peripatetic life is changing schools frequently and leaving behind any expectation that you, "must surely remember your lessons from last year!" Which, because I didn't share the same lessons, meant the answer was usually a big fat no. That whole orderly progression through the numbers and fractions and base 10 were all a separate slice out of the giant ball of quarks that is math to me.

I had an interesting dinner discussion with a friend from California who is passionate about the common core and raising 2 boys who are taking two different approaches to it. One flies by the rules and the other is content to write the answer and leave it at that. That's where I came in, made a mark and left the building. What is wrong with just writing the answer, I wondered. She told me I didn't understand the process as part of the solution and without showing the process, the solution had no meaning.... My brain started to revert to what it had been like when it was shiny and new and seldom used (back when I was 14-21 years of age.

Oh, I thought. "Could you show me the process you used to reach the correct answer to the following problems," I asked her. Add the numbers together and show your work:

V + V + VI =
C - XIV =

Well, I could go on with higher math but why bother. The process is important but immaterial if one has the correct solution. Why would anyone take away points if the process is not shown but the solution is correct? You know the kind of person who holds fast to a thing they think they know and won't let go even if it kills them? There's one out there reading this and going, "screw the Romans, what did they ever do? The process must be shown or the answer doesn't count!"

Pont du Gard (read the links to see the math)

On the other hand, engineers like to show their work. :)

TIP OF THE SPEAR

The Hindmost has ordered that a U.S. Navy Warship sail within the claimed territorial seas of one of China's new islands in the South China Sea. His will be done. Obama.

One U.S. defense official said the USS Lassen sailed within 12 nautical miles of Subi Reef. A second defense official said the mission, which lasted a few hours, also included Mischief Reef and would be the first in a series of freedom-of-navigation exercises aimed at testing China's territorial claims.

YOU ARE STANDING INTO DANGER

Those interested can watch an interesting video on how to claim millions of square miles of sea bed as part of your very own Exclusive Economic Zone where you too can delve for minerals, oil and natural gas without pesky interlopers.

Reefs and Shoals in the South China Sea

The navy calls these FONs. It stands for Freedom of Navigation and it is the means we use to abide by the international law of the sea that we recognize. Basically, if one doesn't exert one's rights, one loses them. We played this game for decades with the Soviet Union and other grasping communist, muslim and socialist tyrannies. Usually they met with success. Sometimes they ran into trouble. Trouble is a matter of life and death, not a matter of getting a dent or the paint scraped off some piece of hull as you can see from the shameful Hainan Island Incident in 2001.

The last FON that was not a FON but close enough for government work, involved the loss of a US Navy spy plane with all the latest and greatest spy gear, communications and equipment when it was damaged by a Chinese Air Force plane and decided it had no choice but to turn over all of America's embarked, hard won, top secret technology to the Chinese rather than crash land in the deep ocean and let it all sink to the bottom.

I don't think anything like that is going to happen to LASSEN but I am concerned about 'pirate submarines' in the South China Sea. I enjoyed the wordplay in Strategy and Policy when we discussed the pirate submarines in the Spanish Civil War.  From the excellent book by Tom Buchanan, Britain and the Spanish Civil War

There's another problem with running USN warships around reefs in the South China Sea. The Navy's charts aren't very accurate or reliable.

USS GUARDIAN turned to scrap by reef not on chart

ALSO CAUGHT IN THE ACT

Some people insist that denile is a river in Egypt. Others see denial as the motivating spirit of the Democratic Party. I'm still waiting for her to test the actual depths of her power by eating a live baby on The View.

UPDATE: Consider who is going to moderate the crazy when this fiend is President; Huma or her former Chief of Staff Mills?

Jim Jones' Guyana Followers Could Not Be Reached either.

CAUGHT IN THE ACT

Hobbes Takes the Gold Ring

TOTAL DOMAIN AWARENESS

We used to talk about this at Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. This is kind of what the surface layer of TDA looks like. (full screen to see)

The goal was to have a picture with as much detail and information as possible in real time of all the domains (air, surface, subsurface, electronic, etc). Proponents of Total Domain Awareness proposed that with it, a single frigate could deny the oceans of the world.

I thought it was kind of silly, back then...

PATRICIA VISITS MEXICO

Hurricane Patricia going ashore in Mexico.

Taken from the Russian Space Station (Who controls access-Owns it)

RESUMMONING THE TRIUMPH OF THE WILL

I decided to look at how backlash against the ruling class presented itself in another age of the world. I foresee a time when Germany reunited, concludes that mistakes were made and institutes a typical German plan for resolution of the matter in question. In this case, the question would be, "how will we handle this enormous influx of people with alien ways who demonstrate unrelenting hostility to Germans and western principles? I took a look at how they handled it the last time and only changed one thing.

THE REVISED TEXT

II.At the beginning of the discussion Chief of the Security Police and of the SD, SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Heydrich, reported that the Reich Marshal had appointed him delegate for the preparations for the final solution of the Islamic question in Europe and pointed out that this discussion had been called for the purpose of clarifying fundamental questions. The wish of the Reich Marshal to have a draft sent to him concerning organizational, factual and material interests in relation to the final solution of the Islamic question in Europe makes necessary an initial common action of all central offices immediately concerned with these questions in order to bring their general activities into line. 

The Reichsfuhrer-SS and the Chief of the German Police (Chief of the Security Police and the SD) was entrusted with the official central handling of the final solution of the Islamic question without regard to geographic borders. 

The Chief of the Security Police and the SD then gave a short report of the struggle which has been carried on thus far against this enemy, the essential points being the following:a) the expulsion of the Muslims from every sphere of life of the German people,b) the expulsion of the Muslims from the living space of the German people.In carrying out these efforts, an increased and planned acceleration of the emigration of the Muslims from Reich territory was started, as the only possible present solution. 

By order of the Reich Marshal, a Reich Central Office for Islamic Emigration was set up in January 1939 and the Chief of the Security Police and SD was entrusted with the management. Its most important tasks werea) to make all necessary arrangements for the preparation for an increased emigration of the Muslims,b) to direct the flow of emigration,c) to speed the procedure of emigration in each individual case.The aim of all this was to cleanse German living space of Muslims in a legal manner. 

All the offices realized the drawbacks of such enforced accelerated emigration. For the time being they had, however, tolerated it on account of the lack of other possible solutions of the problem. 

The work concerned with emigration was, later on, not only a German problem, but also a problem with which the authorities of the countries to which the flow of emigrants was being directed would have to deal. Financial difficulties, such as the demand by various foreign governments for increasing sums of money to be presented at the time of the landing, the lack of shipping space, increasing restriction of entry permits, or the cancelling of such, increased extraordinarily the difficulties of emigration. 

In spite of these difficulties, 537,000 Muslims were sent out of the country between the takeover of power and the deadline of 31 October 1941. Of these  

approximately 360,000 were in Germany proper on 30 January 1933  

approximately 147,000 were in Austria (Ostmark) on 15 March 1939  

approximately 30,000 were in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on 15 March 1939. 

The Muslims themselves, or their Islamic political organizations, financed the emigration. In order to avoid impoverished Muslims' remaining behind, the principle was followed that wealthy Muslims have to finance the emigration of poor Muslims; this was arranged by imposing a suitable tax, i.e., an emigration tax, which was used for financial arrangements in connection with the emigration of poor Muslims and was imposed according to income. 

Apart from the necessary Reichsmark exchange, foreign currency had to presented at the time of landing. In order to save foreign exchange held by Germany, the foreign Islamic financial organizations were - with the help of Islamic organizations in Germany - made responsible for arranging an adequate amount of foreign currency. Up to 30 October 1941, these foreign Muslims donated a total of around 9,500,000 dollars. 

In the meantime the Reichsfuehrer-SS and Chief of the German Police had prohibited emigration of Muslims due to the dangers of an emigration in wartime and due to the possibilities of the East. 

III.  

Another possible solution of the problem has now taken the place of emigration, i.e. the evacuation of the Muslims to the East, provided that the Fuehrer gives the appropriate approval in advance.
These actions are, however, only to be considered provisional, but practical experience is already being collected which is of the greatest importance in relation to the future final solution of the Islamic question. 

Approximately 11 million Muslims will be involved in the final solution of the European Islamic question, distributed as follows among the individual countries:

The number of Muslims given here for foreign countries includes, however, only those Muslims who still adhere to the Islamic faith, since some countries still do not have a definition of the term "Muslim" according to racial principles. 

The handling of the problem in the individual countries will meet with difficulties due to the attitude and outlook of the people there, especially in Hungary and Rumania. Thus, for example, even today the Muslim can buy documents in Rumania that will officially prove his foreign citizenship. 

The influence of the Mulsims in all walks of life in the USSR is well known. Approximately five million Muslims live in the European part of the USSR, in the Asian part scarcely 1/4 million.

I tend to see Europeans as predictable and unchanging. I don't underestimate their ability to do what they did the last two times or even the last 10 times even if it didn't work out all that well. Europeans believe in driving out or stamping out problem types. The Germans did it with Jews and the rest of Europe followed up by doing it to Germans. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the Age of Enlightenment coincided with a vast increase in the popularity of the New World as an exciting travel destination for many diverse disaffected types. The sundering worked for both Europe and America.

Some observers note the enormous increase in anti-semitism in Europe and Germany today. A lot of observers believe it is fanned by muslim immigrants and, to a point, I agree with them. However, the real story underlying anti-semitism in Europe is a tradition popular in every European country that disdains and despises other nationalities. If you think this is some stale leftover, simply consider the ongoing displays of nationalism rearing its head everywhere.

As you can see from the (revised) Wannsee Protocols, the Germans started out by demanding that other countries relieve them of their troublesome Muslim problem and demanded the right to resettle Muslims in the countries surrounding Germany. Does that sound at all familiar?

The National Socialist German Worker's Party didn't spring overnight, full blown, on Germany. The vast majority of Germans initially despised them as a bunch of lunatics and even locked up their leaders. I don't see it as helpful that every country in Europe and every media agency in the world condemns every single nascent nationalist movement anywhere in Europe or even the United States, as some kind of NAZI party reborn. As they act to crush dissent, they force what might have been a political issue into a revolutionary movement with all the attendant violence and repression. We know how that works out, those of us who have studied the history of Europe.

NAZIs represented the common working man and grew out of their festering hatred of what had been imposed on Germany by France, England and the United States with the Treaty of Versailles. The common working man had no say at all in that entire process and yet was bound and limited in every way by a Treaty none of them signed or agreed to. It is difficult to not see a parallel with the implementation of the EU on all European countries and traditions? A lot of Europeans voted against the treaty and some nations blatantly voted it down only to see their votes overturned by the ruling class.

Watching Putin and the Russians play the stalking Soviet Empire in the East again is a nice additional touch of the zietgeist. "LOOK!", the nationalists will exclaim. "We are only mobilizing to defend against the dreaded Putin and his evil crony capitalist empire! We are just harmless, efficient, organized and opinionated patriots." A great many of them actually are.

Anne Applebaum wrote an interesting article in Foreign Affairs on the problem with Europe.

Nevertheless, the Obama administration can certainly be faulted for complacency. Behind the scenes, some central European states did try to warn the Americans that beneath the surface, Russia’s strategic posture was changing. But no one felt any sense of urgency or need to prepare, not even when the Russians conducted Zapad 2013, a military exercise similar to Zapad 2009, only larger. Some 70,000 troops were involved in that exercise; reservists from St. Petersburg were mobilized. The scale of the operation was a reflection of the hundreds of millions of dollars that Russia had invested in its armed forces over the previous four years. 

The two concessions to central European jitters made at this time were contingency plans for an invasion of NATO’s new eastern flank—during no previous U.S. administration had NATO ever tried to make any—and a NATO military exercise in the fall of 2013 in the new eastern part of the alliance, the first major exercise to take place there. But Steadfast Jazz, as the exercise was known, was a disappointment. The United States sent only 160 troops. Germany sent 55. The biggest contributions came from France and Poland, with over 1,000 soldiers each. This was a larger effort than anything NATO had put together since 2006, but in light of the shift in Russian military doctrine, it still seemed very thin.

We send far more people to a planning conference for an exercise in Korea than even went to this NATO exercise in the East. If I was the Baltic Countries or even Poland, I'd be more than a little concerned that NATO doesn't have my back or my flanks. If one looks at Russian actions in Syria through the lens of Russian history, one can clearly see that Russia is setting the stage for a major Mediterranean Naval Base on NATO's flank that is not subject to the Montreux Convention of 1936. They are aided in this villainy by Turkey and Syria. Turkey has nothing to lose and Syria everything to gain.

It's a shame that the current socialists who run things don't appreciate just what real disenfranchisement and an insane foreign policy and idiotic military policy inevitably lead to.

A WALK IN AUTUMN

I went for an Autumn walk before winter adds its dimension to walking in MetroParkCentralis. It was a simple uncomplicated walk through the wilderness, downtown and then back up through the lakes. It's a nice place.

Crossing the Stream outbound

Cutting through the Swamp

Management Offices at Think Box

Over the rail look at the Art Museum

Tourists throng the Lagoon

The Artist and his Paraphernalia for recording his Garden 

A Glorious Red Tree in MetroParkCentralis

On Dam Looking Downstream to Bridge

Shark

Bloodsucker going after my burned and broken arm

After the Zombie Apocalypse

This is what I missed living all the years in the Middle East and SOCAL. It's not better, it's different.

ROBERT CONQUEST

A man with a rare vision for his time. He saw communism for what it really is and clearly perceived that Stalin was a monster. Stepped into the clearing August 3rd aged 98.

To understand the moral and literary power with which Robert Conquest wrote, consider the second sentence in his book Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine, a study of the 14.5 million deaths that resulted from Joseph Stalin’s murderous takeover of his nation’s agricultural sector: “We may perhaps put this in perspective in the present case by saying that in the actions here recorded about twenty human lives were lost for, not every word, but every letter, in this book.” . . .

As Conquest's friend, the British novelist Martin Amis, would later observe with a palpable shudder, "The sentence represents 3,040 lives. The book is 411 pages long." The math is too terrible to contemplate.

True for all values of truth

 Speaking of secret cabals....

The communist revolution, Peter wrote, seems to have burnt itself out in two long decades of flaming arson masterminded by disguised Okhrana survivors and low level tsarist functionaries of the old service apparat operating out of closet Moscow rooms and communicating through secret drops in public trash cans. 

Early in 1921 reactionary plotters devised their master plan while accidentally reading The Collected Works of V.I. Lenin which was in use as their secret code book for the trash can messages. Lenin's major theme was a vituperative insistence upon the one correct line—his. This, the plotters deduced correctly, would lead to squabbles upon Lenin's death which could be cleverly exploited in the revanchist cause. 

The critical Okhrana files on the Bolsheviks had been saved during the disastrous October days and were hidden away in the mattress of an ex-Moscow prison guard. After hushed discussions behind black-shaded windows and the delivery of many messages on non-garbage collection days inside hollowed-out sausages, it was recommended that Joseph Dzhugashvili (Stalin) be set up as the plot's principle dupe. 

He was seen as an opportunist with no tolerance at all for men superior to himself which meant that with careful provocation he could be used as a deadly tool to destroy all Bolsheviks more able than himself. Thus the entire socialist organization could be liquidated. For the purposes of the plot Stalin was assessed to be lacking only in intelligence and organizational ability, but these necessary commodities could be supplied by infiltrators who would do his thinking and organizing for him. Such a man was very dependent upon help. 

It must be remembered that the tsarists were decimated at this time. Their entire first rank of leadership had been wiped out, they were badly organized, disunited, and thousands of them were acting independently, unaware even that there were others of the same sympathy. They sat home and drank vodka and complained about the price of food. This gave them time to plot while the socialists were busy rebuilding the nation.It was slow work at first but the restorationists used divisive technology effectively enough to fragment the socialists into isolated cadres. By promoting different "correct lines" and using Stalin as a tiebreaker they lifted their dupe to power. The reactionaries weren't able to place any of their own in high places but by being the actual physical people who controlled Stalin's files they were able to bring to his attention a sufficient number of scoundrels whom they knew would appeal to him, Stalin being Stalin. 

The Bolsheviks classified rich peasants as kulaki; medium peasants as seredniaki; and poor peasants asbedniaki. Under Lenin, authority in village affairs was delegated to the poor peasants who were recruited to inform the government when the kulaki and seredniakihid grain from the Bolshevik tax men. To destroy peasant resistance to the revolution's taxes Lenin turned class shadings into class war. 

"Attack rich peasants!" was a slogan that Stalin preached. By then, on the say-so of informers, peasants were being arrested wholesale by OGPU agents with large kulak quotas. Meanwhile the Bolshevik baskaks of 1930-31 were confiscating food for export (to be sold on foreign markets at below-cost depression prices), leaving next to nothing in the countryside. What did it matter if those who objected to working for nothing were tortured for withholding grain they had never dared grow, were shot, were sent to the Gulags to build socialism with their free labor? Their neighbors had denounced them. That was enough. A peasant's rights had never been guaranteed by tsarist law— why change? 

The Bolsheviks made their first fatal doctrinal mistake by disavowing socialist comradeship with the peasants. The Bolsheviks needed the surplus value that the peasants could supply if properly milked, but didn't relish the dirty work of collecting it, especially since it meant that to do so they would be forced to face the peasant families they were robbing. Thus The Bolshevik City Workers hired tax collectors. Hundreds of counterrevolutionaries, most of them acting independently, seized upon this opportunity like starving wolves at a fawn. The tsarists, as unorganized and demoralized as they were, had plenty of people who knew how to squeeze taxes out of the countryside. 

By 1935 the counterrevolutionaries who had started out in Ivan jobs murdering peasants for the OGPU, now had respectable jobs in the NKVD, plenty of vodka, enough money for girls, and each one of them had his own room in Moscow. It was decided after much trash can searching that the time was ripe for the great offensive. 

Letter writing squads, patterned after the congressional letter writing clubs of the United States, began to complain about wrecking and sabotage, named names, and demanded action. Writers from the Washington Post were imported to write articles for Pravda about dishonesty and hypocrisy in high places. A few arbitrary arrests were made to satisfy "the outrage of the masses" and some torture begun to prime the restoration fuse. 

There was no danger of backlash. The NKVD's victims were carefully picked to appeal to Stalin—they were in every way superior to him. At first only journalists true to the masses were executed. Socialists connected to a free press were very dangerous to the counterrevolution and so all honest voices had to be destroyed during the first strike. Then came the big offensive. In NKVD backrooms, hordes of counterrevolutionary troops began to fabricate false testimony and forward it on to the vain Stalin-tool for approval. 

Here was one of the strangest things that Kaissel was learning about the Russian culture during his prison studies. Russian villains had long mastered group solidarity, while the legions of brave Russian heroes, hordes of them, continued to fight on as individuals,with no understanding at all of the power of union. Working Americans read Marx avidly while that shaker of men was alive. Presto, powerful American labor unions sprang up. Yet in a hundred years no Russian had ever organized a successful labor movement. Why? 

Perhaps in a sea of informers it was impossible.

                                                ----The Moon Goddess and the Son by Donald Kingsbury