Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, March 23, 2016
“This is the most transparent administration in history.”
Barrack Obama
Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western Civilization as it commits suicide.
Under Capitalism, the rich become powerful. Under Socialism, the powerful become rich.
Under Socialism, government employees become powerful.
It’s been hectic here, and I don’t try to track breaking news, but there are two developments that need discussing. One, the terrorist acts in Brussels, is more of a reminder than anything new. I have said from the day that The Caliphate – ISIS, or ISIL, or DAESH or Islamic State in Levant; the very confusion about nomenclature is indicative – from the day that the Caliphate declared war on the United States that we ought to take them seriously, respect what they have done, answer the challenge, and annihilate them. There is no other objective worth pursuing.
The other event is the response of the presidential candidates. Mr. Cruz has a domestic strategy, and Mr. Trump endorses it but says it does not go far enough. There are various proposals on how to increase UDS security. They are all of them not worthless, but inadequate and doomed to failure. You do not attack a mortal existential enemy by patrolling one of his recruiting grounds; and shoring up one’s defenses may be necessary, but it is almost never decisive in winning an existential war; and it certainly will not be in the present case.
Every successful attack ISIS carries out increases their strength, and increases the persuasiveness of their arguments, and appeals to more potential recruits. The Koran says that it is the will of Allah that the House of Islam – Dar al-Islam, the House of Peace and Submission – will prevail over the House of Resistance — Dar al-harb, the House of War; that the end of times will come when Allah intervenes directly into the affairs of men and establishes Dar al-Islam over all the world. Every Muslim believes this, as every Christian believes that Christ will return in clouds of glory to judge both the quick and the dead.
The Caliphate states that Allah has chosen Daesh as the instrument for bringing about that result, and that every true Muslim must join in that task, they impose the law of the Koran on the territories incorporated into the Caliphate. A further sign is their continued expansion and their successful attacks on the infidels.
This is not difficult to understand. The same fervor inspired the first crusades. The crusaders shouted Deus Vult! – God Wills It – as they charged into battle, and every victory was proof that their side was right, inspiring more to join them, until they became an invincible force, conquering Jerusalem and much of the Levant. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem held Jerusalem itself for 80 years, and endured with Jerusalem a trucial city open to pilgrims for another century.
The only way to defeat the Caliphate is to defeat it, conquer its territories and distribute its territories to locals who do not believe they have been chosen to convert the world by the sword. The only way to do that is to engage the Caliphate on its own territories; to attack. Defense, no matter how successful, will not do it. Yes. Containment eventually brought down the Soviet Union without a central war, because the Allied efforts after WWI were too little and abandoned too soon, and after WWE II we did not understand the chiliastic objectives of Marxism until Central War was such a frightening prospect that we dared not undertake it; but we are not at that stage with ISIS – yet.
When the Caliphate first declared war on us, I warned that we should take the threat seriously. At that time one Airborne Division supplemented with naval air support and a couple of squadrons of Warthogs operating from Kurdish territory could have eliminated IDSIDS in a relatively brief campaign. The territory could then have been partitioned between Kurds, Iraq Sunni, and Iraq Shia according to wishes of the inhabitants; no permanent US occupation would have been needed. The costs would be moderate and the US casualties low.
That wasn’t done. As time went on and the Caliphate grew, I pointed out that the mission was still vital, but the costs were rising. They grew past needing two heavy infantry divisions and all the A-10’s (including building a base for them). I would estimate now that it will take two heavy infantry divisions, two regiments of Marines or armored cavalry, all of the A-10’s, and some of the USAF air supremacy force to protect the warthogs against surface to air missiles; their presence ought to be enough to deter the intervention of Iranian air jets against the Warthogs, which cannot possibly defend themselves against air-to-air fighters regardless of quality.
As to domestic measures we must take: We need them, but no such measures will be sufficient as the threat from ISIS grows with each successful act of terror. Nothing we can do here of in Europe will end the Caliphate, and policing their recruiting grounds in Europe and the US will not be decisive. Even expelling every Muslim from the US – and I do not advocate that – would not step their recruiting in Libya, France, among the Syrian refugees throughout Europe, and most of all, in the Levant itself where each successful attack against the West inspires hundreds to move from being fervent Moslems to Jihadists.
It now appears that one of those who blew himself up in Brussels was arrested in Southern Turkey as he tried to make his way into the Syrian civil war; and was deported back to Belgium. The Belgian security forces had ample forewarning of a pending attack, but apparently had no on going surveillance of this pious Muslim. They do have a program for rehabilitation of jihadists; it may or may not be working.
Brussels is the capital of Europe, and could be expected to be a target.
Jerry:
ISIS cannot be defeated militarily — they can only be forced into a protracted terrorist war, such as we have seen in such places as Rhodesia, the Philippines, etc.
The only way to defeat them will be to make their attacks too costly for them. However, since they already plan to DIE in order to kill innocents, the only cost which can be increased will be to use their beliefs against them.
They think that if they die “pure” deaths, they will be martyrs, and rewarded in Paradise. Thus, it is necessary to remove their expectation of dying “pure” deaths.
The easiest way to do this is to widely advertise that our bombs, missiles, bullets etc. carry something “impure,” such as bacon grease.
While this is politically incorrect, and will certainly offend a few people, I DON’T CARE. What I want is for some would-be terrorist to weigh the possibility of dying holding the card that says “Go Directly to Hell — Do Not Pass Over the Bridge, Do Not Collect 72 Virgins!” . .
.then decide it’s not worth the risk.
Until we’re willing to offend somebody, we can’t AFFECT them.
Keith
But that is not true: unlike al Qaeda, which can exist as a ghost operation, the Caliphate must have a territory which it is governing by Sharia law, or it is not a legitimate state, and does not have the Favor of Allah. The Belgian attack was planned in ISIS territory, and the orders sent from there. The Caliphate can be defeated, destroyed, its territories partitioned among its enemies, that’s just the point. If it does not govern it cannot be the Chosen of Allah and much of its attractiveness vanishes. Note that the Caliphate does not hide. It grows, and as it grows it demonstrates that it is the true and lawful instrument of the Will of Allah.
Happy 3/23 Day!
David Couvillon
Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.;
Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq;
Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time;
Distinguished Expert, TV remote control;
Chef de Hot Dog Excellence; Avoider of Yard Work
What it looks like when the Internet suddenly disappears, in 4 charts (WP)
By Niraj Chokshi March 22 at 7:00 AM
Early one afternoon in November, Internet activity in Bangladesh fell off a cliff.
The drop — to 5 percent of typical activity — lasted only an hour, but traffic would not return to normal levels for weeks. The cause? A reportedly government-ordered shutdown in the wake of a court ruling upholding a death penalty verdict in a high-profile war crimes trial.
The brief interruption was just one recent example of a common problem: Internet disruptions around the world caused by myriad events. Sometimes natural disasters are to blame. Sometimes it’s power outages or other technical failures. Sometime the cables that connect the world get cut (on purpose or by accident). And, sometimes, as with Bangladesh, the government just prefers the darkness.
Akamai Technologies, which delivers a sizable share of online content for clients such as Yahoo, IBM and several federal agencies and departments, reviews such disruptions in its quarterly reports, the latest of which was published Tuesday. Here’s a look, courtesy of those reports, at the various events and incidents that made the Internet disappear, however briefly, last year.
Government intervention
Bangladesh, of course, isn’t the only country whose government has interfered with Internet access.
In Iraq, Akamai recorded a more than 80 percent dip in traffic nine times over the summer, all of them occurring during the same period in the morning. Dyn Research, an Internet performance company that also researches connectivity around the world, confirmed the outages, which were reportedly ordered by the government to prevent, of all things, cheating among students on high-stakes exams.
Last year, in January, the Democratic Republic of Congo cut Internet service to the capital, Kinshasa, in an alleged attempt to contain violent protests against the president.
Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis for Dyn, says such incidents of government controlling Internet access are no longer rare.
“I don’t know that I want to say it’s more frequent, but when it occurs, people are like ‘Oh, yeah, that’s too bad, but that’s kind of what happens now.’ It’s not that shocking of a development,” he said.
But, he added, exercising such control is getting harder as developing countries become increasingly connected to the world and more and more content gets hosted locally.
“The capacity of the whole system to absorb these incidents and overcome them is also increasing,” he said.
Cord-cutting
Snipped or nicked underwater cables also can take down the Internet for large swaths of time.
A cable-related outage in the West African nation of Gabon resulted in a near-90 percent drop in traffic there over the course of several days in April. The cause, some alleged, was sabotage related to ongoing strikes at Gabon Telecom.
An accidental cut to an undersea cable connecting Algeria and France resulted in a more than 70 percent drop in traffic to the former in October, Akamai reported. Some say vandals cut a cable serving Colombia, resulting in a drop in connectivity there in January 2015.
Late April, Nepal suffered a devastating earthquake. Thousands died, many were injured, and the recovery effort was hampered by the devastation wrought on the country’s physical infrastructure.
Immediately, traffic dropped to 11 percent of previous levels, according to Akamai. It recovered, slowly, over the course of several days. While Nepal’s connection to the world remained largely intact, local power outages and damaged cables left many within the country with spotty connectivity, according to Dyn.
A month earlier, a cyclone wreaked havoc on the Pacific island of Vanuatu, suppressing Internet traffic for about 36 hours.Countries will probably never be able to fully eliminate disruptions caused by technical issues, but they can dull their effect with more external connections to the Internet. Some countries, however, are not quite there yet, unfortunately.
Take Azerbaijan. Traffic to the small country situated to the north of the Middle East dipped to 10 percent of normal levels for about six hours on Nov. 16. Why? A data center belonging to Delta Telecom, the country’s main Internet provider, caught fire.
Roughly four-fifths of the networks in the country were affected, all of which connect to the Internet through Delta Telecom, according to Dyn.
Such problems don’t dramatically affect Internet service in more developed countries, such as the United States, because they tend to be far better connected both internally and externally, Madory says.
“It does require that there’s some single point of failure, so to speak,” he said.
Hello Jerry,
Logged on to my computer this morning and found this letter in my in basket from a former govvie work colleague and long time post retirement friend:
“I’m having a hard time sleeping this evening. I spent yesterday afternoon attending a funeral at Arlington National Cemetery, where a colleague was laid to rest. I stood in the afternoon sun while rifles fired in honor of those who served our Country, followed by the mournful notes of a bugle and the folding of the American flag. Final prayers were said and then I started the drive home past the thousands of white stones that represent the honored dead.
As I departed the cemetery I turned on the radio, hoping to hear some happier news or maybe find some music. What do I get instead? Obama speaking from Cuba, telling us he thinks we can agree on Cuba’s “universal education and free health care” as something the US should agree is great. I thought I must be mistaken. The leader of the Free World telling us Communist, drug dealing,murdering despots are providing a great education to their youth? It’s called indoctrination and brain washing. As for the great Cuban health care, please, take full advantage of it while you are there so the problem America has right now can be solved.
I arrived home, turned on the TV and saw Obama standing in front of an image of Che Guevara, holding hands with Raul Castro.
I have to say, the contrast between the start of my afternoon to the end of my day is as deep and stark as the difference between my America and the vision that bowing moron has for the country he apparently hates. One does not have a dialog with the Devil and “come to agreement” with Evil. Good people resist both.
Anyway, it seems like a footnote to the news jackals. For me it just confirms that there are those who would tell any lie it takes to gain power and that evil knows no boundaries. I have no idea what comes next, but the end of Obama’s reign this year will be welcome news for me. I hope his fellow travelers depart as well. I hear Cuba is a great place to go. Universal healthcare, plenty of free political indoctrination, and a nice, rent free cell in a tropical dungeon if you speak the truth. I hear a former messianic “leader” highly recommends it.”
Bob Ludwick=
I don’t believe it, a guy on the left is right for the right reasons
— just decades too late. Better late than never? Well, better than many other politicians at least:
<.>
Russian President Vladimir Putin is deploying nuclear-armed submarines “dangerously close” to the United States and European allies, a Senate Democrat said following a trip to the Arctic Circle.
</>
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2586428
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
Jerry
A new kind of not-an-invasion invasion?
http://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-O456J56KLVS301-5OHO56QVPTHKGV6KERV4TKI7QA
Ed
You are surprised?
: Free Trade
Free trade sounds great until you see a video of workers losing their jobs and think about the crisis this imposes on their families. Many might say you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, but I want to ask a question and maybe you can answer it:
What benefits do free trade initiatives such as NAFTA, CAFTA, GAT, permanent normalized trade relations with China, TPP, TPA, etc. do for the United States that justify the burden imposed on American workers and their families? Why are American families sacrificing for this vision? What benefits do the rest of us gain at their expense that make this course reasonable?
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
Free Trade
It seems to me that both free trade and protectionist tariffs are poor choices. A good strategy is to set tariffs such that they generate maximum revenue. Free trade generates no revenue because the tariffs are zero, and protectionist tariffs generate little revenue because the volume of imports is nearly zero. Tariffs that generate maximum revenue allow a reasonable amount of trade, while still providing a reasonable amount of protection.
Some economists think that free trade is better, and that no one should be collecting tariffs or getting protection. The problem is that their set of assumptions does not include consideration of the welfare and security of a nation, and those are really the primary point of having a nation.
Thanks,
Jim Melendy
The obvious answer is that each case is different. The North imposed high tariff on weaving machinery to keep the South from industrializing. When Japan could build cars that competed with Americans on quality rather than price, it was quite different from competition on price alone. When first world countries compete, Free Trade makes a lot of sense. When third world countries want to get in the act it’s a different story. I’ll have a free trade discussion another time. I’m in a tearing hurry today.
“What immigration really does is not so much increase the pie, as redistribute the wealth.”
—————————————
Roland Dobbins
National Disgrace
If this is true, it’s a national disgrace and it completely undermines the illusion of national security if you still believe even after Deutsche and Petraeus. Deutsch was Clinton’s man; so you expected something like this but to see it happen again under another president with a general and now possibly with a Secretary of State.
If this is possible in the United States, why would you work in an organization where you could go to jail for mistakenly doing what these people seem to have done intentionally? Also, if these breeches occur doesn’t that violate national security? So what’s the point?
Without national security, we really don’t have a country. It may seem that way for a while, but as Manly P. Hall put it:
“Abuse always seems to succeed but eventually leads to the collapse of the very system being abused”.
I believe I will see “the crisis” in my lifetime if we continue on this trajectory. I believe next we’ll see leaks offering specificity if the trends, outlined below, continue:
<.>
FBI chief James Comey and his investigators are increasingly certain presidential nominee Hillary Clinton violated laws in handling classified government information through her private e-mail server, career agents say.
Some expect him to push for charges, but he faces a formidable
obstacle: the political types in the Obama White House who view a Clinton presidency as a third Obama term.
With that, agents have been spreading the word, largely through associates in the private sector, that their boss is getting stonewalled, despite uncovering compelling evidence Clinton broke the law.
Exactly what that evidence is — and how and when it was uncovered during Comey’s months-long inquiry — has not been disclosed. For the record, the FBI had no comment on the matter, and government sources say no final decision has been made.
</>
http://nypost.com/2016/03/20/will-hillary-get-charged-or-what/
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
fast food automation to eliminate minimum wage
you’ve been predicting this:
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/03/17/2220225/fast-food-ceo-invests-in-machines-because-regulation-makes-them-cheaper-than-employees
The CEO of Carl’s Jr., Andy Puzder, has been inspired by the 100-percent automated restaurant, Eatsa, as he looks for ways to deal with rising minimum wages. “With government driving up the cost of labor, it’s driving down the number of jobs,” he says. “You’re going to see automation not just in airports and grocery stores, but in restaurants.” Puzder doesn’t believe in [the progressive idea of] raising the minimum wage. “Does it really help if Sally makes $3 more an hour if Suzie has no job? If you’re making labor more expensive, and automation less expensive — this is not rocket science,” says Puzder. What comes as a challenge is automating employee tasks. This is where he draws the line and doesn’t think that it’s likely any machine could perform such work. But for more rote tasks like grilling a burger or taking an order, technology may be even more precise than human employees. “They’re always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case,” says Puzder in regard to replacing employees with machines.David Lang
Perhaps the minimum wage ought to be $99 an hour; that would really guarantee a decent living for all. Well, all who could do something useful in an hour worth $100 to someone else. We would then have no more problems with low income workers.
I understand there are demonstrations for higher minimum wages.
“This will be the most transparent administration in history,” said President Obama, as Dr. Pournelle is fond of reminding us.
US govt sets record for failures to find files when asked
By TED BRIDIS and JACK GILLUM, Associated Press
Associated Press – Associated Press – Fri Mar 18 09:30:00 UTC 2016
When it comes to providing government records the public is asking to see, the Obama administration is having a hard time finding them.
Nerve Cell Stimulation ‘may recall memories’ in Alzheimer’s Patients.
—————————————
Roland Dobbins
more reaping of the whirlwind
https://www.aei.org/publication/an-open-letter-to-the-virginia-tech-community/
Charles Murray explaining fact vs. politics to Virginia Tech.
—
Phil Tharp
Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.
