Chaos Manor View, Wednesday, July 27, 2016

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

It has been a comedy of errors getting my fallen brick wall restored, but I think we’re getting it, and work will start tomorrow.

 

 

The contractor we chose to do it, rewrote their contracts for them (they had been recommended by USAA insurance and their contracts thought USAA was going to pay them), went through several iterations of that, then an inspection by their estimator, then signed a contract and gave them a check which they cashed – they were supposed to start Monday. Then Tuesday, but when they came out Tuesday they decided they had underbid. The job was going to cost more. How much more, we asked. I thought the question reasonable, but they had no answer. They’d get back to us.

So today I asked for my money back, and we’ve found another mason, recommended by the wife of an executive producer friend as very reliable, and he says he’ll start removing old bricks tomorrow and get a new wall up by the weekend. So we’ll see, but I have confidence in the people recommending him. But all of this took time. A lot of time.

I’ve also been generating scenes and characters for the interstellar colonization novel. It’s a sequel to The Legacy of Heorot and Beowulf’s Children, and I’m doing a pass through Mamelukes.

.

            

If you haven’t read these yet, you’ll like them. The first two books haven’t looked so much at the problems facing interstellar colony designers. The first Colony was put together by wealthy private members of the National Geographic Society, and they named the ship Geographic. We told some of the story of unexpected problems they faced in the first two books, but they brought all of those problems with them or found them on the planet they chose. Now another ship is coming from Earth. It wasn’t invited or expected, and it will turn out to have been built by a very different wealthy group. Meanwhile, discoveries of biological marvels continue… I think you’ll like the new book, but anyway working on it has absorbed much of my time that wasn’t taken up by plumbing problems, family weekend guests, and the usual chaos of Chaos Manor..

It’s the silly season.

The Conventions haven’t produced any great surprises. Democrats continue to be plagued by hacked emails, and to fear a November Surprise leak of emails from Mrs. Clinton’s destroyed private server; as more than one intelligence officer has noted, it would be hard to respect any intelligence organization that doesn’t have them…

Mr. Trump asked the Russians to give us the 33,000 (according to Mrs. Clinton) emails that the Secretary of State erased from the private server she kept in the basement.  The media exploded. How dare he invite the Russians to hack us? Treason! Treason! But everyone knows that server has been destroyed.  Mrs. Clinton say so.  Thus it can’t be hacked.  If the Russians have these 33,000 erased emails, they did it long ago – a not unreasonable assumption, of course.  Any intelligence service would have had a go at it.  I’m sure the Brits did. It cannot be treason to invite the Russians to give us a copy of whatever they have already stolen.  The fact that grown people, presumably competent, would think Trumps remarks treason says more about them than him.  Hardly unexpected; more like a confirming instance.

 

Republicans continue to worry about whether Trump can keep the conservative vote. Is he a Conservative? But that question can be answered only if you know the answers to many other questions, because Conservative has become a name for a very large number of competing movements. They have some common goals, but we have no real definition any longer; in particular, we are not at all agreed on what, precisely, is to be conserved.

Capitalism and Conservatism

There seems to be a notion that conservatives must be for capitalism, and anyone not for capitalism cannot be a conservative. Actually, as a few minutes reflection will show nearly anyone, this cannot be true. Capitalism is a tool, and like fire, it is a vital tool but a dangerous master. The purpose of capitalism, and its major effect, is to guide the allocation of resources to produce the stuff the society wants. It does that splendidly; nothing else like it. Socialism tries to allocate resources to produce, if not quality, then at least a “fair” distribution. It succeeds wildly so long as there are plenty of resources. When an army sacks a conquered city, wise officers will try to see that every soldier receives a fair share, and no one hogs all the loot – particularly that the officers do not visibly get a lot more than the men, since the goal is to have an obedient and disciplined army when the looting is finished.

Socialism works fine, but as Lady Thatcher observed, eventually you run out of other people’s money. You have to start taking in taxes, and that increases your costs of government. You try allocating resources through a bureaucracy of experts, and the iron law of bureaucracy soon takes over. If productivity is reasonably high, and the wants of your society are low. It all works like a charm, witness the success of many and many a medieval monastery. Over time the Abbots and Priors and other officials gained appreciable splendors not available to the more common member priests or brothers, but the monasteries were quite stable: the Venetian monastery of San Giorgio Majore endured with the abbots and priors in great splendor for centuries until Napoleon sacked Venice; and even to this day the Monastic buildings and art treasures, while belonging to the commune, are available to the Abbot were he of an inclination to enjoy them – or were when I was last in Venice, although the Monsignor in charge there was also the pastor of a congregation, and spent his time as most pastors do.

But capitalism is not conservative; indeed, to be successful, it must generate creative destruction. Inefficient firms go broke, and their resources are taken over by entrepreneurs who can make better use of them. Conservatives must endure this for the sake of production and efficiency, but the subsequent community destruction can only be deplored. You cannot have a free society without economic freedom, you cannot have economic freedom without a free market, and to that extent Conservatism is wedded to capitalism; but it must always be remembered, unrestricted free capitalism inevitably leads to the sale of human flesh in the market place. If you can’t buy baby parts in the market, someone is restricting your right to sell them. Why? And would it be conservative to end that restriction of your rights?

Enter now free trade. The theory of capitalism leads one inevitably to free trade; but the consequences of free trade can be devastating. Mills close. Jobs vanish. The means of production are shipped somewhere else, to people who will make more efficient use of them. What was made at home is now made elsewhere; when you buy it, the money is gone. It no longer remains in your community. That may be a good thing if goods are that much cheaper, but this is not always the case.

Before overseas competition, Detroit produced some cars that many intellectuals did not like. See The Insolent Chariots as an example. There were domestic competitors, and some of the then many car makers tried the rugged long lasting rather than stylish strategy. My first car was a Barracuda because I bought it for style and performance, but I had only one child at the time. My second was an International Harvester Scout. I loved that car, and my four boys learned to drive in it. I don’t think of a competitor to it: Land Rover from Britain was probably closest. Of course all the International Harvester plants, agencies, distributors, and dealers are long ago closed and dismantled. Eventually Ford made competitors, and I still drive an Explorer. I never bought an insolent chariot with tail fins.

I make no doubt that competition from overseas improved automobiles in the United States, and that various laws favoring unions and local governments ignoring union “organizing” practices had as much to do with turning Detroit from the industrial heart to a wasteland as ever did free trade – but free trade allowed manufacturers to move to Mexico where wages were much lower. Then Walmart pressured them to close their Mexican factories and move the whole mess to China, where wages were even lower, so they could sell stuff in Walmart at lower and lower prices.

Free trade, like capitalism, is a way of getting cheaper stuff; but surely there is more to life than cheaper stuff? Conservatives certainly used to think so.

Capitalism and free trade

Fingleton: ‘For all her alleged smarts and homework, nothing Hillary Clinton has said or done demonstrates that she understands that free-trade theory is based on a model with a highly flawed set of assumptions (full employment, no exchange rate cheating, no cross border investment flows, and so on).’

<http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/clintons-bad-trade/>

I highly recommend Eamonn Fingleton’s book In the Jaws of the Dragon

(<https://www.amazon.com/Jaws-Dragon-Americas-Chinese-Hegemony-ebook/dp/B0017JWLB4/?tag=chaosmanor-20>)

to anyone who wants to understand China’s imperatives, objectives, strategy, and tactics.

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Would 15% have saved Detroit?

I had to respond to your query on free trade. You said “Would a 15% tariff on cars have saved Detroit? It would mean that I would have had to pay about $5000 more for my 1988 Ford Eddie Bauer V8 Explorer I bought in 1999. I could have afforded that. And I suspect that I’ve paid more in income taxes sent to welfare recipients in Detroit than that. Is paying people not to work more Conservative than trying to keep their jobs and manufacturing capabilities and potential here, not dismantling it and leaving its former site to rust away Conservative?”
Free market forces seem to have worked against Detroit as it turned out genuine crap for 20+ years – my opinion and the results of the reliability surveys out there as well. By 1999 the tide was turning but the problem with a protectionist tariff is that it doesn’t incent the industry to get better, do things better or do things cheaper. You want quality you buy Honda or Toyota has been the standard setting groups. You want luxury go German or the luxury brands of the Japanese. I admit that for me I owned a US made car only recently and only recently have begun to lust after another American made car (Tesla). I usually buy quality and some luxury. I’ve done German. I’ve done Japanese. But rarely American.
My point – a 15% tariff will do more long term harm to the US auto industry than letting it be gutted for building crap.

Chris

So we have better cars, and we’re better off now. Perhaps so, although I suspect there are a lot who don’t agree.

Free Trade

Mr. Pournelle,
You wrote: “What was conserved by turning Detroit into a wasteland? How was that conservative?”
A good question. It seems to me that Ricardo’s argument would be most persuasive for people who are confident they themselves won’t be the ones to pay the cost. “We can all bear philosophically with other people’s misfortunes.”
On either side of the argument, I’d want to be alert to unintended consequences. On the one hand, the idea of an island of economic prosperity surrounded by failing states is disturbing; one odd consequence of “free trade” seems to be some transition of other countries out of a pre-industrial economy. Though what they seem to be transitioning *into* seems too much like Dickensian Victorian rapacity. Although, perhaps that’s a necessary stage in growing out of the abject poverty of most of human history. Though on the third hand, how do you keep the profits from being gobbled up by kleptocracies?
In other words, I find myself confused. This is a case in which I am not at all sure what is either just or constructive. I’ll follow your discussion with interest.
Yours,
Allan E. Johnaon

What we did hasn’t worked too well: doubled the debt twice so that it is now over $50,000 per person (man, woman, and child, employed, unemployed, or just not working) while dismantling the “arsenal of democracy” that won WWI and II. Perhaps that’s it, and nothing could be done, but I doubt that. I do not think many predicted it in 1945.

r.e. “Free Trade”

Dear Jerry,

I’m in general agreement with your thoughts on “Free Trade”.  However,

“The advantages of Free Trade are lower prices for stuff.”

This is not at all clear.  My own inquiries on this matter have led me to conclude that “lower prices for stuff” is mainly a diligently promoted myth spread by the cheer leaders of “Free Trade”.   i.e. the various trade agreements struck by the Bushes and Clintons with one party Communist dictatorships and other institutionally corrupt foreign governments.

Let’s take one minor data point, tools.  PDF versions of Sears Tools Catalogs from the late 1950s and early 1960s are available online in various places.  And so are various US Government inflation calculators. Imported tools of equal quality to the US made tools Sears formerly sold appear to cost more, not less.

“That means they are more cheaply produced.”

If we include radically lowered quality in the definition of “more cheaply produced”, I agree.  Entry level Chinese machine tools are far more cheaply made than nominally equivalent Sears Craftsman products in the 1950s and 1960s.  Both material specifications and workmanship are both far below former standards.

“As the economist David Ricardo wrote, there is a principle of comparative advantage that coupled with free trade guarantees maximum profits for when there are no trade restrictions”

I agree this has certainly worked out for the “Free Traders”, meaning those actively engaged in the process of “buy low – sell high”.   And it certainly helps here to have ready access to almost interest free loans from the Federal Reserve System under the current Zero Interest Rate Policy regime.  I think this is self evidently a major cause of the rising domestic income inequality that various commentators denounce.

In any case the modern dominance of “Free Trade” as either a “Conservative” or “Republican” dogma is extremely recent.  The Republican Party was explicitly founded on protectionism in 1860.  “Free Trade” in those days was promoted by the Slave Power as necessary to their 3d World raw cotton commerce with David Ricardo’s already industrialized United Kingdom.

“Free Enterprise” was much more commonly used and praised among most of the American Right as late as the 1950s – 1970s.   The fruits of these enterprises however were held to be the result of individual and family moral virtues, not government policies.

Best Wishes,

Mark

p.s. I also fail to see many – if any –  “Free Market Principles” at work in a “Free Trade” regime that depends on a) a government chartered central bank system and b) stock, financial and commodity exchanges that are functional monopolies thanks to government regulatory protection forming barriers to entry for would be competitors.

= =

As I will comment when I publish this, when I was in 5^th grade we learned that “Democrats believe in tariff for revenue only, Republicans believe in protective tariff to keep the South from industrializing.” (There were huge tariffs on manufacturing and weaving equipment.)  Those were the days when the South always voted Democrat.

= =

We learned something similar in the 5th grade in northern Indiana in the 1960s.  This was that northern manufacturers wanted tariff protection from already established and lower cost British manufacturers.

I am unaware of any industrial economies that established themselves under anything other than mercantilist type tariff protections.  And this specifically includes the original example in England and Scotland in the early 19th Century.  David Ricardo’s work was generated as part of the Liberal political war against the Corn Laws and the Tory landowners in the 1840s.  These tariff laws on agricultural produce weren’t repealed until 1846.  This debate was entirely about the scale of the British manufacturing sector, not its kind or type.

I’ll go so far as to challenge any True Believers in free trade to cite just one example of a 19th Century scientific, technological and industrial advance that depended on “Free Trade”.  The William Shockley of the 19th Century was Henry Maudsley.  He and his apprentices launched the machine tool revolution during the Napoleonic era in a solidly mercantilist England.  His screw cutting metal lathe was working by 1800.  David Ricardo and his program didn’t come along until the 1840s when all the new industries were well established.

The traditional common understanding of the economics of the Victorian British Empire as taught as late as the 1960s was incomplete. The whole “workshop of the world” Free Trade idea of England never really existed.  This was the simple explanation that the United Kingdom imported food and raw materials and sent out finished industrial goods for a profit.

AJP Taylor in his History of England 1914 – 1945 cited a Royal economics commission of the late 1920s.  This showed that the “trading” account had only shown one annual surplus since the 1830s.  This industrial deficit at the ‘national’ level was always made up by profits from City of London financial activities in factoring this huge trade, interest and dividends on foreign investments and shipping services.   And as far as I can see fostering this vast expansion of City of London financial activities was always the intent of bond trader David Ricardo and those who promoted his theories.

Capitalists will always try to get government to regulate and impose compliance costs to keep the cost of entering that kind of business high, and thus cut down on competition.  That goes for conservatives who want to preserve the status quo.

 

Hello Jerry,

This from today’s post on free trade:

I could have afforded that. And I suspect that I’ve paid more in income taxes sent to welfare recipients in Detroit than that.

You have also paid far more to the people who are paid to pay the people not to work, those who are paid to take your money and give it to the people who in turn give it to the people who don’t work, those who are paid to examine every detail of your financial life to ensure that you actually ‘gave’ what they had unilaterally decided was the proper amount, and those who are paid to capture and punish you should your payments—or the paperwork that accompanied your payments—had in some way been in error.  And don’t forget the vacations, medical coverage, and retirement plans for all the above folks that you are paying to confiscate your money and give it to the non-workers.

And that, rather than paying the non-workers, is the point of the whole exercise.

Bob Ludwick

‘Free’ trade and conservatives

Liked your recent posting on ‘free’ trade and conservatism, well said. (although how is giving big corporations the ‘freedom’ to restrict the ability of private citizens to import legal pharmaceuticals from Canada, so that the corporation can maximize their profits, ‘free’?)
There is another point here that I think people forget. The English economist John Stuart Mills once commented that if low prices are due to efficient production techniques, then this may temporarily hurt people with a vested interest in older, less efficient techniques, but in the long run we all benefit. However, if low prices are due to low wages, then it is impossible for the average person to benefit – people don’t become rich by becoming poor. Most of the US trade deficit is not with Japanese and German companies that produced superior goods – it is with American companies that moved American designs and production processes to low wage countries. In other words, the low prices from modern ‘free’ trade are mostly just due to low wages, not technical innovation. In the long run that’s just a race to the bottom for wages.
It also needs to be pointed out that the old mantra of ‘comparative advantage’ only applies to situations like agricultural and only when demand is higher than supply – which nowadays is mostly not true. Agricultural land is in fixed supply and it’s very hard (if even possible) to increase the supply of it. So if I maximize my profits by growing grapes, I will grow only grapes, and someone else could earn a living growing corn, even if in principle I could grow corn more efficiently. But that won’t work for manufactures. If Outer Nowhere has 50 cents an hour labor, ALL the factories can be moved there leaving me with no business at all. ‘Comparative advantage’ is an interesting intellectual exercise but as a guide to modern economics it should be consigned to the dustbin of economic history.
But then I remember the old joke: microeconomics is wrong about specific things, and macroeconomics is wrong about things in general…

TG

Conserving unemployment

The following from your latest update struck a chord:
Quote: “And if you dropped out of the labor force “ no longer looking for a job “ you are no longer unemployed. The unemployment rate just went down. You stopped looking for a job. Of course you don’t have a job, you are certainly not employed, but you aren’t unemployed and don’t count toward the unemployment rate. I wouldn’t have thought that sort of lying to the people by government officials was a very Conservative thing to do at all.”
This is exactly what has happened under the previous two terms of the Conservative-led Coalition, and then the Conservative government, in the UK.
The mechanism that permitted it was the availability of Working Tax Credits which are available to anyone who goes self-employed (a broad definition that encompasses both the traditional definition of setting up in your own business, or working temporary, part-time, seasonal, zero-hours contracts for an employer).
The motive that drove many thousands to “go self-employed” was the horribly punitive and demeaning unemployment welfare system that worked to infantilise and punish job seekers, and often actively impaired their ability to get a job by interfering in a candidates availability to attend interviews, or mandating that they only apply for a limited range of occupations. As a victim of the recession (losing two jobs in quick succession) I went through this system.
I, too, took the chance to jump out of the unemployment welfare system and onto Working Tax Credits (which is administered by the HMRC, another department with a different budget). My “business”, like so many others, was always doomed to fail, but it was better than staying on the dole and being treated like scum for being there.
And the Tories crowed about how they had reduced unemployment. And how had they done it?
Quote: “Of course you don’t have a job, you are certainly not employed, but you aren’t unemployed and don’t count toward the unemployment rate.”
The UK is rife with unrealistic small-businesses that haven’t a hope of earning a living, while their owners subsist on temporary contracts plus some occasional meagre earnings that their businesses actually do generate, all so that they can stay off the horrible, horrible dole. This allows the government to boast of the lowest unemployment rate since records began, and to use this as an excuse to perpetuate a policy of austerity: of ideologically driven cuts and a lack of investment in infrastructure, while busily selling off all the state’s existing assets for low prices. The only things they throw money at are a few high profile projects like High Speed Rail and Nuclear power: projects that only benefit those already in work in highly specialised roles.
This approach solves nothing. I haven’t been able to plan my life, apply for debt, invest in a large purchase such as a house or a car or even take a single holiday of any description since 2007. I am a member of the silent majority of the British workforce, many of whom displayed their anger by making a protest vote in favour of Brexit. I have lost count of how many of those people have expressed remorse for this because they understand that now, with the economic down-turn that must inevitably result from Brexit as we move from being an economy of 508 million to just 65 million, our situation cannot realistically improve for at least a generation.
I see no prospect of the USA avoiding a similar fate, no matter who wins.

Mike Ranson

What is Conservative

Your recent post brought to mind this essay from several months ago:
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/can-the-american-right-renounce-utopianism-15599?page=show

Craig

The models are better than history

Dr. Pournelle,
I am citing the popular article because of the headline: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Historical records miss a fifth of global warming: NASA.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 July 2016. .
The synopsis says pretty much the same thing: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3066.html
“We show that there is no evidence that climate models overestimate TCR [transient climate response] when their output is processed in the same way as the HadCRUT4 observation-based temperature record.”
What I’m getting out of this is an attempt to discredit the historical record by processing it using the model that was created, from the historical record, to show that temperatures are going up. Guess I’ll have to read the study to see if they decided to rewrite history or discredit the model.
My money is on the butler…
-d

“At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it.”

<https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150527103110.htm>

———————————————————————–

Roland Dobbins

So Samuel Johnson should have refuted Berkeley by closing his eyes as he kicked the rock ?

Dr. Pournelle,
Unfortunately I think Dr. Ball is right.  Universities have had a long time for your Iron Law to work.   I wonder why it has got so much worse in recent years.  I loved his quote:
“Intelligence appears to be the thing that enables man to get along without education. Education appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along without the use of his intelligence.“
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/07/24/credibility-loss-in-climate-science-is-part-of-a-wider-malaise-in-science/
You may be interested in this recent summary of Andrea Rossi’s efforts in LENR.  The QuarkX appears to be something very different.  1 mm dia x 30 mm long – produces 100 Watts output for 0.5 W input.  Can produce half the output as electricity and light.  (At above 1300C)    I know he has many critics but the facts continue to build up that he has what he claims.  We should know for sure in about six months.
Regards,
Adrian Ashfield

‘The history of American close air support is a tale of learn, master and forget.’

<http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-real-problem-killing-americas-10-warthog-17084?page=showje>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

 

I think I agree with something I heard Glenn Loury say a month ago. Totally paraphrased, my own version:

There is a way for Trump to turn this election into a rout. And it’s something that maybe no one could do but him. He should be spending 25% of his time from now till the election talking to black audiences. He should be telling them, “You’ve heard I’m a racist. Well, I’m here to talk to you and listen. And I want to tell you that you’ve been voting for Democrats for more than fifty years now. What have they done for you that actually works? Do you know what they’ve done to your schools? How is going to help to give inner city kids a free college education (isn’t going to happen) when the elementary schools didn’t teach them to read, or do math? Do you know that every school in the country, fifty years ago, spent maybe half as much money per student in today’s dollars, and taught pretty much every kid to read? How long are you going to keep voting for people who don’t care if schools can fire teachers who don’t teach? How long are you going to keep voting for people who have agencies in Washington who give orders to every school in the country how they should arrange their bathrooms?  How long are you going to keep voting for people who don’t care if what they’ve promising will actually help? I’m not that much of a conservative; I don’t mind spending money. But I’m not going to spend it on agencies in DC and state governments; I am going to find ways that work.”

Etc. He could do it; he could turn the black community. They don’t care about his “bigoted views” on immigration; they probably agree with him.

(It would help if he would come out strongly in favor of fixing relationships between the police and the inner city. Doesn’t need to endorse BLM; that too could be presented the way Newt Gingrich seems to do it: There’s a serious problem here in many cities, and we need to find a way to really fix it. Picking sides isn’t going to help; none of us wants police that can’t do their jobs, none of us wants police shooting people who didn’t do anything at all. Let’s find a way that works; that ends the war.)

mkr

I have never understood why the black community sticks with the Democrats, who are the remnants of the slaveholders and then the authors of Jim Crow.  When I grew up in the segregated Old South, Republicans were so rare there were jokes about it. Lyndon Johnson won them over, and they have stayed with the Democrats. And so long as the media make Al Sharpton and his kind their “Leaders” and consult him when they want a quote on how Blacks think I see no change coming. Trump would do more for the blacks because he needs them; Hillary doesn’t have to worry about their vote.

 

 

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Friday, July 22, 2016

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

The day was devoured by the business of living. The plumbing stopped yesterday, and Mike Diamond’s efficient $99 drain clearers couldn’t come until today. They came early enough, but that was the first household problem. I couldn’t shower yesterday when I had someone to help, so it was today, alone. Not fun, and I couldn’t start until the drains were free. Meanwhile, the people who are going to get rid of my fallen wall and replace it usually work for an insurance company and all their standard forms are drawn up with the insurance company as the payer; we were referred to them by USAA, whom we have good reason to trust, but that wall falling after trying to fall for fifty years is a good example of normal wear and tear. Why it couldn’t have fallen in one or another earthquake I don’t know; but it didn’t, and there it is. So we’ll pay, which means the contracts need to reflect that, and it took three iterations and Roberta’s skills to get it rewritten, after which we had to wait for the next draft. I needed stuff from the grocer, but there was always some reason I couldn’t go. I had to wait where I could hear the doorbell, which meant I could not get upstairs to the Monk’s Cell to work on the novel; I did some pretty good work on it this week, but I can only work on fiction where I am not interrupted and distracted. For that matter I can’t do decent essays when distractible. I used to write the Chaos Manor column in the Press Room at major shows, but that was before brain cancer and a stroke – now I can only two finger type while staring at the keyboard.

On that score, there’s good news. I’ve found the 15” ASUS ZenBook just what I needed, this after trying all kinds of keyboards. I have the ASUS upstairs in the Monk’s Cell, on a good stand with a 25” LED very high resolution monitor at eye level when I sit back and relax. I type looking at the keyboard, but I can see the laptop’s screen, sort of, as I do. I don’t hit two keys at once so often. I still manage to hit c of v along with the spacebar too often, but I am training myself not to do that; and I can type fast, fast enough to keep up with scenes as I imagine them. I can then sit back and edit on the big screen with mouse and keyboard as I did before the stroke. It’s wonderful. You can recover from a stroke. It’s a bit like learning skills all over again, but that’s fine – you can do it. What you can’t do is give up. Anyway, what with my ADSUS ZenBook and other equipment I’m back in business – when I can get upstairs to use it. Today I couldn’t.

And then about 4 PM my oldest son sent an email, cryptic, saying that our number three son Phillip, the career Navy officer, just landed at Burbank Airport and would be at the house anon. He has a Navy conference in San Diego next week and will spend the weekend here. Of course he was expected but with all the other distractions I had forgotten.

After which things began to get back to normal. The restoration guy showed up and the papers were all in order, and they start next week, and there are no more decisions to make. The plumbers finished their work and the toilets work again. So do the showers. I took one, alone and unassisted, and even treated myself to a real shave with a real razor, no incidents to report. Alex, Phillip, Roberta, and I all went to dinner at a local Italian restaurant that serves gluten free, and it was great. Phillip and I then went to the grocery store and got things urgently needed – I don’t drive at dusk or later – and that pressure is off. It’s quiet, everyone is in bed, and I’m working in my back bedroom, not as good as the Monk’s Cell, but Phillip is sleeping there – it is, after, the bedroom of the oldest boy living with us, which means it was his room at one time. But it’s quiet here, no distractions, and here we are.

So it turned out to be a pretty good day after all.

On Free Trade

One reason Conservatives are advised by Conservative leaders to disagree with Trump is his position on Free Trade. The problem for me is that I do not see Free Trade, particularly laissez faire Free Trade, as necessarily Conservative at all,

The advantages of Free Trade are lower prices for stuff. That means they are more cheaply produced. As the economist David Ricardo wrote, there is a principle of comparative advantage that coupled with free trade guarantees maximum profits for when there are no trade restrictions, and impediments to free trade are supposed to be mutually disadvantageous.

But do understand, what is conserved is lower prices. Nor social stability. Not communities. Not family life. Indeed those are often disrupted; it’s part of the economic model. Under free trade theory, it’s better to have free trade than community preservation, better to have ghost towns of people displaced because their jobs have been shipped overseas; better to have Detroit as a wasteland than a thriving dynamic industrial society turning out tail finned Cadillacs and insolent chariots and supporting workers represented by rapacious unions in conflict with pitiless corporate executives.

The theory of free trade includes liquidity: liquidity in capital flow, and liquidity in labor relocation.

What was conserved by turning Detroit into a wasteland? How was that conservative? Wouldn’t it be more conservative to argue that if everyone pays a little more for stuff made here, by people who work here, we are better off than having it made south of the border and inviting our people to go work there at their prevailing wages?

Go further. You don’t have to move. We’ll pay you for not working and you don’t have to move. Of course we’ll have to raise taxes on those who do work to pay those people no longer working, but that’s life. But after unemployment benefits work out – in my days the government would pay you $26 a week for 26 weeks – you’re in trouble. So much so that welfare benefits kept being raised. Food stamps, which became larger and bought more items. Negative income tax. And if you dropped out of the labor force – no longer looking for a job – you are no longer unemployed. The unemployment rate just went down. You stopped looking for a job. Of course you don’t have a job – you are certainly not employed – but you aren’t unemployed and don’t count toward the unemployment rate. I wouldn’t have thought that sort of lying to the people by government officials was a very Conservative thing to do at all.

Would a 15% tariff on cars have saved Detroit? It would mean that I would have had to pay about $5000 more for my 1988 Ford Eddie Bauer V8 Explorer I bought in 1999. I could have afforded that. And I suspect that I’ve paid more in income taxes sent to welfare recipients in Detroit than that. Is paying people not to work more Conservative than trying to keep their jobs – and manufacturing capabilities and potential here, bot dismantling it and leaving its former site to rust away – Conservative?

And is encouraging people not to work – at least making it easier and more possible – building a Conservative nation?

What, precisely, is being conserved here?

Some addresses I saved; I intended to comment on them, but things got out of hand, and I have to reduce the number of tabs I have open or Firefox glitches.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/trump-has-officially-inaugurated-post-movement-conservatism/

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-speech-is-good/

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8442/sharia-in-denmark-part-ii

http://www.unz.com/freed/ready-new-rossiters-universal-robots-toward-a-most-minimal-wage/

http://www.unz.com/freed/walter-williams-catholics-the-projects-and-schooling-for-blacks-something-is-wrong-somewhere/

While this was written recently in Fred’s current style, most of the column is a reprint of a 1981 article he wrote for Harper’s (and is in a more journalistic style). He could have written it last week, only more so: it’s about DC schools. They’re bad. They were bad in 1981. They were bad in 1983. They are worse in 2016. Interestingly, the Constitution gives Congress the authority to deal with the DC school system: you’d think that if the Federal Government could tell you how to run your local schools. It could show you how to do it in a place where the Congress – i.e. the Federal Government – has all the Constitutional authority it needs. Yet from 1981 to now, under Democratic majorities with Democratic Presidents, Democratic majorities with Republican Presidents, Republican majorities with Democratic Presidents, Republican majorities with Republican President, and in the past few years Republican majorities with Democratic President – under all these combinations the DC schools have got worse and worse, the federal government always had the Constitutional authority to fix it, and did nothing: yet the Department of Education still pretends it knows how you should run your schools.

This is robbing the poor. This is building a caste system. This is seeing to it that the ruling class has an out – a few good public schools in neighborhoods dominated by the governing class can send their kids to public schools, but for those who are governed, the public schools are all they have.

I sent my children to Catholic schools because they learned more there; more than they would have even in the best Los Angeles public schools. But I could – just barely – afford to do so. I don’t live big, and I’m not addicted to conspicuous consumption. I tend to be Conservative even if the formal Conservative Movement had the egregious Frum throw me out .

Oooo!

https://news.brown.edu/articles/2016/07/imbrium

http://infowebbie.com/scienceupdate/asteroid-formed-moons-imbrium-basin-may-protoplanet-sized/

Asteroid that formed Moon’s Imbrium Basin may have been Protoplanet-sized – Science, Astronomy, Medical News & Updates infowebbie.com The asteroid that slammed into the moon 3.8 billion years ago creating the Imbrium Basin may have had a diameter of at least 150 miles, according to a new estimate.

Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”
http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com

‘The scattered, moated complexes like Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom were merely the most enduring features of what we now know was the biggest city on Earth during the 12th and 13th centuries.’

<http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/how-archaeologists-found-the-lost-medieval-megacity-of-angkor/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

: REDUX: Turkey  <.>

Turkish media announced that:

15,200 teachers and other education staff had been sacked

1,577 university deans were ordered to resign

8,777 interior ministry workers were dismissed

1,500 staff in the finance ministry had been fired

257 people working in the prime minister’s office were sacked </>

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36842073

The coup crackdown surpassed 50k today (the media breakdown doesn’t seem to list it all). How can you put together lists like that in a few days? The sheer collections and sorting alone would take longer than that. The Nazis used lists and even they would be astounded by such efficiency.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

It is the final end of the Ataturk secular republic.

 

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Thursday, July 21, 2016

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

I keep reminding you that the education mess is deep and getting deeper, because it’s so easy to forget that it wasn’t always this way. If you want to minimize income disparity, you ought to minimize education disparity; but leveling is very difficult – folks got money scratch where they itch, so it ain’t so easy robbin’ the rich; easier by far, to keep robbin’ the poor. And lousy public schools are a good way for robbing the poor. It only takes one undisciplined student being either ignored by the teacher or coddled by the teacher, to really limit the education of the rest of the class. And of course students who don’t understand the language, or the culture, or have any background education, take up a great deal of the teacher’s time, so making sure every classroom has a fair share of kids who really need help is a very good way for seeing that the ordinary middle class kids whose parents pay for those schools don’t learn much. And we can import an infinite number of kids who need all of the teacher’s time, and fill the classrooms with them, and call it equality.

But if you were to try to design a system to produce low class education, and make going to private schools very beneficial, and thus widen all gaps into castes, I wonder what system would be better than the one we are developing? And closing the Charter schools, making sure that all but the rich have lousy systems, is a great way to continue; only we never catch wise, do we?

The joys of diversity.

Ted Cruz, like Nelson Rockefeller in ’64, is concerned about principles, not Party, and thus wants to assure that Hillary Clinton is elected President since it can’t be him. If that wasn’t his intent, it is the effect.

As a guy thrown out of the Conservatives by the egregious Frum at National Review because I opposed the invasion of Iraq, I can’t speak for Conservatives. I remain a student and admirer of Burke, and I was a protégé of Russell Kirk and Steve Possony – got my doctorate under Cole at the University of Washington – so I used to have Conservative credentials until the National Review crowd decided you had to be an international interventionist like the neo-conservatives to be a conservative. I think I know something about conservative principles. As a Republican County Chairman I was I think the third chairman to have an actor named Ronald Reagan speak at a rally (at the Orange Bowl in San Bernardino) and I got along with Reagan fine, years later chairing the kitchen cabinet committee that wrote the Strategic Defense (Ted Kennedy called it Star Wars) proposal.

Trump is no movement conservative, but he has conservative principles. He doesn’t want a bigger government, he believes people can do very well without so much government, and he believes the Constitution means what it says – exactly as the Federalist Papers which, after all, were newspaper articles when they were published, states. Trump won’t expand government, he’ll appoint scholars to the Supreme Court, and he’ll put America First in negotiations. He won’t import hundreds of terrorists along with hundreds of thousands of refugees – a majority of whom have no intention of assimilating.

Under Trump I don’t know what the future will be, but I know quite well what a third term for Obama will mean; and Hillary is that third term.

As to personal honesty, Trump is a sharp business man. You may draw your own conclusions about Mrs. Clinton.

As Mr. Ryan said, this election is important. Key. It is going to determine the future. It is a maximum effort mission.

 

Mrs. Trump hit a standing up three base flier off the right field wall so Fox News had a pipsqueak analyzer on two hours later to comment on her plagiarism; as if there were all that many ways to say “Work hard, and make your word your bond.  Be honest. ”  You can’t imagine Hillary saying that without gales of laughter.  Early in Barrack Hussein Obama’s days, his charming wife could say it; today she’d have a bit more difficulty. Which is the point.  It used to be that way in America.  It might be again.  And we may have enough of the joys of diversity that it will never be again.  If we lose this election, no one will ever say it again.  And that’s not discussed : that Trumps family seems to believe in working hard and keeping promises.

 

We now have an estimate on fixing my wall. Since it has been falling for forty years, and it’s deductible, I guess I can’t complain too much. At least it can be done.

I’m hard at work on the Cthulhu book, but stuff like this is certainly a distraction. More later; I have to go work on fiction.

2300  Trump’s acceptance speech was remarkable: as Newt Gingrich said afterwards, probably there is no other political figure in America who could have made it. It was certainly effective with the focus group of undecided voters consulted after the speech.  Only 7 were converted and would vote for Trump, but none would vote for Hillary, and a dozen said they now leaned toward Trump – if they could believe him.  Trump’s family made impressive appearances, too, although I expect many women viewers were more impressed with the crew of elves it took to manage the appearances of Trump’s wife and daughters. All told it was an impressive speech, but about half an hour too long.  In general, most speeches are too long; this one not fearfully so, and not all that long at all compared to many historical orations. Millenials don’t much like long speeches (or essays).

People don’t seem to take Daesh economic warfare seriously. Consider this:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article90782637.html

Some Albanian hacker compromised, what seems to be, a small business.

He used customer data to create a kill list for ISIS. Knowing that large businesses and politicians like Hillary Clinton cannot keep their data secure; indeed, the United States government routinely has data breaches and offers “free” identity theft protection to those concerned at considerable taxpayer expense, no doubt.

Any intelligent person who wants to mitigate their risk of being on such a list would, prudently, stop doing business with small businesses online that didn’t seem secure. And, since figuring that out would require time, it seems likely to me that most would rather just go to a larger retailer with hopefully better security or at least lots of other folks that might be gotten to first. After all, when you’re running from a wild beast you do not have to run faster than the beast; you only have to run faster than the slowest person in front of the beast.

But, I have no confidence enough people will be convinced of this idea before it’s too late and we’re onto the next idea while they’re still trying to figure out the last one. I’m starting to think that maladjustment is the biggest threat to national security.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Daesh needs to be destroyed, not just molested. All the special forces we have can’t do that. We now need a full Corps, including Heavy Armor and an Armored Cavalry, artillery, all the A-10’s, and considerable air superiority assets to protect the Warthogs from SAM and other anti-aircraft. It means a major effort, and now that Turkey is unreliable, Iraqi Kurdistan is probably the right p,lace for an air base, and the base to operate from.

It will take considerable skill to handle Turkey now.

Anything mush smaller will mean far more casualties. We need overwhelming, mind-numbing force to deal with this threat, even though our allies will do most of the fighting; but there needs to be overwhelming force to protect our striking forces.

That’s the only way America makes war. We are not can Empire and we don’t have mercenary legions to rule without the consent of the governed. We should have learned that in the Philippines long ago. We don’t colonize well.

well, they said it

“2016 is the hottest year on record,” CBS Evening News, 20 July 2016, 5:36pmCDT

Pardon me while I laugh — I played polo in heat much greater than this, with higher heat indices, more than ten years ago…

Stephanie

 

 

Worth your time: http://realclimatescience.com/2016/07/global-temperatures-are-mostly-fake/

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

 

Denmark, Norway and global warming

The weather in Northern Europe, especially Denmark, is getting warmer in the winter. Little snow falls in Denmark anymore. The young I’ve talked to cry Global Warming, the old recall Greenland had dairy farms in the time of the Vikings. The old don’t seem to missing the freezing winters.

Just anecdotal evidence from our family vacation.

—

Phil

 

We all know temperatures are defined, not measured. The reported temperatures are not data, they are adjusted. The adjustments have been getting more frantic as heating has slowed. We know the Earth was warmer in Viking times than it is now. How much warmer we don’t know, but enough to extend growing seasons in China and Europe.

‘It simply makes no sense to tie America’s security to countries of such modest importance that are situated in such unpromising tactical circumstances.’

<http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/why-the-baltic-states-are-where-nuclear-war-most-likely-17044?page=show>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

One of Trump’s major points was that our allies are not paying their share.  Extended deterrence was often discussed during the Cold War.  One consequence was a large military force in Germany,  large enough to keep the Russians from just driving to the Rhine in hours.  My daughter was S2 for an artillery unit in the Fulda Gap; large enough to stop small units, but no more than a trip wire if facing the entire Red Army.  Eisenhower’s carefully worded statement that attacks on our units in Germany would be met wit “massive retaliation at a time and place of our choosing”, along with the cold but easily observed competence of SAC – the Strategic Air Force —  was sufficient.  If it was a bluff, it was a damned good one, and the SAC generals at Dropkick and Looking Glass didn’t know it was a bluff. They were ready if ordered, and the Polit Buro knew it.

Now SAC is no more. The Navy’s boomers are counter value – city buster – weapons, not counterforce – war fighting – forces. I make no doubt they are ready and efficient, but they are to avenge us after we are dead; they would never be used in a retaliation “at a time and place of our choosing”.  Estonia was “my” captive nation in our captive nations program, and I came to admire the Estonians and their American-recognized government in exile (the US did not recognize the legality of the incorporation of the Baltic Republics into the Soviet Union after World War II). But Eisenhower, then Kennedy, then Nixon did not pledge American lives to the defense of Estonia and Lithuania, and they were freed only after the general collapse of the Soviet empire. Now they are pledged to consider an attack on the United States as an attack on them. I don’t know the size of the Balt armies, but I suppose that among the three of them they might field 20,000 men with which to invade Russia if Washington was atom bombed.

 

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Friday, July 15, 2016

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

The news has been depressing. The failed coup – the media is now calling it the Keystone Coup – in Turkey spells the end of the separation of mosque and state that Ataturk founded. The Army was specifically commanded to insure that separation, and several times came out of barracks to dismiss a government that abridged it. This was unique in that once the government adjudged to be trying to install an Islamic Republic was gone, hew and very free – at least by Middle East standards – elections were held. Over the past few years, Erdogan has been able to purge the Turkish Army of officers loyal to the oath of brotherhood that Ataturk left as his legacy; and now with this coup attempt he has all the excuses he needs to eliminate the rest and appoint others to command. Turkey will now become an Islamic Republic, relying on plebiscite and “democracy” to establish Sharia law.

Given the secularization of much of the Turkish upper middle class, this will take time, and the economic effect on Turkey’s thriving tourist industry will be large, but it is inevitable. The Turkish relations with Israel, at one time friendly and already greatly deteriorated under Erdogan, will continue to go downhill.

The US will soon be required to choose between our Turkish “allies” – the treaties are still in force although one suspects that Erdogan will repudiate them soon enough – and the Kurds, who are our only real friends in Iraq, but who have close attachments with the Kurds in Iran and in Turkey. Turkey is already in a state of counterinsurgency with some Kurdish elements in Turkey. That will not likely diminish.

The Framers of the US Constitution universally had rejected “democracy” at the Federal level, and discouraged it in the States. In the principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, the US Constitution left most government activities to the States; when I was growing up the most visible sign (other than the war)  that there was a national government was the presence of the County Agent of the Department of Agriculture, who encouraged (but had no power to enforce) contour plowing and various other gulley elimination processes, and distributed many government printed handbooks on better farming methods. Newspapers had stories about Federal Agents and bank robbers and other public enemies, but I knew no one who had ever had much contact with the feds: “Don’t make a federal case out if it” was a common expression, as federal cases were Big Deals – and quite rare. That was during the Depression, and during the War there were more signs of Federal activity, but it wasn’t until the Great Society with explicit redistribution of wealth (“take it away from the haves who don’t need it much and give it to the have-nots who need it so much” , Lyndon Johnson once said).

And with the establishment of Federal Aid to Education (you can build 5 schoolhouses for what a B-52 costs) and then the Department of Education, a bureaucracy was created which can exist only so long as the schools are bad. It of course keeps growing, but somehow the schools are worse than they were before it was founded. And getting worse. If they ever got good, the bureaucracy would not have jobs.  Oddly enough, that bureaucracy grows every year, as the schools get worse.  We now teach college juniors things I learned in high school.  That t seems acceptable to the Department of Education.

Enough. I have work to do, and so do you. Wallowing in depressive news doesn’t help. We’ll get back to something constructive.

 

 

 

 

We’ve had some problems. The back street wall has been falling for forty years, and finally made it.

 

 

It has to be dealt with. I’ll have more later.

Tojours gay…

I got one of the first iPads about the time I got brain cancer. Apple advertised that “You already know how to use it”. And they were right. I got a lot of good out of that iPad. I got out of the habit of carrying and using it, and haven’t even turned it on since the stroke; but I keep remembering that I liked it, and I miss having something easy to use at the breakfast table when I want to make notes or often look something up. The iPhone does a passable job as a portable computer, but not so much for a stroke victim; I’m just too sloppy a typist to be very comfortable with it.

I’ve been using the Surface Pro for that job, but it gets increasingly complex to use – they offer enhancements and improvements that I don’t need and which confuse me in the morning – and I kept longing for the easy to use companion I had in the iPad. So, Saturday, I went out and got the latest iPad, and this morning I tried it.

I will probably go back to the Surface. I don’t already know how to use the new iPad. I don’t even know how to close a window I don’t want, other than pushing the one button it has to get back to starting over. The pencil, which works very well, has no place to store it although I’ll look for an accessory I can glue on, and the pencil comes with a small cap which I will almost certainly lose; I’ve already misplace it twice, and I don’t need one more damn thing to worry about.

I’ll still keep trying because I remember how much I liked the old iPad; but of the new iPad cannot truthfully say “you already know how to use it”, and so far I have found no great benefits over the Surface Pro. I’ll carry either the iPad or the Surface or both to WorldCom this year, and so far the Surface alone is the decided favorite. I’m open to suggestions.

It took me an hour to install the Wall Street Journal app this morning. The App Store kept popping up suggestions for software I don’t need, and I don’t know how to close those popup window except to push the button and start over. So it goes.

There Will Be War Volume VI

 

 

Volume VI is now out! Seven down, two to go.
THERE WILL BE WAR is a landmark science fiction anthology series that combines top-notch military science fiction with factual essays by various generals and military experts on everything from High Frontier and the Strategic Defense Initiative to the aftermath of the Vietnam War. It featured some of the greatest military science fiction ever published, such Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” in Volume I, Joel Rosenberg’s “Cincinnatus” in Volume II, and Arthur C. Clarke’s “Hide and Seek” in Volume III . Many science fiction greats were featured in the original nine-volume series, which ran from 1982 to 1990, including Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Gordon Dickson, Poul Anderson, John Brunner, Gregory Benford, Robert Silverberg, Harry Turtledove, and Ben Bova.
THERE WILL BE WAR Volume VI is edited by Jerry Pournelle and features 25 stories, articles, and poems. Of particular note are “Battleground” by Gregory and James Benford, “The Eyes of Argos” by Harry Turtledove, “The Highest Treason” by Randall Garrett, “Crown of Thorns” by Edward P. Hughes, and “See Now, a Pilgrim” by Gordon Dickson.

 

 

American Pravda: Relying Upon Maoist Professors of Cultural Studies by Ron Unz

Last week America suffered the loss of Sydney Schanberg, widely regarded as one of the greatest journalists of his generation. Yet as I’d previously noted, when I read his long and glowing obituary in the New York Times, I was shocked to see that it included not a single word concerning the greatest story of his career, which had been the primary focus of the last quarter century of his research and writing.

The cynical abandonment of hundreds of American POWs at the end of the Vietnam War must surely rank as one of the most monumental scandals of modern times, and the determined effort of the mainstream media to maintain this enormous governmental cover-up for over four decades raises serious doubts about whether we can believe what our newspapers report about anything else.

A couple of mainstream academics, one liberal and one conservative, whose names would be recognized as those of prominent public intellectuals, dropped me notes strongly applauding my effort to reopen the POW controversy and help get the truth out at last. [snip]

 

It is long past time to open the shameful story of Americans abandoned for reason of state: I am not sure what happened, but we ought to know.

 

Death of a Nation?

<http://www.unz.com/ldinh/death-of-a-nation/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

It is not, I think, the death of a nation, but it is a good summary of the history of the situation, and some insight into the present.  it cannot be ignored.

 

Nukes in Europe — New Yorker story link

Dr. Pournelle,
As usual, I know many of the statements of “fact” in this article are flat wrong, but consider it worth reading just for a description of the issues. I think it does, sort of, state some of the vulnerabilities that I have concerns about — before the author goes off into the weeds of ignorant opinion. http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-h-bombs-in-turkey
-d

 

Dr. Pournelle,
This probably falls under the headings of breaking news and of “I told you so…”, the latter for which I don’t feel any personal satisfaction. Link only: http://www.wsj.com/articles/turkey-arrests-incirlik-air-base-commander-1468760920
I’ve been advocating for some time that responsible guardianship of U.S. military assets requires withdrawal from Turkey, and ultimately from NATO. I once wrote about this in an e-mail to you. This is one of the kinds of events I feared might happen.
It may be likely that this particular problem will be cleared up quickly. I only have slight hope at this point.
-d

 

I am well out of the loop, but as you say, some of it is flat wrong; but it does raise some issues that need consideration by the incoming President, whomever that may be.

 

What Really Died At Auschwitz?

https://www.truthorfiction.com/europe-died-in-auschwitz-by-spanish-writer-sebastian-vilar-rodrigez/

Here’s an interesting viewpoint. The following is a copy of an article written by Spanish writer Sebastian Velar Rodriguez and published in a Spanish newspaper. It doesn’t take much imagination to extrapolate the message to the rest of Europe and here at home, and for that matter, to the rest of the world.

Entrance to the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp which operated 4 gas chambers where 6,000 people were put to death each day by the Nazi regime.

What Really Died At Auschwitz?

by Sebastian Velar Rodriguez

I walked down the streets in Barcelona and suddenly discovered a terrible truth – Europe died in Auschwitz. We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.

The contribution of these people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned.

And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty, due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.

They have blown up our trains and turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime. Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.

And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition. We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.

What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe.

Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it ‘offends’ the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving in to it.

It is now approximately seventy years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, twenty million Russians, ten million Christians, and nineteen-hundred Catholic priests who were murdered, raped, burned, starved, beaten, experimented on and humiliated. Now, more than ever, with Iran among others, claiming the Holocaust to be ‘a myth,’ it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.

How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center ‘NEVER HAPPENED’ because it offends some Muslim in the United States? If our Judeo-Christian heritage is offensive to Muslims, they should pack up and move to some Muslim country and stop turning America into another third-world slum like that from which they came!

—
Gordon

We need to think carefully about where we go next

I just read the following article on the Fox News site –
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/07/17/baton-rouge-murders-if-killing-cops-becomes-new-normal-america-is-doomed.html
The title sounds a bit mellow-dramatic… until you read the article. The pick quote sums it up: “No longer can the patrolman simply worry about the reported crime itself but rather he or she must approach these events as though they are potentially walking into the next Dallas or Baton Rouge.”
The rule of law that became the hallmark of our culture is based upon the idea that everyone in the culture agrees to its rules. We hire police forces to deal with the minuscule few who choose to live in the culture but not to obey those rules. When the few who refuse the rules are no longer a near insignificant percentage of the population, the rule of law begins to fail.
The advent of high technology has given us powers beyond our ancestor’s dreams. It has also made the percentage necessary to bring about the downfall of a civilization dramatically smaller. When these vastly empowered malcontents turn on the people charged with keeping the rules in place, the concept of “to protect and to serve” looses its meaning in the resulting avalanche of violence.
In spite of all the hand-wringing over the militarization of our police equipment inventories, the police are neither trained nor equipped to deal with daily armed combat. That was never intended as part of their role in society. There is however a group that is trained and equipped for just this situation. It is called an army and its members soldiers.
Armies fight wars… it is the reason for their existence. A soldier is trained intensively to cease thinking in the terms of a civilian living in a community and to start acting as a warrior who follows orders to kill people and break things. Armed combat is what they train for and what they are best at. It is, simply, what they do.
It looks to me like our opportunity to live in communities protected by policemen and women who serve as our guardians against a malevolent few is slipping away. It will likely be replaced with order enforced by soldiers who are governed by very different priorities.
Before we go there, we all need to think long and hard about what that change will mean and how drastically our daily lives will be altered by it.
John Lunsford

 

We are still owned by the “Too big to fail Banks” and if you are an exec at one you cannot be prosecuted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/17/business/a-bank-too-big-to-jail.html?ribbon-ad-idx=4&rref=world/europe&module=Ribbon&version=origin®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Europe&pgtype=article

Have you ever wondered why the crippling 2008 financial crisis generated almost no criminal prosecutions of large banks and their top executives?
Then take a moment to read the congressional report issued on July 11 titled “Too Big to Jail.” Citing internal documents that the United States Treasury took three years to produce, the report shows how regulators and prosecutors turned a potential criminal prosecution of a large global bank — HSBC — into a watered-down settlement that insulated its executives and failed to take into account the full scope of the bank’s violations.

…

Another modification involved penalties to be exacted from executives if HSBC failed to live up to compliance requirements.

While initial terms called for voiding the entire year’s bonus compensation at the bank if it did not meet compliance hurdles, the final deferred prosecution agreement said only that a failure could potentially void the bonuses. This revision, the report said, “apparently leaves open the possibility for executives to get their bonuses, despite failing to meet compliance standards.”

Must be nice. Seems to me that we need to convert really big banks into a multiple moderately sized ones.

John Harlow

Subj: Everything you need to know is on the Internet, eh?

http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-07-17

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.