Syria, Solar Power Satellites, and other matters

Mail 788 Monday, September 02, 2013

behind

Jerry,

Leading from behind Congress

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324009304579047431684838844.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

An important caveat: "From the start of the Syrian uprising, these columns have called for Mr. Obama to mobilize a coalition to support the moderate rebels. This would depose an enemy of the U.S. and deal a major blow to Iran’s ambition to dominate the region." (Emphasis added.) The question becomes: (a) how does one decide, and (b) even if one can arm the moderate rebels, are the moderate forces sufficient to overcome BOTH Assad and the Jihadists? I might even agree with this as a strategy, but I see it as impossible of implementation without direct military intervention, and nobody is going to sign up for that under the President who has trashed whatever good might have come out of the intervention in Iraq. PARTICULARLY when a large number of people are beginning to see him as siding with the Jihadists.

J

Doesn’t fit King Barry’s agenda

http://tinyurl.com/ph7st6o

In a report that is sure to be considered blockbuster news, the rebels told Mint Press Reporter Yahya Ababneh they are responsible for the chemical attack last week.

In that report rebels allegedly told said Ababneh the chemical attack was a result of mishandling chemical weapons.

This news should deflate the accusations, against the Assad regime, coming from the U.S., Britain, France and the Arab League.

\More on Syria

Additional reports suggesting that the Obama Administration supported Al-Qaida and the Moslem Brotherhood in conducting the attacks to plant a false flag against Assad:

http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/video-shows-rebels-launching-gas-attack-in-syria/

http://www.livetradingnews.com/un-official-syrian-rebels-used-sarin-nerve-gas-assads-army-6636.htm

Note that I consider these sources less credible than the report from Ms. Gellar which you were unable to confirm and generally discounted yesterday. But there is a consistent theme, and it’s not from the far extreme of the blogosphere even if it’s not from any of the fully accredited sources yet.

I have not rejected the hypothesis that the gas attack was a false flag operation, but I do so on logic, not on evidence, of which I have none. I do not believe Assad is stupid enough to have used a small gas attack that did him no good in taking the territory attacked. The down side is large and the up side seems negligible.

Better King Log

Jerry,

I’ve been following the Syria fuss closely. For what it’s worth, at this point it looks to me quite likely the Assad government really did bombard a rebel neighborhood with sarin – I could make a plausible case they saw this as a net plus for their position in the Syrian civil war (and also that they may end up right about that) but that’s not what I’m writing about.

Many of the pundits and powerbrokers on TV today have been going on about how essential it is that, despite all doubts, Congress authorize the President to Do Something, lest we be seen as irresolute and weak.

My current take: Congress should do everything they can to prevent this President taking further overseas military action, because frankly, with him at the helm we ARE irresolute and weak. Far better to do nothing at all than to do things in the manner that now seems near-certain coming from this White House: Shambolic half measures taken only after extended public leak-fest debate has removed all chance of surprise.

Better to do nothing overseas at all for the remainder of this term than to continue semi-randomly Doing Something this badly, I fear. The best we can hope for at this point is King Log – actually, not so much King Log, as King Stork chained to a log by Congress. A bad way to spend the next three years in a volatile world, yes – but not as bad as our current course. I very much fear where our current course is taking us, far too quickly.

Porkypine

Britain Pulling Out Of Syria War

If the special relationship were that Britain always does what the US wants (and the US always does what the US wants), which it sometimes feels like from here, then it would be over, and good riddance.

But it isn’t. It is primarily a cultural and linguistic relationship. We both have Parliamentary governments derived from George III’s.

In that case the relationship may be strengthened. One of the changes from George III’s government is that they have a Constitution, which is literally and correctly venerated. The right to declare war is reserved to the Congress – one of the differences they introduced from George III. In Britain, up till now it has been the Royal, i.e. PM’s prerogative.

To Quote Abraham Lincoln on the right to declare war:

“This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln>

have always stood.” <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln>

Thus Britain deciding that Parliament must approve war making is not a repudiation of our special relationship but a massive endorsement of it as a cultural success. Which is far more important than the issue of the day.

Paradoxically this part of the Constitution has been breached since at least the time of the Kosovo war which Clinton waged without reference to Congress.

The reason for this is that the Imperator/Duce/President/Generalissimo/PM needs to be able to threaten war credibly if he is running an imperial state. For a century and a half after George III we did. Now the US is such and we aren’t.

It is a tension which goes to the heart of whether a country is an Imperium or a Republic.

The best thing Obama could do is the ask Congress’ permission too. If he doesn’t get it he is off the hook. If he does he will have the support nationally, and indeed internationally, he needs.

Despite having the money, ships, aircraft and bombs the US is not a very good imperialist because their heart isn’t really in it. That is their saving grace.

Neil Craig

WMDs in Iraq

Dr. Pournelle,

I have to toss the "BS flag" when anyone says that no one found any sort of VX, Sarin, or whichever sort of nerve agent in Iraq. I

personally met soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division that not only stumbled upon bunkers of 55 gallon drums full of it, they had

to go through the complete decontamination procedures, to include the extra long swabs rammed up into their sinuses and all other

orifices. Painful to say the least.

I’m sure that, for whatever reason, our military was directed to report that no WMDs were found. I cannot come up with any good

reason why this was so, but suffice to say, that statement is not correct. I lump it in the same category with the stories from

Vietnam when our military claimed that Agent Orange had no side effects and from the Gulf War, as is still maintained that Saddam

did not use chemical weapons on our soldiers, even though the chemical detectors were repeatedly set off from the "smoke" drifting

in on my unit’s positions. Our chem NCO told us that his direction was to wear NBC suits and masks until told otherwise.

In short, I was in Kuwait and spoke with the 4th ID chemical guys and know the people that experienced the chem attack in the Gulf

War. The all stick by their stories.

Keep up the good work,

Bill R.

PS – I can’t wait for "Mamelukes" to be published.

I keep hearing these stories, but I never see direct evidence. Others in Navy ops in Kuwait have the opposite story. What I don’t have is a direct account. Which is not to say I don’t believe it, but it was sure in Bush’s interest to take a New York Time reporter to any given cache of war gas including mustard that was found — and I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t do that.

Preferably a reporter who had written about how there were no MWD found. And take Johnny Depp with them…

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

WMDs in Iraq

I am at a loss why any sort of news like this could be ignored or buried. Perhaps the 55 gallon drums found by the soldiers in Iraq were full of Roundup and gave off false positives like the claim about the aspirin factory in Sudan when Clinton authorized the strikes there.

I do know that CNN was not interested in continued Serb, Croat and Bosnian atrocities up until 1998, when I was over there. I do know that Special Ambassador Holbrook was incensed each and every time we made a report. In my case he demanded that I be confined to base when I submitted a report with photographic evidence. In my case it was Serb "Special Police," formerly 10th Special Forces, conducting illegal roadblocks. My commander blew off the ambassador’s demand and I continued doing my job, but from that point on I had to submit all of my reports for "review" prior to them being placed onto the old Warlord report/database system.

In the case of WMDs in Iraq, perhaps the case is still open.

An example:I do know that the internet was scrubbed in the past year regarding a spy case, a guy named Bergeron, because, my thought and mine only, is that the case is nowhere close to being closed.

Perhaps there were WMDs in Iraq, perhaps they are no longer there, and perhaps they are still being traced to their present end users, or there is some other type of operation going on that involves them. That is the only thing that would make sense to me, but I agree to having a narrow point of view of the situation

Bill

The World’s Most Vulnerable People

Jerry,

John Kerry’s quote near the top of your column today:

"President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable people."

Would seem to apply to the current Executive Branch using the IRS against American Tax Payers that oppose the Current Administrations Politics and Policies.

Bob Holmes

An off-take from ‘A Nation of Sullen Paranoids’

Jerry

Noonan’s piece included this:

I heard this week from a respected former U.S. senator, a many-termed moderate conservative who was never known as the excitable type. He wrote in reaction to Nat Handoff’s warnings regarding the potentially corrosive effect of extreme surveillance on free speech. “All this scares me to death,” the man wrote. “How many times do we have to watch government, with the best of intentions, I am sure (or almost so), do things ‘for us’? Now ‘security’ and ‘terrorism’ argue for and justify the case for ever more intrusions—all in the name of protecting us . . .”

I recalled the Jack Williamson story, “With Folded Hands.” Written in 1947. Nice summary in Wikipedia. Brrr.

Ed

Williamson’s story has scared me from the day I read it when I was still in high school. It seemed to me that Williamson had found the flaw in the Asimov Three Laws (although confess I don’t recall which came first). And a robot does not care.

These people are going to govern themselves?

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/08/31/egyptian-authorities-detain-suspected-spy-bird/

A migrating stork is held in a police station after a citizen suspected it of being a spy and brought it to the authorities in the Qena governorate, some 450 kilometers (280 miles) southeast of Cairo, Egypt.

Busted! Your car’s black box is spying, may be used against you in court

http://blogs.computerworld.com/20109/busted_your_cars_black_box_is_spying_may_be_used_against_you_in_court

Busted! Your car’s black box is spying, may be used against you in court

"As IEEE pointed out <http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/embedded-systems/the-automotive-black-box-data-dilemma/0> , "In the 37 states without EDR laws, there are no ground rules preventing insurance companies from obtaining the data-sometimes without the vehicle owner ever knowing that the data existed." John Tomaszewski, general counsel at TRUSTe, said "People should not relinquish their Fourth Amendment rights merely because of the location of their information." What about your right to plead the Fifth Amendment and not witness against yourself?"

I’d wondered why they were so excited about destroying old cars in cash for clunkers. A political party which pretends to be all about the poor, destroying cars destined to provide the poor with transportation they could afford. It makes far more sense now. It is all about the surveillance.

Niven fusion thruster

Dr. Pournelle:

NASA has awarded a grant for research into a fission/fusion thruster — PuFF. Details at

http://www.nasa.gov/content/pulsed-fission-fusion-puff-propulsion-system/

Pete Nofel

“Waiting in line each morning for our bread was already practically a suicide mission with all of Assad’s airstrikes, but now we have to watch out for bears who are just there for the bread. Things were better when it was just a ruthless government onslaught.”

<http://www.theonion.com/articles/syria-conflict-intensifies-as-bears-enter-war,33659/>

—

Roland Dobbins

Police not interested in brutal beating on tape

Jerry,

The lack of police response is the salient issue in this incident.

http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/police-not-interested-in-brutal-beating-on-tape/

James Crawford

Wisdom from Newt — SPS made simpler

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/27/opinion/gingrich-syria-stay-out/index.html Former Speaker Gingrich shows once more his brilliance

http://scinotions.com/2013/08/harvesting-solar-power-in-space-and-sending-it-back-to-earth/ A simpler design for a SPS that scales well

—

73s/Best regards de John Bartley K7AAY CN85qj "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." – RP Feynman

SPS will eventually be built and make energy cheap; but it takes a lot of capital investment.,

Harvard concludes gun control does not work

Bruce McQuain was understating the conclusion from a world wide study of gun bans vis a vis murder rates. The report itself suggests that gun bans usually lead to higher murder rates even if the gun related crime numbers decrease.

Harvard gun study concludes gun bans don’t reduce the murder rate http://hotair.com/archives/2013/08/28/harvard-gun-study-concludes-gun-bans-dont-reduce-the-murder-rate/

Russia with very strict control has 4 times the murder rate of the well armed United States.

Norway, Finland, Germany, and France have remarkably low murder rates while Lumembourg with no handguns and few other guns was 9 times worse than Germany in 2002.

Bruce thoughtfully includes pointers to both the study’s summary and the full study.

Our gun grabbing leaders are trying to kill us off.

{^_^}

Fast Food Strike

Hi Jerry,

Boy Michael Bloomberg must be having his liberal head twisted over this:

http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2013/08/29/just-beginning-for-fast-food-strikes/

A choice between artificial wages and union support, versus his war on fast food. A strike might cause people to lose weight! Oh what’s the liberal nanny state to do?

Seriously, these are unskilled workers. If they want to earn more money, get a skill and change jobs. My first job was at a McDonald’s – $3.35 an hour if I remember right, but all it did was motivate me to work harder in school so I’d never have to do that kind of work again! They market pays minimum wage, because the skills and job aren’t worth more than that (and I’ll bet there would be people willing to work for less, if the artificial floor wasn’t there).

For someone to aspire to ‘make a living wage’ at fast food is just unbelievable. Do these people really want a career flipping burgers? But of course, that’s the result of having ‘a world class college prep education for every student’ instead of vocational/technical/shop training in the high schools. A good plumber or auto mechanic makes far more than a 17th century French literature major – and without the loans.

Cheers,

Doug