An interesting theory about battle axes

 

I'm sure we've all read about or seen illustrations of ancient and medieval battle axes - axes shaped and formed specifically for fighting, not wood-cutting.  In particular, war saw the development of the so-called "bearded axe", with the "beard" of the blade extending behind the head, reaching back along the upper haft, as illustrated below (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

The purpose of the "beard" has been debated.  Wikipedia says:

This design allows the user to grip the haft directly behind the head for planing or shaving wood and variations of this design are still in use by modern woodworkers and some foresters. The "beard" of the axe would also have been useful in battle, for example to pull a weapon or shield out of a defender's grasp.

This morning, Eaton Rapids Joe proposed another reason for the beard.

Suppose Thog and Yon go into battle and Thog uses an ax designed for cutting wood while Yon uses a much lighter ax with a thinner blade used for butchering game. All other things being equal, who will win the match-up: Brute strength or much faster speed?

Like all things, it depends.

If Thog has the presence of mind to catch the shaft of Yon's ax with his hand, then he can disarm Yon and part him out like a lobster at his leisure. If not, then Yon is more likely to administer a disabling blow more quickly and then prevail over Thog.

So how would one catch the handle of an incoming axe? One would have to catch it near the center of gravity, just below the head of the axe.  Can you see where this is going?

That dainty, knifey thing projecting approximately 5" (125mm) back toward the user's hand is not intended to crack skulls or lop through clavicles or chop through the humerus. Nope. All it needs to be able to cut through is the web and bone at the base of your opponent's thumb. If he is grabbing the handle closer to your hands, the head will rotate around his hand and you will still strike his body with enough force to take him out of the fight. 

Oh, and if you lop off his thumb but miss his body...your opponent now only has one functioning hand which offers you a distinct advantage.

There's more at the link.

It's an interesting theory, albeit one I haven't seen discussed by researchers into ancient and medieval weaponry.  I'd love to find out whether there's any historically recorded use of a war axe in that way.  Can any readers help?  What do you think of Joe's theory, and do you know of any records that might confirm it?

Peter

The mainstream media propaganda machine is in full swing

 

I'm sure my readers have noticed how, as soon as Kamala Harris was "anointed" as the Democratic Party candidate for the Presidential election in November, the mainstream media (most of which could be more accurately labeled "the Democratic Party support machine") began boosting her at every opportunity, while downplaying former President Trump's chances against her.

One of the most egregious ways they're supporting Harris is to "whitewash" (you should pardon the expression) her political past.  How many remember that in 2019, she was ranked the most liberal Senator of all?  Suddenly that Govtrack rating is nowhere to be found on the Internet (except at the Internet Archive, to which we're indebted for keeping track of potentially embarrassing cover-ups like that).  Govtrack confirms that the page was deleted sometime in the past couple of weeks, despite the scoring method it used being discarded some years ago.  One does wonder about the timing . . .

There have also been many opinion polls suggesting that Harris has not only drawn level with Trump in popular ranking, but even exceeded his rating.  However, those opinion polls are themselves highly suspect, because the sampling is so often skewed heavily towards the Democratic Party.  For example:

In today's episode of why polls are generally bullshit - a new survey of voters from Harvard-Harris has Donald Trump beating Kamala Harris 48-45, despite yet another egregious oversampling of roughly 25% Democrats which was then 'weighted to the US general adult population' - that still resulted in a Democrat oversample.

Now imagine if the poll wasn't ridiculously skewed and oversampled to Democrats:

Republican respondents: 654

Democrat respondents: 883 https://t.co/eB4iV282EO pic.twitter.com/WMzfcll4H3

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 30, 2024

This, despite the fact that Gallup has national party identification at +6 Republicans/Republican leaning independents.

There's more at the link.

I've taken a look at half a dozen of the skewed-towards-Harris polls, and in every case where the sampling data was provided, they had oversampled Democrat-leaning respondents and undersampled Republican-leaning ones.  Gee - who'd of thunk it?

There are also blatant attempts to demonize factions of Trump supporters, painting them as unstable to the point of possibly representing a danger to this country.  For example:

As a scholar who studies American Christian nationalism and Christian extremism, I can say with confidence that right-wing Christianity is presently experiencing mass radicalization around Trump — driven, in large part, by prophecy. The very meaning of the term “evangelical” is itself quietly shifting, with new paradigms of theology and practices moving from what were once the fringes into the mainstream.

The fallout for American politics could be quite perilous: These are some of the same driving forces that sent a mob of Trump supporters to the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Again, more at the link.

The author is, of course, quite correct in viewing organized religious support for any candidate as potentially dangerous.  History is awash with claims of "God is with us!" on both sides of an issue, be it elections, wars or just plain existing . . . and there's never been a Divinely sanctioned outcome that I can identify.  Indeed, if I were the Almighty (and you should be very grateful that I'm not!), I'd have washed my hands of all those who claimed Divine sanction without a single shred of evidence to prove it.

I've said before that the current "powers that be" dare not lose this election, because it would lead to all their earlier shenanigans being uncovered, and much of the damage they have done to this country being put right.  They cannot allow that.  Therefore, I expect even more cheating and chicanery in November.  What's more, I won't be surprised if another assassination attempt against President Trump - or perhaps more than one - just "happens" to get through his security detail.  Pray God such attempts will be unsuccessful, because if one succeeds, I think we're facing a very real danger of civil war.

I have no idea who will be declared the winner in November's election - but I think the next hundred days or so (not to mention the aftermath of the election) will be very dangerous for our constitutional republic system of government.  The pressures on both sides to overturn the checks and balances in our system, and "go to the mattresses" instead, are going to be enormous.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  TINVOWOOT.  There Is No Voting Our Way Out Of This.  The powers that be are entrenched, and will not give up their position voluntarily no matter what the voters want.  I expect to see that play out between now and November.  For a start, watch the Democratic Party's National Convention in August;  then see whether the street violence of 2019/2020 comes back afterwards.  Frankly, I'm expecting it.

Peter

EDITED TO ADD:  See this montage of mainstream media parroting the Democratic National Committee line about the Republican vice-presidential candidate, J. D. Vance, being "weird".  It's both funny and deeply concerning, because it proves how much in lockstep the media are with left-wing and progressive talking points.

The Olympic Last Supper debacle

 

I haven't had much to say about the depraved, debased mockery of the famous "Last Supper" image at the Olympics opening ceremony last weekend, largely because I was expecting something like it.  The overwhelming mood in much of Europe, particularly among the self-selected "intelligentsia", is anti-Christian.  Of course they were going to mock what so many of us believe!

I may not agree with Arthur Sido all the time, but I think he summed up the brouhaha very well.

It is just another example of cultural vandalism by degenerate toddlers that are controlled by their genitalia.

Causing outrage was the entire point. Why else would you do that? There was nothing artistic about it, it was simply performative degeneracy intended to cause a backlash. The backlash reaffirms to these freaks that they are on “the right side of history” and probably at some deep level serves as a way to get back at their parents for not buying them a pony for their 7th birthday.

What it did accomplish was to get a bunch of people upset and serve as clickbait for normie “news” sites to drive traffic for the latest outrage du jour. Places like Fox News and Newsmax love stuff like this because it drives traffic numbers way up.

So what good does it do to get all upset and frothing at the mouth? Not a damn thing. That is exactly what They want you to do, chasing after the latest stick of outrage until you get tired and then they throw a different stick in a different direction. It is the same thing I tell people when I say Quit Chasing The Stick. The Left throws out charges of “racism” and normies go chasing after the stick to prove that they are in fact not “racist”. They bring back the stick and say “See, I am not racist!” at which point the Left throws the stick again and there they go chasing after it.

The same basic thing happens with cultural vandalism ... There is nothing wrong with pointing it out and then of course mocking it but to get upset about it is doing what They want. Nothing good will ever come from you doing what They want.

It ought not be a surprise that people that not only don’t believe in the [tenets] of Christianity and in fact hate it would therefore mock and revile it. In fact if people would occasionally read their Bibles they would know that an absence of mockery and hatred of your faith ought to be considered a sign you are doing something wrong. Don’t give them the outrage they crave. Mock them and then move on. They crave your vitriol but your scorn is a far more effective weapon.

There's more at the link.

Speaking of scorn . . . if we're offended by that opening ceremony (and "offended" should be a very tame description of our reaction if we truly believe in Christ), then why are we watching a single moment of the Olympic Games?  The Games rely on spectators, both live and on TV, for their financial success.  One or two of us boycotting them won't even be noticed;  but a few hundred million of us around the globe?  Now, that would get their attention!

Peter

African "engineering" for the win!

 

I had to laugh at a report from CNN:

South African police discover

multimillion-dollar meth lab on farm

The reason for my laughter was this photograph.  Click the image for a larger view.

Those are bodged-up pressure vessels, used when "cooking" the methamphetamine - and they're held together by an immense number of vise grips and locking pliers!  Whoever put them together clearly decided that "quantity has a quality all its own" (to quote Josef Stalin out of context), and that using so many grips would make it unnecessary to render the setup pressure-proof in the usual way, using nuts and bolts.  The fact that such grips were never designed or intended for such pressure-containing use clearly didn't bother the designer . . .

Life is cheap in Africa, as we've noted in these pages on several previous occasions.  Nevertheless, I wouldn't have liked to be the person standing near those things, monitoring their operation.  My skin crawls just looking at it!  I wonder how much of the poisonous fumes escaped during operation - and how many "cookers" they went through before they figured out how many vise grips were needed?

Peter

An interesting comparison

 

Reddit recently discussed the average size of a house in the 50 US states, and compared it to average European house sizes.  Click the image for a larger view.

I grew up in an old Cape Dutch-style house in Cape Town, South Africa.  It was double-storied, with massive clay brick walls over two feet thick, which provided insulation against heat or cold depending on the season.  I daresay overall size must have been in the 3,000+ square foot range.  It remains the largest home I've ever had.  When I left home I moved to a studio apartment (i.e. one room, no separate bedroom) of not much more than 200 square feet, including kitchenette and bathroom.  I progressed through several apartments until I ended up, in the late 1980's, owning one with about 1,900 square feet and four bedrooms.

Coming to America, I stayed in church rectories for several years, so I didn't think anything in particular about their size.  Today, my wife and I live in a relatively small house (by Texas standards) of about 1,400 square feet, including a rear porch converted to a small storeroom-cum-office where I'm writing these words.  It's not too big for two physically limited people to handle the cleaning and routine maintenance, but not so small that we can't invite guests to stay from time to time.  The size fits our needs and injury-related restrictions pretty well.

How about you, readers?  What size is your present home, and how well does that suit your needs?  Tell us about it in Comments, so we can compare notes.

Peter

Lessons not learned and not heeded

 

Commander Zero notes that while he's doing fine, many others in his part of Montana are still without power after a windstorm flattened power lines.  Among his blog articles about it, and its aftermath:

109-MPH winds

Still not outta the woods

More lessons

Who can’t afford fifteen cent water?

In the second article linked above, after mentioning several "lessons learned" by those who were not prepared, he concludes:

Will people learn anything from this? No. Invariably, they’ll tell their ‘war stories’ about how the suffered mightily and when I politely ask them if they’ll be buying generators or doing anything else to mitigate a repeat performance of the event they will say “Oh no, this sort of thing almost never happens”. Even though it just freakin’ happened.

And that, mi amigos y amigas, is why, collectively, we are doomed. People like you and I are outnumbered by orders of magnitude by these idiots. But they have the numbers and the collective gene pool of humanity will suffer because of it.

There's more at the link.  All four articles are worth reading.

Commander Zero's perspective is even more relevant when one takes into account the same situation arising elsewhere in the country.  Just look at Houston, Texas after Hurricane Beryl paid the area a visit earlier this month.

When Hurricane Beryl swept through southeast Texas on July 8, its damaging 80-mile-per-hour winds took down thousands of trees and knocked out much of the electricity system. More than 2.6 million Texas power customers went without electricity for days in the summer heat.

In the days that followed the storm, officials and residents alike turned their eyes to the Houston area’s electric utility, CenterPoint Energy. Texans criticized the company for failing to prepare adequately for the storm, communicate clearly with customers and restore power efficiently.

Gov. Greg Abbott threatened the company, legislators quickly called hearings about the outages and the state’s utility regulators launched an investigation. On July 25, the company's CEO apologized to customers and vowed to improve.

Again, more at the link.

Bear in mind that Hurricane Beryl blew through during high summer in Texas, where temperatures approaching or exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit are normal, and humidity levels along the Gulf Coast (where Houston lies) are as close to 100% as you'll find anywhere in these United States.  Even so, despite living with these realities year in, year out, literally millions of customers of power utilities found themselves cut off, without having arranged access to backup power of any kind.  They stayed that way for up to ten days.  (There are reports that some isolated sites are still without power.)  As a result, a number of heat-related deaths have been reported, as well as at least hundreds (perhaps thousands) of heat-related medical emergencies.  Why were they not better prepared, despite having experienced this so often before?

Those living in hurricane- or tornado-prone areas are accustomed to seeing long convoys of power company trucks coming in after such disasters to answer calls for help from local utilities, or heading out again after doing so.  Yet, this time round, there were fewer of them headed for Houston.  I wondered why, and called a buddy of mine who works for a major Texas utility.  His answer was grim.  He stated bluntly that the national supply of essential high-capacity spare parts for the power grid - transformers, junction boxes, insulators, etc. - is at what he thinks may be an all-time low, thanks to supply chain problems and companies being unwilling to invest a lot of money in maintaining a large emergency reserve supply.  Even worse, in some states, if utilities do stock up on such backup supplies, they'll be subject to inventory tax, making them in many cases unaffordable.  As a result of all those factors, there simply aren't enough of such parts to send to a disaster area without risking dangerous shortages in the places that sent them - and utility companies can't afford that risk.

To add to the problem, he pointed out that there are fewer and fewer skilled, experienced linemen willing to travel long distances and work under conditions of extreme discomfort, again and again, all summer long.  The old hands are retiring;  many of the newcomers don't have enough experience to handle the work on their own;  and many simply don't want to work in broiling heat and sweltering humidity non-stop for days and weeks at a time.  They won't accept such assignments.

My friend summarized by warning me to expect longer and longer delays in power being restored in such disaster areas, and "ripple effects" in non-disaster-affected areas (including my own) as the relatively few experienced staff grow fewer in number.  When I mentioned Commander Zero's posts about the Montana power outage to him, he went to read them for himself, then called back to say that utilities there were probably in exactly the same situation he'd described here.  I can't confirm that, of course, but being in the industry, he may well have the right of it.

Certainly, looking at the average levels of disaster preparation I see all around me, there's plenty of room for concern.  I know many people who've invested in a generator, but they've never tested it, or if they have at least switched it on, they've never actually connected essential household appliances to it, or tested it under full load.  Their multi-thousand-watt generator may look and sound lovely, but if they add up their normal household electric power consumption - HVAC, water heater, freezers and refrigerators, and so on - the total power demand may considerably exceed the generator's maximum power rating.  They're going to have to figure out what to switch off if their generator is to help them.

Worse, many of them have two or three 5-gallon gasoline containers for it:  but their generator may have a fuel consumption of well over a gallon per hour under heavy load (which is why many generator manufacturers misleadingly quote fuel consumption under half-load conditions, which looks and sounds much better).  They're going to run through those containers of fuel in no more than a day or two - but if the gas stations nearby don't have power, they're not going to be able to refill them.  The same goes for lubricating oil.  Generators are hard on the stuff, and typically require oil changes more frequently than other small engines;  but if you don't have it available, how are you going to do that?  What about spare spark plugs, etc.?  Murphy's Law applies doubly to essential, indispensable equipment like generators.

Most of us aren't doing enough to be properly prepared;  and many of us (including yours truly) who are better prepared than most, still have "holes" in our preparations that could use filling.  We need to be reminded of that by people like Commander Zero and those who go through current or recent emergency situations, so we can be jolted out of our complacency, and check and double-check our own situation in the light of their experiences, and rectify what needs fixing.

Peter

How to detect a Russian bot spreading propaganda

 

Courtesy of Hans G. Schantz:

Yeah, that's a bit of a give-away . . .  In case you're wondering, AI systems like ChatGPT have "rules" which they follow in preparing the answers they provide.  If you know how to ask them a question in the right (or the wrong) way, their responses can be "gamed".  Here, for example, is a "cheat sheet" for ChatGPT questions.  Clickit to biggit.

As for comments such as that shown above:  please remember, friends, that a whole lot of the comments on social media (sadly, including some on this blog) are made either by partisan individuals trying to debunk any other point of view, and/or by bots programmed to do the same.  The example above is an excellent way to catch some varieties of the latter in the act, so to speak.

As for the Ukraine conflict, remember, neither side is trustworthy.  Take anything they say with a hefty pinch of salt (if not an entire sack of the stuff)!

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 220

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  There are fewer than usual, because I simply didn't find many that tickled my funnybone.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

Let's have a change of pace.  Susana Seivane is a traditional musician from Galicia in north-western Spain, near Portugal.  Galicia combines Spanish and Portuguese culture and music in its own unique synthesis, including the gaita or traditional bagpipe of the region.  Susana plays this instrument and popularizes traditional Galician music across Europe, and has also performed here in the USA.  It's certainly got a swing and a beat to it that traditional Celtic bagpipes usually lack.

Here are four of Susana's pieces to whet your appetite.  Let's start with one of her earlier performances, at the age of 21.

Here she "gets down" with other Celtic instruments to celebrate the Iberian tradition of their music.

In more reflective solo mode:

And finally, another ensemble performance.

Not your average Highland bagpipes, but very energetic and refreshing.

Peter

Saturday: Not a Snippet, but a Smile

 

Again, time ran too short this week for me to select a book to excerpt for our Saturday Snippet.  I'm afraid that due to the burden of too much to do in too little time, that's likely to be an ongoing problem.  Some weeks I'll manage it;  other weeks, I won't.  Therefore, on weeks when I can't manage to put together a Saturday Snippet, I'll put up a (quicker and easier to prepare) Saturday Smile instead.

Today we have one from Stephan Pastis and his "Pearls Before Swine" comic strip.  Click the image to be taken to a larger version at the strip's Web page.

It's funny how often I've run into Rat's point of view about being happy.  Happiness is, fundamentally, a choice (albeit easier to choose if the circumstances of our lives are more conducive to it).  Nevertheless, there are those who will always choose the negative, being gloomy no matter how well things are going.  They would probably call themselves realists, rather than pessimists;  but they're too often a downer for the rest of us to deal with.

It's worth remembering that - if only to ensure we don't make the same mistake.  I've done so on occasion, and always had cause to regret it later.  Mea culpa!

Peter

Making a hash of it

 

I'd never thought much about beef hash or corned beef hash, except that I occasionally enjoy them for breakfast along with eggs and toast.  However, it turns out hash goes back centuries, and there's a clear development in that timeline from what they called hash way back then, to what we know as hash today.

Townsends has produced this video introducing hash and its history.  It makes interesting viewing for foodies, and may be the basis for some new hash ideas in the future.  I'm pondering hash made with chopped dried fruit, to add a little sweetness.  Different, certainly, but possibly also very tasty . . .

Suddenly I feel hungry . . .

Peter

A self-inflicted tragedy in Gaza

 

A report on Thursday claimed that children were being deliberately targeted - executed, in so many words - by Israeli snipers in Gaza.

Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an American surgeon with heavy catastrophe-zone experience, is among those stunned by the civilian devastation they've recently witnessed in Gaza, and especially by a high volume of what appear to be precision rifle-fire wounds on children -- including toddlers.

"All of the disasters I've seen, combined – 40 mission trips, 30 years, Ground Zero, earthquakes, all of that combined – doesn't equal the level of carnage that I saw against civilians in just my first week in Gaza," Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic surgeon and vice president of the International College of Surgeons, told CBS's Sunday Morning.

. . .

Perlmutter, a Jew who grew up in New Jersey and who now lives in North Carolina, was also disturbed what what he attributed to precise rifle fire directed at children, some of whom were "shot twice." 

"I have two children that I have photographs of that were shot so perfectly in the chest, I couldn't put my stethoscope over their heart more accurately, and directly on the side of the head, in the same child. No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the 'world's best sniper.' And they're dead-center shots."

His description of the phenomenon was confirmed to CBS News by more than 20 other doctors who'd recently visited Gaza. An American doctor had such a problem grasping what he was seeing that he double-checked using CT scans, saying he "didn't believe that this many children could be admitted to a single hospital with gunshot wounds to the head."

There's more at the link.

It should be noted that the gist of that article has been repeated in sources such as Common Dreams (an explicitly progressive-left outlet), Politico and Democracy Now!  I have no idea of the political views of Dr. Perlmutter, but I suspect the views of such outlets are clues.  I note, too, that neither he nor any of the others involved have spoken about Hamas atrocities on October 7, 2023, or at other times.  It seems a rather one-sided perspective.  That does not, of course, affect the very real disaster that has befallen the people, particularly the children, of Gaza, but it does - must - condition one's perspective on it.

It's tragic to read about that disaster, and even more tragic to see it in real life.  I speak from all too bitter personal experience, because in the terrorist wars in southern Africa during the 1970's and 1980's, children were cold-bloodedly and brutally used as couriers, cover, even as armed combatants, by the terrorist movements.  The kids were given no choice in the matter, and their parents had no option but to let them do so - or be killed themselves as "counter-revolutionary sell-outs".  In rural areas of Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe), and to a certain extent in the Ovambo regions of South West Africa (today Namibia), it became common for terrorist gangs to kidnap whole schools full of kids and send them across the border to be trained as guerrillas/terrorists in their turn.  The security forces attempted to rescue them before they could be taken out of the country, but seldom succeeded - and when they did, many of the kids died or were wounded in the crossfire.

There were many incidents where security forces were deliberately placed in a no-win situation by terrorists using kids as cover, or to take military equipment to fighters by concealing it in their schoolbags (for example, magazines of ammunition, hand grenades, or even a land-mine or two).  Some children were even used as soldiers, not in uniform, but carrying grenades or other lethal devices and throwing them at a patrol while walking with a group of their fellow kids.  When fire was returned, it wasn't just the guilty ones who died.

I described some years ago how a baby was used to camouflage a land-mine, positioned to catch a patrol.

I remember Gavin, who was a member of a patrol that found a baby, too young to walk, sitting in the middle of a dirt road in a township, crying. As the point man and a couple of others walked up to see why the baby was just sitting there, the terrorists waiting in ambush blew up the landmine they'd buried beneath her, killing the point man and savagely mutilating the other two soldiers. Bits of flesh and blood from the soldiers, and the baby, splattered all over Gavin . . . across his face . . . in his eyes, nose and mouth.

For years, Gavin would start awake in the small hours at night, a scream of horror on his lips. "They blew up a baby! A baby!" Gavin's wife eventually left him, because she couldn't handle the strain of living with his nightmares. Psychiatric treatment couldn't break the cycle; nor could alcohol, or drugs (legal and illegal). Gavin took his own life at last, too tormented by what he'd seen to endure any longer, in the small hours every night, the parade of images across his closed eyelids. He was a hero in my book . . . and I'll always remember him as such.

There was another case where a dead baby was literally hollowed out, presumably by its mother.  Its body cavity was filled with explosives, and then carried through a military checkpoint to conceal the ordnance.  It worked the first time . . . and the second . . . but by the third time, decomposition had set in, and a whiff of it came to the nostrils of one of the soldiers at the checkpoint.  He investigated, and uncovered the scheme.  (The mother claimed - possibly truthfully - that she'd been forced to cooperate with the terrorists;  therefore, no action was taken against her.  I had my doubts.)

I was present when a vehicle-mounted patrol was passing through a very volatile area.  A woman rushed out from behind a hut, with a baby strapped to her chest in the typical African manner.  She charged the lead vehicle, holding a Molotov cocktail in either hand, their fuses lit.  The soldiers on the vehicle had a very simple binary choice.  Shoot her - which meant snap-shooting, probably through the baby on her chest, because there was no time to take careful aim and avoid it - or be immolated when the gasoline bombs exploded inside the load bed of the patrol vehicle.  You can imagine their feelings . . . but they were left with no other options.  She, and her baby, died.  Whose fault was that baby's death?  Not the soldiers', I would argue.

Older kids, as noted earlier, were used as couriers, pack mules, and resupply trains, particularly where the presence of international journalists might be presumed to inhibit troops - who knew exactly what they were doing - from shooting at them.  It seldom worked.

US forces encountered precisely the same thing in Afghanistan and Iraq.  It's happening in Gaza, too.  We've all seen videos on YouTube and elsewhere of how Gaza kids are brainwashed and indoctrinated to seek martyrdom, to hate Jews, and to lash out at them whenever and wherever they can.  If you or I were an Israeli sniper or designated marksman in Gaza right now, and saw a baby being used as "live cover" by its mother in a critical situation, or an older kid making a run towards our troops or carrying supplies towards a known enemy strongpoint . . . I daresay we'd take the shot in a heartbeat, because if we didn't, our own troops would suffer the consequences.  That's the cold, hard, brutal reality of a terrorist war.  There are no morals.  There are no rules - except, "Survive!"  Allow me to assure you:  if you hesitate, you won't.

When you're dealing with a ruthless, homicidal movement like Hamas, which has openly stated that civilian casualties serve its purpose as propaganda, it's even worse.  I wish we could know precisely what side shot each of those children.  The answer might be very revealing.  We do know that for years, Hamas has routinely trained children at summer camps to be terrorists.  It has sent children to confront Israeli soldiers on patrol, throwing stones at them, in the hope that the soldiers will shoot back, thereby creating more propaganda about "Israeli atrocities" for dissemination.  Hamas wants child casualties.  It glories in them.

Yes, Israeli forces almost certainly are targeting kids who show themselves in suspicious circumstances.  I'm more saddened by that tragedy than words can say, but I'm not surprised by it.  I'm more surprised at how few kids in Gaza have been shot like that.  As a proportion of the population, I daresay it's minuscule.  I submit that speaks to the discipline and training of the Israeli troops involved (see, for example, the videos linked in the previous paragraph).  There may be a few renegade souls in Israeli uniform who are actively seeking to murder innocent kids in Gaza, but I think it's very unlikely.  I hope and pray I'm not wrong.

May God receive the souls of the children who die like that;  and may He visit condign punishment on those who force them into situations where that can happen to them.

*Sigh*

Peter

Not a fruitful headline...

 

The subject of the article is actually innocuous (i.e. the fruit), but given North American slang (i.e. not the fruit), the headline left something to be desired.

Cherries line up for a controlled modal switch

Um . . . yes!  Quite!

Peter

EDITED TO ADD:  The headline appears to have been modified since then, but it's still funny.

The terrible truth about the "Pyramid of Cheese"

 

Several years ago, Francis Porretto published an essay on cheese (more specifically, the sort used in macaroni and cheese).  It first appeared on his previous blog back in 2007.  He linked to it the other day, which is what recalled it to mind.

The Great Pyramid Of Cheese

I think it's essential reading for all cheese lovers;  and if you have "finicky eater" kids, who think that off-the-shelf cardboard-box macaroni and cheese is all she wrote, this will hopefully educate them.  I've no idea what flavoring is applied to cardboard-box cheese, but the reality of the food underlying it is truly ghastly!

Peter

Unintended consequences: Russian crime edition

 

As I'm sure most readers will remember, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine kicked off, Russia soon found itself short of fighting soldiers.  One of the ways it sought to address that was to allow convicted criminals to volunteer to serve with the Wagner Group, a private military contractor.  If they served six months, the remainder of their prison sentence was excused and they became free men once again.  The body count was allegedly very high, but a significant proportion of the thousands who volunteered are once again out and about in Russia.

Turns out that might not have been such a good idea . . .

According to Bloomberg, citing data from the Supreme Court of Russia, crimes committed by soldiers (but not those on the front line) increased by more than 20% in 2023. Although their number is still "small," and many soldiers do not commit offenses, the number of violent acts, thefts, and drug-related crimes are rising.

However, the data do not include crimes committed by thousands of convicts. It's important to recall that they were released from prisons to join a program founded by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin. Those who survived six months on the front could receive a pardon from President Vladimir Putin and return to Russia as free men.

As sociologist Iskender Yasaveev explained in an interview with Bloomberg, they are treated horribly on the front. "The experience they return with is a trauma that will manifest itself for decades," he argues.

According to Bloomberg, the return of prisoners who fought for Wagner provides an early picture of what might happen when hundreds of thousands of men return from the front to civilian life. The agency notes that while minor crimes have decreased, the number of murders and sexual offenses, especially against children, has not reduced in the past two years.

According to Bloomberg's calculations based on Supreme Court data, the number of assaults on minors increased by 62% compared to the pre-war period. Meanwhile, the number of crimes involving military personnel quadrupled - to 4,409 in 2023, compared to 2021.

Bloomberg describes that the return of Wagner recruits to Russia has shocked city and village residents. They discover that men they thought were serving long prison sentences are living among them again. Among those pardoned were people convicted of murder and even cannibalism.

There's more at the link.

Yeah . . . I can understand that finding the person who raped, killed and ate your daughter is back in your village, free as a bird, might be just a leeeetle bit upsetting to her parents.  However, they have no recourse;  the pardon has already been issued.  If they try to take justice into their own hands, they make themselves guilty of a crime, and will land up behind bars or executed.  There's no future in that.

On the other hand, it appears that Russian soldiers are turning on each other with increasing criminality - possibly due to the presence in their ranks of precisely the same released convicts?

The journalists pointed out that from January to October 2023, 135 cases of murders committed in areas occupied by Russian soldiers were settled in courts. "It turns out that the Kremlin's army kills its own soldiers every two to three days — due to mistakes or negligence," reports Onet. Importantly, these are incomplete data, as there is no information from garrison courts in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

It turns out that more crimes are committed in these areas than murders committed by war veterans throughout Russia ... Crimes occur both in trenches along the front lines and in camps. Many murders are successfully covered up by reporting deaths resulting from combat actions. Many cases reach the courts, though it's hard to say what percentage of this represents.

An analysis of verdicts shows that, in most cases, alcohol is a factor. This was the case in 83% of cases. As many as 76% of the perpetrators were drunk at the time of the murder. Some of the accused were confirmed to have alcoholism, drug addiction, and in some cases, mental and behavioral disorders, including PTSD.

Again, more at the link.

I can understand Russia wanting more troops;  but this way of getting them seems to have had more than a few unintended (and very undesirable) consequences.

Peter

Very good questions. Will we ever get any answers?

 

I've deliberately refrained from much comment about the assassination attempt on President Trump and the fallout from it.  Things appear to be getting murkier and murkier, and the number of unanswered questions and mysterious coincidences are growing by the day.  One wonders whether we'll ever get (honest) answers to them all.  (If the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security and the current Attorney-General are running the investigations, I'd say that's very unlikely.)

Aesop, writing at Raconteur Report, puts together a list of points that, taken together, are a searing indictment of the so-called "Deep State".  Here are a few examples.

Somebody made the decision to half-ass Trump's protective detail all along.

Somebody made the decision, despite multiple requests from the campaign, not to increase Trump's protective detail.

Somebody decided, despite clear and credible threats of an Iranian assassination plot, not to increase Trump's detail in the days prior to the Butler assassination attempt.

Somebody decided to deliberately and knowingly lie about that, and claim that just the opposite had happened.

Somebody on Trump's detail made the jackassical decision to place the nearest building to Trump's podium outside Secret Service responsibility, against all common sense and basic SOP.

Somebody made the jackassical decision not to put Secret Service countersnipers on top of that very building.

Somebody made the decision to not have everyone on the same radio frequencies, and not to have liaison officers from all agencies in each others' command posts, to literally make sure everyone was on the same page at all times during the event.

Somebody made the decision to pull all of Trump's actual Secret Service bodyguards from him at this event, and replace them with fat-assed, half-assed, untrained and unqualified fifth-string security bumpkins from DHS. And just pretend Trump was being protected by the Secret Service.

There's much more at the link.  Recommended reading.

Next, the Oversight Project of the Heritage Foundation came up with some awfully suggestive coincidences concerning the would-be assassin's electronic devices and others associated with them.

I know there will be those who say, "Oh, they're just coincidences!  You can't draw any meaningful conclusions from them!"  Perhaps . . . but taken with Aesop's points to ponder, plus the known mendacity of the FBI and related agencies, I'm not so sure.

All I can say is, if I were President Trump, I'd want to hire my own security agents to watch the "official" ones whose duty it was to "guard" me.  I'd feel a lot safer that way.

Peter

Looks like others have the same fear...

 

A few days ago I put up a blog post titled "Biden quitting the race? That could be very risky for all of us".  In it, I postulated that President Biden, freed from any restraint connected to his re-election, could go "scorched earth" on his policies, using executive orders and other measures to ram through actions and decisions that might impact the whole country very negatively.  After all, he'd have nothing left to lose.

It looks like the New York Post has similar fears.

In an irony that would seem absurd in any election cycle but this one, Joe Biden is now liberated to do exactly what he wants without fear of reprisal for the first time in what has been a half-century political career full of triangulation and calculation.

He can even embrace the “Dark Brandon” persona his online fans have yearned for in recent years.

In short, there’s a realistic chance that if the president doesn’t step down and isn’t driven out — via a 25th Amendment scenario as Republicans from JD Vance on down would like — it’s entirely possible his term’s last few months could include some of the most radical moves any chief executive would make.

There’s no one left to cater to. So Biden, who presented himself as something of a caretaker president in the 2020 cycle, can assume his final form as an executive order-wielding change agent as he runs out the clock on his political career.

. . .

Could he increase American involvement in Ukraine? Could he impose more conditions on aid to Israel amid its struggles with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran?

What’s stopping him is the real question.

And of course there is the case of Hunter Biden, a key White House adviser of late who was recently convicted of three felonies in a federal gun trial.

Republicans aren’t the only ones who can talk about “lawfare,” and Biden — despite pledging he wouldn’t pardon his son — has nothing to stop him from breaking that vow.

There's more at the link.

I'll be watching developments very carefully.  I think there might be all sorts of mischief coming out of the White House over the next few months - not least because the mainstream media are going to be focusing on the election campaign, and paying less attention to the "old guard" (something the Biden administration might be relying upon).

Peter

Clarification is important

 

From Stephan Pastis' "Pearls Before Swine" comic strip.  Click the image to be taken to a larger view at the cartoon's home page.

Reminds me of a Franciscan friar who told me, when I was a student at seminary, "Prayer is such a dangerous thing.  Before you know it, you're heard - so better be careful what you ask for!"

Peter

Thankyouthankyouthankyou!!!

 

Out of the blue, an unexpected package arrived yesterday from Killer Bees Honey, whom I first mentioned on this blog back in 2016.  Their bees (or "ladies", as the beekeeper refers to them) produce what may be the finest, best-tasting honey in the USA - and I don't say that lightly.  It's remarkable stuff.

 Once opened, the package revealed two jars of honey and a note from an anonymous reader of this blog, commiserating with me over my "recent medical misadventures" and hoping the honey "will help speed your recovery".  How can it not?  I couldn't resist opening a jar at once and sampling a big teaspoonful of its delicious contents.  Best medicine I've had in weeks!

To my anonymous benefactor:  thanks a ton!  It was a wonderful and very thoughtful gift.  To the rest of my readers:  if you haven't tried Killer Bees Honey for yourself, you truly don't know what you're missing.  It is, quite literally, the best honey I've ever tasted.  I may possibly meet a honey that's their equal, but I don't expect to ever find one better than these.  Award yourself a taste "fix"!

(No, I'm not being compensated in any way to advertise Killer Bees Honey.  A friend founded it, and I first mentioned it here to give him a boost.  After tasting it, my wife and I have ordered from them every year.  It's not cheap, but it's the best!  We visited them in 2019, and hope to do so again if we're ever in the area.)

Peter

"Myths Hollywood taught you about guns"

 

I'm obliged to Zendo Deb at the 357 Magnum blog for linking to a useful video about Hollywood's myths about guns.  It's one of the most propagandized - and most misunderstood - subjects in the entertainment world, and any attempt to set the record straight is worthwhile, IMHO.

If you have friends who don't understand firearms, or are afraid of them, tell them to watch this video clip.

Let's get the truth about guns out there, so that we can debate with anti-gunners based on facts rather than fanciful fiction and emotion-driven excess.

Peter

A mass murderer is unrepentant

 

An article and video at the BBC's Web site has highlighted one of the more horrific mass murderers of the apartheid era in South Africa.  As they emphasize, the perpetrator was tolerated, even encouraged, by the police forces and justice system in that country until it became no longer possible - due to public outrage and a change in the political climate - to do so;  and even then, he received a minimal sentence, with most of his murders being judicially ignored.  I remember his case from that time, and the horror and outrage it aroused in parts of the local community, particularly because he apparently felt no remorse.  He regarded himself as a savior and defender of public order.

Let me start by saying that, in writing about the apartheid era in South Africa, I've frequently run into comments claiming that black people were actually better off under apartheid than they are under the present government there;  that apartheid itself wasn't so bad, and neither were Afrikaners;  and that allegations of mass ill-treatment of black South Africans under apartheid are nothing more than revisionist exaggerations.  I think I answered most of those comments in previous posts.  In particular, see these four:

My heroes

Was apartheid South Africa really that bad?

No, the Afrikaners were NOT "The Heroic White Tribe of Africa"

Defending my thesis about South Africa and the Afrikaners

They put the case of Louis van Schoor and his (at least) 39 victims (he's known to have boasted about shooting 100 or more) into perspective.  He did not act alone.  He was part and parcel of the system of apartheid, and his actions were deemed to be enforcing "law and order" - for the white community, and against the black community.  Here's an excerpt from the article.

Over a three-year period in the 1980s under the country’s racist apartheid system - which imposed a strict hierarchy that privileged white South Africans - Van Schoor shot and killed at least 39 people.

All of his victims were black. The youngest was just 12 years old. The killings occurred in East London, a city in South Africa’s windswept Eastern Cape.

Van Schoor was a security guard at the time, with a contract to protect as many as 70% of white-owned businesses: restaurants, shops, factories and schools. He has long claimed that everyone he killed was a “criminal” who he caught red-handed breaking into these buildings.

“He was a kind of vigilante killer. He was a Dirty Harry character,” says Isa Jacobson, a South African journalist and filmmaker, who has spent 20 years investigating Van Schoor’s case.

“These were intruders who were, in a lot of cases, pretty desperate. Digging through bins, maybe stealing some food… petty criminals.”

Van Schoor’s killings - sometimes several in a single night - struck terror into the black community of East London. Stories spread through the city of a bearded man - nicknamed “whiskers” in the Xhosa language - who made people disappear at night. But his shootings were not carried out in secret.

Every killing between 1986 and 1989 was reported to the police by Van Schoor himself. But the release from prison of anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela in 1990 signalled an end to this impunity. Ripples of change swept across South Africa and, following pressure from activists and journalists, the security guard was arrested in 1991.

Van Schoor’s trial was one of the largest murder trials in South Africa’s history, involving dozens of witnesses and thousands of pages of forensic evidence.

However, the case against him largely collapsed in court. At the time of his trial, much of the apparatus of the apartheid system was still in place within the judiciary. Despite killing at least 39 people, he was only convicted of seven murders. He would go on to serve just 12 years in prison.

His other 32 killings are still classified as “justifiable homicides” by the police.

There's more at the link.

Here's an hour-and-a-quarter-long video documentary about van Schoor.  It's even more chilling than the article.

If you have young people in your family (not too young, of course!), I highly recommend that you show them that video, or let them read the article.  Believe it or not, there are people like van Schoor still alive in the USA today.  They did similar things (although, please God, with a lower body count) in this country during the Civil Rights era, and many were never caught, or charged, or tried.  I've met several of them.  Our young people today need to be forewarned that such barbarism exists, because it's part of human nature, and it can arise again at any time if the conditions turn favorable for it.

May Almighty God have mercy on our souls . . . even, if it is possible, that of Louis van Schoor and those like him . . . and especially of his and their victims.

Peter

Following on from my July 3 post...

 

... which, if you missed or can't remember it, may be found here:  the next step in the "call your doctor" process.  Click the image to be taken to a larger version at the comic's Web page.

It's felt like that to me, too, at times . . .

Peter

EDITED TO ADD:  Sorry, the link didn't work.  I edited the post, and now it works.

Kamala Harris defied court rulings as California's Attorney General. Imagine what she might do as President.

 

I think the prospect of Kamala Harris as President of the United States is one of profound danger for the rule of law in this country.  When she was Attorney General of California, she disobeyed and displayed open contempt for court rulings - including the Supreme Court - ordering the State to fix its prison problems.  If she was that recalcitrant and obstructionist back then, what would she be like when wielding Presidential authority?

Kamala Harris ... repeatedly and openly defied U.S. Supreme Court orders to reduce overcrowding in California prisons while serving as the state’s attorney general, according to legal documents reviewed by the Prospect. Working in tandem with Gov. Jerry Brown, Harris and her legal team filed motions that were condemned by judges and legal experts as obstructionist, bad-faith, and nonsensical, at one point even suggesting that the Supreme Court lacked the jurisdiction to order a reduction in California’s prison population.

The intransigence of this legal work resulted in the presiding judges in the case giving serious consideration to holding the state in contempt of court. Observers worried that the behavior of Harris’s office had undermined the very ability of federal judges to enforce their legal orders at the state level, pushing the federal court system to the brink of a constitutional crisis. This extreme resistance to a Supreme Court ruling was done to prevent the release of fewer than 5,000 nonviolent offenders, whom multiple courts had cleared as presenting next to no risk of recidivism or threat to public safety.

Despite a straightforward directive from the Supreme Court to identify prisoners for release over a two-year period, upholding a 2009 ruling that mandated the same action over the same timeline, the state spent the majority of that period seesawing back and forth between dubious legal filings and flagrant disregard. By early 2013, it became clear that the state had no intention to comply, leading to a series of surprisingly combative exchanges.

. . .

Harris’s office launched into a campaign of all-out obstruction, refusing to answer why they could not simply release low-risk, nonviolent inmates to conform to the Supreme Court’s request. “Defendants offered no explanation, however, why they could not release low-risk prisoners early,” the June 2013 ruling stated.

But Harris’s office didn’t stop there. Instead, they claimed on behalf of the state that the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction to even request such a release, refusing to answer questions as to how they would implement the Supreme Court ruling, and courting a constitutional crisis. That resulted in a stunningly sharp rebuke from the three-judge district court panel in a June 2013 ruling.

When asked by what date the state could identify their list of prisoners who are unlikely to reoffend, “defendants defiantly refused,” the judges wrote, “and stated, somewhat astonishingly, that our suggestion that we might order defendants to develop a system to identify low-risk prisoners, a system that the Supreme Court had suggested we might consider ordering defendants to develop ‘without delay,’ is a prisoner release order that vastly exceeds the scope of any of the Court’s prior orders.” The Supreme Court, in fact, ruled that the three-judge district court panel had exactly that authority in its 2011 ruling. “In tortured logic,” the district court continued, “defendants suggested that the Supreme Court’s statement ‘did not authorize the early release of prisoners,’ or even the consideration of that question.”

Harris’s attorney general’s office, the ruling added, “continually equivocated regarding the facts and the law,” to the point that the panel strongly considered holding the state in contempt.

There's much more at the link, including links to other articles providing more details.  A tip o' the hat to Francis Turner for drawing my attention to the source.

I don't think anyone in his/her right mind could actually want someone who's displayed such contempt for the rule of law to be elected to a position where she could defy the law, ignoring Supreme Court decisions, enacting her own will through executive orders, and daring opponents to take her to court to overturn her rulings.  With the power of the Presidency behind her, she could throw the entire legal and judicial system in the United States into disarray.

(This, of course, has nothing to do with her political affiliation.  I daresay there are some Republican - and other Democrat - politicians who would be just as dangerous to our legal system if they ended up in the White House.)

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 219

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

I mentioned yesterday that I'd been "Working too hard.  Not able to switch off my mind and relax."  I got some more sleep during the day yesterday, and so far tonight's been OK . . . to bed at about 9.30 PM last night, up at 2:20 AM as expected (my permanent spine injury won't let me sleep much longer than 4 or 5 hours at a time without locking up solid, so that I have to get up, walk around, have some tea [and sometimes a painkiller], and wait an hour or two until -if - I can get back to sleep).

At any rate, Friday night reminded me of one of my favorite songs from the 1960's:  "The Windmills Of Your Mind", sung by Noel Harrison in the film "The Thomas Crown Affair".  One of the composers, Alan Bergman, said of it:  "We felt that the song had to be a mind trip of some kind ... I think we were thinking, you know when you try to fall asleep at night and you can't turn your brain off and thoughts and memories tumble."

Apart from being a brilliant musical summation of a central dilemma in the film, it's certainly an accurate description of lying awake, sometimes for hours, trying to get one's mind to stop flitting from subject to subject, and instead slow down enough to get some sleep!

Peter

No Snippet today

 

It's about 2.30 am on Saturday morning, and I still haven't gone to bed.  Working too hard, not able to switch off my mind and relax.  So, I'm afraid there's no Snippet today;  instead, I'll have a last cup of tea, then head to bed and just lie there until my eyes decide it's OK to close.

Peter

Mike Williamson describes military frustrations. Veterans will more than understand.

 

Michael Z. Williamson, friend, author, blogger, knife vendor and all-around good guy, has written a magnificent rant about the trials and tribulations of dealing with military administration - and administrators.  I've never served in the US military, but my memories of the South African military pretty much match his, and I spent a while giggling (unhappily) over the memories his article brought back to mind.  It's a lengthy rant, and will take some time to read in full, but if you're a veteran of military service, you'll appreciate it.

Getting Some Old Military Frustrations Down On Paper

Click over there and have fun!

Peter