Ukrainegate in a nutshell

I think Robert Bridge does a good job of summarizing our current political brouhaha.

Just as Russiagate was a conspicuous effort on the part of the Democrats and their lapdog media to deflect attention away from the contents of Clinton’s emails, not to mention the identity of the leaker (as opposed to the ‘Russian hackers,’ that is), Ukrainegate is a desperate attempt to focus attention on a harmless phone call between two state leaders so as to bury the news of corruption at the highest levels of the Obama administration, up to and including not only Joe Biden, but former Secretary of State John Kerry as well. In other words, we are talking about obstruction of justice on a mind-boggling scale, and which could only be pulled off with the full support of the mainstream media. A free-thinking, independent journalistic community would have called foul on such shenanigans long ago.

Lest anyone forget, the Democrats have been under investigation by Attorney General Bill Barr and federal prosecutor John Durham. These two are currently traveling the world in an effort to determine “the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election,” Justice Department spokesperson Kerri Kupec said in a statement on Sept. 25.

In fact, Barr and Durham’s ‘mission’ kicked off back in May, long before the smoke and mirrors of yet another Trump ‘transgression’ took front and center in living rooms across the country. Indeed, while every American has heard of the impeachment inquiry, few realize that the Democrats are under investigation for far greater crimes should they be found guilty, that is. Now, in the event that Barr and Durham attempt to present their findings to the public, the Democrats will scream in one persecuted voice that Trump is attempting to ‘obstruct justice,’ which will certainly be the greatest irony considering the source.

In other words, there are two vehicles – one filled with Democrats, the other Republicans – careening towards an intersection at a high rate of speed, and neither looks willing to yield to the other. This is the situation confronting America at the present time: a smashup of epic, deadly proportions, quite possibly on par with its first civil war. Such a seemingly inevitable event, however, would never have been remotely possible had the media been a fair and just provider of news and information as opposed to being an instigator and provocateur of the first order.

Now, should the Democrats get the impeachment they’ve been dreaming about ever since they lost the 2016 presidential election, at least 50 percent of the American public will understand full well that the scales of justice are tilted against them. That will be the moment when the United States is forced to confront its worst crisis in many years, simply because the Democrats have become so terrified of a longstanding political technology known as ‘free and fair elections.’

There's more at the link.

I repeat what I've said many times before:  I'm not a fan of President Trump.  I didn't support him in the previous election, and I don't think he's the best available candidate for the Presidency.  However, I have to admit that he's the best candidate for the Presidency who's actually running at present.  He's shown courage, persistence and fidelity to his campaign promises.  What's more, he's achieved remarkable (albeit limited) success in the face of the most concerted, inimical, "bitchy" opposition that I think any President in modern memory has had to endure.  We need a person like that in the White House, irrespective of their political affiliation.  We don't need someone who'll bend with every prevailing wind, and try to accommodate every shade of opinion.  We need someone who will say, unapologetically, that they were elected to lead America, not the rest of the world, and who will then get on with that job.

Equally, I don't support any political party in America.  I regard all of them, particularly the two major parties, with suspicion, and I believe they put their own partisan interests ahead of those of this country at every possible opportunity.  I don't think the truth is in any of them.  Therefore, if given the choice between candidates for any office in an election, I'm going to vote for the person, rather than the party.  If it should emerge that the Republican candidate, despite a reputation for being a believer, a conservative, and a leader, turns out to be a morally hollow person, I'm going to vote for his opponent, provided that person is not morally hollow, even if I disagree with their politics.  I'd rather vote for Jill Stein than Mitt Romney, because I know she's a lot less likely to be two-faced and mendacious than he is.  If both candidates are suspect, I'll probably hold my nose, swallow hard, and vote for the least immoral among them, on the grounds of choosing the lesser of two evils.

I think the overwhelming opposition to President Trump, on both sides of the political aisle, is very helpfully revealing those who put America first, versus those who put political, or social, or economic ideology ahead of their country.  (Why do they hate him so much?  Victor Davis Hanson has some suggestions, that I recommend you read.)  I regard a Republican like Mitt Romney as no less culpable in that regard as Democrats like Adam Schiff or Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi.  I shudder to think that Mr. Romney actually ran for President himself.  It begins to look like his loss was the best possible thing for America, even if it inflicted another four years of Obama upon this poor, long-suffering nation.

So, no matter what his faults and failings, it looks more and more like President Trump is at present the only way forward (rather than downward) for America.  If that's what his opponents continues to demonstrate, every day, by their actions and by their words, and if that's what their lap-dog media continue to propagate, I think they'll find out that the American people will get the message, and respond accordingly.

Peter

Pain can do that to you . . .

I was saddened to read that a Belgian athlete has chosen euthanasia as the only way she could see to end her pain.

Belgian paralympian Marieke Vervoort, who won gold and silver medals in wheelchair racing at the 2012 London Paralympics and silver at the 2016 Rio Paralympics, died by euthanasia Tuesday, officials said.

Vervoort, 40, suffered from incurable, degenerative spinal pain. She said in an interview in Rio de Janeiro three years ago that she only got about 10 minutes of sleep some nights and described the pain that caused others to pass out from just watching her. She said sports kept her alive.

“It's too hard for my body,” Vervoort said in 2016. “Each training I'm suffering because of pain. Every race I train hard. Training and riding and doing competition are medicine for me. I push so hard — to push literally all my fear and everything away.”

Vervoort, a strong advocate for the right to choose euthanasia, spent her final evening with close friends and family. Before she died, she said signing the euthanasia papers gave her control and allowed her to put “my own life in my hands.”

There's more at the link.

Ms. Vervoort wouldn't have been interested in my opinion, of course, which is based on my religious faith.  I believe that since life is God's gift, we don't have the right to decide when to end it (with obvious exceptions such as the right to self-defense, etc.).  Nevertheless, I can sympathize very deeply with her position, because I understand it from personal experience.

I've been in constant, non-stop, 24/7/365 pain since my spinal injury on February 13th, 2004.  It led to two surgeries and a spinal fusion, and left me permanently partially disabled, with pretty severe damage to my sciatic nerve.  I have to use pain-killers almost every day.  If it weren't for them, I certainly wouldn't be able to cope with the situation.  I'm very fortunate that I can still get a prescription for what I need, and that lower-level narcotics still bring me relief.  I know people who need heavy-duty opiates for their pain, who can't get prescriptions any more, thanks to the War On (some) Drugs.  They're in a terrible way as a result.

I'm not a suicidal type of person, particularly because of my faith;  but I can tell you, there've been times, during days of very great pain (which affect me sometimes), when I've understood with great clarity how some people just decide that they can't take any more, and they'd rather be dead than endure it any longer.  I've never taken such a decision . . . but there are days when I've thought about the pain, and my hopelessness at knowing it was never going to stop, rather longer than I like to admit.  It's been scary, sometimes.

If you know someone living with pain every day, spare him or her a thought, and do what you can to help them.  It's no fun at all to have to go through that, knowing there will never be any relief.  Tomorrow's going to hurt just as much as today, if not more so.  If you aren't strong, it'll grind you down for sure. 

I'm very sorry Ms. Vervoort chose to end her own life.  I pray her family and friends may find what peace they can in her passing;  and I pray that her sins will be forgiven, and that she will be happier in the afterlife than she was in this one.

Peter

Sometimes the jokes write themselves

A headline from last week:

Beto O'Rourke Announces Support for
Menstrual Equity Act on National Period Day

Typical politician.  Going with the flow.




Peter

A serious warning about firearms security

It's long been the practice among security-conscious firearms owners to obscure the serial numbers in any photographs of firearms they put up on the Internet.  This is because unscrupulous characters have been known to note the serial numbers, report "their" firearm stolen (with that same serial number), and claim the loss against their own insurance policies.  The insurance company/ies then keep the firearm on the stolen property lists, and if there's ever an inspection (for example, you're stopped while driving, and the policeman checks your firearm serial number against his database), you may find yourself in trouble.  Alternatively, if you buy a gun from a private seller and it turns out to be stolen, the same procedure may find you accused of the theft.  It's happened to two people I know.

Now it emerges that Google and Facebook (and possibly others) are using optical character recognition to index the serial numbers of firearms in photographs posted or stored on their services.

Google and Facebook have now made it possible to find photos of firearms by simply typing a serial number into the search box.  Earlier today, the automotive website Jalopnik published a story showing how license plate numbers are evidently scanned using optical character recognition (OCC) on Google images, allowing them to be searchable using text queries. Using the OCC hypothesis, TFB wondered if this image data mining technique might be able to be used to search for firearm serial numbers. Using images posted previously on TFB with serial numbers displayed on firearms, we tested the serial number search technique.  As you can see from the results below, firearm serial numbers are in fact part of this apparent large-scale data mining operation by companies like Google and Facebook.

There's more at the link, including examples of such searches.

If you've ever put any photograph of your firearm(s) online that shows its/their serial number(s), you're at risk from this.  It's not just a risk from unscrupulous characters, either.  If you own a firearm for a while, and then sell it (legally, at a gun show, or something like that), and a future owner uses it to commit a crime, the serial number lookup may associate you with that crime in the eyes of law enforcement.  This is not a good thing.

Forewarned is forearmed - and a useful hint not to put up any more photographs of your firearm(s) unless the serial number(s) have been obscured.

Peter

Elections, incumbents, and democracy

Looks like Congress is the opposite of "democratically elected" when you take this into account.

How is 97 percent of Congress able to get re-elected each year even though only 17 percent of the American people believe our representatives are doing a good job?

It’s called an incumbent protection system. Taxpayers have a right to know how it works.

Recently, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com mashed up the federal checkbook with the congressional campaign donor database (source: OpenSecrets.org). We found powerful members of Congress soliciting campaign donations from federal contractors based in their districts.

We followed the money and found a culture of conflict-of-interest. The confluence of federal money, campaign cash, private employment, investments, prestigious committee appointments, political power, nepotism, and other conflicts are a fact pattern.

Furthermore, members of Congress own investment stock in, are employed by, and receive retirement pensions from federal contractors to whom they direct billions of taxpayer dollars.

Moreover, members sponsor legislation that affects these contractors. The contractor’s lobbyists then advocate for the legislation that helps the member and the contractor. Oftentimes, the contractor’s lobbyist also donates campaign cash to the member.

Here are five case examples detailing the conflict-of-interest among five powerful members of Congress...

There's more at the link.

It's easy to talk about term limits and similar steps to help fix our broken system of government;  but I daresay the entrenched interests that have corrupted it, and the systems they've put in place, would find a way to corrupt newly-elected representatives almost as soon as they set foot in the door of the Capitol.  We have to find a way to break the stranglehold of special interests before we can fix our democracy . . . and short of creating new offenses for which a heavy prison term can be levied, I don't see how.  Any practical suggestions, readers?

Peter

What's really going on in Mexico - and threatening the US

Three articles have shed a great deal of light on what's really happening in Mexico right now.  They're essential reading, particularly because the mainstream media simply aren't covering that country in anything like sufficient detail.  To call Mexico a "failed state" is being charitable, as this news report makes clear.

The first article is from The Federalist, titled "A Drug Cartel Just Defeated The Mexican Military In Battle".

The battle of Culiacan marks a turning point in the collapse of the Mexican state. There is now no doubt about who is in control of Sinaloa, let alone the rest of the country. Cartel forces seized a major regional capital city in broad daylight and defeated the national armed forces in open battle.

Violence is rampant across Mexico. Earlier in the week, more than one dozen police officers were massacred in a cartel ambush in western Mexico. A day later, 14 suspected gang members were killed by the Mexican Army. Homicides in Mexico this year are on track to surpass last year’s record total of more than 29,000.

Understand that the fighting in Culiacan is not just another episode in the “drug war,” nor is it merely an incident of organized crime. What’s happening Mexico right now is more like an insurgency. Yes, drug-trafficking is one of the things the cartels do, but it doesn’t nearly describe what they are or what role they’re playing in the disintegration of civil society in Mexico. Indeed, over the past decade cartels have diversified their economic activities to include everything from oil and gas production to industrial agriculture to offshore commercial fishing.

In other words, it’s fair to say that Mexico is now on a trajectory to become a vast gangland governed more by warlordism than by the state. The last time this happened was a century ago, during the decade-long Mexican Revolution, which eventually triggered the invasion and occupation of northern Mexico in 1916 by the U.S. Army, including the mobilization of the entire National Guard and a call for volunteers. Before it was over, U.S. forces attacked and occupied Nogales, Sonora, in 1918 and Ciudad Juarez in 1919.

There's more at the link.

The second and third articles are by Larry Lambert, blogging at Virtual Mirage.  He knows the situation in Mexico intimately, and has had extensive experience there.  Here's an excerpt from the first of his articles.

The cartels have run Mexico since the days of Amado Carrillo Fuentes. It didn't happen overnight, but in the model before Amado Carrillo, each state in Mexico had an army general who oversaw the state for the PRI Party. They each received the tax/mordida/bribes for allowing drugs to flow through the state and they spread the juice. For the past thirty years it became even more institutionalized.

Let's talk about the recent presidents of Mexico: In the case of President Vincent Fox Quesada, formerly an executive for Coca Cola, his wife, Marta Shagun (and her children) handled the bag for the cartel money. You could say that he made a token effort to distance himself. In essence, Fox and his family "licensed" certain states in Mexico to certain cartels in exchange for a fixed amount. There were some ripples with the Zapatista revolution in Chiapas (left over from the Zedillo presidency), etc. but it was managed.

President Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa took a different approach to the situation, selling the licenses to deal in narcotics more than once (selling the same horse several times to different buyers). This led to a massive drug war since each cartel felt that it had the rights to the states that it bought. During this administration the Catholic Church in the diocese of Morelia (Michoacan) created its own cartel, Los Cabelleros Templarios, which dealt primarily in methamphetamine. The Archbishop took his cut.

Again, more at the link.

Larry's second series of comments on that country may be found by scrolling down at the link to the section titled "Mexico".  They're also well worth reading.

Knowing all that, how anybody could dispute the need for a border wall between the USA and Mexico is utterly beyond me.  Right now, that sort of institutionalized criminal chaos is being exported wholesale to the USA - because the cartels are running the illegal immigration networks, and putting their own people in place inside our borders.  The tighter we can insulate ourselves from that revolutionary chaos, the happier I'll be!




Peter

Doofus Of The Day #1,057

Here's a graphic illustration of why you shouldn't use gasoline in combination with matches to clear an ant or termite nest out of your back yard.

Must have been fun explaining that to his wife!

A common practice in many parts of Africa was to soak the offending nest with a couple of gallons of gasoline, but then leave it alone for the gas to penetrate fully and kill off the ants or termites by poisoning them.  We didn't toss lighted matches at the gas-soaked ground, for obvious reasons, as illustrated above.

I can still recall (with some glee) the friend who duly expended three gallons of gas in soaking three separate patches of ant-infested ground in his back yard (which was, fortunately, much bigger than that shown above, and the infestation was a lot further away from the building).  He duly left it to soak, and I helped him put away the gas cans.  As we came out of his outbuilding, however, another friend arrived, smoking a cigarette.  At my friend's somewhat urgent request to "Put it out, quick!" he simply tossed the lighted butt off to one side.  The result was a considerably larger explosion than that seen in the video, some well-excavated patches in the yard, and some interesting language from my friend!

Peter

A blast from the (fashionable) past

Australian reader Snoggeramus, who's contributed many candidates for our Doofus Of The Day award, drew my attention to this 1997 report.

George Alexander of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory reports that attorneys for Oleg Cassini phoned, saying how dare JPL put the fashion designer’s name on its Saturn probe without permission.

JPL’s lawyers replied that the Cassini spacecraft was named for Jean Dominique Cassini, an 18th century astronomer.

“There was a long silence on the other end of the phone,” Alexander said, “followed by an ‘Oh.’ ”

Talk about an argument lost in space.

Yes, that would have left egg on the lawyers' collective faces.  I wonder if they were even aware, before this happened, that their fashion idol boss was named for someone rather more historically famous than he'll ever be?  It's probably too late to give them a Doofus award, but I reckon they deserved one!

Peter

An amazing find in naval and military history

I was amazed to read about a recent discovery in England.

A sketch hand-drawn by Admiral Lord Nelson showing his plan for victory at Trafalgar has been discovered tucked inside the pages of a scrapbook after nearly 200 years.

The map was found by Martyn Downer, a historian who is an expert on Nelson, in a book dating from the 1830s which was recently sold at auction.

It shows his plan for splitting the Royal Navy fleet into three divisions to break and destroy the enemy French and Spanish lines coming out of Cadiz harbour.

Lines representing wind direction also appear on the attack plan, showing Nelson’s intention to attack across the wind to take advantage of increased speed.

The drawing, which has been donated to the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth, was found alongside an address leaf bearing Nelson's signature and is dated September 5 1805.

. . .

Professor Dominic Tweddle, the museum's director general, said: "This is an astounding discovery, it shows that Nelson had thought deeply about how he would defeat the combined French and Spanish fleets long before he ever set foot on HMS Victory.

"We are immensely excited to add this find to our rich collections."

There's more at the link.

I wonder how it ended up in "a young lady's scrap book" from the 1830's?  The sketch must have come back to England with Admiral Nelson's effects after his death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, but how did it end up, a quarter of a century after that, where it was found in the 21st century?  I don't suppose we'll ever know, but I wish that sketch could talk!

Peter

Fake news - shooting sports edition

"Don't believe everything on the Internet" is an overworked statement, but remains as true as ever.  It was proven again by a 2017 forum post, which is making the rounds in the shooting community at present (example).

This guy and his co workers were discussing whether a steel toe boot would withstand a round from a .45, so what do do you think would be the best way to test this theory? YUP, you guessed it.

Good thing he wasn't testing his hard hat.

There's more at the link, including pictures of the perforated foot.

The only thing is, it's not true.  The same pictures of the same perforated foot were circulated in 2009, showing the aftermath of an accident (or, rather, dumb stupidity) with a shotgun.  I published the story on this blog at the time, with links to the photographs.  If you look at them, you'll see they're identical to those published in the forum post and news report above.

I don't know why people feel it's a good thing to copy a picture and compose their own story to go with it, but I'm afraid it's all too common on the internet.  The old saying that "the camera doesn't lie" is now comprehensively disproven, because the people using its output are all too prone to lie!

Let the reader beware.

Peter

Sunday morning music

Alessandro Scarlatti was one of the major Italian baroque composers, with a prodigious output, particularly early operas.  However, his instrumental pieces are nothing to sneeze at.  I've picked two of his shorter works this morning;  you'll find many more on YouTube if you like them.

First, here's his Sonata for Flute, Strings and B.C. No.22 and No.23.

Next, here's a live performance of his Concerto Grosso No. 3, played by the La Spagna baroque orchestra.  You'll note how much smaller a baroque orchestra is compared to a modern one, and how many instruments didn't exist in those musical times.

I hope you enjoyed the change of pace.

Peter

Saturday snippet: Sam the Sex God

Some years ago I published "Walls, Wire, Bars and Souls", a memoir of my service as a prison chaplain.

Many of the realities of prison life are grim and unappealing, but there are flashes of humor even inside the walls that can relieve the tension.  Here's one incident, as narrated in that book.

A large proportion of the hardened criminals in high-security institutions are mentally unstable, to say the least. Some are downright psychotic. We have psychologists who constantly monitor our inmate population, treat those who need it, and advise the rest of us on problem areas. Inmates whose condition is severe are incarcerated in special medical facilities. Others who have been stabilized through medication are assigned to the general prison population. We have our fair share of them in this facility.

It’s interesting that most of the inmates, even the most violent and predatory among them, generally don’t bother those whom they call the ‘bugs’ or the ‘crazies’ (or less complimentary terms). If they lose control, things can get very interesting, very quickly: and since they can be as violent as any other inmate, and have few inhibitions and less self-control (including not knowing when to stop), others tend to leave them alone. Of course, as long as they’re taking their meds, all is well. Unfortunately, every now and again one of them will decide that he’s feeling fine, he doesn’t need them and he’s going to stop taking them. That’s when things can go downhill in a hurry.

Sam, the self-proclaimed Sex God, is a good example. Let me tell you about him. Sam was on a cocktail of meds for a range of psychiatric and psychological issues, but had the annoying habit of stopping taking them now and again — whereupon he’d go stark staring bonkers within days. The authorities at his prison tried to avoid this by making him take them under supervision, but he learned to conceal pills in his cheeks or under his tongue, so that it only appeared as if he’d swallowed them. When the supervisor turned away, he’d spit them out and dispose of them. (That’s one reason why many prisons try to give medication in liquid form whenever possible — it’s harder to fake swallowing it.)

I witnessed Sam’s most memorable breakdown, the one that earned him his glorious title. He left his residential unit one day with a vacant look on his face, humming and jiving to himself. His Unit Officer, nobody’s fool, recognized the signs of ‘bugging’ and called a psychologist to investigate. Unfortunately for her, the psychologist on duty that day was a rather attractive young lady. She hurried over and confronted Sam, who decided the fact that she’d approached him must surely mean that she had the hots for his magnificent body. He reached out and tried to embrace her. She backpedaled frantically and hit her body alarm.

Next thing you know, Sam had stripped off his clothing (and I do mean all his clothing) and was being pursued around the yard by a reaction squad of half a dozen puffing, panting Correctional Officers. He was a fit, strong man (he’d obviously done a lot of gym work and body-building before his incarceration), and he wasn’t hampered by boots, trousers and the like, so he was able to keep comfortably ahead of them. As they ran, inmates boiled out of the adjacent housing units, shouting ribald encouragement to Sam, who was screaming at the top of his lungs, “I’M A SEX GOD! ALL THE WOMEN WANT ME!”

A number of staff (including yours truly) gathered at a nearby window to observe proceedings. The comments by some of the ladies concerning Sam’s naked athleticism and his self-asserted divinely priapic status were of a nature rendering them entirely unfit for reproduction here.

Eventually Sam spotted his presumed light o’ love trying to creep away down the walk, and made a sharp right-angled turn across the yard towards her. This proved to be his undoing, as the pursuing posse ‘cut the corner’ on him and piled on, six deep. Sam disappeared beneath a heap of heaving, thrashing bodies. Judging from his whinnying cries of excitement, he must have thought that all his wildest fantasies were being fulfilled.

At last Sam emerged from a cloud of dust, handcuffed behind his back, still naked as a jaybird. One of the Correctional Officers clearly wished to spare the blushes of the female staff, because he took a handkerchief from his pocket, unfolded it, and draped it gently over Sam’s all-too-obvious maleness. As Sam was led away to the medical unit, cooing gently to himself, the handkerchief fluttered and bobbed like some sort of weird fishing lure (giving rise to even greater hilarity among his fellow inmates). The poor psychologist returned to her office looking a little glassy-eyed, and was not very polite in response to our proffered suggestions as to how she might better have handled the situation. (Then again, they may not have been the most helpful of suggestions.)

Who says prison work is always boring?

Ah, yes.  Memories . . .




Peter

It's time for the annual Broadway Bomb again

The Broadway Bomb is a skateboarding event held every year in New York City.  It's been declared illegal since 2012, but that hasn't stopped enthusiasts from staging it.  (The Wikipedia page for the event appears to have been hacked by people with an axe to grind - at least at the time of writing.)

Back in 2013, the police deployed in force to stop the riders.  Did it work?  Like hell it did!  Here's a video clip that I posted that year, showing the results.

I'm told that police haven't bothered to intervene like that in subsequent years.  I can see why!




Peter

An historic way of life to a different, slower drumbeat

Courtesy of Old Salt Blog, I was interested to come across a novel, centuries-old method of shrimp fishing - on horseback.

Intrigued, I looked for more information, and found this longer, more detailed view of the same "industry" in Belgium.  I found it equally interesting.

It's fascinating to think that such an ancient method of fishing has survived so long;  and it's good to know that the number of mounted fishermen in training has actually increased in recent years.  I imagine the occupation is a lot less stressful than much of modern living, which is an attraction in itself.

Peter

Bill Barr on the foundation of our Republic

US Attorney-General Bill Barr gave the commencement speech at Notre Dame University last week.  I think he summed up very well the real issue with American politics and society today.  I'll quote from his remarks at some length.

In one sense, Barr simply explained what President John Adams meant by a statement he made in a 1798 letter. He then showed the significance of that statement to American life today.

"We have no Government armed with Power which is capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by ... morality and religion," Barr quoted from Adams' letter. "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."

Within this context, Barr accurately described the cultural war raging in America today.

"The challenge we face is precisely what the founding fathers foresaw would be the supreme test of a free society," Barr told the Notre Dame law students.

"They never thought that the main danger to the republic would come from an external foe," he said. "The question was whether the citizens in such a free society could maintain the moral discipline and virtue necessary for the survival of free institutions."

"And this is really what they meant by self-government," said Barr. "It did not mean primarily the mechanics by which we select a representative legislature. It referred to the capacity of each individual to restrain and govern themselves."

"But what was the source of this internal controlling power?" Barr asked. "In a free republic, those restraints could not be handed down from above by philosopher kings. Instead, social order must flow up from the people themselves freely obeying the dictates of inwardly possessed and commonly shared moral values."

"And to control willful human beings with an infinite capacity to rationalize, those moral values must rest on an authority independent of men's wills," he said. "They must flow from the transcendent Supreme Being. In short, in the framers' view, free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people, a people who recognized that there was a transcendent moral order antecedent to both the state and to manmade laws and had the discipline to control themselves according to those enduring principles."

. . .

Barr argued that "secularists" are now attacking the moral order that is the foundation of our liberty and threatening religious freedom in pursuit of their cause.

"First is the force, fervor and comprehensiveness of the assault on organized religion we are experiencing today," said Barr. "This is not decay. This is organized destruction. Secularists and their allies have marshaled all the forces of mass communication, popular culture, the entertainment industry and academia, in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values."

The threat is not that the government will establish a state religion; the threat is that the state will attack people for conscientiously practicing their own.

"The problem is not that religion is being forced on others," Barr said. "The problem is that irreligion is being forced, secular values are being forced, on people of faith."

. . .

"Education is not vocational training," he said as he neared the goal line at Notre Dame.

"It is leading our children to the recognition that there is truth and helping them develop the facilities to discern and love the truth and the discipline to live by it," he said.

"We cannot have a moral renaissance," he concluded, "unless we succeed in passing to the next generation our faith and values in full vigor."

There's more at the link.  It's worth reading in full.

Being a man of faith myself, I think Mr. Barr is spot on.  I agree with almost every word.  I know that those of different (or no) faith(s) will disagree with him, and that's OK, but remember the context of his argument.  He's quoting President Adams and his remarks;  and President Adams was one of the Founding Fathers who drew up our Constitution.  I submit that if the Founding Fathers believed what the evidence shows they did believe, they were probably right to say that the Constitution they gave us is suitable only for a people of faith.  Without that faith, the Constitution becomes a dead letter, a burden rather than a framework for life.

It appears that a good half of American society today believes that to be the case.  They are not people of faith (or, at least, not the faith of the Founding Fathers) and have no intention of becoming one.

Therefore . . . whither our Constitution?  Whither the road map that has guided the United States to where it is today?  Can it serve us in the future, or is it doomed to be replaced by a more secular society that will abandon many of the founding principles of this nation?

I can't answer that . . . but I fear the answer that many will give.

Peter

"Journalists are prostitutes"

That's the title of a very enlightening essay at Lew Rockwell.  It describes the life and experiences of German journalist Udo Ulfkotte, who explains just how journalists are "bought" and paid off by the powers that be.  It's long, but very interesting.  Here's an excerpt.

Now to the subject of lying media. When I was sent to the Iran-Iraq war for the first time, the first time was from 1980 to July 1986, I was sent to this war to report for FAZ. The Iraqis were then ‘the good guys’.

I was bit afraid. I didn’t have any experience as a war reporter. Then I arrived in Baghdad. I was fairly quickly sent along in a bus by the Iraqi army, the bus was full of loud, experienced war reporters, from such prestigious media as the BBC, several foreign TV-stations and newspapers, and me, poor newbie, who was sent to the front for the first time without any kind of preparation. The first thing I saw was that they all carried along cans of petrol. And I at once got bad consciousness, because I thought: «oops, if the bus gets stuck far from a petrol station, then everyone chips in with a bit of diesel’. I decided to in the future also carry a can before I went anywhere, because it obviously was part of it.

We drove for hours through the desert, towards the Iraqi border. Approx. 20-30 kilometers from the border, there really was nothing. First of all no war. There were armored vehicles and tanks, burned-out long ago. The journalist left the bus, splashed the contents of the cans on the vehicles. We had Iraqi soldiers with us as an escort, with machine guns, in uniform. You have to imagine: tanks in a desert, burned out long ago, now put on fire. Clouds of smoke. And there the journalists assemble their cameras.

It was my first experience with media, truth in reporting.

While I was wondering what the hell I was going to report for my newspaper, they all lined up and started: Behind them were flames and plumes of smoke, and all the time the Iraqis were running in front of camera with their machine guns, casually, but with war in their gaze. And the reporters were ducking all the time while talking.

So I gathered courage and asked one of the reporters: ‘I understand one thing, they are great pictures, but why are they ducking all the time? ‘

‘Quite simply because there are machine guns on the audio track, and it looks very good at home.’

. . .

I just want to say that this was my first experience with truth in journalism and war reporting.

That is, I was very shocked by the first contact, it was entirely different from what I had experienced. But it wasn’t an exceptional case.

. . .

I was greedy. I accepted many advantages that a regular citizen at my age in my occupation doesn’t have, and shouldn’t have. But I perceived it – and that is no excuse – as entirely normal, because my colleagues around me all did the same. But this isn’t normal. When journalists are invited to think-tanks in the US, like German Marshall Fund, Atlantic Bridge, it is to ‘bring them in line’, for in a friendly way to make them complicit, naturally to buy them, to grease them with money.

. . .

A lot of subjects and news, that are not being reported at all, or they are – I claim reported very one-sided. One can only explain this if one knows the structures in the background, how media is surrounded, bought and ‘brought onboard’ by politics and the intelligence services; Where politics and intelligence services form a single unity.

There's much more at the link.  Highly recommended reading.

The same sort of habitual lying on the part of journalists is widely known, as in "Journalists Have Become Hoaxers".  We addressed the subject earlier this week, looking at "Propaganda Versus Fact".  We see it around us every day . . . yet we tolerate it without objecting to the news media or the powers that be.  I wonder why?  Have we been so brainwashed that we simply accept it as inevitable?

Peter

Remember those ISIL terrorists being held by the Kurds?

According to Strategy Page, they're probably in a world of hurt right now.  Turkey may be, too, due to the hornet's nest it's disturbed by invading Syria.  Bold, underlined text in the excerpt below is my emphasis.

The Kurds responded to the Turkish offensive by doing something the Americans told them they would eventually have to deal with. The Assad government has prevailed in the civil war and they are technically in charge of the entire country, including border areas occupied by the Turks. The Assads declared that the Americans and Turks were in Syria without permission while the Russians and Iranians had treaties permitting their armed forces to be in Syria. The American forces were sent to Syria just to deal with ISIL and that was done, so now the Americans are leaving. This is especially true now that the Kurds have agreed to work with the Assads, Russia and Iran, to oppose the Turkish invasion. The United States sidestepped any involvement and is letting Turkey deal with the mess it created in Syria.

. . .

The Syrian government quickly agreed to send Syrian Army forces to Hasaka Province to join or replace Kurdish forces facing the Turks. The Kurds agreed to subordinate themselves to the Assads. Russia and Iran say they will support the Syrians but it is unclear if that means Russian warplanes will attack Turkish (or FSA) forces. At the moment Russia is officially urging the Turks to call off their invasion, which they so far refuse to do.

Syrian security forces are also helping to round up or kill any ISIL prisoners who had recently escaped from Kurdish prisons. Everyone involved here, especially the Syrians, Iranians and Iraqis, have a compelling reason to prevent ISIL members or family members from getting free. The Kurds had asked, without much success, for more help, especially financial, to deal with all the ISIL personnel they had captured. Moslem and non-Moslem nations were not eager to take back their citizens who had joined ISIL and were now Kurdish prisoners. The Assads will kill most of these ISIL members as well as many of their wives and children. That’s how the Assads deal with Islamic terrorists who oppose them and ISIL was definitely an enemy of the Assads. There are already many nations who want to prosecute the Assads for war crimes because of this policy of murdering anyone who opposes them, including women and children. Syria was a nasty mess before the civil war, during the civil war and now at the end of the civil war. Now you know why Turks a century ago and today don’t want to get involved with Arab affairs. Turkish leader Recep Erdogan is going to get a sharp reminder of that.

With everyone turning on the Turks that creates loyalty and reliability problems for the FSA forces working for the Turks. The FSA are largely Syrian Sunni Arabs who were always lukewarm about working with the Turks, who promises FSA fighters support in running the northern Syria security zone. Once established this zone would remain under Turkish control (or “protection”) for some time to come with the FSA gunmen policing the zone backed up by the Turkish military. The Turks want a stable government in Syria that is not hostile towards Turkey. That is unlikely now with the Assads condemning the Turks as foreign invaders and most of the world agrees with that assessment. With Assad support, the Kurds will again be a threat to Turkey because the YPG will have an incentive to resume working with the PKK (Turkish Kurdish separatists) mainly out of necessity because the Syrian Kurds have decided that the Turks are a larger threat than the Assads.

There's more at the link.

I've long anticipated something like this concerning ISIL prisoners.  There were thousands of them, perhaps even tens of thousands, held by the Kurds in northern Syria and Iraq.  The Kurds wanted their home countries to take them back, and/or to pay the costs of their incarceration.  The home countries, not wanting a horde of well-trained and -indoctrinated terrorists to return, understandably refused.

I'm willing to bet a large sum of money that the Kurdish prison camps for ISIL are now largely empty of living ISIL terrorists and their families.  Dead ones?  Oh, there'll be plenty of those.  In the Middle East, as in many parts of the world, life is cheap.  While the USA was exerting some sort of moral influence there, the prisoners were kept alive.  In our absence, that moral influence has evaporated;  and the Kurds have grown weary of the cost in money, supplies and manpower of keeping ISIL locked up.  A bullet per prisoner is a lot cheaper than a single meal for that prisoner.  I daresay one of the points in the deal they've made with Syrian President Assad is that they'll "dispose of" their prisoners, either themselves, or by sending them all to a rendezvous with Syria's secret police.  Either way, the outcome will be the same - terminal.

Just wait for the howls of "Atrocity!" and "Human rights violations!" to start up.  They'll come from modern liberals and progressives who've never bothered to learn from history.  That sort of thing has been going on in the Middle East for millennia, much less centuries or decades.  As for ISIL . . . you reap what you sow.  They sowed terror, destruction and mass murder across most of the Fertile Crescent.  Now it's their turn to reap the harvest.  It's going to be bloody.

As for Turkey . . . I daresay Strategy Page is right.  The Communist-oriented Kurdish terrorists in Turkey and Iraq - the PKK - are going to receive at least sympathy, if not armed support, from the Syrian Kurds (the YPG), because, in Middle Eastern terms, "The enemy (PKK) of my enemy (Turkey) is my friend".  Turkey has just painted a big bullseye on its back, and it may rue the day it got so adventurous.

Confused?  So has everyone been who's tried to follow the currents and counter-currents of Middle Eastern politics, probably as far back as the Phoenicians or the Ancient Egyptians.  They, at least, had the sense to stay out of the cauldron and let the locals go on squabbling with each other.  The Crusaders learned the lesson the hard way when they got involved.  Let sleeping Middle Eastern dogs lie, because if you don't, they're going to bite you!

Peter

In memoriam: Harold Bloom

An academic legend has left us.  Prof. Harold Bloom died earlier this month.  The New York Times offers a lengthy obituary.

Professor Bloom was frequently called the most notorious literary critic in America. From a vaunted perch at Yale, he flew in the face of almost every trend in the literary criticism of his day. Chiefly he argued for the literary superiority of the Western giants like Shakespeare, Chaucer and Kafka — all of them white and male, his own critics pointed out — over writers favored by what he called “the School of Resentment,” by which he meant multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, neoconservatives and others whom he saw as betraying literature’s essential purpose.

“He is, by any reckoning, one of the most stimulating literary presences of the last half-century — and the most protean,” Sam Tanenhaus wrote in 2011 in The New York Times Book Review, of which he was the editor at the time, “a singular breed of scholar-teacher-critic-prose-poet-pamphleteer.”

At the heart of Professor Bloom’s writing was a passionate love of literature and a relish for its heroic figures.

. . .

Professor Bloom insisted that a literary work is not a social document — is not to be read for its political or historical content — but is to be enjoyed above all for the aesthetic pleasure it brings ... “You must choose,” Professor Bloom himself wrote ... “Either there were aesthetic values or there are only the overdeterminations of race, class and gender.”

. . .

Professor Bloom was ultimately both optimistic, in a narrow sense, and pessimistic, in a much broader one, about the durability of great literature. The books he loved would no doubt always find readers, he wrote, though their numbers might dwindle. But his great concern was that the books would no longer be taught, and thus become irrelevant.

“What are now called ‘Departments of English’ will be renamed departments of ‘Cultural Studies,’” he wrote in “The Western Canon,” “where Batman comics, Mormon theme parks, television, movies and rock will replace Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth and Wallace Stevens.

“Major, once-elitist universities and colleges,” he continued, “will still offer a few courses in Shakespeare, Milton and their peers, but these will be taught by departments of three or four scholars, equivalent to teachers of ancient Greek and Latin.”

There's more at the link.

Prof. Bloom enraged and outraged the entire "modern" movement within arts faculties across the nation.  His insistence on quality and originality, as opposed to churning out yet more Marxist-inspired dreck, was directly opposed to the "rigs of the times".  His many books were an inspiration, including the classic "How To Read And Why", which I highly recommend to anyone seeking an introduction to the art and science of reading for pleasure and greater understanding.

He will be sorely missed.

Peter

I bet that got dust up his intakes . . .

An Algerian Mig-29 made an extraordinarily low pass over Mecheria airfield a few days ago.  If he'd towed a lawnmower behind him, I reckon he'd have got a full bag of grass cuttings in no time at all . . .

The heavy smoke from the engines is a hallmark of the Mig-29, just as it was for the F-4 Phantom II. The later development of the MiG-29, the MiG-35, is better in that respect, but the smoke is still visible.

Peter

Crime, reform, and partisan politics

It looks like the administration in Seattle is doing a terrible job of controlling crime in that city.  Two reports by local business associations highlight the problems they're facing as a result. I'm obliged to the good people at Bearing Arms for putting together this summary of the situation. I'll quote it at length, because it deserves attention - and it's symptomatic of the situation in so many of our larger cities at present.

In fact, in Seattle, crimes like rape, homicide, and aggravated assaults are the highest recorded in over a decade ... A new report commissioned by business associations in Seattle reveals that the criminal justice system is suffering from a systemic failure that’s leading to tens of thousands of wasted hours by law enforcement and a city attorney’s office that is dismissing a staggering number of cases. The report is called “System Failure 2: Declines, Delays, and Dismissals”, and builds off of an earlier report issued in February of this year that documented the staggering number of criminal cases stemming from the actions of just a few prolific offenders. As the new report claims, one of the reasons why some of these offenders are so prolific is that they so infrequently face any real consequences.

In 2017 (the most recent year for which data is available), the City Attorney’s Office filed only 54 percent of all non-traffic criminal cases referred by police. According to data from the City Attorney’s Office, the rate at which misdemeanor prosecutors declined cases increased dramatically over the past decade from 17 percent in 2007 to 46 percent in 2017. Most of that change is driven by the City Attorney’s Office not filing 65 percent of out-of-custody cases (when the suspect is not in jail) that Seattle police refer for prosecution.

Almost half of all misdemeanor charges are dismissed outright by the City Attorney’s office? Why should the police bother to make an arrest if half the time the City Attorney’s office isn’t even going to bother to prosecute? As the report notes, this means that literally tens of thousands of hours of on-the-clock policing is taken up by engaging in an utterly futile exercise.

... data from Seattle’s misdemeanor criminal justice system shows that there is a significant disconnect between the City Attorney and other criminal justice system actors on how Seattle’s laws should be enforced. The result is that Seattle police churn thousands of misdemeanor case referrals every year, only to see them declined, delayed or dismissed. Prolific offenders know they are unlikely to be held accountable, even when arrested. Police know that most of their hard work is discarded. And repeat victims understand that there is little relief in sight for the daily grind of crime.

The report also notes something very important; as residents and business owners become aware that nothing of consequence will happen if they report a crime, they stop reporting crimes. That means that Seattle’s crime problem may be even worse than the official statistics suggest, as KOMO-TV recently reported.

The case of Seattle’s Uwajimaya on 5th Avenue South is a representative example of what is, and isn’t happening within a broken system.

In 2018 the supermarket stopped reporting any theft cases, that’s in spite of the fact that they continue to be decimated by theft.

“I would say thousands a week, tens of thousands every month, every few months,” said Uwajimaya CEO, Denise Moriguchi.

. . .

From January to September of 2018, before they stopped reporting, Uwajimaya reported 261 theft cases. These are cases in which they actually caught the shoplifter red-handed or had video of the theft.

Of those 261 cases, 166 of them, 63%, were held by the Seattle Police Department. In other words, nothing happened.

The reason the cases were held, the amount that was stolen didn’t reach the $25 threshold set by the city attorney’s office. They weren’t worth dealing with.

Of the remaining 95 cases referred to the city attorney’s office, 44 of them were declined. Or, simply never filed. So nothing happened.

Another 28 cases are pending with bench warrants outstanding. In other words, nothing happened.

It’s not just non-violent crimes like shoplifting. The report found that it’s taking the City Attorney’s office almost seven months, on average, to file charges in assault cases, and in the meantime many of these suspects will be arrested again on similar charges.

There's more at the link.

The scary thing is, many larger cities are now following the same policies, resulting in the same law enforcement failures.  To cite only a few examples (click the links for more information):

• Chicago, IL:  Top Cook County prosecutor raising bar for charging shoplifters with felony.  "The number of defendants sentenced to prison or jail has dropped by one-fifth during State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s second year in office ... violent crime in Chicago dropped by eight percent in that period."
• Dallas, TX:  Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot Announces He Won’t Prosecute ‘Low-Level’ Crimes.
• New York City:  New NYC Program Allows Low-Level Offenders To Avoid Jail Time By Taking An Art Course.  "Officials told Kramer the program has been wildly successful in allowing people who make mistakes to see the error of their ways without the anxiety of facing a judge or entering the court system."  Not everyone would agree that such programs are a good idea:  What does it take to get sent to jail in New York City?

And therein lies the problem.  If, as the Seattle report suggests, the number of crimes being reported has dropped because victims have no confidence that the judicial system will solve them or protect the victims of crime, that does not mean that the actual crime rate has dropped.  It's simply being under-reported.

We should also understand that these measures are part of a deliberate effort to change the US justice system at the local level, after attempts to do so at federal and state government level had largely failed.  Progressive, left-wing money is funding the election campaigns of many of these DA's, and their policies reflect that.  This isn't so much a new judicial approach as a partisan political perspective on society as a whole, and an attempt to re-shape that society in accordance with the views of the sponsors of these elected officials.

That's scary . . . and because so few voters pay much attention to local politics, it appears to be succeeding.  It may also be an attempt to undermine the influence of more traditional/conservative judges.  If a case never reaches their court, they can't rule on it, can they?

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #1,056

Today's award goes to the member of Congressional representative Brian Mast's staff who posted this tribute on Twitter to the US Navy.  (I presume it wasn't composed by Mr. Mast himself - he's a combat veteran, and, given that background, hopefully knows enough about the navies of world powers not to make this mistake.  Even so, it went out under his name, so he owns it.)

Sadly, the tribute was misplaced.  That picture shows the Russian battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy, not a US Navy ship.  The original tweet has since been corrected, and now shows a US Navy carrier task force.  Still, it was fun while it lasted, and attracted more than a few negative remarks from other denizens of Twitter.  I daresay some hapless communications intern or assistant has since received counseling as to his or her choice of images!

Peter

Flying through the water - literally

Here's a fascinating video taken earlier this month of thousands of Mobula rays in the sea off Baja California.  They look like birds flying, but they're swimming, using a flying motion.

You can read more about the event here.  I'd love to see that in the flesh.

Peter

Propaganda versus fact

As an exercise in judging the torrent of political propaganda that's spewed at us from all sides in these tenuously United States, here are two articles covering the same subject;  President Trump's decision to withdraw US forces from the area of Syria near the Turkish border, to avoid getting involved in a shooting war with the Turks over the Kurds.  (We've spoken of his decision before, here and here.  Basically, I think it was correct.)  They offer very different perspectives.

The New York Times thinks the President got it disastrously wrong, and has endangered US prestige, policies and security as a result.

President Trump’s acquiescence to Turkey’s move to send troops deep inside Syrian territory has in only one week’s time turned into a bloody carnage, forced the abandonment of a successful five-year-long American project to keep the peace on a volatile border, and given an unanticipated victory to four American adversaries: Russia, Iran, the Syrian government and the Islamic State.

Rarely has a presidential decision resulted so immediately in what his own party leaders have described as disastrous consequences for American allies and interests. How this decision happened — springing from an “off-script moment” with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, in the generous description of a senior American diplomat — probably will be debated for years by historians, Middle East experts and conspiracy theorists.

But this much already is clear: Mr. Trump ignored months of warnings from his advisers about what calamities likely would ensue if he followed his instincts to pull back from Syria and abandon America’s longtime allies, the Kurds. He had no Plan B, other than to leave. The only surprise is how swiftly it all collapsed around the president and his depleted, inexperienced foreign policy team.

. . .

Out of necessity, the Kurds switched sides on Sunday, turning their backs on Washington and signing up with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, a man the United States has called a war criminal for gassing his own people ... And over the weekend, State and Energy Department officials were quietly reviewing plans for evacuating roughly 50 tactical nuclear weapons that the United States had long stored, under American control, at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, about 250 miles from the Syrian border, according to two American officials. Those weapons, one senior official said, were now essentially Erdogan’s hostages.

There's more at the link.

It's worth noting that the NYT classifies its own article as "News Analysis" rather than a news report.  An analysis can bring in extraneous opinion, and isn't limited to the facts - something useful to propagandists, who know that readers may not find it easy - or may not even bother - to distinguish between the two categories.

Also, I find it curious that the NYT article mentions the nuclear weapons based in Turkey.  They're assigned to NATO, so to a certain extent, the US can't act independently in moving them;  we have to consult with our treaty partners.  They've been a question-mark in NATO's relationship with Turkey for some time, but so far no-one has suggested that they're a political trump card (you should pardon the expression) for either side.  I don't think they are.  It's too easy to disable them by removing key components;  in fact, I'll be very surprised if they're stored in a ready-for-use configuration.  I'm willing to bet some critical components have been removed, and may already be out of the country.  What's more, there's nothing about those weapons that is new or top-secret.  They're all decades-old designs, well-known to friend and foe alike.  I think that the NYT mentioning them is nothing more or less than a red herring, designed to provoke a knee-jerk reaction to President Trump's policies from the anti-nuclear-weapons crowd.

Be that as it may, The Last Refuge, generally a pro-Trump source, has a very different perspective on his policies toward Turkey.

President Trump has played this out perfectly.  By isolating Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and effectively leaving him naked to an alliance of his enemies, Erdogan is now urgently asking for the U.S. to mediate peace negotiations with Kurdish forces.

This request happens immediately after President Trump signed an executive order [See Here] triggering the sanction authority of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.  Erdogan called the White House requesting an urgent phone call with President Trump.

After President Trump talked to Kurdish General Mazloum Kobani Abdi, the commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, President Trump then discussed the options available to President Erdogan.  As a result of that conversation, Erdogan requested the U.S. mediate negotiations.  Vice-President Mike Pence announces he will be traveling to the region with National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien to lead that effort.

Again, more at the link.

Who to believe?  Who's got it right?  Who's telling the truth about President Trump's policies in Syria and towards the Kurds, and who's lying?

The answer is, of course, that neither article has it completely correct.  A great deal of the information coming out of the Middle East is suspect, heavily influenced by partisan perspectives there and here.  However, there are three important elements to watch for when trying to determine what's propaganda, and what's fact.

1. What's the pattern?  Has a source been consistently reliable, accurate and truthful in its reporting about a person or subject, or has its coverage been generally biased and one-sided?  If the latter, its trustworthiness takes a knock.
2. Does the source's reporting match what's happening on the ground?  This can be difficult to determine in real time, so it may be necessary to look at past reports and analyze whether they matched the facts as they emerged.  Again, if a pattern of accurate reporting takes shape, that's good.  If it doesn't, that's bad.  In general, one should suspend judgment until the facts are clear.  In this case, the facts on the ground are murky, to say the least, and are not helped in the least by deliberately false reports in local and international news media.  (ABC News, take a bow.  If that report was "mistaken" or "inaccurate", I'll eat my hat.  No, it was deliberate propaganda, and you were caught red-handed.  You even edited out from the video people holding cellphones, so it would look more realistic!  You deserve the egg on your face.)
3. Is the language objective, or subjective?  Is the way in which the incident(s) and/or person(s) is/are described factual, unbiased and neutral, or is it designed to evoke a particular emotion, attitude or reaction?  What descriptive words and phrases are used, and what is the author's and/or editor's intention in using them?  That, in itself, tells us a lot.

Obviously, in the two examples above, both have elements of propaganda in them.  However, when analyzed according to the three principles above, it's clear that one is more propaganda than reporting, while the other is more factual.  There's also a consistent pattern of that in both outlets' reporting, where one prefers to offer opinions without specific references to prove them, while the other backs up its opinions with references whenever possible.  I don't fully trust either outlet, but I certainly trust one more than the other, based upon that evidence.  Nevertheless, I'll double-check both, just to be sure.

We simply can't trust the mainstream media, and much of the alternative media, to be completely honest and trustworthy any longer.  It's up to us to be far more discerning in accepting the "news" and "facts" with which we're bombarded, and reserve judgment until we have enough of a factual foundation to make one.

(BTW, for another, somewhat contrarian perspective on what's going on in Syria and the results of the US withdrawal, see here.  It's interesting - and again proves my point about judging carefully.)

Peter

Blogorado 2019, Day 5

Yesterday (Monday) saw the end of our gathering for this year.  Some folks had to leave on Sunday, due to work commitments, but the rest of us gathered for a final breakfast at the Obligatory Cow Reference before heading out in all directions.  I tackled their Western Omelet, which was as delicious as everything else on their menu.  Their breakfasts are a highlight of our get-togethers, and I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain about their quantity or quality.

Miss D. and I headed south to Amarillo, where we met up with Alma Boykin and Old NFO for lunch.  As always, it was a pleasure to see Alma again.  She's good people.  After the meal, we continued south, through heavier traffic than we're used to on US Highway 287;  perhaps the Columbus Day long weekend had proved more popular than usual for a last pre-winter vacation.

We were followed southward by Ambulance Driver, who stayed at Blogorado for a few hours longer to get in some more testing on a firearm he's reviewing.  He's now on his way home to Louisiana, and occupying our guest room for the night.  The cats are overjoyed to have us home again, but not sure about this stranger who arrived shortly after we did.  One can almost see their minds working - are we planning to go away again, leaving them at the mercy of yet another temporary daddy or mommy?  They'll get over it.

Normal blogging will resume today.  Thanks for your patience while I was on the road.  It was good to see old friends and recharge my batteries.

Peter

Blogorado 2019, Day 4

Another fine, sunny day, with temperatures in the 70's, much nicer than when we arrived!  We gathered for our usual breakfast at the Obligatory Cow Reference.  (To explain its name:  the restaurant isn't actually called that, of course, but has a cow-related name.  Early in our Blogorado history, someone remarked that it was like an obligatory cow reference in a town that was, after all, founded towards the end of the great cattle drive period of Old West history.  The name stuck.)  I treated myself to their breakfast tacos and a short stack of flapjacks, which I couldn't finish - they were very large flapjacks indeed!

One of the reasons I like coming to Blogorado is that one is surrounded by bloggers of every ilk, most with a shared interest in firearms.  It's a great place to share views, exchange ideas, help with publicity for each other's books, and so on.  I found that again yesterday, when I was struck by an idea for a new Walt Ames western novel.  I've already got the next three plotted out in some detail, but this idea will probably change the next two, one in minor ways, the other very much.  I'll noodle on it over the next few months.  Anyway, the idea was sufficiently interesting for me to leave the others to have fun on the shooting range, while I headed back to the hotel to make notes for future reference.

Much fun was had bringing down the ramshackle old barn before which the happy couple had exchanged vows yesterday.  It's been derelict and falling down for years, and FarmDad decided that since he had all these muscular strong geriatric old men around, we might as well help him get rid of it.  A chain was duly wrapped around a couple of uprights and fastened to a pickup truck, which slowly reversed until they snapped.  It took several tries to remove enough supports, but eventually the old barn collapsed sideways with lots of creaking and groaning.  FarmDad will set fire to the remains as soon as there's been enough rain and/or snow to make it safe to burn, without creating a larger fire hazard.

Yesterday evening was our last supper together for a while.  Jeff made a very tasty chili, while a local lady produced three large pans of oven-baked enchiladas.  We stuffed ourselves, as usual.  Miss D. and I are afraid of what our bathroom scale will reveal when we weigh ourselves back home.  If we've put on less than five pounds apiece, I'll be very surprised!

This morning (Monday) we'll gather for a final breakfast, then go our separate ways.  Miss D. and I hope to be home by late afternoon.  Regular blogging should resume tomorrow.  Please say a prayer for us for safe travels.

Peter

Blogorado 2019, Day 3

We kicked off Saturday, as usual, with breakfast at the Obligatory Cow Reference.  I renewed my acquaintance with their chicken-fried steak, topped with a generous helping of their spicy chili verde.  Accompanied by cottage fries and a couple of eggs, it was delicious.

We headed out to the farm, where a couple of hours was spent preparing for the wedding celebration that afternoon.  Two of our long-term associates have decided to tie the knot, using another of our members to officiate.  FarmDad has welded together an entrance arch for the bride out of wheels from antique farm implements (which are apparently worth quite a lot of money to collectors, but he refuses to sell them, because he has "projects" in mind).  That done, the group headed to the shooting range, where much fun was had by all concerned.

The wedding took place in late afternoon, and was lovely.  The bride and groom are of the less conventional sort, so they made up their own wedding vows, which were original, moving, and sometimes very entertaining.  The ceremony over, lots of hugs and kisses were exchanged, and we adjourned to the barn, where the grills were fired up.  Every year we all contribute to buy an entire cow, which is traditionally named "Sir Loin".  T-bone steaks of enormous size were duly grilled, while FarmMom deployed pans of her famous garlic mashed potatoes.  We struggled to eat our way through the food, but we're a motivated bunch, so we eventually triumphed.

One of the fascinating things about belonging to such an eclectic group is the number of conversations on various and sundry topics that can be overheard by just wandering around.  Yesterday evening, as an example, there was a discussion on the merits (or otherwise) of a particular firearm;  the raising and breeding of cattle;  prospects for farmers in this part of the world after a pretty miserable growing season and a very poor harvest;  the political situation in the USA;  the trials and tribulations of emergency medical responders and fire departments (complete with "it happened to me!" real-life stories, some hair-raising, others funny);  and a conversation about books and copyright law, and dealing with plagiarism.

We were both pretty tired, so we left mid-evening to return to our hotel room and get to bed.  Tomorrow should be more of the same, God willing.

Some thought-provoking reading for you, gleaned from surfing the Web in the small hours of the morning when my back would let me sleep no longer:

• Hoax Marks the Spot & the Rush to Fudge
• The coming next American Civil War
• We're in a permanent coup
• Survey Reveals ‘Alarming’ Civic Literacy Crisis Among College Graduates
• San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless

Peter

Blogorado 2019, Day 2

The cold snap left very cold temperatures in its wake.  When I got up yesterday (Friday) morning, the thermometer read a balmy 9 degrees Fahrenheit!  Needless to say, with that sort of cold, nobody did anything too strenuous on Friday.  We waited for the warmth to return.  We spent the day at the FarmFamily residence, eating, drinking and batting the breeze.

Two of our number are getting married at this year's Blogorado.  Farmdad has assembled a triumphal arch for them, with the aid of a number of old steel wagon wheels and his trusty welding torch.  It was moved into place next to an old, tumbledown barn yesterday, and other preparations were made.  Later this afternoon the Big Moment will be celebrated by all of us.  Farmdad's also laid in a few antique weapons (a double-barreled shotgun, a Winchester rifle, and a Springfield rifle, all 19th-century) to serve as props;  and he has a white-painted Mossberg shotgun, so we can officially designate it as the "wedding shotgun" for a shotgun wedding!

The abundance of German food we provided was devoured with gusto yesterday evening.  It was the right meal for a chilly evening;  German sausage, potato salad and sauerkraut have a very warming effect.  We'll have to do that again, one of these years.

Today's going to be warmer, so after our usual communal breakfast at the local hostelry known, by Blogorado tradition, as the Obligatory Cow Reference, we're going to head out to the shooting range on Farmdad's property and convert a large number of dollars into spent brass, loud noises and muzzle smoke.  It should be a lot of fun.

Peter

Blogorado 2019, Day 1

We had an interesting drive from North Texas to Colorado yesterday.  The massive Arctic weather front that dropped temperatures by over 60 degrees Fahrenheit in Colorado yesterday had moved well into Texas.  Miss D. and I ran into it just outside Chilicothe, where she took this amazing picture while I was driving.  It isn't wide enough to tell the whole story.  (Clickit to biggit.)

Those are four massive roll clouds in close formation, extending from one horizon to the other in an otherwise clear sky, as far as the eye could see. We were just under the first of them when she took that image.  When we left home, the temperature was a humid 79 degrees.  Within moments of hitting the cold front, demarcated by those roll clouds, the thermometer plummeted by 30 degrees.  Last night we were well below freezing . . . not a happy contrast with home!

We stopped in Amarillo, along with Old NFO and aepilotjim, to have lunch with Alma Boykin, who's always a joy to be with.  At her recommendation, we visited Thai Arawan, which served us a tasty meal.  After filling our vehicle's tank as well as our own, we headed north to Colorado.  That leg of the trip got a lot colder;  temperatures were below freezing by the time we arrived at our destination.  We had decided to wait to buy some warmer clothing until we got there, because what's sold in our home area to deal with north Texas cold doesn't do an adequate job in still colder climes.  Miss D. bought a winter hood and some gloves, while I was lucky enough to find a heavy-duty Carhartt hoodie big enough to fit over my back brace (which I wore for the journey).  It won't be adequate for serious cold, but it'll be fine for daytime temperatures down to freezing point.  For colder weather, I packed a parka.

We dropped our luggage at our hotel (which in local terms means a rather nondescript motel, without much in the way of creature comforts - there are no "name-brand" hotels at all in town), and headed for our Blogorado rendezvous at a farm half an hour outside town.  FarmDad, FarmMom and FarmDaughter were there to greet us with hugs and warm words, as were several other early arrivals.  More people trickled in as it got dark and the fires were lit in the barn.  There's a bumper crop of new farm kittens this year (at least a dozen of them), and they're unusually friendly, so most of us were kept busy scritching and stroking them, keeping them out of the fires (which they'd never encountered before), and generally enjoying their antics.  The fires, built in sort-of-kind-of chimeneas home-made by Farmdad with a welding torch out of old vehicle wheel hubs, were a great cat success.  Several kittens, after testing the hot metal curiously, settled down to sleep as close to the warmth as they could get. (No, we're not taking another kitten home with us.  One Ashbutt is enough for now!)

Last night's supper was beef pot roast with vegetables, accompanied by boiled and shredded lobster brought by one of the visitors.  It was a great start to what's normally a very filling weekend, with an over-abundance of outstanding food served over the duration.  Tonight (Friday) Miss D. and I, assisted by some of the others, will lay on a German-style meal with all the trimmings.  That's going to be fun.

I'll post again (or try to) tomorrow morning about today's events.

Peter

On the road to Blogorado 2019

Miss D. and I left this morning on our journey to Colorado, where we'll join a group of fellow bloggers, writers and shooting enthusiasts for our annual Blogorado gathering.

We're not looking forward to the weather!  Yesterday the temperature at our destination dropped by almost 60 degrees (Fahrenheit), and tonight it's supposed to be in the teens.  In contrast, here in north Texas we've had days in the mid- to upper 80's for the past week or two, and pleasantly (but not excessively) cool nights.  We're not packing our open-toed sandals for Colorado, but rather warm shoes, heavy jackets, gloves and other anti-shivering devices.

We normally spend our days out on a shooting range established by our hosts on part of their farm.  I suspect there'll be less of that this year, particularly for Thursday and Friday, because the wind whistling down the grasslands from the Arctic Circle and Canada is enough to freeze bits that you really don't want frozen.  If things warm up enough, we'll get some shooting in on Saturday or Sunday.

We've already packed two coolers with all the food we bought the other day.  We'll be cooking supper for the gathering on Friday night, with the eager assistance of several other visitors.  I think a good German meal will drive away the early winter collywobbles very nicely.

Blogging will be sparse for a few days.  I'll try to post a daily update on how things are going, but there won't be more than that.  We'll be back home by Monday evening, God willing, so normal service will be resumed on Tuesday.

Say a prayer for us for traveling mercies, if you're so inclined.

Peter

Not so much a flypast as a blowdown

It seems an Indonesian Mil Mi-35 gunship (an export version of the Mil Mi-24) recently made an unexpected and very low flypast during rehearsals for a military parade in the Natuna Regency, in the Riau Islands.  That proved to be not a good idea . . .

I hope they had backup copies of those billboard posters.  I suspect the originals were probably damaged beyond repair.




Peter