Shah! Shtil!

In the world today, with all of the PC BS and universities that censor ideas, a world in which certain groups and peoples receive privileges and others don't, how often do you find yourself self-censoring?

Imagine living in a culture that grew up in the West through many episodes of violent hatred and persecution at the hands of the dominant culture, and that for this reason, developed a vocabulary and manner that encourages self-censoring.

Sha! Shtil!
Don't make a shande fur de goyim!

In Yiddish the first means "be quiet" and the second broadly means 'don't make a fuss because you might embarrass us all in front of "the nations" (the non-Jews).' The idea is that by not speaking up, Jews won't offend anybody and then maybe the ubiquitous "they" will leave us alone. We all know who the ubitquitous "they" are: they are the "they" that have burned us at the stake, forbade us to own land or to enter the professions, herded us into ghettos and concentration camps; they are the "they" that have murdered millions upon millions of Jews. They are the "they" that have the power to vote against Israel in church resolutions, to tell offensive Jewish jokes in the White House, and to make us afraid once again of what will happen to us and those we love only because we are Jewish.
We musn't offend them.

Just like the IDF made the mistake of thinking that if they went onto the Mavi Marmara with paintball guns, the ubiquitous "they" would finally approve of Israel's right to self-defense, so too, in the press and on comments, and even in sermons in synagogue, there are Jews telling the rest of us "Sha! Be shtil!" There are Jews telling the rest of us to stand down, to not tell the whole truth, to evade the reality that antisemitism is rising in the world once again, for fear of making a "shande fur de goyim."

Unless, of course, that antisemitism comes from the "officially approved" enemies of Jews in America, the conservative Christians*. But if it comes from self-hating Jews on the left, or from the members of the World Council of Churches, or the United Nations, then we should be meek and quiet and hope that the ubiquitous "they" of the left will make things right by us come the revolution. (That they never do seems blindingly obvious to even the casual student of history).

*I know very well that conservative Christians are among the best friends of Israel there are in the United States, and many of them are good friends of mine as well. However, in 'liberal' Jewish circles, where the leftist social agenda is often equated with the Ten Commandments in importance, the conservative Christians are understood to be aligned with what is glibly referred to as the "right-wing" Christian agenda, which is understood by a good number of liberal Jews to mean that they wish to force their religion upon us by law. Since there are a few vocal dominionist Christians in the broad patriot movement, this fear is not entirely implausible, making it easy for people who claim to speak for the whole Jewish community (an impossibility) to create a stereotype of all conservative Christians. That's what I mean by "officially approved" as enemies of Jews. (Added to clear up misunderstanding on June 16).

On the Friday evening following the Mavi Marmara "peace activists" attack on the IDF soldiers, I saw a significant example of self-censoring Sha-be-shtill-ing on the part of our rabbi.


I had expected it to some degree, as last High Holy Days, following the annointing innaguaration of Barack Hussein Obama, we heard endless rabbinic references to "hope" and "change" woven into the otherwise completely non-political prayers of the season, sometimes to the point where some of us had to walk out to keep ourselves from developing 'Pukinson's Disease.' The realization that BO does not like Jews and that he has a special antipathy for Israel--although easily foretold from the fact that BO spent 20 years listening to the sermons of his maniacally antisemitic preacher ( apparently without suffering a single case of PD or walking out)--must have come hard for our rabbi.


Although it was the Friday Night services of Confirmation weekend, many members of the congregation came to services also because we had been told by an e-mail that our rabbi was going to discuss the flotilla incident, and the response of the MSM, NGO's and other mavens of Israel bashing and Jew-hatred that represents the sum of the collectivist left organizations. (To understand why Israel bashing on the left is synonomous with hatred of Jews see Sultan Knish's excellent analysis here). We were expecting to hear our rabbi's analysis and to gain some badly needed solidarity with other Jews, having spent the week hearing not just Israel, but the entire Jewish people villified and threatened yet again.

Some of us were sadly disappointed.
The beginning of the discussion was on target, with the effective use of black humor, followed by a discussion of the actual facts of the situation, something that was sadly missing from the MSM. However, the last part of the sermon departed from the excellent presentation of the facts and instead of addressing the attacks on Israel, and indeed on Jews worldwide, veered off into a foggy discussion of the peace movement in Israel, highlighted by quotes from an Israeli Nobel-Prize winning novelist (?) and seemed to be saying that Israel must be willing to sacrifice anything at all for the momentary prize of a cease-fire, and to stand by and do nothing while her enemies prepare to wipe her off the map. No mention was made of the fact that Iran is preparing nuclear weapons for use against Israel and the United States; that as we speak, Hamas and Hizbollah (both funded by Iran) are preparing to launch an attack on Israel across the Lebanese border, and that Turkey is making a sudden move toward Iran and away from NATO.

Since the sermon's structure seemed to require ending with a discussion of the political and strategic situation vis-a-vis worldwide verbal attacks not just on Israel, but on Jews by "reporters" such as Helen Thomas, this ending seemed like a distraction.
The Engineering Geek turned to me and I to him with identical expressions of puzzlement (best described by the WTF? idiom) on our faces. Many people in the congregation were shaking their heads, and even the cantor leaned forward with a surprised look on her face.

Later, I confronted approached the rabbi, as curiouser and curiouser, I wanted to find out the reason for this WTF? ending. As our people are in peril all over the world, and Iran through its terrorist proxies is preparing war against Israel, this sermon did not satisfy; it did not even address the major concerns of the Jews sitting in that sanctuary. We all knew the facts of the matter that were presented in the beginning of the sermon. We needed a message that addressed our concerns at the end. What gives? I approached the question by allowing as to how I had learned by personal experience in the 1990's that the left is virently anti-Israel, and that further, most leftists hate Jews in general. He agreed that this is true.

Puzzled, I probed further. What was with that last third of the sermon? And I was told this:
Visiting the congregation that evening were two 'big machers' from the Presbyterian Church Southwest Presbytery. That organization, a part of the progressive World Council of Churches, was getting ready to vote on a resolution to condemn Israel for the flotilla raid. (This is not the first such condemnation). So the rabbi told me, he softened his stance and changed his sermon in order to placate these two people and to influence their votes for this "important" resolution.

Sha! Be shtil! Don't make a shande fur da Presbyterians.
Self-censorship at the organizational level.

I also self-censored at that moment, because I did not tell the rabbi exactly what I thought of him. This is not the first time he has placed his need to be the token Jew among the super-goyim that make up progressive Christianity before the needs of his own people in the congregation that provides him his pulpit. But I couldn't find the words to do so intelligently.

I wanted to say to him:
"Look, do you think those people care about you, about us, about Jews?
Do you really think that evading reality by not naming the obvious plight that Israel finds herself in is going to change the Presbyterians' minds for their vote? They have an agenda that has been made public over and over again in their resolutions--and that agenda has little to do with Christianity and much to do with advancing the progressive political left in this country. Israel as a nation, and Jews as a people who have stubbornly refused to assimilate into the 'masses' so dear to the collectivists, are a roadblock to their aims of world government and the blurring of indentity among the 'nations.'

"Those particular Presbyterians would be happy if Israel could somehow be dismantled without the inevitable bloodbath, and if Jews could be forced to assimilate without violence. Then they would not have to take responsibility for their real desire--a world in which 'equality' is enforced by 'hatchet, axe and saw.' A world in which there are NO differences, but only the dull, gray world of sameness and slavery.

"How dare you avoid meeting the need of your congregation for them? Your congregation needs a cogent, rational, moral defense of their individual rights, including their right to freely associate themselves with one another, based on a sense of heritage and purpose; and of the right of Israel to defend herself like any other nation. But you have instead given them the tripe they can read anywhere in the MSM; the tripe that Israel has no right to exist, but must beg for the indulgence of the dictators, Jew haters, and tyrants who dominate the UN, in order to survive one more day."

That is what I wish I had said. And further:
"Damn the Presybterians and their vote. They will do what they do, regardless of what any Jew thinks or says. Court Jews, though useful in the past, now only confuse the situation, and in continually apologizing for our stubborn resistance to assimilation, and in using the language of moral equivalency between murders and tyrants, and ourselves, they provide a moral sanction to those would strip us of our unique identity and failing that, destroy us."

That is what I wish I had said. But I didn't. Because I know only too well the internal and external pressure to pass, to soften my words, to get along in order to accomplish what looks like a victory (such as influencing the Presbyterian vote). What I learned at the hands of the left during the 1990's, is that those so-called victories are mere illusion, and only serve to strengthen the fantasy of people like these Presbyterians, that being nice is equivalent to being good; that meeting the irrational demands of terrorists is the road to peace; and that acting as useful idiots serves the Eternal Source of Justice.

Win or lose, it is our obligation as Jews to stand on principle, to confront the evasions, and to provide a moral defense for the best that we have given the world--individualism, capitalism, and the G-d that loves freedom. That is who we are, and we have reason to be proud of all of it.

You Tube Censors "We Con the World"

Perhaps You Tube employees agree with the following speech by Obama. According to our Messiah in Chief, information is a distraction. Especially when information tends to contradict what the BO wants you to believe is true.




After three million views, did they really think nobody downloaded the parody? You Tube claims that the original publishers asked for it to be pulled. But parodies are not considered violations. And does You Tube censor anti-Israel propaganda? No. That stays, but Latma's clever black humor must go.

Fortunately, after 3 million views there are plenty of people out there who have reposted "We Con the World" to their own You Tube Channels. So here it is, and I will edit it back into the original post:

Confirmation: Judaism in a Time of Trouble

Last night, in a Havdalah Service, 17 teens from our synagogue completed their formal religious school education by confirming their Jewish identities. The Havdalah service is an innovation from the Shabbat evening or Shabbat morning services where Confirmation is usually celebrated, and our kids decided to do it that way to provide a service that would be more uniquely focused on their reflections of what it means to be confirming their Jewishness.

The Havdalah itself is a beautiful service in which we recognize the separation between the holy and the ordinary; such separations are the identifying characteristic of Judaism, which in turn separates it from other religions that have other focuses. The very word havdalah means separation, and at the end of every Shabbat, we pause to both say good-bye to the sabbath and to hold onto some of its sweetness and peace as we enter into the productive week ahead.
Because of these meanings, the Havdalah is a good gate through which to come to the celebration and confirmation of Jewishness that marks the end of our children's religious school years.

Confirmation as a life-cycle event was borrowed by the early German Reformers in the 19th Century from the Lutherans, and it fulfills a need that didn't exist in the traditional Jewish cultures of Europe before that. Bar Mitzvah, and in modern times Bat Mitzvah, is the traditional ceremony marking an individual's responsibility to the commandments. Confirmation in Christianity varies in its meaning, but in most cases serves as a coming of age lifecycle marker, as well as having the religious meaning of marking a mature statement of faith and conferring adult membership in the church. In Judaism, confirmation is not so much a statement of faith as it is a statement of identity. This is because no form of modern Rabbinic Judaism requires agreement with a specific creed or set of beliefs for membership; rather membership in the Jewish people comes by birth or by adoption as a child or adult into the People of Israel.

In Judaism, Confirmation marks the end of a period in the lives of a group of children; a period in which they studied and grew towards Jewish adulthood together, sharing in experiences that mark them as members of a distinct people, that mark them as Jews. But further, the experience of distinction, of belonging to a unique civilization within the larger culture, when it is shared in a small group of individuals brings them together in relationships that are nearly as close as siblings. And especially in places where there aren't many Jews, being brought up in two cultures and consciously choosing different moral perspectives and practices sets a child apart from the dominant culture shared by most of his schoolmates. As the Rasta-Jew put it in his Confirmation Reflection: "Sometimes I felt like I was the only Jew in the whole State of New Mexico. But when I came to Hebrew School every week, I knew I was not alone." His statement reflects the fact that being Jewish in the diaspora is an excercise in radical individuality; it requires a person to be very aware of why he does what he does. It is a kind of swimming against the stream that Christians in the West have not experienced until very recently, as anti-religious progressivism has begun to rise.

And in these times, when collectivism is once again on the rise, and when economic instability and fear for the future have led much of the world to embrace once again the modern antisemitism of Europe, watching one's child stand to confirm his Jewish identity evokes a certain solemn pride mixed with the joy of a son reaching toward manhood. This week especially, as we have watched the world condemn the State of Israel for having the temerity to defend the lives and property of her citizens, and as the collectivists of the world rush to delegitimize Israel not for her faults but for her virtues, this Confirmation ceremony served both as an oasis of peace and joy in the midst of trouble, and as a moment of realization that by bringing our son into the covenant we have placed him in danger. For as ever, when the state becomes god, the Jew becomes the first demonstration of what happens to those who will not bow down.

"The time is coming," said Dumbledore to Harry Potter, "When we all must choose between what is easy and what is right." Harry Potter, at much the same age as our children who stood to confirm their Jewish identity, grew to manhood in a time when evil was rising in his world. The time is coming for us now in America, when we must choose between the security of slavery to a universal collectivist state, and our Liberty as free men and women to forge our own individual lives. It is clear from the renewed demonization of Jews, that once again we stand as the canaries in the coal mine; the ones whose stubborn refusal to lose our distinctiveness, our right not to assimilate, will be attacked first. But what happens to us is what will happen to anyone who will not bow down.

Remember?
"First, they came for the Jews . . ."

Liberty Song Saturday: We Con the World--A Parody

Remember We are the World?

The Chem Geek Princess was born that year, and hormones being what they are, I spent many an evening news broadcast sniffling through scenes of hungry children in Africa. We all joined Hands Across America the following Memorial Day weekend--we stood on Central Avenue with the CGP in a baby-backpack--and raised money (sort of) for those same starving children.

Those were more innocent times when we thought that humanitarians bringing aid carried babies in back-packs instead of their own clubs, knifes and stun grenades. I never dreamed I would in my own lifetime see again the rise of virulent anti-semitism on the left and on the right, as part of the package of collectivism and statism as my beloved "sweet land of Liberty" moved inexorably away from its founding promise based on rights of individuals rather than privileges granted to pressure groups.

Each time someone challenges the sovereign right of Israel to self-defense, and Israel responds by defending herself, a new and nastier wave of antisemitism can be found in the statements of "world leaders", members of the press, in the pages of newspapers, and on the internet. It does not matter that fewer than half the world's Jews actually live in Israel. It does not matter that many American Jews try to appease the anti-semites by joining in the condemnation of Israel and worse, their own people. From Hamas, from Iran, and more depressingly, from the UN and the capitals of Europe, calls are renewed once again for the destruction not only of the Jewish state, but of the Jewish people.

In the parody I will feature below, the chorus goes:
"We'll make the world abandon reason,
We'll make them think that the Hamas is Mama Teresa,
The truth will never make its way to your TV."

The problem IMO: You don't make a better day for anybody when you try to get the world to abandon reason. You don't make peace by creating moral hazard in which you give aid and comfort to those who will not rest until Israel is completely deligitimized and her people bombed out of existance.

Today I opened my newspaper and read Charles Krauthammer's column on the Op-Ed page. Writing about Israel's traditional defense tactics, he pointed out that being a small country surrounded by enemies, Israel uses forward defense--fighting wars on the enemy's territory--and active defense--military action to disrupt, dismantle and defeat the newly armed mini-states in southern Lebanon and Gaza. But, Krauthammer writes:

". . . under overwhelming outside pressure Israel gave it up. The Israelis were told the occupations were not just illegal but at the root of the anti-Israel insurgenciesand therefore withdrawal . . . would bring peace. . .
What did [Israel] get? An intensification of belligerency, heavy militarization of the enemy side, multiple kidnappings, cross-border attacks and, from Gaza, years of unrelenting rocket attack.
Land for peace. Remember?
. . .The result? The Lebanon War of 2006 and the Gaza operation of 2008-09. They were met with yet another avalanche of opprobrium and calumny by the same international community that had demanded land-for-peace withdrawals in the first place. Worse, the UN Goldstone Report, which essentially criminalized Israel's defensive operation in Gaza while whitewashing the casus belli--the preceding and unprovoked Hamas rocket war--effectively deligitimized any active Israel defense against its self-declared terror enemies."

According to Krauthammer, this leaves Israel with nothing but passive defense--a blockade preventing enemy rearmament. And with the blockade-running flotilla set-ups, that is also being delegitimized by a world "community" united by nothing so much as their hatred of Jews. Krauthammer asks, then what is left? He writes:

"Nothing. The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense.
The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, six million--that number again--hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists--iranian in particular--openly prepare a more final solution."

And what are we Jews left with? Our traditional black humor in the face of hatred.
Here is the Latma crew with their parody, playing on theme of what really seems to unite the world--unceasing hatred of Jews. Here is We Con the World:





Do watch the original We are the World (linked above) and see the loving detail with which the Latma crew parodies the original in order to make their point about the so-called peace activists.

NOTE: You Tube has banned the original video, but here is a FREESPEECH version of it. Keep the Internet Free and Irreverent!

Reality Bites: Physical Limitations and Political Magical Thinking

Science education in the United States has suffered.

I was going to talk about the problem solving that BP engineers have to deal with in order to deal with a damaged well-head in 5000 feet of salt water, but I realized that the problem that they have in being confronted by Obama-like politicians has to do with a lack of scientific understanding among the pols and the general public.
So I'll begin by restating my first sentence and continue from there.

Science education in the United States has suffered. And the main reason that it has suffered has nothing to do with the intelligence of the students or of the teachers.
Science education in the United States has suffered because of the prevailing philosophy in our schools of education and in the humanities in general. That philosophy is post-modernism, which can be crudely stated as teaching that there is no objective reality.

But working scientists and engineers deal with objective reality every time they put on their lab coats and hard hats and go confront the real world. There is no way to evade it or obviate it; the laws of physics remain the same everywhere in the known universe. This is the meaning behind the ultimate geek bumper sticker:

3.14 X 10 ee 6 meters per second: It's not just a good idea--it's the LAW!

Politicians, on the other hand, due to the prevelent philosophical sloppiness in the humanities at our colleges and universities, and due to what cannot be called anything else but magical thinking, do not feel the need to actually deal with reality; their eyes glaze over when the calculators come out, and so they believe that energy can be created by decree, and that no trade-offs are necessary to maintain the modern standard of living that is made possible by what they call "miracles" of science and technology.

And that brings us to the present oil well accident in the Gulf of Mexico, what it would take for BP engineers to "fill that hole, Daddy", and why lawsuits are not going to either fill it or prevent future accidents of this nature. (Unless we could plug the line with lawyers, which could kill two problem birds with one stone).

Although we do not yet know the proximate causes of the well breach a mile under the ocean in the Gulf, we do know the ultimate problem. It is that BP was drilling for oil with a well head in the continental shelf under the Gulf that was one mile under water down to a reservoir whose surface was 13,000 feet under the surface rock below that. This kind of deep water drilling is currently at the very edge of our current technological development, mainly because of the pressures involved. When people are operating on the thin edge of technology, one small problem can become one huge nightmare; and in this case, an explosion that breaches the line at the top of the rock formation can rapidly spin out of control, because the technology developed to fix it operates much less efficiently at the high pressures involved.

The question then becomes, so why was BP drilling at a location that places the well at the laser-edge of technology? And the answer is not because they are irresponsible; the answer is because politicians and environmentalists, neither of whom appear to have any clue about risk/benefit calculations will not permit drilling in shallower water, where our technology is much more robust for solving the inevitable problems that develop when moving parts and entropy collide. (Entropy--the tendency of any system to go to maximum disorder unless energy is brought into it--is another physical constant that politicians tend to ignore and evade. This is why much of the infrastructure of this country is in such poor shape).

I will give the answer to the problem here, before I detail the problem: For the nonce, DRILL ON LAND OR IN SHALLOW WATER. There, it's in capitals so the Pols in Washington can read it without putting on their spectacles.

So what, in reality, would it take for Obama to answer in the affirmative to the question, "Daddy, did you plug that hole yet?"

I once worked for a very short time in the oil industry as a geologist. My husband is a mechanical engineer who has worked in the Geotechnical Engineeering Department at Sandia National Laboratory for 28 years. He has extensive experience with underground oil storage, and the associated fluid mechanics and materials required to get oil out of the ground or into it. Between us, we came up with the following calculations of what it would take to plug the hole using extant technology. All numbers are reasonable approximations. Data was obtained from information received from BP. NOTE: BP is not able to "plug the hole" because of the enormous pressures and the material constraints involved.

The current well head is broken at the surface of the rock formation, under 5,000 feet of water, which has a specific gravity of 1, and which is exerting an absolute pressure of 2,300 PSI(A) on the wellhead. The top of the oil reservior is ~ 13,000 feet below that, under a continental shelf formation that has various layers catalogued by mudloggers, each of which has a density somewhere between that of concrete and that of granite, and the average density of the whole formation exerts an absolute pressure of 13,000 PSI(A) on the reservior. Together then, the total absolute pressure on the top of reservior is that of the mile of water and the more than two miles of rock sitting on top of it, which is approximately 15,300 PSI(A). (The pressure exerted by the atmosphere above the ocean, which is approximately 15 PSI(A) at sea level, is negligible in comparison). The line from the wellhead to the reservior is likely a 20" line, extending 13,000 feet down. And since the wellhead is broken, the oil is flowing with a pressure difference of 8500 PSI(D),and the gauge pressure at the top is ~ 3,000 PSI(A).

Given that living on the surface of the earth, we are used to a pressure of 15 PSI(A), and can withstand a maximum of a bit more than that, the pressures calculated here are truly impressive. And given these impressive pressures, here is what it would take to "plug the hole". To place a plug near the reservoir surface, which would be necessary, because at the wellhead the pressure would increase to 15,300 PSI(A) once the flow is stopped, BP would need to lower a packer that weighs in at ~3 million pounds. Oil mixed with mud injected earlier, would flow past the packer and back up the well. When the packer is in place, it would be expanded to make a seal, but even so, at those depths and pressures, some oil would continue to flow past it. Once the packer is sealed, the line would then need to be backfilled with about 4 million pounds of concrete. BP will most likely not be doing this because solutions that have already been tried have made it nigh unto impossible to do it this way.

FYI: BP had a plan in place for dealing with this accident, and had possible solutions ranked from first to last according to increasing difficulty and likelyhood of failure. There is some evidence that the Obama administration dictated a different order, most likely for political reasons or worse. If so, the hubris of these men--who have no real world experience doing much of anything other than community organizing--is absolutely astounding.

Ideally, when this accident occured, the Obama adminstration should have followed an EPA plan already in place to use the Coast Guard and various state agencies belonging to the states the border the gulf to contain the oil and mitigate the damage to the coastal waters. In the meantime, BP would be working to stop the flow or oil at the well. But the administration did not follow the plan that was in place, choosing instead to "study the problem" at the behest of environmental groups concerned that burning the oil at the surface would cause air pollution. It is certain that there would have been smoke, but all in all, the damage from that would have been much less severe than the damage caused by oil drifting to the Gulf Coast. At the same time the administration was dithering about whether to follow the EPA plan, it was also engaging in empty rhetoric about "pushing BP out of the way" and having a "foot on the neck" of BP, presumably to point fingers elsewhere and try to mitigate the political damage to the president. Because this kind of political behavior is an evasion of the real situation, it only succeeded in making the admininstration look more and more foolish.

Case in point: As Barack "Emperor Hadrian" Obama was commanding the tides to stop by magical insults hurled at BP, Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana sought permits to construct artificial barrier islands to stop the oil. The EPA dithered and Obama, indecisive as ever, promised to "study the problem" and get back to Jindal, after his Memorial Weekend vacation and Paul McCartney concert. Jindal waited in vain, and thus missed the opportunity to prevent coastal damage.

This failure of leadership seems to result from the fact that Washington D.C. sits inside a magic beltway, where the laws of physics, and the trade-offs made necessary by the needs of a technologically complex society that must deal with entropy, are less important than fingerpointing and blame games intended to obviate political damage. I have no illusions that any other politician would have done much better; however, Obama, whose real-world experience is negligible, and whose socialist political philosophy has already been demonstrated to be a total failure during the last century, seems to personify the absolute nadir of leadership.

Good leadership in a crisis requires that one first focus on solving the immediate problem, and only after that problem is dealt with, doing a thorough investigation that considers both the technological failures and any decision-making errors that exacerbated them. As the immediate problem is dealt with, evidence of what actually went wrong is often uncovered, but the general procedure is to get rid of the alligators before determining what went wrong with draining the swamp.

Further, human error is always part of the equation of any accident, but human error does not automatically translate into moral culpability. In general, there is a good body of law that deals with accidents like this, and BP--knowing its fiduciary responsibility--has already exceeded the legal cap on the amount of damages recoverable and has already volunteered to pay all costs related to the mitigation and clean-up effort. They have done so, even though the damage has been substantially multiplied by federal inaction over six weeks now, caused directly by the failure of leadership coming from the President of the United States himself.

Ideally then, a good leader deals with the immediate problem, and then considers the why's and wheretofores of an accident rationally and without immediately assigning blame. What has our president done? Filed a lawsuit.
Because that's really going to "plug the hole, Daddy."

Environmentalists, because they refuse to face the reality of entropy, and because they discount the place of human beings on the earth, refuse also to acknowledge that all life alters the environment, and that every technology involves trade-offs and hard choices. There is no magic bullet that lets any species function without changes on the earth. This magical thinking is exacerbated inside the beltway due to the unreality of the political game--which is not about taking responsibility--a key leadership trait--but rather obviating blame and political fallout. The combination has turned an accident into a crisis.

One that will undoubtedly not be wasted in Obama's march to fascism.

Talk about fiddling while Rome burns!

The Clouds of War: Why the Flotilla Crisis is a Distraction

There has been a good deal of discussion at most patriot and conservative sites about political solutions to our present crisis. Discussions involve the upcoming elections and possible moves to impeach the president. Meanwhile, generally, much discussion along the political spectrum has been about the Israeli commando raid on one of six ships in a flotilla that was aiming to run and break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. There is much outrage on the left, where nobody mentions the Egyptians have a blockade of Gaza as well, and for the same reasons: Gaza was forcibly taken over two years ago by the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas, which has dedicated itself to the cause of destroying Medinat Yisrael, the State of Israel. Hamas--they're not the kind of people you want living next door to you. The Egyptians know that as well as the Israeli's do.

I believe the flotilla that was boarded and towed, as well as the ones now on the way to run the blockade, are mere distractions perpetrated mostly by useful idiots while Iran and Syria prepare for war. Here is my contribution to a discussion that mostly consisted of political responses to an article about the video 33 Minutes: Protecting America in the New Missile Age. (You can view trailers here).

My response:

This discussion has gone for the most part toward poltical solutions such as marches and impeachment.
These are important discussions in their own right and for all the reasons (and more) that have been brought up.

We also need to be thinking about preparations, and a few people have mentioned food insurance.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are headed for war. This summer.
Iran has promised to wipe Israel off the map, and the United States is depicted by Achmadinajad as an even greater evil to be destroyed.

The present "Flotilla Crisis" is most likely a distraction to keep the world busy while the real war is planned.
Consider this interview with a retired American general put out by PJTV on May 6:
Former US General Warns of Chemical Attack Against Israel

In the interview at PJTV, this general says that he fully expects Achmadinajad to attack Israel and from a container ship, attack the United States with nukes.

Then consider the news from the UN--the new Mid-East Non-Proliferation Treaty. CNN is hailing it as "multi-lateral" missing the fact that Israel is named, but Iran is not considered a nuclear power. Israel rejected the NPT, but named Israel and not Iran singles Israel out for condemnation:

From Jewish Telegraphic Agency (English Language):

"Israel rejected the final document of a United Nations review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, saying that by singling out Israel it "ignores the realities of the Middle East."
The monthlong conference ended last Friday. The conference's final resolution called for a conference on establishing a nuclear-free Middle East to take place in 2012. It also called on Israel, which has never confirmed or denied that it has a nuclear weapons arsenal, to sign on to the treaty and allow the United Nations nuclear watchdog group to inspect its facilities. Iran was not mentioned in the resolution."

Finally, on Monday it was confirmed that Iran has the ability now has enough enriched uranium to make two warheads. Here is the Fox News report, but the news is everywhere:

"VIENNA (AP) — Iran has amassed more than two tons of enriched uranium, the U.N. atomic agency said Monday in a report that heightened Western concerns about the country developing the ability to produce a nuclear weapon.
Two tons of uranium would be enough for two nuclear warheads, although Iran says it does not want weapons and is only pursuing civilian nuclear energy.
The U.S. and the four other permanent U.N. Security Council members — Russia, China, Britain and France — have tentatively backed a draft fourth set of U.N. sanctions against Iran over its refusal to stop enriching uranium."

And consider this, from Fox News yesterday:

"Things in Middle East are quickly spiraling out of control. The Palestinians want to import weapons from Iran, to stockpile for the next war with Israel, but are prevented from doing so by the Israeli naval blockade. They realize they can’t stop the Israelis militarily, so they’ve turned to the world court of public opinion. . .
. . .The next few ships to challenge the blockade will likely be filled with more children’s toys and baby formula. But once the blockade is broken, those ships will be filled with missiles, weapons and ammunition bound for Hezbollah and Hamas. . .
. . . Meanwhile, the clouds of war are gathering."



Like Chamberlain, Barack Hussein Obama refuses to believe what Achmadinajad has been saying over and over. But unlike Chamberlain, I believe that Obama knows full well what he is doing. And by the time we got to congressional hearings on impeachment, they might well be taking place by candlelight.



Save those tin-foil hats, fellow patriots. The thing is spinning out of control. Remember what General Vallely said. We may need that foil to make Faraday Cages for our sensitive electronics.


Remember Glenn Beck's interview with Binyamin Netanyahu in 2006?

Many people ridiculed both Beck and Netanyahu for saying that Achmadinajad sees himself as the harbinger of the 12th Iman, who wishes to destroy Israel and the United States.

Given the news in the past month, I think the time for ridicule is over.

The Meaning of Memorial Day: Reply to a Friend

"In recent decades especially, the connection between American military intervention

and American freedom has become ever more tenuous.

Meanwhile, competence has proved notably hard to come by."

--Andrew J. Bacevich, "Memorial Day for a father whose son was killed

in Iraq", Los Angeles Times, May 31, 2010

Minuteman Memorial, The Green at Lexington, MA

Yesterday, a friend from Continental Congress 2009, who is also a combat veteran, wrote a heartfelt statement questioning the purpose of the deployment of American troops in the undeclared wars the United States has fought in his lifetime, including the war in which he served. He stated that he did not want to participate in Memorial Day activities that would perpetuate the lie that in these wars, our troops are fighting for freedom or dying for our country or our interests. Although his words were published on a private network, they echo what Andrew J. Bacevich, historian, grieving father, and author of the soon-to-be released Washington Rules: America's Path to Endless War, published today in the Los Angeles Times.

These reflections, public and private, have opened up for me the question that I believe many of us in the R3volution struggle with this Memorial Day: How do we honor the loss of our countrymen while at the same time recognizing that the character of America's wars has changed from that of fighting for liberty to that of advancing the interests of a few oligarchs with transnational ambitions?

Certainly the men whose names are written in stone on the Lexington Minuteman Memorial, who died rather than allow themselves to be disarmed, were fighting for their liberty and that of their families and posterity. And just as certainly, we cannot say the same about the loss of the precious lives of those who have been ordered to Somolia, Afganistan and Iraq.

And yet, this year as tyranny unfolds around the world, and the imperial ambitions of our politicians has become evident in a series of disasterous legislation passed, I do not have the stomach to ignore this question further, and distract myself by observing Memorial Day as "a celebration of the beginning of summer", thereby putting the reality of its origin and the dilemma of its current status down the memory hole. I thank my friend, whose identity will remain between us, for pushing me to face the question above squarely and to begin to wrestle with the meaning of Memorial Day in our times.

Here is what I wrote in response to my friend and fellow delegate, edited to suit this post. This is not the end to my questioning, but only the beginning of it:

Dear F.:

In a conversation with a Gold Star Mother from my hometown, I was recently reminded that Memorial Day is specifically to honor the fallen, and Veterans Day is to honor those who served and lived. Maybe, being from the rural Midwest I am too fussy about these things, but I like to keep them separated in my own mind.

As a youngster growing up in rural Illinois, Memorial Day was not a day only for picnics and cook-outs, and it was not a day to celebrate the beginning of summer. Instead, my grandparents still called it Decoration Day, and schoolchildren dressed in their school clothes (remember those?), would be taken to the cemetery, or to the war memoral in the town square, to decorate them with flags and flowers in memory of those who paid the ultimate price so that we might live free, become educated and make something of ourselves.

But my education did not prepare me to answer the following: What do you say to a mother or a wife or a child who has lost a child or a husband or a father in wars to which they never should have been sent? This is difficult, and I believe that most Americans do not know and so avoid the situation that would make us uncomfortable.. And so Memorial Day has become something other than honoring our war dead. All of them.

F., we are going to take your suggestion--no TV today. And we had already decided not to have a cookout. That can wait until the Glorious 4th! Today we will have a quiet day with the family, and think about those who died for freedom, and those who died in unconstitutional wars, and remember that each life was precious, and each one ended too soon. Some lost to the evil outside who threatened our liberty, and some to the evil within who shed and blood and treasure for their own wicked ends. In this way, I believe all of our soldiers died as a reminder, at least, that liberty must be defended, whether from within or without.

We have decided to stop today, even from preparations for the crisis that is coming, in order to remember the multitude of lives lost in all of America's wars, the good, the bad, and indifferent. We appreciate your service as well, then and now, and will set aside time to honor it specially on Veteran's day, though we strive to remember it every day.

And we appreciate your service to us today as well, the one you did us with your post about your own questions regarding your service in an undeclared war.
Thank you.