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Home » Staying away from the computer for 12 daytime hours yesterday…

Staying away from the computer for 12 daytime hours yesterday…

The New Neo Posted on by

…to see a friend meant that I skipped writing about a ton of stories. That happens anyway in these days of fast-breaking news flurries. But when I take a significant chunk of time off, it happens even more.

So another roundup is in order.

(1) Biden – the guy who’s never been right about foreign policy in his lengthy public life – was sold by the Democrats, the MSM, and the NeverTrumpers on the preposterous idea that he would be the man who would be restoring our relations with our European (and other) allies, post-Trump. I didn’t see them as all that damaged in the first place, although Europeans certainly looked down on Trump’s style and didn’t like his calling them out on certain failings of theirs. But anyone familiar with Biden’s history should never have thought he’d help the situation – except perhaps through abject capitulation.

So now we have France recalling its ambassador over a nuclear submarine deal Biden made with Australia without informing France.

(2) On the right we already knew – and have known for weeks – that the much-touted post-Kabul airport attack drone strike by the administration on a supposed terrorist was actually almost certainly on someone who had helped the US and included the deaths of a host of children. Now the Pentagon has admitted it.

Watch Rand Paul a few days ago (prior to the admission), questioning Blinken on that (“You’d think you’d kinda know before you off somebody”…:

(3) Illegal immigrants under a Texas bridge.

(4) Another aspect of the recent Woodward book on how Milley’s China call circumvented President Trump in a coup-like action is that the WaPo reporters sat on the explosive story all this time – apparently, in order to sell the book. Here’s Mark Levin talking about it:

(5) Mollie Hemingway has written a book about the 2020 election entitled Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections , which will come out on October 12.

(6) Rapper Nicki Minaj strikes a blow for liberty of thought and against cancel culture.

Comments

Staying away from the computer for 12 daytime hours yesterday… — 40 Comments

  1. Hope you had a great visit with your friend! You deserve some R&R (time off for good behavior?) justly deserved.

  2. Senator Paul’s remarks are a disgusting cheap shot, even for a politician. It’s easy to sit in a hearing room in the Capitol and say “well, if you didn’t know you shouldn’t have fired.” It’s different if you’re a drone operator in the fog of war with intelligence suggesting, but not proving, that the potential target will launch a terror attack on thousands of desperate people, an attack likely to kill over 100 and wound many times that. If you launch the missile you may kill innocent people, but if you don’t launch you may kill many more. It’s never an easy call. That’s the brutal reality of war, and unless Paul has faced it himself he should restrain his snark.

  3. “now we have France recalling its ambassador over a nuclear submarine deal Biden made with Australia without informing France.”

    The illegitimate administration having rejected reality, they lack any reliable feedback mechanism with which to evaluate consideration of their future actions.

    Blinkin’s inability to answer Sen. Paul et al is in effect, an admission of guilt.

    Woodward once again sells his soul for his 30 pieces of silver. Grasping for renewed fame with dishonor its price.

    Fraud Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Stole Seized Our Elections

    Sadly but importantly, Nicki Manaj has far more influence with other blacks than does Candace Owen. Which is why the left has exploded. Her white liberal fans however may be more resistant to reason.

  4. AF JAG retired:

    In this case the snark was justified. The entire withdrawal was handled in a way that was so grossly stupid that even a child could see the stupidity, and then this drone strike was done – from reports – on information that was probably provided by the Taliban, whom the State Department and the military decided to pretend was some sort of ally of ours that could be trusted to provide such information. The strike was precipitously done – for PR reasons, to distract from the withdrawal fiasco and the terrorist bomb that killed Americans. The following is from the WaPo, not exactly a right-friendly outlet As you can see, even if the Taliban was not involved, due diligence was not observed:

    The chain of missteps ending with the missile strike came days after a suicide attack at the Kabul airport claimed the lives of at least 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members, prompting a sense of urgency among military officials. It also highlights flaws in the Biden administration’s strategy for targeting threats that emerge in Afghanistan from long distance, an approach analysts and critics of the president have panned as being vulnerable to inadequate intelligence and overconfidence among commanders reading ordinary behaviors as evidence of malicious intent.

    The strike followed days of chaos in Kabul as thousands of Afghans tried to flee through the airport. It capped the U.S.-led war with what has come to symbolize Western intervention in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa: airstrikes that sometimes kill civilians, followed by initial Pentagon denials that it may have made mistakes far from public view, said Brian Castner, a senior crisis adviser at Amnesty International…

    On the morning of Aug. 29, Ahmadi stopped near a building analysts suspected was an ISIS-K safe house, McKenzie said. He picked up and dropped off people at various places in the city, the general added, and at a few points the vehicle was loaded and unloaded with cargo.

    Ahmadi arrived home a few minutes before 5 p.m. under the watchful eye of an armed Reaper drone.

    The father of four had a tradition with his kids, his family later said: Ahmadi would hop out of the car and let his children finish parking. Several piled into the car, his brother said, and they reversed into the courtyard under the shade of a nearby tree.

    A few minutes after Ahmadi’s arrival, the commander fired a single Hellfire missile at the vehicle, destroying the sedan in an explosion and strewing bodies through the wreckage and courtyard. The drone operator did not see any children when the missile launched, but it was already in flight when three children could be seen just as the missile struck, officials said.

    Surveillance footage from the aid group Ahmadi worked for, Nutrition and Education International, and interviews with its staff provide a portrait of Ahmadi’s mundane errands against the backdrop of the city’s humanitarian crisis. His route included breakfast with colleagues, trips to a bank and police station visits to coordinate security for food distribution, along with visits to the group’s headquarters, said Steven Kwon, the group’s president.

    Videos captured Ahmadi carrying containers into the compound. He filled them with water to bring home to his family because utilities in Kabul were disrupted following the Taliban’s takeover, said the group’s country director, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety.

    McKenzie said the heavy packages were suspected to be bundles of explosives, such as the suicide vest used at the airport attack, but upon reviewing the surveillance video and drone footage, commanders learned they had mistaken the water jugs for bombs.

    Those types of canisters are common for insurgents to fill with homemade explosives because they’re inexpensive, have handles and can hold a lot of weight, and it’s possible commanders familiar with that practice were overconfident about their conclusions without considering plausible alternatives, Castner said.

    This is not the sort of intelligence that would justify a drone attack. No, I’m not in the military, but that seems pretty clear. Obviously, we can never have 100% certainty. But this was so far from that that it constitutes negligence at best.

  5. Granted we are on the other side but think the administration has yet to do something against what out opponents would do.
    China, Taliban, South American countries wanting to lose their most uneducated poorest citizens, you name it if the opposition wanted it done, Sundowner has done it .

  6. And of course the JAGs have a proud history being in the thick of the “fog of war.” And having common sense and a level head when the ROEs are flying hot and heavy. IIRC it was a JAG that had to ponder long into the night concerning whether 7.62 mm match bullets were legal for snipers to use. Was David French a JAG?

    Carry on sir in your righteous rage. General (White Rage) Milley said the drone strike was “righteous” too. Maybe a JAG should brief him about the constitution?

  7. Wasn’t there a potential drone strike withheld at the Abbeygate entrance a few moments before our people were killed? Been several reports.
    It would be interesting to ponder how many people in Kabul were running errands whose profile would fit this one.
    Stop here, pick up somebody, go there…. Heard that was common during the Depression when cars were less common and money for gas had to be hoarded.

  9. Berlinski(*) isn’t up on (or doesn’t regale us with) the finer points of Australian political #$%^tardery. Be fun to give details, but some of the characters involved are highly litigious.

    The amount of stupidity, corruption, and outright incompetence in military planning and purchasing is amazing for such a small place. The French never should have gotten the contract. The whole thing was set up to fail from the get go.

    It’ll take so long to get whatever new subs eventuate that the Chinese will probably own the dockyards by the time they’re delivered — we’re talking about same country gave a 99 year lease on the Port of Darwin to a Chinese company.

    Really the only ‘hope’ for the West is its ‘Elites’ deciding that they can make more graft from ‘Fighting the Chinese’ than from selling out to the Chinese. Which seems to be the way the wind is beginning to blow.

    (*) Don’t think she’s just a random journalist, writer, think-tanker with a fondness for Ottoman architecture. Bit more going on there.

  10. France and Australia entered the nuclear submarine deal in 2016.
    That is five years ago. France would build or is(?) building them, the Aussies being the buyers.
    It is no small deal, the building of nuclear subs.
    Dopey Joe’s team (not him; he’s dozing) is sure making the Euros despise the USA. Rightfully so.

  11. @Cicero:

    Australia and France made a deal to hack an existing French nuclear sub design to make it into a @#$%ed up grifting x thousand percent cost overrun *CONVENTIONAL* submarine. It was a stupid deal for the Australians to make. Actually corrupt and venal too. Cost Plus contract, so the French could charge (instead of retreat for a change) whatever they liked and doubtless kickback to certain Australians… End product would have been a pretty useless sub and too late.

    Mind you, the proposed nuclear-powered ones will also likely be too little, too late.

    Ultimately the French have to bend over and take it. They have substantial holdings in the South Pacific and don’t want to lose them to China. Altho they absolutely cannot ever be trusted (the French I mean): see this

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_wintering_in_Toulon

    Biden didn’t make this decision. Your men behind the curtain did.

    But wait, there’s more!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Nice

    That’s the Franco-Ottoman Siege of Nice to you.

  12. (*) Don’t think she’s just a random journalist, writer, think-tanker with a fondness for Ottoman architecture. Bit more going on there.

    Zaphod:

    Color me curious. What?

    I don’t set my watch by Claire Berlinski but she has written Stuff From Some Other Continent I’ve liked.

    Her father, David B., is an odd bird I don’t have a handle on either. Mathematics and Intelligent Design. He wrote a book on calculus I didn’t like. I’d like to browse his Princeton Ph.D thesis: “The Well-tempered Wittgenstein.”

  13. GB, do you like watching America burn?

    It won’t be the first or the last nation I and the ANgels of Death, have burned to ashes as a penalty and lesson.

    Learn the lesson, so we don’t havve too many Soddoms.

  14. It won’t be the first or the last nation I and the ANgels of Death, have burned to ashes as a penalty and lesson.

    ymarsakar:

    Sounds like an interesting job. Do you get dental with that?

  15. @Huxley:

    She has the whiff of working (at least on spec) for one or more agencies. All that sparkling wit and intelligence and she has no ‘real’ job… I suppose she could just be yet another trustafarian who enjoyed living the life in Bangkok and Istanbul and now Paris with some dabbling in scribbling for the press.

    Bangkok is and Istanbul (Until Erdogan went more full-on) was a hotbed of Mossad activity. There’s much amusement to be had in watching the Israelis and the Iranians circling each other in Bangkok and Tokyo — both run large number of front companies + have people embedded in their actual mafia mafias… In Bangkok she worked for Asia Times (a David Goldman / Spengler vehicle) which has I’ll guarantee never turned a profit.

    She has the look/feel of a dilettante journalist with impeccable connections (Balliol, FFS) who can get an entree just about anywhere and gets to hang out with the right sorts and pick up all the gossip. Gossip makes the world go round. Most of it never makes it into print. It all has to be filtered and what’s left analyzed but someone still has to hoover it up.

  16. RE: Drone strike.

    Years after the Kosovo conflict, I heard an unclassified talk by a guy who did weapons testing and damage assessment. He claimed that the early weeks of the US bombing there was all conducted at very high altitude, and that the Serbs had correctly anticipated this.

    In his assessment, in the early weeks of bombing, the vast majority of the targets destroyed were plywood tanks, and inflatable jeeps and personnel carriers, etc.

    The point is that much of this “over the horizon” and drone strikes from thousands of miles away warfare is a bunch of garbage. Unless you’ve got eyes on the ground or other really great intelligence, the information is almost always suspect.

  18. I said i would burn down america the evil nation shielding child rapist torturers and i am true to my word.

    I will burn down the gop and the demoncrats. They will be wiped frok the face of the earth.

    Donald was your last hope and his military chickened out. Their time is just about up.

  19. Dogs and cats living together! Who knew Yammer was keeping score and taking names? QANON to the rescue!

  20. French political opposition leaders point out that both Germany and Sweden wanted to scuttle their Aussie submarine deal. But years of cost overruns and zero progress give the lie that France is over her head, anyway.

    According to Australian sources, the deal has been in the works some 18 months ago, which means that Pompeo-Trump spearhead ex the super secret death, calculating that with Covid and CCP, the New Cold War would need new defensive juice.

    And Nuke subs which can be fueled for three or four decades is just the ticket to to secure Aussie Independence while securing the Down Under Flank from the Southern Indian Ocean as well as the hotly contested South China Sea.

    Currently, Xi is blaming Japan for plotting war against China.

    What the deal is does is reshape post Hong Kong politics for 50 years by keeping the UK engaged there.

    Despite talk that the Aussies may lease old US subs, the UKs Astute Class upgrades cycle is nearing an end. The UK can easily reposition her expertise to benefit the Aussies needs — which is a huge Brexit benefit, as Nigel Farage the says on
    GB News.

    China walked into this. Pompeo just sprung the trap. Biden couldn’t realistically sabotage this with so many other wheels in motion.

  21. TJ:

    That is a very interesting analysis; you mean to say Xi got bested and Can Do! didn’t?

    Impossible!

    Zoot alours! 🙂

  22. @TJ:

    All the Chinese have to do is nothing for 10-15 years while those submarines get built and delivered. Ought to be a cinch. I mean it took them 15 years to rebuild the World Trade Center.

    It’s for sure a better deal for Australia than the French boondoggle.

    Still, if the USA and Rest of the West were serious about confronting China it would engage in serious long-term economic warfare and re-build industrial and high tech hardware bases(*) — but then the wrong people might lose money. Can’t have that. A new Cold War is a nice way to further enrich the wrong people.

    Going to be a grift. And you TJ and your nearest and dearest will end up worse off for it. Nothing is done for your benefit, you can be sure of that.

    * Oh they’ll move some stuff out of China. To India and Vietnam and Philippines and Thailand and Oogaboobaland…. All of these before they give jobs back to Legacy Americans.

  23. Re: Claire Berlinski…

    Zaphod:

    Yes, I noticed her Balliol/Oxford cred and wondered. Perhaps she just found a rich husband like Anais Nin did.

  24. Zaphod:

    I thought they had renamed Oogaboogaland to something more authentically African.

    But it will always be Oogaboogaland to me.

  25. TJ:

    Notice that the real problem from the perspective of Hong Kong isn’t Xi or the CCP, but the unnamed other forces that are a threat to “Legacy Americans,” and the world? An old, well-polished turd, still not shiney, but he likes it.

  26. TJ:

    In Hong Kong logic land building a group of SSNs is the same as replacing the WTC buildings. Otay.

  27. Take it easy, Om. All these Instant Just Add Water China Neocon Hawks are the same people who got everything else so perfectly geopolitically right these last 20 years.

    China will eff itself up in its own ways in its own time. And nobody, I mean nobody has any idea when that will happen. If it comes in our lifetimes it will be a surprise to all of us on all sides of the political spectrum exactly how and when it goes down.

    If the West spent as much effort on self-improvement and putting its own house in order as it does on butting into everyone else’s business, it probably wouldn’t need to distract itself from its awful systemic failings and political divisions by drumming up trouble in East Asia.

    Oh… and you might want to look at just how long it takes the US Military Industrial Complex to excrete a big shiny ship in the current year.

    You sneer at “Legacy Americans”… Good thing you’re not a Jew or you’d be a Self-hating Jew. But it’s something to be proud of being a Self-hating White?

    There’s two blasted generations of people who had their livelihoods taken away from them by Wall Street, MBAs, etc — who got richer than God by doing so.

  29. “Legacy Americans” is your words. I don’t sneer at Americans, or ‘Muricans as you call us. It is my country, not yours, so you know where to put your profundity. And what would you know of America again? Or your own country BTW? Is it Hong Kong, Thailand, South Africa, or the CCP? Run and hide while you can.

    Melanin raises it ‘s head or other member again. So old and so predictable. Your other favorite turd.

    “If the West ……” Do tell. Do tell.

    You have a way with words, ideas on the other hand ….

  31. Here’s an actual real Propaganda Shill for China:

    Popularity of multiple-kid TV shows expected to encourage people to have more children
    https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202109/1234542.shtml

    Have a look at the link and at the people starring in it. Then think clearly about the degenerate filth and garbage your entertainment industry pumps out to encourage you to have abortions, get sex changes, get knocked up by a gangbanger and be a Brave Single Mother, get a divorce and go to Bali via Tangiers and Kashmir to bang Kuta Cowboys on your ex-husband’s dime, and so on and and so on.

    I mean it’s obviously just Nazis! Neo-Confucian Nazis with Chopsticks!

  32. Who is rhis “your” you are speaking of Kimosabe? Isn’t TikTok a CCP product and what does TikTok promote to youth in the West?

    But tell us more about the morals of the CCP and Xi. You have it in you.

  33. (3) Illegal immigrants under a Texas bridge.
    Monica Showalter has some information I hadn’t seen yet. I did read elsewhere that these are not NEW refugees, but most have been in South America for years. The question is: why now, why Del Rio?
    The answer is: Joe Biden did it.

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/so_how_did_15000_haitian_illegals_suddenly_find_their_way_to_del_rio_texas.html

    The Center for Immigration Studies, sent a senior researcher named Todd Bensman to ask those questions on the ground, going to the immigrants themselves, and he came up with a doozy of an answer:

    The surprising answer, which the migrants provided independently in different places and at different times, was universal: on Sunday, September 12, the Mexican government effectively sent a mass of migrants it had bottled up for months in its southern states up to the American border. This move, which appears to have been done under the cover of Mexico’s independence week of celebration known as El Grito, essentially foisted a humanitarian problem onto the Americans in a single week.

    …Turns out Joe Biden promised them some things and based on the available information, apparently never delivered. ….They had been penning up thousands of illegal Haitian migrants on their southern border in the town of Tapachula from entering the U.S. and opened the floodgates, all to teach Joe Biden a lesson about messing with them.

    So much for Joe Biden’s vaunted ‘diplomacy is back’ claim — he can’t even manage the U.S. Diplomacy 101 task of managing relations with our nearest neighbor, Mexico.
    …
    As for why they all chose to head for Del Rio, Bensman found the answer to that, too – migrants were told that cartels did not hold sway over that crossing as they did at other illegal crossings, and so, migrants could get across without paying ‘fees’ to the cartels for the privilege of entering the U.S. illegally. And it certainly helped matters for them that Joe Biden halted the border wall.

    Here’s Bensman’s report, if you want the details. They are worth looking at.
    It’s nice to see a good solid piece of actual investigative journalism.

    Bensman didn’t say who funded the travel, but I’m now assuming each family bought their own bus tickets. They are economic country-shoppers, not destitute natural-disaster refugees.

    Once you get beyond the travelogue, you get his analysis of the political fall-out.

    https://cis.org/Bensman/Why-Huge-Illegal-Alien-Camp-Formed-Del-Rio

    CIS could find no public reporting of any official Mexico announcement or confirmation of these immigrant accounts.

    But if their accounts prove to be true, Mexico’s decision presents a clear diplomatic affront to the Biden administration, transferring a significant threat management and humanitarian challenge to America, not to mention a potential political problem for the Biden administration.
    A casual move such as suspending deterring strategies under cover of a holiday, or perhaps for the express purpose of transferring a humanitarian burden to the United States, indicates a diplomatic failure by the Biden administration in choosing carrots rather than Trump’s stick in dealing with Mexico. The move hints at how Mexico’s leadership regards the Biden administration’s quid pro quo arrangements of aid for help with illegal immigration from Guatemala.

    But knowing what happened also gives the Biden administration choices beyond merely adding fleets of buses to reduce the swelling population of the Del Rio encampment. They will be diplomatic choices in how the Biden administration might respond to the Mexican move, if at all. Will Mexico release huge populations of inconvenient migrants again someday?

    It remains unclear if Mexico has since shut the gate behind these thousands or has left it open. None of the migrants CIS interviewed seemed to know if friends or relatives in Tapachula were still free to board buses to Acuna.

    And it remains unclear whether any of the expensive and time-consuming U.S. law enforcement action to manage the problem will lead to consequences for Mexico.

    Preferring the public not know too
    In a sign of keen awareness that the Del Rio encampment situation portends political damage in an area where polls show Biden is already very weak, the administration has picked a strategy of not speaking about it and working to make sure no one else did either.

    The White House had not addressed the camp. Up until Friday, DHS was content to let the city of Del Rio lead a press conference about national immigration policy and what was happening.

    The federal government barred reporters from touring the site and rarely made officials available for questions. At one point, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a ban on unmanned aerial vehicles over the bridge area, a measure that seemed aimed at Fox News, which has fielded a drone team to photograph the migrant shantytown.

    What remains to be seen is whether the same concern for appearances about the Del Rio encampment will motivate the administration to shift to a harder-edged diplomatic strategy with Mexico, in addition to adding the fleet of buses to move the migrants away from the river.

    Of course, if the Left (and thus Biden) really does have the goal of electing a new people, this is exactly what they would want happening, so the only strategy they will follow will double-down on this very successful (from their POV) adventure and hope they get another Big Wave or two.

  34. I’m not staying away from my computer nearly enough, but Andrea Widburg had some of her usual insightful posts, ready for the round-up.

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/while_the_rally_for_january_6_prisoners_was_a_bust_it_still_mattered_a_lot.html

    This grotesque overreaction is having a chilling effect on conservatives. Unlike many leftists who are professional protesters, conservatives have jobs, families, and mortgages, all of which can be destroyed if they’re swept into a dragnet for daring to exercise their First Amendment rights to petition their government and engage in peaceful protest. And so, they fall silent in the face of government injustice. The risks are just too great for them.
    The Biden era represents the crushing of American constitutional rights, whether to travel freely, run their businesses, show their faces, educate their children, live in a country secure from foreign invasion, or peacefully protest and petition their government.

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/newt_gingrich_has_a_plan_for_regaining_congress.html

    His research has revealed that there are multiple unifying issues that concern all Americans and that Republicans are the ones with the more appealing platforms regarding those arguments. … The most interesting thing Gingrich and his team discovered while working with Larry Kudlow is that Americans haven’t really bought into socialism, although they think they’ve been alienated from capitalism. However, if you frame the two political systems by talking about liberty versus big government, people suddenly view them differently.
    In fact, it turns out that they support capitalism and oppose socialism, but only if the issue is phrased quite specifically as “free-market capitalism versus big government socialism.” This insight means that the Republicans can attack the $3.5 trillion Democrat boondoggle by referring to it as “big government socialism.” Throwing around abstract words or phrases will fail while specific definitions will help people evaluate policies.

    So, take every opportunity to call the Democrats what they are: Big Government Socialists.
    Good idea.
    Not that anyone in Congress or GOP leadership will listen to him.

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/a_socialist_attacks_a_racialist_approach_to_the_american_revolution.html

    The first push-back & rebuttal to the 1619 project came from the World Socialist Web Site (!!) and Tom Mackaman is still lambasting its supporters because their

    grotesque historic inaccuracy harms socialism by giving fuel to conservatives.

    Well, the enemies of our enemy can be useful, at least for awhile, even if their motives are not the same as ours.

  35. This is actually the best story about the January 6 Rally, and there are pictures.

    https://notthebee.com/article/pictorial-justice-for-j6-rally-and-a-truth-bomb-or-two

    Conclusion: a legit organizer not a false flag, turnout not as low as media suggested (didn’t mention that Trump told people not to go, although Widburg did), obviously homemade posters waved by grassroots protestors from DC (who have day jobs, not professional funding), lots of uniformed LEOs with nothing to do but schmooze with the tourists, and some undercover “glowies” (no explanation of the term).
    So, a nice day was had by all.

  36. Doc Zero puts the gist of Widburg’s observation about self-censorship in blunt terms and proposes the only remedy.
    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1435586614227607552.html

    If you’re applauding someone losing their job because they privately expressed a political idea you disagree with, you are either implicitly conceding that YOU could be punished the same way by those who disagree with you… or you are a totalitarian and flirting with fascism.
    …

    The correct term for a system in which only political views in line with the ruling party’s ideology can be expressed without fear of punishment is totalitarianism. If corporate muscle is employed by the ruling party to punish dissidents outside the law, it is fascism.

    The nature of these systems does not change because a particular observer agrees with the ruling party’s ideology, or loathes dissenting views. Every fascist and totalitarian system is filled with people who think the ruling party ideology is morally and intellectually superior.

    Americans are only two generations removed from a time when “imposing morality” was widely considered sinful, whether it was done through government or corporate power. Those who wished to impose their morality were commonly derided as fascists.

    The conclusion that dissidents must draw about America’s emergent totalitarian system – and well over half the population are dissidents from the ruling party’s orthodoxy – is that you must develop your own totalitarian muscle to fight back and protect your rights.

    Objecting to totalitarianism on principle is useless, because it is defined by hypocrisy – its adherents truly believe only their views should be protected from retaliation, while dissent should be crushed by any means necessary. They think dissent is dangerous.

    You can’t convince totalitarians to back down because THEY might one day be punished for expressing their views. They don’t think they’ll ever lose the power they wield. THEIR morality is sacred and could never be suppressed. They don’t think oppression is objectively wrong.

    If you think that last sentence is harsh, just chat with anyone who thinks it’s great that dissenters from their political orthodoxy are getting fired, demonetized, or deplatformed. It’s not hard to get them to agree that dissenters are dangerous or evil and deserve oppression.
    …
    Dissidents must develop the same muscle.* Make politically activist corporations afraid of you. Make it clear you will retaliate if they oppress you. Make it unthinkable that you should be silenced for exercising your Constitutional rights to speak and organize.

    Totalitarianism masquerades as order, but in truth it’s ultimately barbaric: there are no principles, no inalienable rights, no logic: only exercises of power and fear, where aggression is rewarded. Play offense or lose slowly. That’s the definition of cancel culture.

    *Same muscle, but not same hatred and hypocrisy. Self-defense is not the same as committing the first offense.
    (Cue Goldwater’s Maxim – which I think was unfairly attacked by BOTH parties.)
    However, although this is a good pep talk, it’s short of strategy and actual tactics.
    Maybe that’s my Minaj and other who are at least speaking out are getting traction – they show it can be done.

  37. Richard Fernandez’s analysis of Australian submarines written in 2013 but not published until today (his decision). Fernandez is a pretty astute dude FWIW.

    https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2021/09/19/the-australian-nuclear-sub-decision-as-i-saw-it-eight-years-ago-n1479870

    There is a graphic on the web showing that time on station for various naval choke points in the East Chima seas (the CCP’s lake, AKA South China Sea far western Pacific) is generally 70 – 80 days for a SSN vs 7 to 10 days for a French (conventional) SSK.

  38. For about 35 years I would read the San Diego Union newspaper–front to back–almost every day.
    Canceled them when they turned left about 5 years ago & now my news starts with RealClearPolitics.
    Every day over our morning coffee I tell my wife “we’re in Alice in Wonderland territory”.
    Can’t make this sh*t up & I dare you to try.

  39. AesopFan —

    https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Glowie

    Normally used for the CIA but also used for agencies like the ATF, FBI, etc. Their inability to blend in to the native population’s habits, patterns and speech makes them stick out like a sore thumb to the population, hence they “glow in the dark.”

    The most common trappings of government shills are their inability/hesitation to use the major racial slurs, improper use of memes, and the pushing of mainstream political theories.

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