third world county – Page 417 – "In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."

November 18, 2006

Letting the Genie Out of the Bottle

{ed notes: I posted this last August on my blog, but I think it frames how we got here. Being a Cold Warrior for 20 years, I stared across the deep blue seas at many a Soviet vessel, many times taking the pictures for the intel files and sending up contact reports – I came to understand the Russians, the culture at the core fo the Soviet Union, have always taken the long view, while we look at life 4 years at a time as a nation. Thie story told has dramatically changed my view of the current “unrest” in the world]

Note on the end before you begin reading. The further I got into reading the subject article, the more I can’t help but think this is one of the most significant bits of intelligence the world has seen to date on the current state of world-wide affairs. It cuts across the lines of history, culture, religion, military affairs, global politics and empire building, but it tells us who is behind it all. Mark my words, it is a definitve article for every serious person to read, and more importantly, one that is worthy of many changing their beliefs on how we got here, and use the information to figure out how to clean up the mess in the aisle known as the World.

Do your own thinking, but this General has provided the “glue” to bind together a multitude of seemingly random events over the last 30+ years.

Scanning about this morning brought me to an article on how the Soviet Union masterminded the use of client states and Muslim discontent to attack us:

“Russian Footprints: What does Moscow have to do with the recent war in Lebanon?” By Ion Mihai Pacepa

The introduction:

The Kremlin may be the main winner in the Lebanon war. Israel has been attacked with Soviet Kalashnikovs and Katyushas, Russian Fajr-1 and Fajr-3 rockets, Russian AT-5 Spandrel antitank missiles and Kornet antitank rockets. Russiaâ€™s outmoded weapons are now all the rage with terrorists everywhere in the world, and the bad guys know exactly where to get them. The weapons cases abandoned by Hezbollah were marked: â€œCustomer: Ministry of Defense of Syria. Supplier: KBP, Tula, Russia.â€

If my recollection of history is correct, the Soviets have been none too kind to their Jewish population:

In the mid-1970s we also started showering the Islamic world with an Arabic translation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a tsarist Russian forgery that had been used by Hitler as the foundation for his anti-Semitic philosophy. We also disseminated a KGB-fabricated â€œdocumentaryâ€ paper in Arabic alleging that Israel and its main supporter, the United States, were Zionist countries dedicated to converting the Islamic world into a Jewish colony.

Note: This movie has made it’s way into this country and is now on the shelves at BlockBuster for rent. Thankfully, at least Amazon knows it a faked story. Click on the link above on the title and see what they say.

As Ion points out, that people group, specifically the ones gathered in Israel, became the pawn in the great game of the superpowers in a bi-polar geo-political world, and is now, a classic case study of “unintended consequences.”

At the core, was the embarassment of the Soviets, when their client states, armed with “conventional” weaponry, supplied by the Soviet Unions central economy, had their butts handed to them in the 1967 war. As with the mentaility of most losing teams, while there are still games in the series to be played, you get back in the locker room and look at what happened on film and from personal reports, then you brainstorm a plan to not have it happen again. (Note to all those teachers who think competition among youth in classrooms and on the playing fields is a bad thing: Read this and rethink your position right now) Speaking of personal reports, check this out:

Todayâ€™s international terrorism was conceived at the Lubyanka, the headquarters of the KGB, in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War in the Middle East. I witnessed its birth in my other life, as a Communist general.

I’d say you can’t get much more credible than a personal story of one who was at the table, in the room, and as part of the very first discussion on what we are experiencing today. However, I doubt the left wing, President Bush planned 9/11 conspiracy crowd will be able to honestly accept that it all was conceived, birthed and nurtured by the great Communist “Empire,” and not Bechtel or Halliburton and Dick Cheney. It would, if accepted as the truth that it is, necessarily require them to divest themselves of two major issue at the apex of their discontent:

1) George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Scotter Libby, and, yes, Dick Cheney, and big oil, the capitalist military industrial complex and “the rich” (except the ultra rich liberals from Hollywood and the Heinz families) are not to blame for the world wide terrorist movement, the domain of those who adhere to the teachings of the Koran.

and

2) Communism is, in fact, a force for evil, and while they have been removed from governing most nation-states, their heritage of tyranny, oppression, and creation of human misery carry on.

Side note: Doing this would cause the rest of their actions/rheotric to become also menaingless by association with two top level assumptions that are now shown to be incorrect. Interestingly enough, the rapid environmentalists have painted themselves into a very similar corner, it seems….Advice to anyone with an extreme argument: Know that the actual facts, read: The Trurh, or any one thing is not always apparent at the outset of your intial investigation. Lave room for the truth to come along and help your see the issue more clearly/credibily. See my book report on a well written, yet readable story of science and mankind, or discredited assumptions and theories, that did lead to greater, more precise truths.

The outcome of this desire to get back at the US, via fomenting hatred of Israel and Jewish people is affecting the world wide economy, and, in the cultural landscape of today, are resonsible for us (the world community of humanity) driving wedges between various groups of people. The bottom line for all those who didn’t figure out that Karl Mark prepetrated the most extensive “practical joke” on all of mankind, is that that the end result of socialism and Communism, is not the great utopia they all crave. For the record of those who are not away, the devastating irony of Karl Marx’s political and cultural theory is he was a retired industrialist when he published his idea. He had alrady extracted the sweat equity from the “proletariat,” and was living in luxury as a result. He suckered V.I. Lenin and company into taking it out for a 70 year spin, reusulting in miliions upon millions of deaths from the collective farms of Russia, to the killing fields of Cambodia, and more recently, as we find out, the Marine Barracks in Beruit, the World Trade Centers, various embassies of several nations, in the skies over Lockerbee, Scotland, at Munich, in Mogadishu, Dufar in Sudan, and daily in the streets of Baghdad, but those are merely a few instances.

My analysis: Communism is the most destructive social cancer we face today, which, strangley enough, is worshipped by the leftists, who also want us to embrace each and every human as worthy and equal (and I don’t disagree with that at all, as a goal). “Useful Idiots” defines these leftists properly, and Oh, BTW, that’s a term invented by Lenin, for those who he could use to further his own goals of Communism.

Before you read further, H/T: LT Smash, the first MilBlogger, for leading me to this jewel of an article.

Eagle1 at Eagle Speak discusses how the Germans in WWI used similar tactics, while using Iran.

Thanks to Little Green footballs for running an outstanding blog!

Trackbacked at:
Samantha Burns
Don Surber: Why they Hate Us

Church and State
Point Five

Continue reading “Letting the Genie Out of the Bottle”

November 17, 2006November 18, 2006

Thanksgiving Pumpkin Bread

I took the pumpkin bread recipe our Lovely Daughter sent me and modified it a little. My modifications are in italics. For example, in place of 1/2 cup of oil in the batter, I substituted applesauce. For the sugar, I substituted a target=”_blank”>sucralose sugar replacement (the most well-known brand name is SplendaÂ®). The rest, apart from the baking method and my insistence on using spices that are at least freshly-ground, is as Lovely Daughter sent it to me.

Since my Wonder Woman is still (after a whole day!) outa town, the trial loaf was mine all mine. 🙂

1 cup pumpkin pie fillingâ€”I added a medium egg to the cup measure I used to measure the canned pumpkin purÃ©e
1/2 cup applesauce
3/4 cup granulated sugar substitute (I used a sucralose-based sugar replacement)
1/2 cup molasses
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly-ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon freshly-groundnutmeg
1/4 teaspoon freshly-ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon freshly-ground ginger (or crystalized ginger, whichever you can get)

You may also add 1/2 cup of coarsely-chopped nuts. Your choice, although I’d avoid peanuts, since they just don’t seem right according to my mental taste buds. (I certainly didn’t use any peanuts, and I have a bag of raw peanuts to snack on right here. :-)) In the future, I may add raisins and/or chopped dates, as well. Who knows?

Heat oven to 350Â° F. Oil a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan.

In a large bowl, combine the pumpkin pie filling, oil, sugar, molasses, and vanilla.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger. Slowly stir the flour mixture into the pumpkin mixture. Pour into the prepared pan. Bake for 60 to 65 minutes.

Or, instead of all the mixing and oven baking go with my major modification: place the ingredients in your bread machine, hit the appropriate button (mine is “Batter Breads”) and walk away.

Transfer pan to a wire rack for 10 minutes. Using a knife, loosen the bread from the pan. (Or, in the case of a decent non-stick bread machine pan, just tip it out onto your cutting board.) Invert it onto a cutting board. Serve warm.

In Advance: Bake the bread and let it cool. Wrap and set aside at room temperature for up to 24 hours. Cover with foil and warm in a 250Â° F oven for 30 minutes.

To Freeze: Place the cooled bread in a resealable plastic bag or cover with 2 layers of plastic wrap. Store for up to 3 months.

To Reheat: Refrigerate the bread overnight. Remove the plastic wrap, cover with aluminum foil, and warm in a 250Â° oven for 30 minutes.

Yield: Makes 6 to 8 servings

Update on trial loaf: the applesauce replacement for oil does make the bread more “chewy” and the molasses is a rather strong flavor. I might try this with less molasses in the future, but as it is, good eats.

November 17, 2006November 17, 2006

Educating Congress/OTP

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Hugh Hewitt had another (of course) insightful post yesterday that I believe it would serve well every reader of this blog to read in full. Here’s a sample:

Now imagine if you didnâ€™t read blogs and didnâ€™t read books. Picture all the things that you know now that you wouldnâ€™t know if you left your news gathering to the tender mercies of the mainstream mediaâ€™s editorial decisions. Youâ€™d probably be unaware of the ghastly fate that awaits 200 French automobiles each evening at the hands of rampaging â€œyouths.â€ Youâ€™d definitely be unaware of the youthsâ€™ affiliation with certain religious practices.

If all your news came from newspapers, you wouldnâ€™t understand how numerous, determined and flat-out crazy our enemies are. You wouldnâ€™t know how widespread the phenomenon of Radical Islam is because the New York Times, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal donâ€™t report it. Every now and then you would stumble over an editorial or op-ed piece highlighting a particularly pathological incident, but you would have no concept of how massive the problem is.

AND THIS IS WHERE WE CLOSE THE LOOP. Iâ€™ve long wondered how our leaders can be so unserious about the fight weâ€™re in given the existential stakes. Now I get it â€“ they just donâ€™t understand the stakes. The newspapers havenâ€™t told them that weâ€™re in a fight for our lives. Lord knows the intelligence agencies donâ€™t get it. And now we know the congressmen themselves take either no or precious little initiative to educate themselves.

Hugh, of course, is much more gentlemanly than I in his assessment of our congresscritters’ ignorance of threats facing the United States, the threat of Islamism among them. I would simply say that, regardless of individual congresscritters’ basic intelligence, such ignorance amounts to willfull criminal ignorance, stupidity.

But perhaps these stupid congresscritters can be taught. If so, it’d best be done by people like Hugh. I have little patience for fools. I’m more persuaded that a tea party might just be a better idea, sometimes. *sigh*

November 16, 2006November 16, 2006

How Did WWII Afftect Newspaper Editors?

I posted this a seemingly long time ago…but I think it’s useful reading to establish a baseline from where we might determine the MSM’s shift from supporting the troops and the Government:

Jim Sr. and I went to hear of the exploits of two men who served as armor officers in Pattonâ€™s 3rd Army during the fight across Europe, but we got something different.

On December 1sth, a lecture was sponsored by the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg Campus, that featured Eugene Patterson and John Germany. Eugene spent from 1943 through the end of the war as a platoon leader in tanks as part of the 10th Armored Division. John arrived later in the war as a replacement platoon commander in the 13th Armored Division, taking the place of a Lt killed in action, for a unit that had seen plenty of action prior to his arrival. Both men had grown up in the southern part of the country, and after the war, Eugene went on to be the editor of first the Atlanta Constitution, the Washington Post and later the St Petersburg Times. John became a lawyer, and later a judge in the Florida.

Eugene began the evening by reading us a letter he had written to his granddaughter, who was working on a paper for her journalism class. Her question to her grandfather was how did the war experience shape the newspaper editorsâ€™ perspective? As he read his response, I heard some interesting things and I believe a key to why the MSM is how they are today.

Eugene began by saying what had really changed was they came back from the war as Americans, that the southern legacy of the Confederacy no longer held itâ€™s allure for them as Southerners. Next he said the GI Bill had â€œemancipated the ignorant of the South.â€ I understood this, but that short sentence put it in a better, more far reaching perspective for me. Those both are huge issues in the growth of our nation. First is that having had the depth of bonding between men in combat, they had begun their training as strangers from all over the country, and ended up with deep friendships, now with the shared stories of their fellow soldiers from all parts and economic backgrounds. The second part of that opening indicated the GI Bill brought college to many who would have never had the opportunity otherwise. It seems to be common wisdom that that great plan gave us the men who helped continue the economic improvements that made us the unequaled world leader we have become.

Continue reading “How Did WWII Afftect Newspaper Editors?”