The Dark Ages -- Live From the Middle East!

October 26, 2006
The Dark Ages -- Live From the Middle East!
By Victor Davis Hanson

The most frightening aspect of the present war is how easily our pre-modern enemies from the Middle East have brought a stunned postmodern world back into the Dark Ages.

Students of history are sickened when they read of the long-ago, gruesome practice of beheading. How brutal were those societies that chopped off the heads of Cicero, Sir Thomas More and Marie Antoinette. And how lucky we thought we were to have evolved from such elemental barbarity.

No Mr. Hanson, not all students of history are sickened by the act of beheading, many of us know full well just how powerful a simple act can frighten little children, women, and the so-called civilized. We know full well that the way to stop such acts is by making them un-economical to those who would try to use such an act to gain power- however, today's civilized "Man" shudders at the knowledge of what must be done, but, I for one do not.

WP

PS - Nor Sir, do I need to don period costume to know the flavor of the atrocities committed by the Union in the war for Southron Independence.

Lead souvenir

Inside the Beltway

By John McCaslin
October 27, 2006

Lead souvenir

The National Border Patrol Council Local 2544 in Tucson, Ariz., which represents all the nonsupervisory U.S. Border Patrol agents in the illegal-alien-saturated region - the largest in the country - is not pleased with the recent conviction in Texas of fellow agents Ignacio Ramos and Juan Compean, one of whom shot a fleeing drug-smuggling suspect in the buttocks.

Just posted on the council?s Web site: "When smugglers try to run you over with a vehicle you're supposed to: A. Shoot at them; B. Chase them; C. Wave at them and say 'Bienvenidos a Los Estado Unidos'; D. Throw a pamphlet at them on how to apply for Amnesty; E. Offer them food, water, medical care, and counseling at taxpayer expense; F. Beg them not to report you to the [Office of Inspector General] and/or the U.S. attorney's office for using an expletive when you dive for cover; or G. Let them go."

"We realize you probably thought that this was a trick question, but of course the correct answers are C, D, E, F and G (failure to complete all 5 procedures could subject you to severe disciplinary action)."

In short, the agents stopped a van loaded with 743 pounds of marijuana that suspect Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila was driving. A scuffle ensued, during which Ramos says he spotted a gun on the suspect. Shots rang out. However, Mr. Aldrete-Davila escaped across the Mexican border - albeit, the agents learned later, taking with him a lead souvenir from his short visit.

The slug, it turns out, was compliments of Ramos, a 2005 nominee for Border Patrol Agent of the Year. He has now been sentenced by a U.S. District Court judge in El Paso to 11 years and one day in prison, while Compean was handed 12 years. Among other charges, the federal agents did not report the shooting when filing their incident reports.

More to follow.

WP

What you find in the log files.

Thanks to a websearch done from Freehold Regional Schools, of Englishtown, New Jersey, I find out that:

Capt. John Parker of the Lexington Militia did not say: "If they want a war, let it begin here." Alerted by Paul Revere, Parker and 78 militiamen mustered on the Lexington, Mass., town green on April 19, 1775. They wanted to send a warning to the 700 British soldiers marching on Concord to seize the weapons and gunpowder there. But Parker had no desire to start a war. The words were put into his mouth 100 years later. He positioned his men as far away from the British line of march as possible. As the British approached, Parker ordered his men to disperse. The British opened fire on them without provocation, starting the Revolution.

Now Freehold Regional Schools, let me point you to the Constitution, and a fine source on the 2nd Amendment...

Captain John Parker may not have said it, but I will be proud to.

WP

Compean and Ramos

12 congressmen demand
pardon for border agents
Letter to Bush calls for investigation
of case that ended in prison sentences
Posted: October 25, 2006
10:19 a.m. Eastern

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

Former U.S. Border Patrol agent Ignacio Ramos embraced his wife, Monica Ramos, two days before he was sentenced to 11 years in prison (Courtesy El Paso Times)

WASHINGTON ? A dozen members of the House of Representatives have written to President Bush demanding an investigation of the case against two Border Patrol agents sentenced to 11 and 12 years in prison for the pursuit and shooting of a drug smuggler and calling for a presidential pardon of the pair.

U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso, Texas, sentenced Jose Alonso Compean to 12 years in prison and Ignacio Ramos to 11 years and one day despite a plea by their attorney for a new trial after three jurors said they were coerced into voting guilty in the case.

Read the articles, hit the links in the title article, listen to Dobbs (WARNING 10.6MB RM file), and then start raising hell.

Just too damned pissed off right now to say anything more!

WP

Oct. 26, 1942: The last man did not fail

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
EDITORS: A LONGER VERSION, AT 2,000 WORDS, ALSO MOVES
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED OCT. 22, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Oct. 26, 1942: The last man did not fail


Oct. 26 falls on a Thursday this year.

Ask the significance of the date, and you're likely to draw some puzzled looks -- five more days to stock up for Halloween?

It's a measure of men like Col. Mitchell Paige that they wouldn't have had it any other way. What he did 58 years ago, he did precisely so his grandchildren could live in a land of peace and plenty.

Whether we've properly safeguarded the freedoms he and his kind fought to leave us as their legacy, may be a discussion better left for another day. Today we struggle to envision -- or, for a few of us, to remember -- how the world must have looked on Oct. 26, 1942. A few thousand lonely American Marines had been put ashore on Guadalcanal, a god-forsaken jungle island which just happened to lie like a speed bump at the end of the long blue-water slot between New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago -- the very route the Japanese Navy would have to take to reach Australia.

On Guadalcanal the Marines built an air field. And Japanese commander Isoroku Yamamoto immediately grasped what that meant. No effort would be spared to dislodge these upstart Yanks from a position that could endanger his ships during any future operations to the south. Before long, relentless Japanese counterattacks had driven the U.S. Navy from inshore waters. The Marines were on their own.

World War Two is generally calculated from Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939. But that's a eurocentric view. The Japanese had been limbering up in Korea and Manchuria as early as 1931, and in China by 1934. By late 1942 they'd devastated every major Pacific military force or stronghold of the great pre-war powers: Britain, Holland, France, and the United States. The bulk of America's proud Pacific fleet lay beached or rusting on the floor of Pearl Harbor.

As Mitchell Paige -- then a platoon sergeant -- and his men set about establishing their last defensive line on a ridge southwest of the tiny American bridgehead at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal on Oct. 25, it's unlikely anyone thought they were about to provide a definitive answer to that most desperate of questions: How many able-bodied U.S. Marines does it take to hold a hill against 2,000 desperate and motivated attackers?

The Japanese Army had not failed in an attempt to seize any major objective since the Russo-Japanese War of 1895. But in preceding days, Marine commander Vandegrift had defied War College doctrine, "dangling" his men in exposed positions to draw Japanese attacks, then springing his traps "with the steel vise of firepower and artillery," in the words of Naval historian David Lippman.

The Japanese regiments had been chewed up, good. Still, American commanders had so little to work with that Paige's men had only four 30-caliber Browning machine guns on the one ridge through which the Japanese opted to launch their final assault against Henderson Field, that fateful night of Oct. 25.

By the time the night was over, "The 29th (Japanese) Infantry Regiment has lost 553 killed or missing and 479 wounded among its 2,554 men," historian Lippman reports. "The 16th (Japanese) Regiment's losses are uncounted, but the 164th's burial parties handle 975 Japanese bodies. ... The American estimate of 2,200 Japanese dead is probably too low."

Among the 90 American dead and seriously wounded that night were all the men in Mitchell Paige's platoon. Every one. As the night wore on, Paige moved up and down his line, pulling his dead and wounded comrades back into their foxholes and firing a few bursts from each of the four Brownings in turn, convincing the Japanese forces down the hill that the positions were still manned.

The citation for Paige's Congressional Medal of Honor adds: "When the enemy broke through the line directly in front of his position, P/Sgt. Paige, commanding a machine gun section with fearless determination, continued to direct the fire of his gunners until all his men were either killed or wounded. Alone, against the deadly hail of Japanese shells, he fought with his gun and when it was destroyed, took over another, moving from gun to gun, never ceasing his withering fire."

In the end, Sgt. Paige picked up the last of the 40-pound, belt-fed Brownings -- the same design which John Moses Browning famously fired for a continuous 25 minutes until it ran out of ammunition in its first U.S. Army trial -- and did something for which the weapon was never designed. Sgt. Paige walked down the hill toward the place where he could hear the last Japanese survivors rallying to move around his flank, the gun cradled under his arm, firing as he went.

The weapon did not fail.

Coming up at dawn, battalion executive officer Major Odell M. Conoley first discovered the answer to our question: How many able-bodied U.S. Marines does it take to hold a hill against two regiments of motivated, combat-hardened infantrymen who have never known defeat?

On a hill where the bodies were piled like cordwood, Mitchell Paige alone sat upright behind his 30-caliber Browning, waiting to see what the dawn would bring.

One hill: one Marine.

But that was the second problem. Part of the American line (start ital)had(end ital) fallen to the last Japanese attack. "In the early morning light, the enemy could be seen a few yards off, and vapor from the barrels of their machine guns was clearly visible," reports historian Lippman. "It was decided to try to rush the position."

For the task, Major Conoley gathered together "three enlisted communication personnel, several riflemen, a few company runners who were at the point, together with a cook and a few messmen who had brought food to the position the evening before."

Joined by Paige, this ad hoc force of 17 Marines counterattacked at 5:40 a.m., discovering that "the extremely short range allowed the optimum use of grenades." In the end, "The element of surprise permitted the small force to clear the crest."

And that's where the unstoppable wave of Japanese conquest finally crested, broke, and began to recede. On an unnamed jungle ridge on an insignificant island no one had ever heard of, called Guadalcanal. Because of a handful of U.S. Marines, one of whom, now 82, lives out a quiet retirement with his wife Marilyn in La Quinta, Calif.

On Oct. 26, 1942.

When the Hasbro Toy Co. called up some years back, asking permission to put the retired colonel's face on some kid's doll, Mitchell Paige thought they must be joking.

But they weren't. That's his mug, on the little Marine they call "GI Joe."

And now you know.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and editor of Financial Privacy Report (subscribe by calling Nicholas at 612-895-8757.) His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site
http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

***


Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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Always remember.

WP

Happy Birthday CSMK

CSM Kersh (RET) has a birthday today.

You can learn a bit more about this fine man from his postings on the newsgroups, or over at the AmBack Forums.

Hope there many more sir!

WP

GOP Calls for Withdrawal of Candidate

Oct 19 9:54 PM US/Eastern
By PETER PRENGAMAN
Associated Press Writer

Orange County Republican leaders on Thursday called for the withdrawal of a GOP congressional candidate they believe sent a letter threatening Hispanic immigrant voters with arrest.

Tan D. Nguyen denied knowing anything about the letter in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press but said he fired a campaign staffer who may have been responsible for it. Nguyen's attorney said his client had no intention of quitting.

County Republican Chairman Scott Baugh said that after speaking with state investigators and the company that distributed the mailer, he believes Nguyen had direct knowledge of the "obnoxious and reprehensible" letter. He told the AP that the party's executive committee voted unanimously to urge Nguyen to drop out of the race against Democratic U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez.

"I learned information that allows me to draw the conclusion that not only was Mr. Nguyen's campaign involved in this, but that Mr. Nguyen was personally involved in expediting the mailer," Baugh said in a telephone interview.

State and federal officials were investigating the letter, which was written in Spanish and mailed to an estimated 14,000 Democratic voters in central Orange County. It warns, "You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time."

Immigrants who are adult naturalized citizens are eligible to vote.

Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant whose opposition to illegal immigration has figured heavily in his underdog campaign, was not immediately available to react to the committee's vote. His attorney, David Wiechert, said Thursday night that his client does not plan to quit.

So, if I understand this correctly, the letter states:

"You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time."
How is the statement not factual? If a man is a naturalized citizen, he knows full well he CAN vote, but if that man is in the united States on a visa, he is an immigrant, or if he is an illegal he has then already committed a federal crime and (hence the word illegal) he cannot vote, so I must ask once again, how is the statement not factual, and further, how is it intimidation? Mexifornia has a large population from Mexico and many of it's so called citizens, whose allegiance is due to California and the united States, is obviously lacking, but then again, it is just one more nail in the lid...

WP

Habaes Corpus

WP

Cornwallis Surrenders 1781!

You can purchase the book here, but you must remember and think, two hundred and twenty-five years later, we have let such treasure bequeathed to us, be nearly all pissed away- nearly...

WP

FBI director wants ISPs to track users

October 17, 2006:

FBI Director Robert Mueller on Tuesday called on Internet service providers to record their customers' online activities, a move that anticipates a fierce debate over privacy and law enforcement in Washington next year.

"Terrorists coordinate their plans cloaked in the anonymity of the Internet, as do violent sexual predators prowling chat rooms," Mueller said in a speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Boston.

April 19, 1775:

Don't fire unless fired upon. But if they want a war let it begin here.
Captain John Parker, commander of the militiamen at Lexington, Massachusetts, on siting British Troops (attributed),

I could say "Fuck You Robert Mueller- you NAZI Bastard!", but I agree with Captain John Parker.

WP

Permission to travel

"The USA Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has proposed that airlines, cruise lines, and operators of all other ships and planes -- including charter flights, air taxis, fishing vessels, etc. -- be required to get individual permission ("clearance") from the DHS for each passenger on all flights or ocean voyages to, from, or via the USA. Unless the answer is "Yes" -- if the answer is "no" or "maybe", or if the DHS doesn't answer at all -- the airline wouldn't be allowed to give you a boarding pass, or let you or your luggage on the plane."

I found the link via Claire Wolfe's Blog - go and read the entire post, then follow the directions and go and see for yourself, make up your own mind, but understand, Quislings are remembered...

WP

The Goal of the Earth Firsters

The following pictures were sent to me yesterday, and the marvel of the senders was the Bungee Cord usage, however, that was not my first thought when viewing the images. Here is one:



What does come to mind, particularly after the screams of the Global Warming crowd has intensified over the past year, is that this is exactly the level , and more than likely even a lower level, that the "I hate Mankind folks" really are after- except for themselves of course.

So, with that, I give the future of the united States, if the nuts get there way:


Heading home after grabbing a few last minute party favors for your child's birthday party.


Of course, the night before, Dad took Mom out for groceries.


Naturally, Uncle is bringing ice for the drinks.


And what would the party be without the main course?

Now, when you sit your children down and start discussing how terrible Mankind is, please, please, please make sure you tell them to always look in the mirror to assess just exactly what and who you are.



It should never amaze them at just how stupid one can be...

WP

See, there are starving children in China

She is suppose to be hot? Hardly! This is more than likely Vouge paying of the ChiComm's for entry.

BAH! She is just like your Mother told you, now eat your supper!

WP

Deer in the Yard

Nice to look at even better to eat.

WP

Bush says he can edit security reports

By LESLIE MILLER, Associated Press Writer
Thu Oct 5, 4:06 PM ET

WASHINGTON -

President Bush, again defying Congress, says he has the power to edit the
Homeland Security Department's reports about whether it obeys privacy rules while handling background checks, ID cards and watchlists.

In the law Bush signed Wednesday, Congress stated no one but the privacy officer could alter, delay or prohibit the mandatory annual report on Homeland Security department activities that affect privacy, including complaints.

But Bush, in a signing statement attached to the agency's 2007 spending bill, said he will interpret that section "in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said it's appropriate for the administration to know what reports go to Congress and to review them beforehand.

"There can be a discussion on whether to accept a change or a nuance," she said. "It could be any number of things."

The American Bar Association and members of Congress have said Bush uses signing statements excessively as a way to expand his power.

The Senate held hearings on the issue in June. At the time, 110 statements challenged about 750 statutes passed by Congress, according to numbers combined from the White House and the Senate committee. They include documents revising or disregarding parts of legislation to ban torture of detainees and to renew the Patriot Act.

Privacy advocate Marc Rotenberg said Bush is trying to subvert lawmakers' ability to accurately monitor activities of the executive branch of government.

"The Homeland Security Department has been setting up watch lists to determine who gets on planes, who gets government jobs, who gets employed," said Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

So many of you can continue to deny it, but there is not one thin dime's worth of difference between the Repuglicraps and the Democraps- so I say elect Hillary, this way, the war will start sooner...

WP

Spokane sheriff acknowledges porn search was at wrong house

Thanks to a regular reader for pointing me to this:

The Associated Press

SPOKANE - For a 67-year-old homeowner and his wife, wrongly subjected to a shattering pornography search, saying, "Oops, wrong number" is not enough.

Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie D. Knezovich apologized Tuesday for the blunder, which he said resulted when Detective Timothy D. Hines tried to nail whoever was responsible for obscene calls to at least 20 or women enrolled at Whitworth College.

Hines wrote down the wrong figures for a telephone number associated with the calls, so he obtained a search warrant for a house in Spokane, miles from the correct location in suburban Spokane Valley, Knezovich said.

Through a spokesman in the sheriff's office Hines declined an interview request from the newspaper.

The irate homeowner told by The Spokesman-Review, which did not identify him at his request, that deputies dumped out drawers, went through his wallet and checkbook, seized computers, CDs, floppy disks, VHS tapes and other material and refused to clean up the mess in the raid Sept. 27.

Half a dozen sheriff's vehicles converged on the house, and after taking photographs outside Hines told officers within hearing of the neighbors, "Now let's go inside and get some porn," the owner said.

As if this was not insulting and degrading enough, the following certainly is:

Knezovich said he plans to adopted a more structured system for checking facts in search warrants, adding that Hines probably would not be disciplined.

"I could see it if it was a blatant lack of diligence," the sheriff said, "but sometimes things like that happen. A number can get transposed."

And Sheriff Knezovich, just how many other cases that Detecive Hines was involved with have simple mistakes too? You come out and apologize for the mistake because you are the sheriff, but has he done so PUBLICLY and if so, then why decline an interview? Is it because he did this:

Perhaps worse, he said, Hines played recordings of the obscene calls and his wife had to listen to "this filthy stuff." According to court documents, the obscene caller made lewd suggestions while describing child pornography he said he was watching.

The West Point Road resident said Hines argued with his wife when she told him the voice on the recording wasn't that of the man to whom she had been married for 37 years.

When he put his arm around his wife as she cried, the man said, Hines challenged him: "What are you doing?"

The man said Hines told him he could keep the story out of the newspaper if the man would confess. Three days later, the homeowner said, his wife called him at a Promise Keepers meeting to tell him the newspaper had published a story about the search.

Yes, certainly, another simple mistake by a cop, who threatens innocent people with things that turn anyone's stomach, once again, and of course, we can't sanction him for that let alone a wrong number, now can we?

WP

Muslims! NO STROKING YOUR MONKEYS!

Khameini: Don't masturbate during Ramadan

Iran's supreme leader answers questions on masturbation and other topics on his website Yaakov Lappin Published: 10.04.06, 19:55

Deliberate masturbation during the month of Ramadan renders a fast invalid, Iranian Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khameini has ruled.

Khameini, who is Iran's most powerful political and religious figure, was asked on his website: "If somebody masturbates during the month of Ramadan but without any discharge, is his fasting invalidated?"

"If he do not intend masturbation and discharging semen and nothing is discharged, his fasting is correct even though he has done a h.ar?m (forbidden) act. But, if he intends masturbation or he knows that he usually discharges semen by this process and semen really comes out, it is a h.ar?m intentional breaking fasting," the Iranian leader said, posting the reply on his website.

If he do not intend? What is this, a poor translation or a lingustic cousin to Ebonics? Either way, just remember to remind all of our Muslim friends, NO STROKING YOUR MONKEYS! during Ramadan! So says one of your direct lines to allah!

WP

MOLON LABE

A friend with the BP sent me the original link and all I can say is WOW!

More on the upcoming movie here and the production blog here.

WP

Found over at Shorty's

Officials: Inmate got 'Katie's Revenge' tattoo by force
POSTED: 6:02 p.m. EDT, September 29, 2006

EVANSVILLE, Indiana (AP) -- An inmate serving a life sentence for molesting and murdering a 10-year-old girl named Katie was apparently forcibly tattooed across the forehead by a fellow prisoner with the words "KATIE'S REVENGE," authorities say.

Anthony Ray Stockelman, 39, was removed from the general prison population for his own safety last weekend after authorities discovered the tattoo, officials said.

A picture is worth a thousand words...

WP

I am not a fan of Wireless

However, some clients want to use it and Mr. Sharkey provided me a good link for a random WEP Key generator- use it wisely and change it often...

WP

DESTROY ALL MONSTERS (movies that is)!

Found via LewRockwell:

The Biology of B-Movie Monsters

BY | Michael C. LaBarbera

SESSION 1: Biology and Geometry Collide!

Size has been one of the most popular themes in monster movies, especially those from my favorite era, the 1950s. The premise is invariably to take something out of its usual context--make people small or something else (gorillas, grasshoppers, amoebae, etc.) large--and then play with the consequences. However, Hollywood's approach to the concept has been, from a biologist's perspective, hopelessly naïve. Absolute size cannot be treated in isolation; size per se affects almost every aspect of an organism's biology. Indeed, the effects of size on biology are sufficiently pervasive and the study of these effects sufficiently rich in biological insight that the field has earned a name of its own: "scaling."

In the cube on the left, length = 1 and volume = 1 (L x L x L). The cube in the middle, where L=2, has a volume of 8. And in the cube on the right, L=3 and V=27.

The conceptual foundations of scaling relationships lie in geometry. Take any object--a sphere, a cube, a humanoid shape. Such an object will have a number of geometric properties of which length, area, and volume are of the most immediate relevance. All areas (surface area, cross-sectional area, etc.) will be proportional to some measure of length squared (i.e., length times length); volumes will be proportional to length cubed (length times length times length). Equivalently, lengths are proportional to the square root of an area or the cube root of a volume.

I do not think that this is his real goal, and most will appreciate his usage of great B-Movies for examples, but for some, the results will be as my title states- nevertheless, it is an enjoyable read about science.

Now, if we could just stop the Monsters of the "The Swamp", and I mean all of them...

WP

October 3rd, 1993

Remember- then remember this:

"On August 29 Task Force Ranger flew into Mogadishu. They were led by General William Garrison and consisted of 440 elite troops from Delta Force. Their mission was to capture Aidid. But, at the same time, in September 1993 the Clinton Administration began a secret plan to negotiate with Aidid. U.S. military commanders within Somalia were not apprised of this. U.S. Defense Secretary Les Aspin denied a request for armored reinforcements made by General Montgomery."

WP

Come And Take It!

From October 2, 2004:

Today is a great day in Texas History. It's the day the first shots in the successful Texas revolution were fired. In a surprise attack at dawn October 2nd, 1835 outside Gonzales under the "Come and Take It" flag a band of noble Texicans took the Mexican force which had been sent to seize their cannons.

"When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression."

Unanimous Declaration of Independence
March 2, 1836
Washington-on-the-Brazo, Texas

I must point out those reasons sound very much like things happening today...

--WP