Lecture - Simon Johnson (MIT)

I cannot find an embed link but this video must be watched and listened to (00:15:18).

Lecture Simon Johnson (MIT) in the whole conference from the IMF and the Government offers a choice in the 27th October

It is coming HARD and this is a reminder to be prepared.

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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I always remember and as I look about to see what Americans are today, it is examples such as this that remind me what we once were, those who still are- and what will be required of such VERY shortly.

WP

Battle of Agincourt

Battle of Agincourt, 25 October 1415
Won by the direct ancestor of the citizen rifleman.

If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:*
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

WP

Looking around.

In no particular order:

1. So While Every Bank Is Defending PrimeX, Here Is What Fannie Mae Really Thinks
   Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/18/2011 21:46 -0400
   
   Remember when it was your job to be cheerful and optimistic if creating forecasts for insolvent and nationalized entities, whose entire pseudo-business model is predicated upon the return of the housing bubble and the overall Ponzi resuming? Apparently not, especially if one has read the following forecast from none other than Fannie Mae. So while we have Barclays, Deutsche, JPM, TCW, and any other axed bank , you name it, defending PrimeX which is nothing more or less than a bet on the "safe" tranche of US home price prospects and housing overall, here is the one entity with more mortgages on its books than any other organization, telling us how it really feels.
   
   Summary:
   

   • Projecting 10yr treasuries to plunge to 1.90% by 4Q11
   • Median New / Existing home prices will fall 7.1% / 7.7% respectively by mid 2012
   • Purchase Mortgage Origination will decline 21.5% from 2Q11 levels
   • Total Single family mortgage debt will decline 3.0% by 4Q12
   • First Lien single family mortgage debt will decline 2.3%
   • The imputed (based on reported first lien & total) 2nd lien mortgage debt will plunge 10.2% vs. 2Q11 levels (hmm why W
   • Would somebody with a first lien allow a junior creditor to get paid off first?)

2. Is It Time To Close Down Bank of America?
   
   This is precisely the sort of arbitrage that ought to lead people straight to a nice date with Bubba:
   

   Bank of America Corp. (BAC), hit by a credit downgrade last month, has moved derivatives from its Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.
   
   The Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. disagree over the transfers, which are being requested by counterparties, said the people, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The Fed has signaled that it favors moving the derivatives to give relief to the bank holding company, while the FDIC, which would have to pay off depositors in the event of a bank failure, is objecting, said the people. The bank doesn’t believe regulatory approval is needed, said people with knowledge of its position.

3. Discovering What Facebook Knows About You
   
   Things are getting interesting in Europe:
   

   Max is a 24 year old law student from Vienna with a flair for the interview and plenty of smarts about both technology and legal issues. In Europe there is a requirement that entities with data about individuals make it available to them if they request it. That's how Max ended up with a personalized CD from Facebook that he printed out on a stack of paper more than a thousand pages thick (see image below). Analysing it, he came to the conclusion that Facebook is engineered to break many of the requirements of European data protection. ...

4. US forces 'massing on Afghanistan-Pakistan border'
   US forces are massing on the Pakistan border in eastern Afghanistan amid reports of an imminent drone missile offensive against fighters from the feared Haqqani Network, a Taliban faction which operates from safe havens in Pakistan's North Waziristan Agency, Pakistan Army sources have confirmed.
   
   By Dean Nelson, South Asia Editor and Javed Siddiq in Islamabad
   2:19PM BST 18 Oct 2011
   
   The scale of the American build-up, including helicopter gunships, heavy artillery and hundreds of American and Afghan troops, caused panic in north Waziristan where tribal militias who feared they could be targeted gathered in the capital Miranshah to coordinate their response.

5. FBI Monitoring News Talk Radio for Investigations
   
   Mark Weaver
   WMAL.com
   
   WASHINGTON -- If you call a radio talk show and get on the air, you might be recorded by the FBI.
   
   The FBI has awarded a $524,927 contract to a Virginia company to record as much radio news and talk programming as it can find on the Internet.
   
   The FBI says it is not playing big brother by policing the airwaves, but rather seeking access to what airs as potential evidence.
   
   "This doesn't give us any enhanced capability, prying into or any 'big brother' concerns because this is information that's being put out on the airwaves," FBI spokesman Paul Bresson told WMAL.com. "Its very important to our investigators to know what's being reported."
   
   Bresson cites as an example of the case of the Times Square bomber.
   
   "It's ideal for cases like that because we can extract information that's already been reported and help our investigators make better decisions."

All of this is not good or enjoyable news and there is so much more out there, but there are bright spots- such as this:



Those who frequent here know full well that I fully expect all of this to come crashing down- HARD. We are broke, our "leaders" corrupt with many submitting or calling for treason; demanding that we further embrace socialism/communism. That elections do not matter and should be halted. Others dismiss their citizens- acting as potentates and kings who send out Jack-Booted Thugs to harass, intimidate and even kill. This is why it does not matter this mans politics he is standing up for what is right AND honorable- with the outcome of 30 cops nearly pissing themselves.

How many more are ready and will join him across the Republic?

WP

Cornwallis Surrenders 1781!

Today, in 1781, Cornwallis surrendered and ended our first war of Independence.

Raise a toast to those fine Men, and remember that our Founding Father's left us a great legacy- one that we have squandered.

WP

Proscription and Reasons of State

Proscription and Reasons of State

Posted: September 30, 2011, 1:41 pm - Last updated: September 30, 2011, 11:45 pm
View 694 Monday, September 26, 2011

In the old Roman Republic before the wars of Marius and Sulla it was considered sacrilege to put to death a Roman Citizen without trial. The Civil Wars changed that, and when one faction won it would publish lists of enemies who could be killed without trial or mercy if found within Roman jurisdiction. Most lists of proscription also carried rewards to those who found and executed the proscribed enemy of the people. Proscriptions also carried confiscation of property, and were used by Sulla to replenish the treasury.

After Sulla the practice was used by other factions. Julius Caesar refused to employ such a device on his election as Consul and elevation to dictatorship, but when Caesar was assassinated

Plutarch, Life of Cicero, 46.3-6:

3 The proscription of Cicero, however, caused most strife in their debates, Antony consenting to no terms unless Cicero should be the first man to be put to death, Lepidus siding with Antony, and [Octavius] Caesar holding out against them both. 4 They held secret meetings by themselves near the city of Bononia for three days, coming together in a place at some distance from the camps and surrounded by a river. 5 It is said that for the first two days Caesar kept up his struggle to save Cicero, but yielded on the third and gave him up. The terms of their mutual concessions were as follows. Caesar was to abandon Cicero, Lepidus his brother Paulus, and Antony Lucius Caesar, who was his uncle on the mother’s side.

Are you ready to Hail Caeser?

WP

The Day America Died

The Day America Died

The Day America Died
By Paul Craig Roberts on October 2, 2011

September 30, 2011 was the day America was assassinated.

Some of us have watched this day approach and have warned of its coming, only to be greeted with boos and hisses from “patriots” who have come to regard the US Constitution as a device that coddles criminals and terrorists and gets in the way of the President who needs to act to keep us safe.

I found this article via Eric Peters Autos, a great site run by a man of liberty and if you have not visited yet, you should.

Most of you know that I marked the date as January 20th, 2009 as that is when I Kenyan Muslim was not even sworn in as President of the Republic of These United States.

WP

October 3rd, 2008

Obama: "[T]he way I’m portrayed 24/7 is as a freak!"

So what has three years shown us Mr. Foreigner? It has shown us you ARE a freak and so is that BigFoot you shaved down, taught to speak and then married (just like Eddie's Aunt Bunny).

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.

Come And Take It!

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

Yes, it is time once more and I ask you, are you ready for it?

WP