POOL BANS GRANNY FOR NOT BEING TRANS-ACCEPTING – A YMCA Pool in Port Townsend, Washington banned an octogenarian woman for wanting a transgendered worker to leave the locker room while she was dressing and showering. She had been coming to the pool for 35 years. The woman, Julie Jaman, was deemed out of touch with the new normal.
An 80-year-old Washington state woman has reportedly been banned from her local YMCA after she expressed extreme discomfort when a transgender staff member entered the women’s locker room while young girls were undressing.
Julie Jaman, a resident of Port Townsend, Washington, told the Port Townsend Free Press that she was asked to leave the YMCA facilities at Mountain View pool after she demanded that a male wearing a female bathing suit be removed from the women’s locker room, where she had been showering and a group of girls were changing out of their swimwear. A YMCA employee reportedly told Jaman she was discriminating against the transgender individual and threatened to call the police on her. In response, Jaman promptly left and filed her own complaint with the police department.
Shortly prior to the 95th founding anniversary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on Monday, China for the first time revealed a video featuring the launch of what resembles a DF-17 missile, in a move experts said on Sunday displayed the flexibility of the “aircraft carrier killer” hypersonic weapon that is almost impossible to intercept, at a time when tension is rising in the Taiwan Straits amid US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s possible visit to the island of Taiwan.
State broadcaster China Central Television on Saturday released a video titled “The capabilities of the Chinese troops shown in 81 seconds”, celebrating the upcoming China’s Army Day, which falls on August 1.
A scene in the video, showing live-fire launch of a missile from a transporter erector launcher on a highway in a desert, attracted particular attention by military enthusiasts, who said the missile resembles the DF-17 hypersonic missile, which has been publicly displayed at the National Day military parade on October 1, 2019 in Beijing.
If the missile shown in the video is indeed a DF-17, this would be the first time China has publicly revealed a footage on the DF-17’s live-fire launch, observers said.
Being able to launch on a highway in a desert demonstrated that the new-type missile does not require a preset launch position to launch, Song Zhongping, a Chinese…
UNIVERSITY FACES LAWSUIT FOR MASK MANDATE FIRING – The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill issued an executive order preventing Pro-Life groups from getting funding. The move has been met with legal action from FIRE, The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which issued a letter to the student body president to rescind the order.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s student government is in violation of the First Amendment due to a July executive order, according to a leading campus free speech organization.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sent a letter on Thursday to Taliajah Vann, student body president, as well as university and student government leadership, and asked them to rescind an executive order against funds going to pro-life organizations.
The executive order came as a result of the June 24 Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization which reversed Roe v. Wade and returned the issue of abortion to the states.
The letter informed Vann that the July 6 executive order that prohibits funds from going to “any individual, business, or organization which actively advocates to further limit by law access to reproductive healthcare,” violated the viewpoint-neutrality principle of the First Amendment.
As First-World States Amp Up Their High Tech, The Opposition Sticks To Basics
An F-35 Lightning II prepares to take off, Luke Air Force Base, AZ – USAF photo by Sr Airman Devante Williams; Public Domain
Over the last hundred years or so, uncountable amounts of money have been spent by various countries, to develop ever more sophisticated weapons and vehicles, many times, almost literally reinventing the wheel. The latest gargantuan expenditures that come to mind are the M1 Abrams tank, the Zumwalt destroyer and the F-35b airplane.
Iranian soldiers with a BGM-71 TOW missile during the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988
Why this should be so, is of great discomfort to both defense companies and armies, around the world. The reason defense companies are worried is that the civilian Toyota vehicles are “good enough” for most combat vehicle applications. They are simple, rugged, durable, easy to understand and operate, and – most importantly – cheap.
Roll-on/roll-off ferry terminal at Queenscliff, Victoria, 1993.
On the military side, these are also concerns, but the military – by necessity – goes deeper: the very ubiquitous nature of the vehicles (driven by market, not military forces), in addition to their built-in ruggedness, makes it supremely difficult to both identify and attrit an asymmetric enemy’s mobile infrastructure without attacking civilian targets at the same time.
Mongol horseman, 14th Century
It has long been known that light vehicles equate to light cavalry. Unfortunately, historically, conventional militaries have always had a distinctly difficult time dealing with forces that can master the techniques of light cavalry campaigns.
U.S. Marines and guide in search of bandits. Haiti, circa 1919.
Similarly, it has long been recognized that simple, robust weapons systems give unconventional forces near-parity of effectiveness at the “boots on the ground” level of combat. As long ago as 1940, in the US Marine Corps – in its “Small Wars Manual” – recognized that as technology developed, and lightweight, fully automatic weapons spread, the tactics the manual outlined would be rendered obsolete.
AK-74 assault rifle
Modern small arms development has essentially hit a plateau in the years since 1946. Once the move to self-loading rifles was complete, what remained were alterations to ergonomics and attachments. The weapons could be massed produced with a very high degree of mechanical simplicity built in…This, of course, resulted in the development of the near-universal AK-series of assault rifles in the hands of both urban and rural guerrilla forces, as well as the later tribal militias, to say nothing of its continued use by regular armed forces throughout the world.
Adding to the difficulty for conventional armies is the widespread deployment of highly effective, yet almost laughable uncomplicated, heavy support weapons at the squad level, primarily the RPG-7 and the General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG).
An Afghan National Army (ANA) soldier fires an RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher, Helmand province, Afghanistan, May 20, 2013. USMC photo.
The RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher, while becoming less capable against frontline combat vehicle armor, is still more than capable against light vehicles, light or hasty fortifications, and even some aircraft. A robust and simple design, the RPG-7 is a valuable weapon in any force’s arsenal, and is widely available.
PKM Machine Gun
Likewise, the Soviet-designed PKM GPMG is another simple, robust and highly capable weapon system, easily a match for anything produced by the West.
Of course, except for the Toyota pickup trucks, the two things that the above weapons all have in common is that they are both products of Cold War-era Soviet Army design bureaus, and were handed out in vast numbers to many armies and guerrilla groups as the Cold War ground on.
And yet, their effects remain.
Adding to the problem is the impact of remotely piloted drone technology, especially drones modified to drop small munitions on target. Coupled to cheap and reliable internet access and radio technology, as well as the wide dissemination of both automated and manual secure encryption methods, armies trying to chase down irregular, terrorist and/or guerrilla forces today have issues far outside the scope of previous generations.
The challenge for both conventional forces, defense companies, and perhaps especially the political leadership of First World powers, frankly, is to find a way to equip the large security forces necessary to ensure a counterbalance to terrorist groups that operate like multinational corporations, while not cutting off their noses to spite their faces, by bankrupting the countries they are trying to sell their products to.
In general, people tend like good things. This should be self-evident: good food, good sex, good booze (in no particular order), so…anything ‘good’ should be, well, “good” – right? Like – peace, for instance.
Right?
I mean, war is all about violence, blood, horror, terror, crippling and debilitating injuries and very tragic and untimely death, all of which are really bad things…So…Less war must be good.
Right?
Today, we will examine a tiny sliver of that question.
Paris Street in Rainy Weather, 1877, Gustave Caillebotte.
In 1856, in an attempt to “limit the scourge of war”, a collection of European nations’ representatives gathered in Paris, France and signed a convention, the “Paris Declaration“, that eliminated the practice of “privateering“, or “legalized piracy in time of war.”
Letter of marque given to Robert Sutton de Clonard for the privateer Comte d’Artois, 1780.
The mechanism of this decision was simple: the Admiralty court system that adjudicated the “condemnation” and auctioning of “prizes of war” were disestablished, more or less overnight, removing the purpose of issuing “Letters of Marque and Reprisal“…and freeing – it was hoped – merchant shipping from the scourge of “legalized plunder“…
…But what was the real effect of this declaration?
Prior to 1856 – for roughly 400 years, in a formal sense – Western nations had deliberately evolved the system of prize-capture to avoid the cost of keeping excessively large (and very expensive) fleets manned when there was no war going on. Since merchant ships were generally alone in dangerous waters anyway, it only made sense to build cargo ships that carried weapons comparable to warships, and by extension, to utilize those same ships in time of war.
Thus, as an adjunct to the very common practice on land of hiring part-time professional soldiers – i.e., mercenaries – to flesh out an army, armed merchantmen were offered commissions to supplement regular navies, until those navies could get their actual warships fully crewed. After ferrying troops and supplies, many of these armed merchantmen struck out at the merchant ships of the enemy, striking targets of opportunity, capturing enemy vessels, hauling them to friendly (or even neutral), to sell off the cargoes and the ships themselves (sometimes at a staggering profit), as well as ransoming the prisoners.
The Ranger, Private Ship of War, with her Prizes. By Nicholas Pocock, 1780
After 1856, this all changed.
As the United States (which did not sign the Paris Declaration) was to discover to its horror, the dismantling of the prize system removed any incentive to capturing ships intact — where shipping companies (previously, at least) had the chance of buying their captured vessels back, once there was no possibility of easily selling off a captured prize, there was no reason to not strip the surrendered ships of useful supplies and destroy them after capture. The crews were either abandoned on remote islands to uncertain (and very unpleasant) fates, or tossed ashore in the first non-hostile port the ship came to, with nothing but the clothes on their backs…if they were that lucky.
Four years after the Declaration, the various States that formed the Confederacy attempted to leave the Federal Union, sparking the four-year long American Civil War. Among its many disadvantages, the Southern Confederacy did not really have a maritime tradition, as their northern opponents did. As a result, lacking hard currency or deep economic capital internally, their few attempts at issuing Letters of Marque were dismal failures, as limited cash in a bottled market could not chase what should have been lucrative captures.
“The Alabama destroying the Texan Star, or Martaban, in the Malacca Straits – The Kwan-Tung, Chinese War-Steamer, in the distance. From a sketch by Commander Allen Young, Royal Navy.” London Illustrated News, April 2, 1864, p. 320. Public Domain
In a series of brutal cruises, Confederate Navy corsairs slashed and burned their way through the United States’ merchant fleets; the US Pacific whaling fleet (supplying vital supplies of whale oil in a pre-petroleum society) was almost completely destroyed. Indeed, by 1864 most US-flagged merchant ships were laid up in US ports, as crews flatly refused to leave port under US colors, because of the danger of prowling rebel raiders; not even ruinous insurance rates could entice crews to sea. To remain solvent, many American merchant investors had to sell their vessels to foreign companies in a buyers market, just to maintain some form of capitol flow. The US merchant fleet would not fully recover its position in the world’s shipping arena until after World War 2.
Other countries – and their navies – noticed.
A battleship squadron of the German High Seas Fleet; the far right vessel is the battlecruiser SMS Von der Tann, 1917.
The basic requirements of naval warfare had not changed, the future writings of US Navy Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan notwithstanding: an enemy nation’s merchant marine still had to be neutralized. This meant larger navies, with many more fighting ships in commission, at all times, since merchant ships could no longer, by about 1890, be easily converted into viable warships (since they could no longer be used as warships, there was no reason to design them with warship guns and armor). But, because technology was also expanding — both the fight between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (the former USS Merrimack) in 1862, as well as the Austro-Italian Battle of Lissa in 1866 marking the first engagements between “armored” (or, “ironclad”) naval warships and fleets — this began a race to develop ever-bigger guns, better armor, faster and more fuel-efficient engines…and the armies, jealous of the navies’ lavish funding, also took note. But, with few major wars (only one, really) between industrial states taking place between 1875 and 1914, no one really paid attention…except, of course, the builders of naval artillery and warships.
Photograph of U-111, a German Submarine.
Come the end 1914, with the land war in Western Europe lurching into a blood-soaked, trench-bound stalemate, enforced by machine guns and more field artillery than anyone had ever seen before, Imperial Germany turned to widely deploying previously experimental or unseen weapons – specifically, the submarine and poison gas.
While there had been a slow and steady development of submarines in the previous decades, few officers of the day took them seriously as anything but scouts for battle fleets. But, once the German High Seas Fleet’s inability to blockade Britain became clear, the Kaiser unleashed his U-Boat fleet.
British 55th (West Lancashire) Division troops blinded by gas, 10 April 1918.
The slaughter was tremendous, as merchant ship crews began dying in huge numbers, and mind-boggling amounts of ship tonnage was sent to the bottom. Britain was almost starved of war-making material, and actually began to experience food shortages. In the next round, in 1940, Britain very nearly did lose its war — and American and British merchant seamen died by the thousands…On land, the role of the machine gun and poison gas is better known. The never-ending quest to one-up to other guy was in full force.
“The battle between the Aisne and Marne: German ammunition column, teams and horses with gas masks when passing a gasified forest.”
On land, with the stalemate and slaughter of trench warfare enforced by machine guns, the German High Command was induced to take what for them was a radical (and, by their own admission, distasteful) action: allowing scientists, led by Fritz Haber, the chemist who perfected the extraction of ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen, to develop what had been annoyingly dangerous byproducts of industrial chemical processes into deadly weapons that killed indiscriminately…and ultimately, led directly to the Zyklon-B of Hitler’s gas chambers.
Ultimately, the quest for “more is not only better, it is vital” led directly to the atomic bomb. Although its destructive force was not truly understood at first, even after its effects were understood in their full horror, their development continued apace, leading to the culmination of destruction: the “Tsar Bomba” of the Soviet Union.
However, nothing happens in a vacuum — while states, and the armies and navies that served them, raced frantically to find faster, broader and more efficient ways to kill each other, those nations’ populations paid attention…and learned the unintended lesson:
Life is cheap, fragile, and easily thrown away — and if governments don’t care about the lives of their individual citizens, why should the citizens care about the lives of an “enemy” people?
Kill ’em all – let God sort ’em out.
Right?
Right?
Terrorists, 2020
…..Welcome to the so-called Islamic Caliphate of the 21st Century – and why not? They are merely responding to the stimuli they have been presented and raised with. They don’t have naval fleets, or fleets of airplanes — but they do have knives and cameras, and fear and horror are ancient and basic weapons. Doubly so, when they pay their troops in loot and slaves…just like the “good ol’ days.” And, in an era where humans can be easily enticed to volunteer to function as “squishy cruise missiles“, the addition of real horror to simple terrorism follows a direct course from that origin point.
So…the next time someone cries “Peace! PEACE!“, it may be instructive to wonder whythere was no peace in the first place.
It is also instructive to remember that sometimes, “peace” is another word for “surrender“.
PA’S BLUE COLLAR DEMOCRATS LEAVING PARTY – The registration rolls from January 1st of this year to July 25th reveal that 18K Western PA Democrats switched to Republican. Across the state, Republicans have 38,000 new members who were once Democrat, while the DNC has only 12,000 switching in the opposite direction.
In the suburbs, longtime Democrats are more likely to be concerned about inflation and the economy, Mr. Madonna added — but it’s too soon to see if the registration numbers are a warning sign for the party’s chances.
“You have to look at the trend underway for several years in these working-class counties. Go look at the voter registration out there in the southwest. Go look at the numbers — that now have more Republicans registered than Democrats,” Mr. Madonna said. “That’s a huge change.”
Research Professor Derek Lovley of UMass Amherst explained, “We’ve simplified the process of generating electricity by radically cutting back on the amount of processing needed. We sustainably grow the cells in a biofilm, and then use that agglomeration of cells. This cuts the energy inputs… and widens the potential applications.”
DNC’S HISPANIC FLIGHT PROBLEM GETS WORSE – Hispanics continue to leave the DNC in droves, according to MSNBC. In 2016, Hispanics gave the DNC a 38 percent margin of victory. In 2020, the gap shrunk to 21. Now, the gap is down to 13 percent, with 48 percent supporting the DNC and 35 percent supporting the GOP.
It is quite a mystery why so many Hispanic voters are flocking to vote Republican. Shocking, only to Democrats. After all, Democrats are the illegal immigration party. Democrats have spent decades marginalizing taco-eatingLatinx voters as only carrying about illegal immigration. Where is the gratitude?
Turns out, as MSNBC of all places tells us, Hispanic voters aren’t as race-obsessed as the mayonnaise-looking white progressive activist base wants them to be. And the Hispanic-American voters care about the same issues as every other hyphenated American group does. That includes those of us who don’t identify as hyphens.
American Enterprise Institute’s Ruy Teixeira says, in this clip, that liberals assumed Hispanic voters would fall in line after 2020’s “racial reckoning” that took place in Park Slope, Berkley, and cable newsrooms. The shift of Hispanic…
MSNBC national political correspondent Steve Kornacki warned Democrats that Hispanics are continuing their mass exodus from their party ahead of the crucial midterm elections.
“One of the major stories to emerge from the 2020 election was the shift we saw in the Hispanic vote,” Kornacki said on a segment Monday.
“You know what? The trend seems to be continuing in 2022. What you’re looking at here, this is the average of every poll we’ve got out there that’s been taken over the last three months that looks at the Hispanic vote,” Kornacki said.
According to the MSNBC report, support for Democrats among Hispanics has fallen to only 48% while support for Republicans has risen to 35%, for a net margin of 13%.
Kornacki showed that Democrats had a large 38% margin of support by Hispanics in the 2016 election which decreased four years later to 21% in that presidential election.
“What’s going on here?” asked Kornacki.
He then interviewed Ruy Teixeira, a nonresident senior fellow…
UNIVERSITY FACES LAWSUIT FOR MASK MANDATE FIRING – A University of Southern Maine Professor, Patricia Griffin, is suing the school over being allegedly fired for questioning the school’s mask-wearing mandate. “She was fired under the pretense and pretext that she didn’t, that she wouldn’t obey the mask mandates,” said Griffin’s attorney, Stephen Smith.
A former professor at the University of Southern Maine Patricia Griffin filed a lawsuit, Griffin v. University of Maine System, University of Southern Maine, Glenn Cummings, on July 14 after being fired in 2021 over the university’s mask mandate.
Griffin, a former professor of marketing, claims that the university fired her after she requested data that would support the university’s mask mandate.
According to the lawsuit, Griffin attended a luncheon in August 2021 remotely that then-President Glenn Cummings attended in person. Griffin claimed that Cummings was not adhering to the mask policy which prompted her to request the data responsible for the policy.
After making her request, Griffin’s classes were removed from the fall 2021 schedule. She was scheduled for a disciplinary hearing on August 27, 2021.
BIDEN EDICT CREATES DNC FIEFDOMS IN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT – Attorney Cleta Mitchell exposes Biden plot to politicize government. She stated, “Politico got a tape from our Arizona Summit in which I was presenting to the group there about how the Biden administration is using our tax dollars to turn every federal agency into a Democratic political operation.”
Cleta Mitchell explains why the mainstream media is out to get her — Because she is exposing the Biden/Democrat plan to use the federal government to get out the vote by enlisting new voters who will support the Democrat cause, all on the taxpayer dime.
“Politico got a tape from our Arizona Summit in which I was presenting to the group there about how the Biden administration is using our tax dollars to turn every federal agency into a Democratic political operation. I used the langue that they used, which is their new Democratic majority… Biden issued an executive order based on a plan that was put to him by a left-wing organization, Demos… and it orders every federal agency to develop a voter registration and turnout program, and they are going to give grants to approved groups… Guess who’s going to approve those groups? Susan Rice.”
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