Wars Not Fought (a series)

This week I found an interesting article over at The National Interest  about NATO plans vis-a-vis a war with the Soviet Union:

During the 1950s and 1960s, NATO and the Warsaw Pact agreed about two things regarding combat on the Central front. First, Warsaw Pact forces would quickly overrun NATO forces, achieving rates of advance across Western Europe that exceeded even those of World War II. Second, both NATO and the Warsaw Pact would make plentiful use of tactical nuclear weapons, both to break up enemy formations and also to pave the way for advancing forces. 

Both of these assumptions began to break down in the early 1970s. On the first, the increasing strength of NATO land forces (especially American and German) suggested that Western armies might have something more to hope for than reaching the English Channel ahead of the Russians. Second, both sides became skeptical that conflict would necessarily result in the use of tactical nukes.

I think this is exactly right. The author goes on to discuss the rise of wire guided missiles as shown in the Yom Kippur War of '73, and how this changed NATO thinking.

Briefly, during the Yom Kippur War, Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal and established a defensive line on the east bank. When the Israelis launched their inevitable armored counterattack, they were met by a wall of Egyptian Sagger missiles. In the course of a day the Egyptians destroyed three Israeli armored brigades.

NATO planners began adopting flexible defense tactics that focused on absorbing the initial Soviet blow and then counterattack their second wave, or follow on forces. This eventually came to be called Airland Battle 2000, which emphasized flexible defense and a war of maneuver. This is eactly the kind of battle the U.S. fought against Iraq in 1991.

I disagree with this, however:

It’s hardly obvious that NATO forces could have won; the Warsaw Pact had massive material advantages, and a well-conceived planning apparatus that welded all of the alliance partners (that is, Soviet satellites) into a cohesive whole.

Given the American victory in Desert Storm and the eventual Israeli victory in 1973 I simply don't see how the Soviets could have defeated NATO.

I loath my people, not myself (a possibly continuing series)

Via JPost:

A poll showed American Jews are much likelier than non-Jews to back the Iran nuclear deal.
The Los Angeles Jewish Journal poll published Thursday shows 49 percent of American Jews support the deal and 31 percent oppose it. Among all Americans, 28 percent support the deal and 24 percent oppose it.

They're Democrats before they're Jews.

Incredible really.. Or maybe not. Jews can be really stupid, sometimes.

Viva la Revolution!

So last night I decided to start watching NBC's Revolution. Briefly, its about the world 15 years after a mysterious blackout overtakes the entire planet. The lights went off and never went back on.

I watched the pilot mostly to get the show out of the way. Like everything else from NBC since The Office went off air, I thought I'd hate Revolution.

I was wrong.

The show begins in the present day and then flash forwards 15 years. There were a lot of nice details here. For starters, the nice suburban cul-de-sac with a wooden walls and gate, cornfields where the concrete circle used to be, water barrels, sheep pens, etc.

Another nice touch was the flashbacks showing the Blackout. The protagonist, a teenage girl, remembers her parents letting her eat all the ice cream she wants, 'Its just going to melt anyway'. In another flashback, one of the characters was in the army and walks up to the entrance to his base to find it ringed with armed troops surrounded by road flares.  In another scene, not a flashback, we learn that a character, who after the blackout is a teacher, used to work for a company called Google. 'That's computer stuff, right?' asked a kid. He also used to a have '$80 million in the bank.'

Nothing is perfect, of course, certainly nothing coming from NBC. He above mentioned former Google employee is a roley-poly nerd whose 'afraid of bees'. He obviously would have died the first winter.

So far so good, and I'll be watching episode 2 this evening.

I don't Loath Myself, Just my People

I'm a Hebrew myself but have never really felt comfortable in the tribe. In a lot of ways I'd make a good anti-Semite.

Now hold on there, let me explain. In a Line through the Desert, Jake bloom asks, 'Do all Jews have to be wimpy little fags?' Jake asked this after discussing with his girlfriend his two cousins, Myron and Roger. They're skinny, have Jew-fros, and are super-smart. Yes, I set them up as stereotypes on purpose. Jake says, 'I waned to play Raid on Entebbe, they wanted to play Fiddler on the Roof.'

Look, the Jews I was around growing up seemed real wimpy to me. Maybe its just because I was/am large and nordic-looking. Hell I'd make a good Nazi-officer in any number of World War II movies:

You think I'm kidding:

Skinny guys with allergies and limp-handshakes. Those are the Jews I grew up with.

My wife tells me I'd feel totally different about Jews if we were Israelis.

In that vein here's PJ Media, Are Israeli and American Jews One?:

Oren grew up believing that “we are one.” He continued to believe it:

 … even during the desperate period leading up to the 1967 Six-Day War, when, with Israel’s existence endangered, tens of thousands of American Jews went out to demonstrate — against the Vietnam War.

He continues in that critical vein, noting that since those days, assimilation rates among non-Orthodox American Jews have soared, and that when he visited a liberal congregation in Washington, even discussing Israel was “virtually taboo.”

Returning to the U.S. as ambassador in 2009, he found that he “scarcely recognized the American Jewish landscape I had left thirty years earlier.” Among his many other trying tasks as ambassador, Oren strove hard to mediate between American and Israeli Jewry over issues of religious freedom in Israel.

Oren the diplomat’s best efforts falter, however, when he considers the role of American Jews in the U.S. media. He writes:

[Reporting about] the alleged erosion of human rights in Israel, its oppression of Palestinians, and misuse of military force, with alarmingly few exceptions … [are] authored by Jews. … The preponderance of Jews in the U.S. media often means, simply, that Israel is subjected to scrutiny and standards imposed on no other foreign nation.

And in a passage least likely to endear him to liberal American Jews, Oren says:

[I] could not help questioning whether American Jews really felt as secure as they claimed. Perhaps persistent fears of anti-Semitism impelled them to distance themselves from Israel and its often controversial policies. Maybe that was why so many of them supported Obama, with his preference for soft power, his universalist White House [Passover] seders, and aversion to tribes.

I've experienced this personally, with Jews who supported Obama against Netanyahu, who over the last 25 years have made dozens of intellectual concessions about Israel. For example, these Jews kept giving ground during the Oslo farce; Israeli didn't need the West Bank, or East Jerusalem, or the Golan. Israel was bad for Jews.

Here's Leon Westeiler writing a devastating critique of Tony Judt's suggestion that Israel become a bi-national Jewish/Palestinian state:

His third reason for wishing to wake up in a world without a Jewish state is the most embarrassing, because it is embarrassment. I mean that Judt is embarrassed by Israel. And so Israel must be gone.

And...

 The behavior of the self-described Jewish state seems to have affected the way everyone else looks at him. I detect the scars of dinners and conferences.

Let's sum up what Tony Judt was worried about. After the 20th century, and the murder of  6 million Jews, he's upset that a Jewish state has the  military power to crush and dominate its enemies.

There's a scene in A Line through the Desert where Jake's mother is discussing a minor controversy at school. The administration wants to change the name of 'Winter Break' to 'Christmas Break'. Jake's mother starts talking about how the ADL prevented the school from making the change.. A few minutes later Jake's mother mentions that he had had a run in with the school bully.

Rather than go to the admin, Jake punched him in the face.

In Which Life Imitates Israel Strikes: War of the Red Sea; a continuing series...

One of the subplots of Israel Strikes and Israel Strikes: War of the Red sea is the actions of the Saudis in relation to the war between Israel and Iran.

In Israel Strikes, Saudi Arabia allows IAF jets to overfly their territory en route to Iran, while in War of the Red Sea the Saudis, led by a reform minded prince....well, let us not give away any plot points.

Lo and behold the Saudis are saying they will take against Iran:

In the first public criticism of the P5+Iran deal by a member of the Saudi Arabian royal family, Prince Bandar bin Sultan told Lebanon’s Daily Star the deal would allow Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb and would “wreak havoc in the region." Covered in The Times of London, the prince also told Daily Star, "Saudi Arabia and the Gulf powers are prepared to take military action without American support after the Iran nuclear deal"

Now that could be an interesting military conflict, no?

The Saudi armed forces posses sophisticated weapons such as M-1 Tanks, F-15 Fighters and Patriot Missile batteries. The kingdom also boasts the largest navy in the region. The Iranians, in contrast are still flying F-5 Tigers and F-14 Tomcats.

So let us assume the Saudis have a technical edge.

Of course, the Saudi's contributed forces during Operation Desert Storm. Like all Arab armies these moved slowly, lethargically and fought badly. Saudi troops weren't given much responsibility, anyway, simply to hold Iraqi troops in Kuwait while the Americans and British executed the right hook into Iraq.

Whether or not the Saudi armed forces have improved in the last 25 years is anybody's guess. We may find out, though.

All Brains

This Postie, railing against 'anti-intellectualism' in America, actually opens the piece with a quote form Emerson. I am vaguely aware of who this Emerson fellow was, a writer, pre-Civil War. Anyway, our intrepid author says:

 It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an "elitist," one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office. 

Yes.

The Postie goes on to note:

 I cannot prove that reading for hours in a treehouse (which is what I was doing when I was 13) creates more informed citizens than hammering away at a Microsoft Xbox or obsessing about Facebook profiles. 

The author establishes her credentials as a pointy-head and spends the article complaining about television, the internet, blah, blah blah. Remember, when she was 13 she read books in tree houses.

For most of us 'folks' as she would complain, intellectualism conjures images of pointy-headed, know-it-alls sitting around a cafe, sipping wine and pondering Jean Paul Sartre. This author was in a production of a Sarte play, yikes.

Perhaps going through the record could clear this up.

Karl Marx: intellectual. Thought up communism. 100 million dead in 20th century.

Abraham Lincoln: Not an intellectual. Won the Civil War. Thought up the Emancipation Proclamation and the Homestead Act.

Franklin Roosevelt: Not an intellectual. Won World War II. Thought up the New Deal.

So yes, yes indeed.

Quest for Story

On a whim last night I watched Quest for Fire.

For those who haven't seen the movie, Quest for Fire is about three Micromanages looking for fire (they have not yet discovered how to make it themselves). Along the journey the Cromags evolve. They discover more advanced homo-sapiens in the process who teach them about animal husbandry, aerodynamic spears, humor, love, sex that is about more than lust and procreation.

I had seen the film 20 years ago. This viewing held up to my memory. It was well done, always stark and at times horrifying. The actors are believable Cromags.

I once tried to write  a prehistoric story. The idea was homo-sapiens were on the verge of defeating and annihilating what was left of the Neanderthals.

It was a false start though.

This happen sometimes. I'll start a story, even a novel, but the execution is not as good as the idea. Sometimes, after the original conception the idea has no place to go.

In this case I simply couldn't figure out how to write caveman dialogue. I just couldn't make the articulate, even if they were (who knows). But every time I tried to write dumbed-down dialogue, by homo-sapiens sounded like bad Hollywood, cigar store Indians. 'Me hit ape man with rock!'

I still want to do the story, though. Maybe one day I'll figure it out.

The new Israeli nuclear calculus.

As Donald Rumsfeld would say there are unknown unknowns in the emerging Middle East. Specifically we do not know exactly where Iran's nuclear program is in its development. Nor do we know what Israel knows, now will we for some time.

In a nuclear standoff or in a cold war with Iran, Israel is actually well positioned. It launch a nuclear attack via land based missiles, aerial bombs, or sub launched missiles. Israel has MAD and second strike capability.

Perhaps the Israelis have already decided they can live with a nuclear Iran. But what if Israel decided it can't live with a nuclear Iran with Hamas in the south and more importantly, Hezbollah and its arsenal of 100,000 missiles in the north?

What if Israel decided it has to eliminate both terrorist groups now or forever? And remember the scorn of the Arab world will be limited. Will Saudi Arabia really condemn Israel when it is destroying Iran's military proxies? The Arab response to last summer's Operation Protective Edge was muted. There is no reason to suppose the Arabs will be more vocal the next time. Israel now has the diplomatic backing to destroy its enemies.

The short term effect of the Vienna agreement may be war in Gaza and Lebanon.

Um, Professor...

A University of Arizona professor has been busted for plagiarism:

Until the last few days, Matthew Whitaker was a full professor at Arizona State University and was the founding director of the school’s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy. But complaints from Whitaker’s fellow academics and an anonymous blog forced the school to investigate one of his textbooks, “Peace Be Still: Modern Black America From World War II to Barack Obama”. The investigation discovered “significant issues” with the book, such as major passages ripped from other books or even websites like Infoplease.

It's soooooo easy to plagiarize. My first semester teaching I was stunned to find plagiarism in a student paper. Said student cut and paste from several websites and submitted the work as his own. The topic was Edmund Burke.

One semester I had a  major outbreak of plagiarism with half a dozen students being caught. After a particularly blatant example I made the entire class put their heads on their desks and those who had plagiarized were forced to raise their hands.  I had at least seven, when only three raised their hands I insisted there were more examples. Nine hands went up.

Since then my policy has been automatic zero, humiliation before the entire class, and inclusion of plagiarizer's name in list of plagiarizers I give at the beginning of each semester.

Still they think they can get away with it.

Academic plagiarism of the kind committed by Professor Whitaker baffles me. When one's stuff is widely read (mine is) sooner or later someone will recognized a lifted paragraph. Once the suspicion is raised one's academic malfeasance is only a crowd sourcing effort away from being discovered.

Of course, there but for the grace of god go I.

I have never lifted something and passed it off as my own, not in my professional career, not in school. Is there something I have written upon which suspicion could be cast, a paragraph not restated well enough, maybe a sentence that I thought was a note I made but in reality had been copied verbatim? I guess.

Iran Deal and Peace in our Time

The author's editorial stance on the just announced Iran deal should be obvious.

Never mind the clauses about inspections and committees and time frames and breakout times. That's just a lot of diplomatic gobbledygook.

What strikes me is the sanctions relief which will happen soon enough and the return of $100 Billion in frozen assets.

With this agreement Iran will become a regional economic power in support of its military power. A renewed economy will thrive. There will be billions in revenue to fun nuclear research, missile research but also naval and air armament, not to mention the regime's support for Hamas and Hezbollah. 

I suspect Iran's nuclear 'breakout time' has been delayed, but only a little. In exchange for that delay Iran has improved its position enormously.

Expect a lot more Iranian meddling in the Middle East and Iraq to fall permanently into the their sphere. 

And watch out for the Saudi bomb.

High Inspiration

I was watching High Fidelity on Netflix today. Good movie, good book.

I first saw the movie in 2000 and read the book in 2003. Don't worry, this is heading somewhere.

In Rob, author Nick Hornby created a character that thought about things, at least some things, the same way I did. Rob owns a vinyl record store. He and his staff are as obnoxious about music as one would imagine a vinyl record store employee to be. This resonated with me on a few levels.

First I'm a metal head and that is important to me as Rob's esoteric indie music is to him. I had a roommate like Rob in collage. My first roommate actually. He was really into Henry Rollins and Minor Threat and Shutter to Think and a lot of other Indie-punk stuff I still know nothing about. He was just horrified that I liked - gasp - Def Leppard.

So I got the whole vinyl thing in High Fidelity.

When I read the book I was just turning 30, Rob is 32, and he thought about his past girlfriends and loves the same way I did. That is, his first breakup at 14 was as important to him as the breakup that begins the book. Rob spends a lot of time- like a music fanatic who ranks albums, bands, genres, etc- ranking his girlfriends and breakups.

I was in the same boat. I met my wife when I was 20, so the girl I dated at 14, just six year before, was as important in my romantic history. Six years seemed like a century back then, didn't it. Now? Ha! Kirsten, Amy, Jane, Jen...they all occupied a similar place.

So I got the whole girlfriend ranking thing.

One Sunday morning in March 2003 I was at my local coffee shop finishing High Fidelity. When I finished the book I put it down, opened my computer and began writing A Line through the Desert.

I've been writing ever since.

Summer Anniversaries

Ahhh...the summer of 1995. The summer of Brave Heart and Apollo 13. My last college summer. My last non-adult summer. Three years of college and college life had given my face a kind of puffy, Chris Farley look.

I was interning in the U.S. Senate for William V. Roth (R) DE. I met him several times. A bit of a dullard if you ask me. He had been in the Senate forever. The people of Delaware voted him out in 2000.

It was a hot summer, the kind where you'd be relieved to get off the street and onto a air conditioned DC Metro. I lived in a great dorm in GW, had an efficiency all to myself, right down the block from the M Street Fridays. We would sit on the concrete terrace from which you could see the OEOB and close down the joint on Fridays and Saturdays. Often my friends and I would meet there after work.
We were quite a bunch. One of us is an author/professor, two are lobbyists, another is back home in Texas.

I worked for a guy named John Marshall, he put me in charge of some project about pesticide regulation. I talked a lot with the American Farm Bureau but honestly the project never really went anywhere. I still wasn't that motivated. I needed adult supervision. I was years away from leaving my slacker stage.

So for me it was a summer of office scut work. Lots of making copies, lots of deliveries and data entry. You can imagine. To stay awake I kept the TV in office, yes I had one, tuned to the senate floor.

One of the raging debates in the senate that summer was the war in Yugoslavia. I had my office TV tuned the Senate feed and one afternoon a visibly pissed off Bob Dole came to the floor and announced that the UN safe haven in Srebrenica had been over run by Serb militia. The Dutch peace keepers were powerless to stop them.  After pushing the Dutch aside the Serbs massacred 8,000 Bosnians.

Dole was furious and announced the next week the senate would have a debate and vote on lifting the arms embargo to Yugoslavia. The brain  child of the UN, the embargo prevented weapons sales to all sides, including, you know, the people being set upon by the Serbs.

The Clinton administration was  opposed to the move. Maybe negotiations hadn't had enough time to play out? I kid.

Joe Biden, yes Joe Biden was the most passionate advocate of lifting the embargo. 'A nation has the right to defend itself!' he thundered all week.

The vote passed 67-33, enough to override a veto from President Clinton. My buddy and I went to the senate gallery to watch the vote. We had fun explaining the procedures and amendments to befuddled mid-western tourists. Only one Republican voted against the bill, Mark Hatfield who also scuddled the balanced budget amendment earlier that year. My buddy and I cursed him.

This week the Bosnians were commemorating the massacre. The Serb president had the nerve to show up. He was booed and pelted with rocks. He should have been lynched.

Flagged... you know where this headed

I'm a flag flyer. I got the habit from a college roommate from the Jersey Shore who told me everyone down there flies flags. He had an Aussie flag and once for my birthday he bought me an Israeli flag. That was and still is one of the most thoughtful gifts I've ever received. I still have it.

I haven't looked back.

I've been flying flags for 20 years now. I must have fifty of them. Let's see, Yankees, Yankees WS, Giants, Giants Superbowl, Union Jack (of course), Canadian, Aussie, Red Ensign, Bermuda...anything Commonwealth really. I have the old South African flag. C'mon, its sharp, its a flag with three flags! I've got some cool historical flags, including the Imperial German flag which I'm flying right now.

I've never used my flags to troll somebody or be deliberately provocative. Ok, ok, sometimes I'll do something like fly the Union Jack on the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne or fly my Alamo flag on Cinco di Mayo. Really though, you have to know your history to get it.

Hell if I really wanted to start something in the neighborhood I'd fly a Pakistani flag.  My aforementioned roommate and I always thought it'd be fun to fly a swastika, just to see what would happen. Now I could  plausibly  do it, in this town anyway. Man that thing gives me the willies.

Though I have a considerable amount of southern blood in my vein I hold no brief for the CSA. I was born and raised in New York State and am a blue-belly through and through. I agree with Professor Victor Davis Hanson who called the CSA an 'apartheid society'. Honestly the old south deserved the destruction wrought by Sherman and Grant.

But I got to tell you these days...

Operation Eastern Storm or....I am George Lucas

Editing the book now. Its big and clunky, like a Star Wars prequel. Basically sections need to be reworked and moved around, words need to be cut. Ironically, after cutting, sections and words need to be added. Things explained.

I swear one of the biggest problems I'm running into is that scene jumps happen for no damn reason. One minute your riding along with the West German Bundeswher the next your on Barholm Island in the Baltic.

I need better segways...no not those, I mean one section leading into another.

Plugging along, plugging along.

Still should be out in the autumn though.

IDF Selects Special Forces All-Star Roster

The IDF is reorganizing it's Special Forces:

Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot recently announced the establishment of a commando brigade that will consolidate four of the IDF's most elite Special Forces units: Maglan, Duvdevan (both currently affiliated with the Paratroopers Brigade), Egoz (affiliated with Golani Brigade) and Rimon (affiliated with Givati Brigade).  

The article notes that most U.S. Special Forces fall under the TOE of the 75th Ranger Regiment. The British SAS also has a regimental sized organization with different units tasked with different functions, air, sea, etc...

This would seem to give the Israelis the ability to to bring a considerable amount of SF firepower to the battlefield in one massive jolt.

In this author's opinion the IDF should also be ramping up its seaborne SF capability, given the nation's looming natural gas platform in the Med.

This plan also has the benefit of creating a Special Forces all-star team, almost like a movie cliche, Think of any WWII commando movie. There you go.

Of course, the coalition had something like that in Iraq, a mysterious commando team with several names, Task Force 145, Task Force 6-26 and so on. It was a Special Forces all-star team with Green Berets, SEALs, Delta Force, and just to ad some character British and even Australian SAS.

No joke, folks. These are the guys that took out Zarqawi.

Sammy Hagar was Right!

Anyone whose read A Line Through the Desert knows I love music. Heck, I started the novel moments after finishing Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, a novel and later a movie about a record store owner. ALTD is littered with music references, Zeppelin, Bon Jovi, Cinderella (very underrated) Tesla, Def Leppard and others.

Anyway, of late I've been rediscovering Van Halen and I have to admit I still prefer Sammy Hagar. I always did. Maybe its just because my first VH album was 5150, that was actually the first album I ever bought with my own money, but I think they're better with Hagar.

5150 is heavier than anything Van Halen had done before. Don't believe me? Behold:

Seeing that on MTV is what got me to buy the album in the first place. The Hagar era is when Eddie Van Halen really gets to show his chops; because with Sammy he's got a lead singer that wants to work with him.

Which brings us to Diamond David Lee Roth.

I'm really not knocking the man, with Van Halen that is. Van Halen I is great, so's II. So is 1984. Let's take a look at the Jump video for a moment, shall we?

There's Dave and the guys.

Now, let's look at some of his solo stuff. Here's Crazy From the Heat:

And here's Paradise:

He just made the same damn video as Jump, but with Steve Vai. I'd show Yankee Rose, which is exactly like the other two, but for some reason I can only find it in Spanish. WTF?

OK, there's Dave climbing rocks, there he is with a funny intro. But these songs are utterly forgettable.

What's Dave's solo career remembered for? You know, and so does everyone else. There will be no links. California Girls and Just a Gigolo. Fun songs, great videos. But they're novelty songs. He was doing that in Van Halen too.

And that's why I prefer Sammy Hagar.

Flotilla Interupted

Via my acquaintance Kathy Shaidle a video of the Jewish Defense League of Canada meeting Gaza Flotilla members at the airport:

This is how you do it, people.

In my time at Raritan Valley Community College I've pulled a few stunts like this. I held a pro-Israel rally, no trouble at the rally proper but two different school offices tried to shut me down just a day before the event.

A year ago Veterans for Peace had an event on campus. Nice guys, except for the one participant who blood libeled the Jews by saying inter-religious marriage is illegal in Israel. I stood up and heckled him.

Last Autumn the campus lefties held a 'Hands up, Don't Shoot' rally. I brought up the rear, handing out a fact sheet from the NY Post.

It's not pretty or a lot of fun, is it? Has to be done, though.

Draped in Black on Independence Day

As an alt history author I love these arguments:

This July 4th, I'm celebrating by taking a plane from the US to the United Kingdom. The timing wasn't intentional, but I embrace the symbolism. American independence in 1776 was a monumental mistake. We should be mourning the fact that we left the United Kingdom, not cheering it.

Look, let's not take this too seriously, this is a Vox article after all; still....

The author sites three reasons why we should mourn America's victory in the Revolution, slavery,  Indians and a preference for the Parliamentary system. Let's take the last point first. The author writes,

In the UK, the Conservative government decided it wanted a carbon tax. So there was a carbon tax. Just like that. Passing big, necessary legislation — in this case, legislation that's literally necessary to save the planet — is a whole lot easier with parliaments than presidential systems.

Its hard to pass things he likes in our system, I grant him that. He also sites Wyoming holding the same power as California in the Senate. True, but not in the House. Why not site Vermont vs. Texas? For that matter, in the above quote let's replace 'carbon tax' with 'flat tax'. There we go. Its all making a sense now. See, in this system its hard for people like me to get what they want too. That's the point, dingus.

As far as treatment of Native Americans, has the man read any history? Is he not familiar with the history of the British in Australia? Or their numerous colonial wars in Africa? Or the Sepoy Mutiny? Up north, the Canadians have turned apologizing and appeasing their 'First Nation's' into a national sport behind Hockey and Curling. So no.

The slavery thing is kind of interesting. Parliament banned slavery in 1833 and the slave trade in 1807. Maybe. But I dunno. Thirty years later the slave states rebelled against the United States, why wouldn't they have rebelled against Britain in 1833? They would have, and many of the northern colonies would no doubt have joined in.

That's ok, I'm an Anglophile myself and love Britain and the empire. And this idea about America staying in the empire has been written about before.

The author isn't the only one to regret American independence. Into the 1830's, every July 4th  little old Tory ladies in New York City draped their windows in black.
.

 

Now I know why you cry, John

24 years ago today one of my favorite movies came out. As the great John Nolte says:

No one who filed into a movie theatre exactly 24 years ago tomorrow (July 3, 1991) wasn’t demanding to be dazzled; no one who walked out of that theatre 136 minutes later wasn’t dazzled … and a little dazed.

I know I was.

I was 18 and had just graduated HS. Three other friends and I saw it at the Beach Movie Theatre in Peekskill, NY.

I was blown away from the opener that showed the rebels fighting the machines. The rebels were fighting, and beating the Skynet, that in itself was a major break from The Terminator in which the rebels were depicted as hiding and on the run.

Then there was this scene at the mall. I still get chills watching the two Terminators walk down the hallway.

Its an action movie, one of the best ever. And its great sci-fi to boot.

Of course it has a few clunnkers for lines....but whatev. That line always gets a laugh in class.