Constitution to Hang by a Thread

Joseph Smith is widely reported by Brigham Young and other early Church leaders as having prophesied that a day would come when the Constitution would be torn up by the people of this nation and, as it were, hang by a thread; but that the Elders of the Church would become "a balance of power" with others to preserve the Constitution. (See here and here).

The Constitution has long been under attack, but, until now, even those opposed to the Constitution have at least paid lip service to the document. No longer. Breitbart reports on a CBS News interview with Georgetown law professor Louis Michael Seidman suggesting that the United States ought to abandon the Constitution (Note: video automatically begins to play). From the article:

From Georgetown law professor Louis Michael Seidman:

I've got a simple idea: Let's give up on the Constitution. I know, it sounds radical, but it's really not. Constitutional disobedience is as American as apple pie. ...

To be clear, I don't think we should give up on everything in the Constitution. The Constitution has many important and inspiring provisions, but we should obey these because they are important and inspiring, not because a bunch of people who are now long-dead favored them two centuries ago. ...

...This is our country. We live in it, and we have a right to the kind of country we want. We would not allow the French or the United Nations to rule us, and neither should we allow people who died over two centuries ago and knew nothing of our country as it exists today. If we are to take back our own country, we have to start making decisions for ourselves, and stop deferring to an ancient and outdated document.

Planetary Disasters

Nature discusses some possible planetary disasters, including supervolcanoes; fungal diseases attacking crops and animals; solar flares, asteroid impacts and y-ray bursts; and submarine landslides producing large tsunamis. The article notes the following about fungal diseases:

... fungi are the planet's biggest killers. Of all the pathogens being tracked, fungi have caused more than 70% of the recorded global and regional extinctions, and now threaten amphibians, bats and bees. ...

Potato blight is still a threat: 13_A2, a highly aggressive strain of P. infestans, is now rampant in Europe and North Africa. Across the globe, Phytophthora causes some US$6.7 billion in annual damages, according to a 2009 estimate. Sarah Gurr, a plant pathologist at the University of Oxford, UK, estimates that the worst theoretical potato infestation would deprive 1.3 billion people of food each year. Other major staple crops face similar threats, such as rice blast (Magnaporthe oryzae), corn smut (Ustilago maydis), soya bean rust (Phakopsora pachyrhizi) and wheat stem rust (Puccinia graminis). The stem-rust superstrain Ug99 has in recent years slashed yields in parts of Africa by as much as 80%.

If all five crop staples were hit with fungal outbreaks at the same time, more than 60% of the world's population could go hungry, says Gurr. ...

... Humans have cause for concern as well. In the past decade, a tropical fungus called Cryptococcus gattii has adapted to thrive in cooler climes and invaded the forests of North America's Pacific Northwest. By 2010, it had infected some 280 people, dozens of whom died. ...

Book Review: War Before Civilization by Lawrence H. Keeley

Book: War Before Civilization: The myth of the peaceful savage by Lawrence H. Keeley (Amazon link here).

Overview: The title pretty well sums it up: the peaceful, noble savage is a myth of Western romantic culture. Instead, conflict, whether characterized as warfare or armed banditry, was rampant and a normal part of life. Your odds of dying a violent death in such societies is much, much higher than in a modern society, even putting together deaths from violent crime and warfare. Primitive societies only become peaceful when "peace" is imposed on them by an outside power, such as the colonial empires of the 19th and 20th centuries. Peaceful coexistence is a byproduct of civilization.

Impression: I read this book on the Kindle. I originally had downloaded a sample, which provided the author's introduction and, later, purchased the whole book.

Based on the introduction, which discussed neolithic and copper age sites in Europe, I was under the impression that the book would discuss specifics of primitive warfare--i.e., details of fortifications, discussion of weapons and tactics, and so. While such details crop up--for instance, the distribution of arrow points at different locations around an enclosure showing where most of the fighting occurred--the book itself was an argument to dispel the long-held belief, even among anthropologists and ethnographers, that primitive tribes are inherently peaceful and that organized warfare is a relic of civilization.

However, as the author goes on to demonstrate from both archaeological evidence and ethnographic evidence from modern tribes, the opposite is true. Organized conflict has always been with us, and "peace" is actually the byproduct of strong civilizations. The "peaceful savage" is based on observations made of tribes and peoples that had already been pacified by the West. The author notes, for instance, three independent cross-cultural surveys of recent tribal and state societies from the around the globe showed only 1/5 of the societies "infrequently or never" engaged in warfare, and the majority of those were groups that "might more accurately be classified as defeated refugees than as pacifists." Another survey indicated that "90 percent of the cultures in the sample unequivocally engaged in warfare and that the remaining 10 percent were not total strangers to violent conflict." Although some cultures were pacifistic, they did so my fleeing territory rather than engaging in combat.

The author gives some other specific examples, such as the Kung ("Bushmen") of the Kalahari, during the period of 1920-1955, had a homicide rate four times that of the United States; and during the 50's and 60's, they had homicide rates of 20 to 80 times that of most industrialized countries. In that regard, the author notes that "[b]efore local establishment of the Bechuanaland/Botswana police, the Kung also conducted small-scale raids and prolonged feuds between bands and against Tswana herders intruding from the east." He notes other examples, such as a Copper Eskimo community first contacted in the early 20th century where every adult male had been involved in a homicide, to that Yaghan of Tierra del Fuego whose murder rate in the late 19th century was 10 times as high as the United States. Later, he notes that "the homicide rate of the prehistoric Illinois villagers would have been 1,400 times that of modern Britain or about 70 times that of the United States in 1980." But this raises an important point: "the seeming peacefulness of such small hunter-gatherer groups may therefore be more a consequence of the tiny size of their social units and the large scale implied by our normal definition of warfare than of any real pacifism on their part." In other words, when dealing with small groups, you cannot usefully separate a "raid" using a small number of people from a "battle." They are one and the same.

The author also addresses the issue of whether it is unfair to compare homicide rates in a small culture against a major nation, without taking into account warfare statistics. The author writes:

Let us undertake such a comparison for one simple society, the Gebusi of New Guinea. Calculations show that the United States military would have had to kill nearly the whole population of South Vietnam during its nine-year involvement there, in addition to its [the United States'] internal homicide rate, to equal the homicide rate of the Gebusi.

In short, "the overwhelming majority of known societies have made war. Therefore, while it is not inevitable, war is universally common and usual," and "frequent, even continuous warfare is as characteristic of tribal societies as of states." "The only reasonable conclusion is that wars are actually more frequent in nonstate socieities than they are in state societies--especially modern nations." The cure to warfare, then, is not less civilization, but more civilization.

Notable Points: There are several notable issues or points to be taken from the book for our purposes as preppers:

First, pre-state peoples existed in tribes, clans, family bands, or some other level of social organization larger than families, but small than a city state. Thus, if civilization were to break down, we should expect that people would organize in, at a minimum, at the level of family or tribal groups (clans or gangs, if you prefer), or larger groups.

Second, raids and ambushes for the purpose of obtaining resources (sometimes including raids to obtain women or children) and revenge killings, would be common. The archaeological evidence the author examined from Europe showed that every single village possessed fortifications. If we were to lose rule of law, it may be necessary, therefore, to plan to live in fortified villages and settlements that would not be easy to infiltrate or attack, and would provide some protection against small arms fire or a mass attack.

Third, it was interesting to me that the author noted a distinct difference between "shock" weapons--axes, spears, and so on--and fire weapons--arrows and darts. The latter were largely inferior in their lethality, but obviously superior as far as staying out of the range of the enemies shock weapons. I would note that this is consistent with studies performed after WWI showing that bayonets were more lethal than bullets or shrapnel. However, the author notes that the increased power of firearms made firearms a type of "shock" weapon. For our purposes, then, I would offer the following: two-feet of steel is going to be deadlier than a rifle or handgun; a large caliber hunting round will be more effective than FMJ or weaker weapons; don't use bows and arrows for fighting.

Fourth, "organized" battles are rare and require the combatants to agree to fight. Most combat will be raids or skirmishes.

Fifth, small numbers of casualties per encounter add up. A prolonged series of battles could result in the extinction of a tribe.

Sixth, while there were "rules" of war among related groups or tribes, "unrestricted warfare, without rules and aimed at annihilation, was practiced against outsiders." Age and sex is no guarantee of protection.

Seventh, raids and ambushes are the most effective forms of warfare. From the author:

Raids characteristically kill only a few people at a time; they kill a higher proportion of women than do battles or even the routs that follow them; they kill individuals or small groups caught in isolated circumstances away from major population concentrations; and because the victims are outnumbered, surprised, and often unarmed, their wounds are often inflicted as they try to flee.

However, the cumulative effect of raids makes them more effective at wiping out another tribe over a period of time.

Eighth, primitive (guerrilla) warfare techniques were generally superior to the "mass" warfare of modern armies. "Primitive (and guerrilla) warfare consists of war stripped to its essentials: the murder of enemies; the theft or destruction of their sustenance, wealth, and essential resources; and the inducement in them of insecurity and terror. It conducts the basic business of war without recourse to ponderous formations or equipment, complicated maneuvers, strict chains of command, calculated strategies, time tables, or other civilized embellishments." It is true total war. However, the author notes that modern forces, when they adopt primitive warfare, can exploit their advantages to defeat primitive warriors by exploiting their clear advantage--logistics. The civilized warrior has a logistic chain that allows them to constantly attack and harass tribal warriors during the depths of winter, during planting or harvest, and so on when the tribal warrior is most vulnerable.

Gear Check: Snow-Trax

(Source: Amazon.com)

The product I'm reviewing is called the Snow-Trax (Amazon link here), made by Implus Footcare, LLC.

I actually bought these a couple years ago at Costco, but never had an opportunity to really try them out until yesterday. We had an ice storm that left a nice layer of ice on everything, including my inclined driveway. While I didn't try to clear all of the ice off, I did go out to break up the ice on the sidewalk and pathway to our door. And I figured this was as good a time as any to try the Snow-Trax out.

As the photograph above shows, they are traction devices designed to slip on over a pair of shoes or boots. The heel has metal cleats to really dig into the ice. The front have crisscrossed metal coils to provide traction.  Obviously, your best traction is if you walk heel-to-toe.

My feet size are probably at the upper range of what the Snow-Trax was designed for. I had difficulty fitting them over a pair of hiking boots, but they fit fine over a pair of shoes. However, I think with practice it would become easier to fit them over the boots. Although you can't see it on the photo, there is a cross-wise velcro strap that tightens up the sides and keeps them in place.

These are not items that you can slip on standing up--you will, at the least, need to be sitting down. I found it was easier to pull them over my shoes first, before putting my shoes on, than to try and pull them on later.

One thing to watch for is that you place the cleats on the heels. When I first was trying to fit them on my boots, I hadn't bothered to read the directions, and put them on backwards (the cleats on the ball of my feet). I kept having problems with the device sliding up and over the toe of the boot. When I put them on my shoes, I realized my error, and did not have any issues with them slipping off my shoes. In fact, I didn't have any problems at all on the second go-around with slipping or any other issues with fit. I noticed that some of the negative reviews at Amazon indicated that the Snow-Trax kept slipping off, and I suspect that it probably had to do with putting them on backwards as I had done initially.

Of course, the key issue is whether they improve traction, I have to say that I had very good traction on the sheet ice. I could feel the cleats dig into the ice. I didn't experience any issues with the balls of my feet slipping either. While I was out working on chipping away and clearing ice, a neighbor that came out to visit was slipping quite a bit, and nearly fell a couple times. So, I think the devices saved me from having a nasty spill.

Given the limited use, I can't really speak to their durability. However, I had bought them for emergency use, and they are small enough to keep a pair in an emergency kit in your car or home. At $20 for two pairs (i.e., $10 per pair), they are a useful piece of gear to keep in your car with other winter emergency items.

Here's another review from About.com.

Hit by the Flu...

Even though I had a flu vaccination just a few months ago, I got hit by the flu anyway. I hope to get back to posting either later today or tomorrow.

Stealth Clothing

The Daily Mail reports on "Stealth Wear"--fashions designed to block thermal signatures from being seen by thermal imagers. I gather from the article that it is not yet on sale, but will be expensive when it is finally available. The article notes:

The nickel-metalized fabrics he uses to create his new clothing line are very specialized and very expensive, he says.

He does plan to offer the clothing at a price, but don’t expect to see these products at Target or Conway.

Harvey’s ‘Stealth Wear’ has been on display at Primitive London, a network of underground designers and artists, since Thursday, January 17.

The designers didn't stop there. The article states:

The designers also created a special pouch for cell phones that shields them from trackers by blocking the radio signals that phones emit and a shirt that blocks detection of the wearer’s heart.

Also:

In 2012 he introduced face makeup product called CVDazzle that allows the user to throw off face-recognition software.

Domino Sugar Factory

The Daily Mail occasionally has articles and photos of "urban ruins." The latest is the Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg, NY. The factory was abandoned in 2004. According to the article, parts of the factory will be renovated into apartments. More photos and a video at the link.

Reader Reviews Beretta Nano

A long-time reader recently mentioned to me that he had purchased a Beretta Nano, so I asked him if he could do a short write-up for my blog of his first thoughts and impressions, to which he graciously agreed. He writes:

The Nano is a relatively new compact 9mm pistol from Beretta. Like many newer 9mm pistols, it is double-action only. And, like many newer 9mm pistols, the lower frame is predominantly plastic ("fiberglass reinforced technopolymer"). The serialized portion of the pistol - the receiver - is effectively a trigger group with integrated slide rails made from stamped stainless steel that is held in the lower frame by a couple of pins. The Nano comes with two six-round single-stack magazines. I won't go into the rest of the technical specifications, as they are available online: http://www.berettanano.com/
User Manual: http://www.berettausa.com/file.aspx?DocumentId=78
I took my new Beretta Nano 9mm pistol to the range for the first time the other day, and used 150 rounds of Federal 9mm ammunition for this initial break-in session.
The trigger travels a rather long distance before firing, but is fairly smooth. Certainly smoother than the Kel Tek P3AT, but not as smooth as a more expensive pistol like the Browning Hi-Power. Accuracy seems pretty good, with the first two shots hitting the same spot on the target. Then I started to flinch and my accuracy degraded. My accuracy improved as I got over the flinching. I believe the gun is fairly accurate for its diminutive size. My marksmanship skills are not up to the capabilities of this pistol.
Like other compact semiautomatic pistols, it does have a bit of a kick, but it was not unreasonable for its small size, and certainly less than the Kel Tec P3AT, which uses the less powerful .380 ACP (9mm short) round.
One very nice feature of the Nano, over the P3AT, is a slide lock which holds the slide open after the last round in the magazine is fired.
Over the course of my shooting session, three times the pistol failed to eject a spent casing (the case remained in the chamber). This occurred around the 70th, 90th, and 130th rounds fired. But, occasional eject/misfeed problems are not uncommon for a new semiautomatic pistol. I was not paying attention to which magazine was being used, and both magazines look look fine. (I've numbered the magazines in anticipation of the Nano's next trip to the range.) Further, there was nothing wrong with the casings to indicate what the problem might have been.
Disassembly and cleaning of the pistol is easy. First, a decocking pin is pressed with something like a ball-point pen. Then the take-down cam is rotated counter-clockwise one-quarter turn. Then the slide can be easily removed. The remainder of the disassembly and cleaning is similar to that of other modern semiautomatic pistols. Reassembly is the reverse of the disassembly, except that the take-down cam automatically rotates back into its locked position when the slide is reattached and racked all the way back (the user manual recommends checking the orientation of the take-down cam after reassembly).
Overall, the Nano is a fun little pistol to shoot - certainly not as brutal as other compact pistols I have used. It is very compact for a 9mm semiautomatic pistol. I have not decided if I am going to start using it as my every-day concealed carry pistol. As small as it is, it is still significantly larger and heavier than my current every-day carry pistol.

Betrayed

Great civilizations rot from the top. Here is an enlightening piece about Al Gore from the National Review:

So there is no doubt that Al Gore Sr. deserved his payoff from Armand Hammer. But what has Al Gore Jr. ever done for Qatar? Isn’t he, after all, the foremost champion of the worldwide environmentalist movement, which is bitterly opposed to oil production, the very lifeblood of the Qatari regime? Yes, he is, but there is a little catch, because while opposed in principle to oil production everywhere, the environmentalist movement has been effective in reality only in impeding it in the United States.

Some measure of the effect of the environmental movement may be obtained by [comparing] U.S. oil production, OPEC oil production, and non-U.S./non-OPEC oil production from 1960 to the present. ... U.S. oil production grew at an average rate of 3.2 percent per year during the 1960s, peaking at 9.6 million barrels per day in 1970. In that year, however, the environmental movement was empowered by the passage of the National Environmental Policy Act and the accompanying creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, and U.S. production has been in decline ever since. ... [T]he growth of OPEC production, which had been extremely rapid during the 1960s, came to a screeching halt in 1973, when the OPEC powers replaced the previously dominant Seven Sisters’ policy of expanding production to grow the world economy with an alternative policy of constricting production to loot the world economy.
As a result, OPEC production has not increased at all since 1973. Thus the entirety of the increase of world oil production over the past four decades — during which time the world economy has doubled in size — has come from non-OPEC, non-U.S. sources. ... [T]his has increased at a rate of 3.4 percent per year since 1970, essentially the same as the 3.2 percent average U.S. growth rate from 1960 to 1970. [If not for this], instead of producing 5.7 million barrels per day today, we would now be producing 35. Together with other non-OPEC production, this would have totally marginalized OPEC and constrained oil prices below $30 a barrel, with associated gasoline prices driven to the range of $1 to $1.50 per gallon. Just as they did in the 1950s and 1960s, such low oil prices would have fueled dramatic U.S. and global economic growth.

At present, Qatar exports around 400 million barrels of oil per year, while the U.S. imports about 4 billion barrels per year. So the fact that oil prices today are $90 per barrel, instead of the $30 per barrel that they would be if not for the environmentalist hamstringing of American oil production, is costing the United States at least $240 billion per year (based on the price difference alone — much more if we take into account the potential replacement of our oil imports with exports), while benefiting Qatar by $24 billion per year, and OPEC as a whole by at least $600 billion per year.

So, Al Gore has certainly earned the gratitude of the rulers of Qatar, and indeed, all of OPEC.

Christians Fleeing Persecution in Egypt

From the Telegraph (h/t Weasel Zippers):

Coptic Christian churches in the United States say they are having to expand to cope with new arrivals, as priests in cities like Cairo and Alexandria talk of a new climate of fear and uncertainty.

"Most of our people are afraid," Father Mina Adel, a priest at the Church of Two Saints in Alexandria said. "Not a few are leaving - for America, Canada and Australia. Dozens of families from this church alone are trying to go too."

... But the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in parliamentary and presidential elections has changed the mood - particularly as the biggest opposition party is the even more hardline Salafist movement which wants strict Sharia law implemented.

... The biggest change in attitudes has come since the passing of a new constitution giving Sharia law more prominence.

"With the new constitution, the new laws that are expected, and the majority in parliament I don't believe we can be treated on an equal basis," said a congregation leader in Cairo's Church of St Mary and St John the Baptist.

... The United States, like other countries, does not distinguish visa applications by religion, so there are no absolute figures. One estimate put the number of Coptic emigrants in 2011 at 100,000, of whom more than 40,000 went to the US.

What Music Reveals of the Decline of Civilization

I recently came across this 2007 article by Mark Steyn on music and what it reveals about the decline of popular culture. It's a lengthy article, but worth the read. Just a snippet:

“Popular culture” is more accurately a “present-tense culture”: You’re celebrating the millennium but you can barely conceive of anything before the mid-1960s. We’re at school longer than any society in human history, entering kindergarten at four or five and leaving college the best part of a quarter-century later—or thirty years later in Germany. Yet in all those decades we exist in the din of the present. A classical education considers society as a kind of iceberg, and teaches you the seven-eighths below the surface. Today, we live on the top eighth bobbing around in the flotsam and jetsam of the here and now. And, without the seven-eighths under the water, what’s left on the surface gets thinner and thinner.

So the “Music” chapter is the most difficult one for young fans of The Closing Of The American Mind—because it’s the point at which you realize just how much Allan Bloom means it. And by “young fans,” I mean anyone under the age of Mick Jagger, who features heavily in that section. ...

For Bloom to write his chapter on “Music” seems to many of us braver than attacking the 1960s or the race hucksters or his various other targets. No-one wants to be Mister Squaresville. And it’s interesting to see the reaction it gets from readers. Told by Bloom that they know nothing about Brahms or Mozart, they respond that he knows nothing about … well, whomsoever they happen to dig. ...

But Bloom is writing about rock music the way someone from the pre-rock generation experiences it. You’ve no interest in the stuff, you don’t buy the albums, you don’t tune to the radio stations, you would never knowingly seek out a rock and roll experience—and yet it’s all around you. ... Whether or not rock music is the soundtrack for the age that its more ambitious proponents tout it as, it’s a literal soundtrack: it’s like being in a movie with a really bad score. So Bloom’s not here to weigh the merit of the Beatles vs. Pink Floyd vs. Madonna vs. Niggaz with Attitude vs. Eminem vs. Green Day. ... [H]e’s not doing album reviews, he’s pondering the state of an entire society with a rock aesthetic.

That’s another reason I don’t like the term “popular culture”—because hardly any individual examples of popular culture are that popular. I don’t mean that whatever the current Number One single is this week will sell far fewer copies than the Number Ones of the 1940s, but in the sense that a gangsta rapper is not as popular as Puccini was ninety years ago, or Franz Lehár a century ago, or Offenbach. Popular culture has dwindled down to a bunch of mutually hostile unpopular popular cultures. The only thing about it that’s universally popular is its overall undemanding aesthetic.

So Bloom is less concerned with music criticism than with what happens when a society’s incidental music becomes its manifesto. The key to what’s happened is in the famous first sentence of the book. “There is,” writes the author, “one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.” To quote the African dictator in a Tom Stoppard play, a relatively free press is a free press run by one of my relatives. A relative culture ends up ever shorter of any relatives to relate to. In educational theory, it’s not about culture vs. “counter-culture” but rather what I once called lunch-counterculture: It’s all lined up for you and you pick what you want. It’s the display case of rotating pies at the diner: one day the student might pick Milton, the next Bob Dylan. But, if Milton and Bob Dylan are equally “valid,” equally worthy of study, then Bob Dylan will be studied and Milton will languish. And so it’s proved, most exhaustively, in music.

"Unforeseen" Social Effects of China's One-Child Policy

Discovery Magazine reports on unforeseen social effects due to China's one-child policy, including that children born after implementation of the policy were less trusting and less trustworthy, more self-centered, and less cooperative. I'm not sure, when considering a generation of only-children that this should be considered "unforeseen."

N. American and Australian Biker Gangs in Europe

The Daily Mail reports on an influx of North American and Australian "violent biker gangs" into Europe, raising concerns that it could lead to conflict with existing gangs over the lucrative drug trade. 

Violent biker gangs from Australia, Canada and the US have arrived in Europe prompting fears of a battle for organised crime markets throughout the continent.

Britain has been warned that turf wars could break out as 'Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs' fight for control over the drugs, weapons and human trafficking criminal markets.

The European Union's law enforcement agency has now warned of a repeat of the 1990s biker wars that left at least 11 dead.

Europol said the arrival of notorious gangs including Comancheros and Rebels from Australia, Rock Machine from Canada and Mongols and Vagos from the US has exacerbated tensions with established clubs.

It has informed police forces across the continent that established gangs are expandings and said there are already ongoing territorial battles with organised crime groups.

Football hooligans from Britain and the continent, as well as former military personnel, right-wing extremists and prison gangs are among those expected to be targeted for recruitment.

Europol said the four main groups - Outlaws, Hells Angels, Bandidos and Gremium MC - were all increasing their membership, particularly in north east and south east Europe.

California Falls Below Replacement Birth Rate

Bad news for CalPERS. The Daily Mail reports:

With childbirth shrinking significantly in all major ethnic and racial groups since 2000, the state has now slipped below the ‘replacement rate’ of 2.1 babies per woman of childbearing age.

And with the ‘babyboom’ generation set to retire, there are not enough children born to fulfill the space they leave as taxpayers.

In 1970, California averaged about 21 seniors per 100 working age adults. By 2030, that number is predicted to rise to 36 per cent of working age adults.

... this demographic shift mirrors those in other states, including New York, Illinois, Michigan and Massachusetts.

This Is Where Gun Registration Leads

From WND, Phil Elmore, in the face of New York's threatened gun confiscation, describes why he finally sold all of guns. He notes:

The result [of the proposed gun confiscation laws] is that a few hunting weapons and a few antiquated firearms designs will remain nominally legal, while most of the weapons currently in private hands in the state will be outlawed. Their owners will, with the stroke of a pen, become criminals. What is worse, many of those owners will be faced with a stark choice: Comply or die.

Unless you’ve never purchased a rifle new from a store, unless you’ve never held a New York State pistol permit, there exists a record in this state telling the government that you own guns. In the case of your handguns, your government knows precisely what you own by make, model and serial number. There is no hiding what you have. There is no quiet noncompliance, no silent refusal to turn in such weapons. If you refuse, the state will know. If they know, they will send officials to your door to take them. That is what confiscation is. When that happens, you can either give them up, or you can resist. If you resist, you will die. You will be outmanned and outgunned by the tyrannical state, now and always, because your fellow citizens are cowards.

(Emphasis in original).

Venezuela Tackles Hoarding

In a Financial Times article linked to by Drudge, it notes the following:

Meanwhile, Mr Maduro on Tuesday showed he would continue the radical economic path of Venezuela’s ailing president as he cracked down on what he claimed was hoarding and speculation by private companies.

In reaction to opposition claims that the Opec nation was suffering from a power vacuum in Mr Chávez’s absence, the government made a show of force by sending troops to take control of food distribution networks, including Venezuela’s six private sugar mills, as scarcity of basic goods riled shoppers.

Although little is known about the policy preferences of Mr Maduro, a former trade unionist, the move signals that Mr Chávez’s controversial economic management is unlikely to be substantially moderated under a government led by Venezuela’s vice-president if the socialist leader’s cancer forces him to relinquish power.

Cracking down on "hoarders" is part and parcel with food and commodity shortages or price spikes. That is one of the reasons OPSEC is so important as to your food storage.

"The New Liberal Aristocracy" and an Introduction to Spengler

Victor Davis Hansen writes at the National Review about what he terms the New Liberal Aristocracy (as compared to the old ones, such as the Kennedy clan). What he notes is not so much the hypocrisy, which as always been present, but that they do not even attempt to hide it--they have no shame. 

But the new liberal aristocracy is far less discreet than the old. Most are self-made multimillionaires who acquired their money through government service, finance, law, investment, or marriage. If the old-money liberals lived it up tastefully within their walled family compounds, the new liberal aristocrats are unashamed about living openly in a manner quite at odds with their professed populist ideology.

Take former vice president Al Gore. He has made a fortune of nearly a billion dollars warning against global warming — supposedly shrinking glaciers, declining polar-bear populations, and the like — while simultaneously offering timely remedies from his own green corporations, all reminiscent of the methodology of Roman millionaire Marcus Licinius Crassus, who profited from fires and putting them out. Now Nobel laureate Gore has sold his interest in a failing cable-television station for about $100 million — and to the anti-American Al-Jazeera, which is owned by the fossil-fuel-rich royal family of Qatar. Gore rushed to close the deal before the first of the year to avoid the very capital-gains tax hikes that he has advocated for others less well off. That’s a liberal trifecta: enhancing a fossil-fuel consortium, attempting to beat tax hikes, and empowering an anti-American and anti-Semitic media conglomerate run by an authoritarian despot — all from a former vice president of the United States who crusades for ending our reliance on fossil fuels and for raising taxes on the wealthy.

Class warrior Barack Obama spent his winter break in a ritzy rental on a Hawaiian beach. It cost the taxpayers $7 (or is it $20?) million to jet him and his entourage 6,000 miles for their tropical vacation. But whether the first family escapes to Hawaii or Martha’s Vineyard or Costa del Sol, the image of a 1 percent lifestyle seems a bit at odds with the president’s professed disdain for “millionaires and billionaires,” “fat cats,” and “corporate-jet owners” who supposedly can afford such tony retreats only because they have done something suspect. The media used to ridicule grandees like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush for wearing cowboy hats and wasting precious presidential time chopping wood or chain-sawing dry underbrush on their respective overgrown ranches. But for liberal class warriors, golfing and body surfing in the tropical Pacific while staying at a zillionaire’s estate become needed downtime to prepare for the looming battle against 1 percenters. One wonders about the conversation between the Obamas and their landlord. “We will stay here, but only on the condition that you remember that you didn’t build it”?

... To be cool is now not just to be rich, but to appear caring. Hollywood still seeks hundreds of millions in tax breaks unavailable to small businesses without shame because it is so manifestly compassionate. Occupy Wall Street does not camp out in Beverly Hills or Malibu, although the likes of Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio make more per year than do most Wall Street fat cats. The public wonders why Hollywood is so liberal — is it the Bohemian culture surrounding the arts? The natural creative temperament of actors? The Lotus-land surf and sun of the southern-California beach milieu? Perhaps. But penance plays a role as well. For the overpaid and pampered Hollywood movie star, calling for raising taxes, banning guns, ending global warming, and legalizing gay marriage means never having to feel too bad about living on the beach and making, under our capitalist system, more money in a month than do many Americans in a lifetime.

It is this worship of money, intrusive central government, and ... as Hansen points out ... the birth of a new aristocracy that brings me to my second subject--Oswald Spengler. Spengler, of course, has been the inspiration for David P. Goldman who writes a column (under the pseudonym "Spengler") at the Asia Times. However, even where his ideas did not directly inspire, they are reflected elsewhere. (See, e.g., Angelo M. Codevilla's "America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution"). Robert W. Merry, at the National Interest, has an article providing an overview and summary of Spengler's main thesis, as well as some background on the man. Some key points:

But two elements of Spengler’s thinking merit particular attention. One is his rejection of the “Idea of Progress,” that hoary Western notion that mankind has advanced over the centuries through quickening stages of development, from primitiveness and barbarism to enlightenment and civilization—and that mankind will continue to advance through the human experience on earth. The Idea of Progress has animated the thinking of nearly all significant Western philosophy since its first stirrings in the thirteenth century. As writer and philosopher Robert Nisbet put it, “No single idea has been more important than, perhaps as important as, the idea of progress in Western civilization.”

In our own time, the Idea of Progress serves as progenitor of the concepts of Eurocentrism and American exceptionalism. It was the underpinning of Francis Fukuyama’s famous “End of History” perception that Western democratic capitalism represents the culmination of human civic development. It fuels today’s foreign-policy belief, so prevalent across the political spectrum, that America’s world role is to remake other societies and cultures in the Western image.

Spengler, by contrast, embraced a view of history as the story of various discrete civilizations, each with its own distinct culture, that emerged, developed, flowered and then declined. This cyclical view subsumes certain underlying perceptions. First, since civilizations and cultures are distinct, there can be no universal culture. No body of thought emanating from one culture can be imposed upon another, either peacefully or through force. And civilizational decline is an immutable rule that applies to all civilizations, including the West.

The second noteworthy element of Spengler’s thought is his view, based on his study of eight great civilizations, that the process of decline carries with it a surge of imperial fervor and a flight toward Caesarism. Hegemonic impulses come to the fore along with forms of dictatorship. As Charles and Mary Beard wrote in The American Spirit, “Spengler’s judgment of history certainly conveyed to American readers the notion that ‘Western civilization’ was doomed and that another Caesar, the conquering man of blood and iron, would bring it to an end.” This phase, which Spengler calls the civilizational phase, can last a couple centuries, and the question Americans face today, looking at the world through the Spenglerian prism, is whether their country, as leader of the West, is in the process of embracing these elements of Spengler’s civilizational phase.

... [H]e pictures the great cultures as essentially organic entities whose phases of emergence, development and decline are remarkably similar from culture to culture. “Cultures are organisms,” he writes. “If we disentangle their shapes we may find the primitive Culture-form that underlies all individual Cultures and is reflected in their various manifestations.” That’s why, says Spengler, the pursuit of historical analogy is so critical to understanding the “Cycles of History”: by studying the patterns of past civilizations we can better understand our own, including its current state of cultural health or decline.

Each of these civilizations, says Spengler, is born when a people in a particular region rather suddenly develops a distinctive way of looking at the world. This world outlook is entirely fresh, unencumbered by influences from other cultures. And as this new culture emerges it develops a sense of its own mortality, which stirs powerful longings for fulfillment, which in turn unleash a passion for creative expression, new methods of inquiry and new modes of knowledge—all conforming to the distinctive “soul” of the new culture.

The passion for creative expression and new strains of culture knowledge runs on for centuries, generally a thousand years or more unless interrupted by external forces. But eventually it peters out. Then begins that civilizational phase, characterized by the deterioration of the folk traditions and innocent enthusiasms of the culture. Its cultural essence, once of the soil and spread throughout the “mother-region” in town, village and city, now becomes the domain of a few rich and powerful “world-cities,” which twist and distort the concepts of old and replace them with cynicism, cosmopolitanism, irony and a money culture.

Thus, Spengler draws a sharp distinction between culture and civilization. The former is the phase of creative energy, the “soul” of the countryside; the latter is a time of material preoccupation, the “intellect” of the city. As Hughes elaborates, “So long as the culture phase lasts, the leading figures in a society manifest a sure sense of artistic ‘style’ and personal ‘form.’ Indeed, the breakdown of style and form most clearly marks the transition from culture to civilization.”

WE PAUSE over this thinking to ponder its implications. Recall that Spengler wrote nearly a century ago, when the Western avant-garde movement was merely a tiny knot of artists bent on assaulting the conventional sensibilities of the prevailing culture. As author and critic Lionel Trilling once explained, in Spengler’s time these people weren’t interested in talking to the masses. Their art was rarefied and special, designed exclusively for the avant-garde itself, those inclined to look down on the masses and on conventional thought and culture. Few at that time predicted that this avant-garde cynicism and cultural nihilism eventually would be absorbed into the popular culture itself and be accepted, even embraced, by large numbers of people within the so-called masses—the same masses under assault by the avant-garde. But Spengler saw it coming, as merely the inevitable consequence of any civilization’s transition from its cultural to its civilizational phase.

He also predicted the West’s coming decline in birthrates brought about largely by the advent of feminism, also a feature of Spengler’s civilizational phase. Whereas the advent and success of feminism in the West is heralded in our time as a sign of civic progress, Spengler’s study of other civilizational cycles convinced him that it was just the opposite—a reflection of cultural decline, largely because it curtailed the production of children. As he puts it:

The primary woman, the peasant woman, is mother. The whole vocation towards which she has yearned from childhood is included in that one word. But now emerges the Ibsen woman, the comrade, the heroine of a whole megalopolitan literature from Northern drama to Parisian novel. Instead of children, she has soul-conflicts; marriage is a craft-art for the achievement of “mutual understanding.” It is all the same whether the case against children is the American lady’s who would not miss a season for anything, or the Parisienne’s who fears that her lover would leave her, or an Ibsen heroine’s who “lives for herself”—they all belong to themselves and they are all unfruitful.

This phenomenon, says Spengler, is seen in every society in transition from the cultural to the civilizational phase, and in all instances it leads to what he calls “appalling depopulation.” Spengler saw a similar phenomenon in the realm of politics. Looking at Athens of 400 bc and Caesar’s Rome, he sees a progressive degradation:

As everywhere, the elections, from being nominations of class-representatives, have become the battle-ground of party candidates, an area ready for the intervention of money, and . . . of ever bigger and bigger money. “The greater became the wealth which was capable of concentration in the hands of individuals, the more the fight for political power developed into a question of money.”

But what most clearly marks the civilizational phase is what he considered the inevitable gravitation toward Caesarism and empire. Spengler’s historical analogies taught him that the transition from culture to civilization unleashes a kind of Will to Power, manifest internally in a drive to consolidate power within the civilization, and externally in a drive to assert dominance over other peoples. “Imperialism,” writes Spengler, “is Civilization unadulterated.”

... IN ASSESSING our own time through the Spenglerian prism, a number of perceptions emerge. First, Spengler predicted with uncanny foresight a number of Western developments of the past century, including the rise of world-cities and the money culture, the emergence of a powerful feminism focused on the yearnings of the Ibsen woman, the force of money in politics, declining birthrates and the popular embrace of avant-garde cultural sensibilities, awash in cynicism and cosmopolitanism and bent on destroying the cultural verities of old.

Second, Spengler makes a powerful point when he says these are not characteristics and developments found in ascendant civilizations. On the contrary, many are signs of cultural and societal decadence and decline. Although the hallowed Idea of Progress has shrouded this truth from Western society, the reality is clear: the Western cultural decline, as understood and predicted by Spengler, is now complete. ...

Third, Spengler’s rejection of the notion of a universal culture provides provocative fodder for Western thinking at a time when that notion is embraced widely as a bedrock of American politics. ...

... Thus, it isn’t difficult to see why Spengler doesn’t resonate in today’s America or the West more generally, with their embrace of the Idea of Progress and the doctrine of Eurocentrism. Nor is it difficult to see why Spengler’s Cycles of History would spur yawns in societies that have come to revere—and see as progress—all the elements of the civilizational ethos foreseen by Spengler and identified by him as hallmarks of cultural decline.

NONE OF this was lamented by Spengler as he peered into the West’s civilizational future. Nor did he lament the age of Western imperialism and the decline of democratic structures that he also saw on the horizon. These too were simply inevitable consequences of the natural developmental cycles through which the West was passing. Indeed, as a product of the West he thrilled to the idea of its culminating phase of power and glory.

But modern Westerners—and Americans in particular—might want to ponder the implications of Spengler’s prediction that the first nation of the West would lead that civilization into an era of imperialism in corollary with serious erosions in its democratic structures. ...

 Although not discussed in Merry's article, one of the important elements of Spengler's model of the transition from "culture" to "civilization" was the rise of the "World City"--cosmopolitan urban centers to which money and power gravitated. He saw these World Cities as achieving a political and societal dominance over rural regions, and even lesser cities, with the concomitant disdain and exploitation that would result.

Before we leave the topic, however, it would be worthwhile to reread Codevilla's article (cited to above) and how he describes the current American aristocracy:

Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.

... Much less does membership in the ruling class depend on high academic achievement. To see something closer to an academic meritocracy consider France, where elected officials have little power, a vast bureaucracy explicitly controls details from how babies are raised to how to make cheese, and people get into and advance in that bureaucracy strictly by competitive exams. Hence for good or ill, France’s ruling class are bright people — certifiably. Not ours. But didn’t ours go to Harvard and Princeton and Stanford? Didn’t most of them get good grades? Yes. But while getting into the Ecole Nationale d’Administration or the Ecole Polytechnique or the dozens of other entry points to France’s ruling class requires outperforming others in blindly graded exams, and graduating from such places requires passing exams that many fail, getting into America’s “top schools” is less a matter of passing exams than of showing up with acceptable grades and an attractive social profile. American secondary schools are generous with their As. Since the 1970s, it has been virtually impossible to flunk out of American colleges. And it is an open secret that “the best” colleges require the least work and give out the highest grade point averages. No, our ruling class recruits and renews itself not through meritocracy but rather by taking into itself people whose most prominent feature is their commitment to fit in. The most successful neither write books and papers that stand up to criticism nor release their academic records. Thus does our ruling class stunt itself through negative selection. But the more it has dumbed itself down, the more it has defined itself by the presumption of intellectual superiority.

Assuming that Spengler's theory is correct, we are well into the "civilization stage," and in fact, have reached the point of a dictatorship, albeit in the form of an autocracy rather than a single "strong man" leader. Although, perhaps that lies in a our future.

Iran Launches More Cyber-Attacks Against U.S. Financial Institutions

From the Washington Free Beacon:

Iran is continuing aggressive cyber attacks against U.S. financial institutions and officials say the U.S. government has failed to take steps to halt the electronic strikes.

The sophisticated denial-of-service cyber attacks have been underway for several months and involve Iranian-origin hackers who flood banking and financial institution web sites with massive log-in attempts that disrupt or halt remote banking services.

“The are going after the same types of sites,” said an intelligence official familiar with reports of the attacks.

... Yet the White House is in charge of directing any counterattacks on nation-states and so far has refused to authorize aggressive action, such as retaliatory counter cyber attacks.

The intelligence official suggested that the administration is reluctant to take action because of the president’s conciliatory policies toward Iran. President Barack Obama failed to back Iran’s democratic opposition in 2009 and has taken limited diplomatic action against Iran’s illicit nuclear program.

... The hackers called the attacks Operation Ababil and stepped up their efforts last week, prompting PNC Bank to warn customers about the disruptions.

... Cyber security analysts said an Iranian group called the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters carried out the attacks.

On the hacker forum pastebin.com, the group said in a statement posted Dec. 25 that a “second phase” of their attacks were underway over the past several weeks.

The group said it has targeted JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp, Citigroup Citibank, Wells Fargo & Company, U.S. Bancorp, PNC Financial Services Group, BB&T Corporation, SunTrust Banks, and Regions Financial Corporation.

One cyber forensic specialist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the al-Qassam Cyber Fighters claim to be a group of private hackers but their activities appear state-sponsored.

“Except for their statements they have no presence and it feels much more like a state-sponsored action,” meaning backed by the Tehran regime, the specialist said.

Iranian officials have been quoted in state-run press accounts as promising to conduct cyber attacks against the United States and other western states in retaliation for cyber attacks against Iran’s nuclear program.

...Ten major U.S. banks were hit by the cyber attacks in September during the first wave of attacks.

Around the time the attacks were detected, the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff stated in a report that the cyber strikes on financial institutions were Iranian-backed aggression.

“Iran’s cyber aggression should be viewed as a component, alongside efforts like support for terrorism, to the larger covert war Tehran is waging against the west,” the report, dated Sept. 14, stated.

"10 Things Happy People Do Differently"

From Paula Davis-Laack at the Huffington-Post. Her list:

1.  They build a strong social fabric.

2.  They engage in activities that fit their strengths, values and lifestyle.

3.  They practice gratitude.

4.  They have an optimistic thinking style.

5.  They know it's good to do good.

6.  They know that material wealth is only a very small part of the equation.

7.  They develop healthy coping strategies.

8.  They focus on health.

9.  They cultivate spiritual emotions.

10. They have direction.

Read the whole thing.

Japan Overdue for Massive Volcanic Eruption

DW News reports that a catastrophic eruption is brewing in Japan:

One of the most seismically active countries in the world and home to more than 100 active volcanoes, experts say Japan is at risk of a major volcanic eruption that would cause chaos across the nation.
... That event was nearly 100 years ago, but Yoichi Nakamura, a professor of volcanology at Utsunomiya University, north of Tokyo, believes that an eruption on a similar scale is imminent. And a blast with a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) reading of four would cause havoc across large areas of this densely populated nation.

"In recent years, we have not had a big eruption, but I have been researching the history of volcanoes in Japan and the evidence suggests that there is an event of VEI four or three every decade or so, but that has not happened for a long time," he said.

"The last really big eruption was Sakurajima and that was in 1914," he pointed out. "I'm very worried about a major event and the possibility that something serious will occur is increasing year by year."

The fear is that vast reserves of magma are building up beneath the craters of a number of volcanoes across the nation and a serious seismic event could trigger an eruption and the release of torrents of lava and pyroclastic material.

... Should a VEI five event take place [from an eruption of Mt. Fuji], Tokyo would once again be smothered in ash, buildings would collapse under the weight, roads and railways would become impassable and infrastructure would be severely damaged by lava flows. It would take weeks for services to return to normal, he warns, and the cost would be huge.

Japan's Debt Crises

From Der Spiegel:

Today's Tokyo has become a permanent mecca of consumption, its boroughs seemingly divided according to target markets. ...

This world of glitter, however, is but an illusion. For years, the world's third-largest economy has been unapologetically living on borrowed cash, more so than any other country in the world. In recent decades, Japanese governments have piled up debts worth some €11 trillion ($14.6 trillion). This corresponds to 230 percent of annual gross domestic product, a debt level that is far higher than Greece's 165 percent.

Such profligate spending has turned Japan into a ticking time bomb .... Japan, the postwar economic miracle, has never managed to recover from the stock market crash and real estate crisis that convulsed the country in the 1990s. The government had to bail out banks; insurance companies went bust. Since then, annual growth rates have often been paltry and tax revenues don't even cover half of government expenditures. Indeed, the country has gotten trapped in an inescapable spiral of deficit spending.

The fact that this tragedy has been playing out in relative obscurity can be attributed to a bizarre phenomenon: In contrast to the debt-ridden economies in the euro zone, Japan continues to pay hardly any interest on what it borrows. While Greece has recently had to cough up interest at double-digit rates, for example, the comparable figure for Japan has been a mere 0.75 percent. Even Germany, the euro zone's healthiest economy, has to pay more.
The reason is simple: Unlike countries in the euro zone, Japan borrows most of its money from its own people. Domestic banks and insurers have purchased 95 percent of the country's sovereign debt using the savings deposits of the general population. What's more, the Japanese are apparently so convinced that their country will be able to pay off its debts one day that they continue to lend their government a seemingly endless amount of money.

Experts warn that this system cannot go on for much longer. Takatoshi Ito ... and a colleague have calculated that even if the Japanese people invested all of their assets in sovereign bonds, it would only be enough to cover 12 years of state expenditures.

But who is supposed to come to Japan's rescue once that point has been reached? "If Japan is forced to go looking for investors abroad, a debt crisis will be unavoidable," says Jörg Krämer, the chief economist of Commerzbank, Germany's second-largest bank.

[The governor of the Bank of Japan] no longer adheres to the disciplined monetary polices his Western counterparts preach. Instead, Shirakawa keeps the money printers going to stimulate the economy. Since 2011, his bank has launched emergency programs with a total volume of around €900 billion. In comparison, the euro bailout funds jointly financed by the euro zone's 17 member states only add up to €700 billion.
For some time now, Japanese banks have been able to borrow money from the central bank at interest rates close to zero. By following this policy, Shirakawa is doing exactly what a number of European politicians -- and particularly ones from cash-strapped Southern European countries -- have been asking the European Central Bank (ECB) to do: He is financing the Japanese government. He denies doing so, and the method he uses are circuitous, but it amounts to the same thing.

So far, though, his strategy has done little to help. "At the moment," Shirakawa admits, "the effect of our monetary policy in stimulating economic growth is very limited." The cheap money is stuck in the banks rather than flowing into the real economy. "The money is there, liquidity is abundant, interest rates are very low -- and, still, firms do not make use of accommodative financial conditions," Shirakawa adds. "The return on investment is too low."
... Predicting the potential effects of the Japanese debt crisis is extremely difficult. But researcher Schulz is convinced that there won't be any "major crash." Out of self-preservation, he says, it is unlikely that large holders of Japanese bonds, such as domestic banks, would shed those bonds very quickly. Such a move would severely damage faith in Japanese debt and, by extension, in the banks that hold that debt. Instead, he predicts "many small crises" in the coming years. He and other economists further believe that there is plenty of room to raise taxes as a countermeasure; taxes in Japan remain relatively low.

Nevertheless, warns Commerzbank economist Krämer, one shouldn't give short shrift to the potential dangers of the Japanese debt crisis. "The psychological effect could be the most dangerous one," he says. What would happen, for example, were investors to suddenly lose faith in other heavily indebted countries such as the US.

"Japan remains one of the world's biggest industrial nations, and the yen is an important currency for international monetary transactions," says Asia expert Gern. "If everything were to spin out of control, then the world would have a real problem."

Notice anything similar between the Fed's policy and that of the Bank of Japan? We are going through the same motions--and likely will have the same results. 

Evacuation of Isfahan. What's Going On?

Yesterday, I saw a couple stories indicating that Iranian officials had ordered the evacuation of the city of Isfahan, a city of 1 and 1/2 million people. (See here and here for instance). Supposedly the evacuation was due to high levels of pollution, but rumors have circulated that it might be due to a radiation leak from a nearby uranium enrichment facility. (See here and here). However, Before Its News indicates that it is a voluntary evacuation, and similar to prior warnings in Tehran when air pollution has become particularly bad. However, I haven't seen anything further from the major media other than the very brief BBC report.

Argentina Demands Return of the Falkland Islands

A couple articles from the Telegraph on the continuing war of words over the Falkland Islands. First, Argentina's president, Cristina Kirchner, has issued an open letter to David Cameron, the British prime minister, calling on the UK to turn the Falkland Islands over to Argentina. The letter erroneously claims that Argentina occupied the islands in 1833, but was expelled by the British. (The Islands had been claimed by the British long before that date, and the failed attempt by Argentina to establish a penal colony less than two months before the British expelled them doesn't really count as Argentinian settlement. The British established the first permanent settlement in the 1840s). Of course, the native Islanders don't want to have anything to do with Argentina.

Dr Barry Elsby, Member of the Legislative Assembly of the Falkland Islands, told The Daily Telegraph: “We are not a colony – our relationship with the United Kingdom is by choice.

“Unlike the Government of Argentina, the United Kingdom respects the right of our people to determine our own affairs, a right that is enshrined in the UN Charter and which is which is ignored by Argentina.” 

Politicians Lied About the True Purpose of the Common Market?

Say it isn't so!

Christopher Booker writes at the Daily Mail about how the British were deceived into joining the European Union. He notes:

The real story, surprisingly, goes back to the 1920s, when a senior League of Nations official, Frenchman Jean Monnet, first began to dream of building a ‘United States of Europe’, very much on the lines that decades later would shape the European Union as it is today.

After World War II, Monnet, by then the second most powerful man in France, finally set the project on its way. He knew there was no chance of bringing such an astonishingly ambitious vision into being all at once. So his plan was that it should gradually be constructed, piece by stealthy piece, without ever declaring too openly what was intended to be its ultimate goal.

At first it should be presented as just a trading arrangement, the ‘Common Market’ set up in 1957 by the Treaty of Rome. But the essence of that treaty was to create the core institutions of what Monnet always intended should one day be the ‘Government of Europe’.

The idea was to work for ‘ever closer union’.

Treaty by treaty, it would take over more powers from national governments, based on the sacred principle that once power to make laws was handed over to Brussels it could never be given back.

Ever more countries would be brought into the net, until the project reached its ultimate goal as a super-government, with its own president and parliament, its own currency and armed forces, its own flag and anthem — all the attributes of a fully-fledged nation state.

Thus, stealthily assembled over decades, would this new ‘country called Europe’ finally take its place on the world stage. What we found most shocking in researching this story was that, when Britain’s leaders first considered joining the project, they were made fully aware of this hidden agenda.

As we see from Cabinet papers and other documents of the early Sixties, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and his ‘Europe Minister’ Edward Heath were put completely in the picture about the secret ‘grand plan’. But in June 1961 the Cabinet formally agreed that it must not be revealed to the British people.

In Macmillan’s words, to admit ‘the political objectives’ of the Rome Treaty would raise ‘problems of public relations’ so ‘considerable’ that they should be kept under wraps. It was vital to emphasise only the economic advantages of British entry.

Thus did Macmillan and Heath become drawn into complicity with that same web of deceit which was driving the ‘project’ itself (which is why we called our book The Great Deception).

Twice in the Sixties Britain made failed attempts to join the project — but within weeks of Heath entering Downing Street in 1970, he applied to Brussels a third time. Scarcely had negotiations begun than he learned that his future partners were already discussing the next steps along their path to full integration: a single currency, European defence forces, a common foreign policy.

Heath immediately sent word to Brussels pleading for all this to be kept quiet, because it might blow the gaffe with British voters.

For two years the negotiations continued, with Heath handing over all he was asked for, from giving away Britain’s fishing waters, the richest in the world, to become ‘a common European resource’, to the betrayal of our Commonwealth partners by excluding their goods from what had been for many their main export market.

Finally, Heath got what he was after: entry to the club — although he still pretended that the Common Market was little more than a trading arrangement.

On the day we entered, he told the British people on television that any fears that ‘we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty’ were ‘completely unjustified’.

This was a deliberate lie, as no one knew better than him and the senior Foreign Office official who two years earlier had written a secret paper on ‘Sovereignty’.

The paper chillingly spelled out how it would be the end of the century before the British people woke up to how much of their power to govern themselves and make their own laws had been given away — by which time it would be too late.

The Coat: A Story of Charity

A true story from the childhood of Heber J. Grant: