Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

I am a huge fan of dystopian Science Fiction, especially those with a pronounced Libertarian slant.  My favorite authors in the genre are Robert Heinlein, George Orwell, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournell, Aldous Huxley, Ayn Rand, and Suzanne Collins. 

Joe Biden’s handlers have been following the plot lines featured by those authors, all from the point of view from the villains.  They most likely have never read any of these great works.   Their dystopian playbooks are based on the collective works of Karl Marx, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Chairman Mao.  Joe Biden’s Cabal should have read the same works I have read; they would have learned some valuable lessons about the various levels of hell created by collectivist policies.

Robert Heinlein wrote a short story, Free Men, and a novel, Sixth Column, where communist nations launched nuclear strikes on the US, and then invaded.  In both stories, written in the late 1940s, the communist invaders completely curtailed travel to ensure control over the conquered US.  Curtailing the freedom of movement is one of the favorite ploys used by dystopian regimes to exert complete control over a population.   The Biden Regime is using safety and climate change as a justification to curtail the freedom of movement of Americans, as chronicled in the following two articles:

NTSB Recommends All New Cars Be Equipped With Technology to Make Speeding Difficult or Impossible (thefederalistpapers.org)

In a recent development, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has proposed a measure that has sparked considerable debate.

The recommendation is for all new automobiles to be equipped with intelligent speed assistance (ISA) technology, a system designed to make speeding difficult or impossible.

The proposed ISA technology works by utilizing GPS and sign recognition to adapt the vehicle’s speed to the local limit.

Its approach is distinct from traditional speed limiters as it varies the maximum speed based on the location.

‘Dystopian Science Fiction’: Thomas Massie’s Amendment to Stop ‘Kill Switch’ in Vehicles Fails (breitbart.com)

Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-KY) amendment to stop what has been dubbed a “kill switch” in vehicles beginning in 2026 under the guise of “passive drunk driving technology” failed last week — something that largely fell under the radar as all eyes remain on newly-elected House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Congress passing his stopgap funding bill this week.

This battle broke out last week, as Massie presented an amendment, which essentially states that none of the funds made available in the Biden-approved Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed in 2021, may be used to implement Section 24220 of the bill.

George Orwell’s 1984 has long been the playbook for dystopian regimes: Biden Admin ‘Working With’ Social Media to ‘Counter Misinformation’ on Economy – The Political Insider

“The White House official said the administration is working with TikTok creators to tell positive stories of Biden’s economic stewardship while also working with social media platforms to counter misinformation.”

If it seems strange to you that the government would just brazenly admit to making naked propaganda, well, that’s just where we are now.

We’ve witnessed what that entails thanks to the release of the Twitter Files that uncovered that the administration, via the arm of the Department of Justice and various aspects of the Intelligence Community, manipulated and infiltrated social media companies to bury factual news stories and infringe on the First Amendment rights of countless users.

NewsGuard Sells Government-Funded Censorship Tool (thefederalist.com)

The for-profit censorship giant NewsGuard is now selling its “Misinformation Fingerprints” technology to private companies to silence Americans’ speech — technology the federal government helped NewsGuard develop to the tune of nearly $750,000 in taxpayer funding. So while NewsGuard is now making headlines for trying to take down Elon Musk’s X, the bigger story concerns the federal government’s funding of the censorship-industrial complex.

In September 2021, NewsGuard was awarded a grant through the Small Business Innovation and Research program, which funds early-stage companies to develop products and technologies that can be helpful for government,” NewsGuard announced in its 2021 Social Impact Report. “Under the grant,” the report explained, “NewsGuard plans to further develop the Misinformation Fingerprints tool and test the effectiveness of the Fingerprints in detecting state-sponsored disinformation campaigns.”

Federal records show the Department of Defense funded the Small Business Innovation and Research program’s award of nearly $750,000 to NewsGuard for the further development and testing of the Misinformation Fingerprints tool. And according to NewsGuard’s 2021 Social Impact Report, its “Misinformation Fingerprints” catalog traced “762 false narratives,” “providing one-of-a-kind tracking seeds for the AI tools used by defense industry clients.”

This whole transgender craze is right out of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: Even the Census Bureau Is Trying To Promote Radical Gender Ideology | The Heritage Foundation

The Census Bureau is asking Congress for $10 million to figure out how best to promote the fiction that sex is assigned at birth, rather than the scientific fact that it is present at conception. It is part of a new set of questions on sexual orientation and gender identity that the bureau wants to ask residents even as young as 15.

This expansion beyond race and ethnicity represents a new foray into sexual identity—one more step in the bureau’s decadeslong degeneration into an agency completely captured by the identity-mongering industry, and which produces the supposedly “victim” categories that the industry requires.

The Biden Administration Is Scheming To Take Your Kids Away (thefederalist.com)

Democrats have been suggesting taking children away from ‘non-affirming’ parents for years now, but Biden’s HHS is getting the ball rolling…The Biden administration has proposed new rules for foster care, which would treat any parent rejecting LGBT ideology as a child abuser.

The bumpy road ahead in Israel

Posted: November 28, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
Tags: ,

By Christopher Harper

After reporting on the Middle East for many years, I realize how difficult it is to find any lasting solutions. Also, predictions about the region are about as accurate and useful as those of the talking heads paraded on national television.

But here are some background and thoughts about the road ahead.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which control Gaza, are vicious organizations. The Palestinian Authority, which rules part of the West Bank, is corrupt. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is inept.

The leadership of all three governments must go.

Hamas came to the forefront in 2006 when it split from the Palestinian Authority, which was formed in the 1990s to rule over parts of the West Bank and Gaza. Many Palestinians voted against the leadership of the PA, which was controlled by the Fatah branch of the Palestine Liberation Organization, because of widespread corruption. Yasser Arafat, the leader of both the PLO and Fatah, had died two years earlier, and no one could manage the Palestinian factions. Since 2006, no elections have happened as the rift between the West Bank and Gaza widened.

How to get rid of Hamas and Islamic Jihad? The Israeli armed forces have pushed through northern Gaza, and most of the Palestinian leadership has fled to southern Gaza on the border with Egypt. As part of the hostage and prisoner exchange, Israel must insist that the Palestinian leaders leave Gaza for other Arab countries. That happened, for example, in 1982 after Israel forced the PLO leaders to leave Lebanon for Tunisia. After that, the people of Gaza must have an internationally supervised election to choose a new government.

How to get rid of the current leadership of the PA? Again, internationally supervised elections may be the answer. Although Arafat had many detractors, he was able to keep the diverse Palestinian groups going in roughly the same direction for more than 30 years. Part of the problem with the PA was that much of the power rested with those Palestinians who lived outside of Israel and returned in the 1990s while those inside Israel’s boundaries held little influence.

Unfortunately, democracy isn’t a mainstay of Palestinian philosophy. But the current leaders have failed to improve the lot of the average Palestinian and should be held accountable.

Then there’s Netanyahu, who has been prime minister three times for 16 years, bringing a hardline attitude toward Palestinians, ignoring most of the agreements made in the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, and increasing tensions within Israel itself. Moreover, his government’s failure to anticipate the Hamas attacks on October 7 should make all Israelis doubt his leadership.

Unfortunately, Israel’s electoral system favors small groups of voters who hold extreme views on both the right and left. Citizens vote for their preferred party and not for any individual candidates. The 120 seats in the Knesset are then assigned proportionally to each party, provided that the party vote count meets the 3.25% electoral threshold. As a result of the low threshold, a typical Knesset has 10 or more factions represented. With so many parties, it is nearly impossible for one party or faction to govern alone, let alone win a majority. In the government before the war, Netanyahu had to woo the conservative religious factions, for example, to create a coalition.

With the ongoing war, the government has the support of nearly all parties. But that support will quickly dissolve when Israeli citizens and politicians look more closely at the once-vaunted intelligence agencies that missed the Hamas strategy. Fortunately, Netanyahu will likely be sent packing.

Neither Hamas nor the Israeli government will be seen as victors in the current war. That’s usually an opportunity for some serious peace negotiations, as happened after the 1973 and 1982 wars, but all sides will need new leaders and fresh ideas to create significant changes.

4th Doctor: You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views, which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.

Doctor Who: The Face of Evil pt 4 1977

Got home from work yesterday and saw this:

I’m happy for the families although my gut still thinks a deal might be dangerous but aside from that I’m confused about one thing.

We’ve had reports that Imams in the US and elsewhere have told their congregations that “claims” that Hamas took Jewish hostages on October 7th were false.

We’ve also been assured by college students and others all over the country that any such claim of Israeli women and children being taken hostage was simply propaganda. In fact many such people stated this as the reason why they were pulling down posters of the kidnapped jews.

If we are to believe these people then this hostage deal must not have taken place and our belief that these people have been returned to Israel must at best be a shared delusion or at worse a grand Zionist conspiracy running so deep that even Egypt and parts of Hamas, for reasons that are unclear, are taking part in it.

It will be interesting to see how those folks reconcile these facts with their previous claims.

Cue Tom Baker

For the past several decades Progressives have been steadily transforming the United States from a Free Market nation based on individualism into Socialist nation based on collectivism.  These radical leftists completely ignore the bloody and brutal legacy of all collectivist ideologies.  Starvation and misery are the only things that are abundant in a Communist or Socialist economy.

Today’s Progressives go to great lengths to hide the fact that the earliest colonies here in what became the United States experimented with Communism.  Those early experiments very nearly ended in total failure.  Disaster was only averted when the colonies switched to a Free Market economy based on individualism.  Plymouth Plantation was one of the colonies.  This is chronicled here in William Bradford: from History of Plymouth Plantation, c. 1650.

This first quote describes their experiment with communist:

The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients applauded by some of later times; and that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. 

It did not work out at all.

For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labor and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labors and victuals, clothes etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it.

The Pilgrims began their experiment with the most noble of intentions, it failed because human societies always falter when collectivism is attempted.

Upon the point all being to have alike, and all to do alike, they thought themselves in the like condition, and one as good as another; and so, if it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men, yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them. And would have been worse if they had been men of another condition. Let none object this is men’s corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them.

Disaster was averted and Plymouth Plantation thrived when William Bradford proposed a radical change to a free market economy based on individualism.

All this while no supply was heard of, neither knew they when they might expect any. So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other thing to go on in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance) and ranged all boys and youth under some family. This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.