Arming our enemies: From scrap metal being sold to Japan before World War II to $6 billion for Iran

Posted: October 8, 2023 by John Ruberry in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

By John Ruberry

Here’s an almost forgotten slice of history.

In 1939, Chinese Americans protested the loading of scrap iron in Oregon on a ship bound for Japan.

As you’ll see the link, there is a photograph of the protest “This iron is for bullets” and “Your wives and babies may be next,” are among the messages on the picketers’ signs.

The protesters were right.

As you of course know, two years later, Japan not only attacked Pearl Harbor, but also Guam and the Philippines, both US possessions.

Before those attacks, Japan seized Manchuria and invaded the rest of China in 1937. The Japanese committed numerous atrocities against the Chinese during the Second World War, most notoriously the Rape of Nanjing.

Last month, on September 11 no less, the Biden Administration announced it was releasing $6 billion in frozen funds to Iran, that was part of swap of American hostages held by the terrorist regime in exchange for some Iranian prisoners held here.

Swap? I call it a ransom payment.

The appeasement-minded Biden administration at the time claimed that the $6 billion can only be used for humanitarian reasons. Even if that is true, which I doubt it is, the definition of charity in the West is remarkably different than how jihadists define it.

In 2008, five former leaders of the Holy Land Foundation, which claimed to be a charity, were convicted of sending $12 million to Hamas.

Okay, yeah, I get it, the $6 billion probably isn’t in the hands of the radical mullahs in Iran yet, but like someone who knows he’s about to collect a huge inheritance, Iran is now financially confident–and it’s emboldened by Joe Biden’s weakness.

Yesterday, Hamas, the Iranian-funded terrorist group, attacked Israel in the deadliest strike against the Jewish state since the Yom Kippur War.

The Iranian mullahs call Israel “the little Satan” and America “the Big Satan.”

America may be next.

UPDATE 6:00pm EDT:

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Iran greenlit and helped plan Hamas’ attack on Israel.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Israel: I Advise General Sherman’s War Unless You Want a Replay in Years to Come

Posted: October 8, 2023 by datechguy in Israel, middle east, war
Tags: , , ,

Spock: Captain, you took a big chance.
Kirk: Did I, Mister Spock? They’ve been killing three million people a year. It had been going on for five hundred years. An actual attack wouldn’t have killed any more people than one of their computer attacks, but it would have ended their ability to make war. The fighting would have been over permanently.

Star Trek A Taste of Armageddon 1967

Our friendly neighborhood terrorists of Hamas have launched their boldest and bloodiest attack on Israel in decades and have put icing on the cake by the targeting and kidnapping of civilians, slaughtering families and killing and kidnapping not just Israeli’s but Americans and at least one German as well.

They caught Israeli intelligence completely off guard and US intelligence completely off guard as well, but that is understandable. Apparently just as US intelligence is busy going after Catholics at mass, Parents attending school committee meetings and Trump supporters Israeli spooks were more interested in going after their Prime Minister.

According to the leaked documents, an assessment attributed to a Central Intelligence Update from March 1, leaders of the Mossad “advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest against the new Israeli Government’s proposed judicial reforms, including several explicit calls to action that decried the Israeli Government.”

These documents were part of a huge leak of Pentagon documents that Hotair has covered, but what’s more important is this move by Israel to formally declare war.

Israel’s cabinet invoked Article 40 Aleph and formally declared war against Hamas after the terrorist group launched the worst attack on the Jewish nation in 50 years.

Over 600 Israelis have been killed, more than 2000 are wounded, and 100 are confirmed to have been taken captive by Hamas since the war began.

This is, in my opinion a very good sign, all you have to do is watch the arab world cheering and even in America as Americas are killed and kidnapped people organizing to support Hamas publicly to understand that you can’t just retaliate a bit and defeat Hamas. You have to destroy them.

Israel in my opinion needs to prosecute this war without restraint, they also have to do it, I’m sorry to say, with the idea that all the people taken as hostages are expendable (If they get a chance to save some by all means do so but not at the expense of destroying Hamas.

And the only way to do so is to retake Gaza, annex is and give the people there a choice to stay or go.

Israel has left Gaza once, and did so without condition and this attack is the result. Israel must recognize that no amount of deals, or concessions or anything is going to change the attitude of either the Palestinians or the Arab world toward them. If the Arabs or Muslims around the world had a chance to slaughter the Jews they would without hesitation.

The only way to prevent this from happening again is to destroy their ability to make war. It will be messy and it will be horrible, but it will end the threat from Gaza once and for all.

They need to take to heart these words by General William Tecumseh Sherman

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. 

And those curses need to be poured out in Gaza to all those who aid abet and cheer Hamas’ actions in the same way that Sherman poured those curses on the people of Georgia and the Carolinas. What are your critics going to say that they aren’t already saying about you now? Sherman again:

 “We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and we must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.” The hard war was here for Georgia. “We cannot change the hearts and minds of those people of the South, but we can make war so terrible . . . [and] make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it.”

The time for mercy is after the enemy is defeated and helpless at your feet, until then the war should be fought hard until it’s won.

Until and unless Israel takes these words to heart, this cycle will repeat and they will really be responsible for the next attack that comes because it will be made possible by not destroying the ability of those who will make it when they had the chance.

Star Wars deserves better: an Ahsoka Analysis

Posted: October 7, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in short films/interviews
Tags: , , ,

Note: I haven’t watched the Season 1 finale yet.

The latest Star Wars movies and TV shows suck. I watched Episode 7 with my son on opening night, and while I gasped along with everyone when Han Solo died, I was left wanting. At the time, I said “Man, Rey seems a bit overpowered and kinda dull.”

Well, she only got more overpowered and dull as the series went on. The Ahsoka TV series is, sadly, the same way. Now I should mention I love the character of Ahsoka that was built up in the Clone Wars animated series. She started off as a kinda-snotty little kid, and I didn’t care for her attitude, but when she lost a bunch of clone troopers by not following orders, as a military officer, I felt very much in her shoes. She grew on me as the seasons went on, becoming a more interesting character that worked hard to overcome her flaws. When she went on trial and was kicked out of the Jedi Temple, only to be found innocent and eventually offered to be readmitted, I shed a tear when she rejected the offer and walked away. She was a cool character with believable motivations and a character arc I enjoyed following.

I liked her so much I purchased her light saber set while at Disney, and they hang up in my office. So when Disney announced an Ahsoka series, I was thrilled, and quite willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

And sadly, I wasn’t happy.

Ahsoka is nowhere near as interesting in the TV series as the Clone Wars. By far the best character is Baylan Shen, with Ahsoka a distant second, and almost everyone else far from that.

So I wondered, why is Ahsoka, a character I’m already primed to like, so bad? I think it boils down to two things:

  1. People taking dumb actions
  2. No consequences for the “good guys”
  3. Weak bad guys with poor motivations

Let’s start with dumb actions. The season opens with two dark jedi, Baylan Shen and Shin Hati, requesting to come aboard a New Republic jail vessel. The ships commander thinks their transmitter is fraudulent, so he personally plans to meet the ship with a security detachment and arrest them. Obviously, this goes horribly wrong, and Baylan and Shin lay waste to everyone and rescue a prisoner on the ship.

How many ways is this wrong? First, if you suspect a ship has ill intentions, why don’t you BLOW IT AWAY AT A DISTANCE??? Nobody, and I mean nobody, in the military wants to get close to the enemy if they have a safe way of killing them at a distance. This decision makes no sense and we’re only 10 minutes into the episode.

Then the captain brings a security detail with no armor and light weapons, which they don’t even have pointed at the ship. Baylan walks right up and gets within arms length of the captain, and nobody thinks this is a bad idea?? If you were to walk up to a military gate looking even remotely suspicious, you’d have at least one pistol trained on you. How are the guards not nervous and on-edge? Why would they let a potentially dangerous person, or at least a person that they don’t know anything about, get within choking distance of their captain?

None of this makes sense. It’s totally illogical and used to drive the plot forward. It would be more believable if Baylan snuck onboard, or boarded stealthily, or hired a band of pirates to hijack the ship. You’d still get a cool fight scene, and it would make far more sense. We get illogical decisions all throughout Ahsoka: stormtroopers don’t shoot at Ezra on site, robots trying to steal a map decide to try and blow it up instead, etc. etc. etc. None of these actions make sense, and it makes the show feel cheap.

There are never consequences for the good guys. Sabine runs off with the mystical map and eventually takes a lightsaber to the gut, but then she’s fine at the beginning of the next episode. Somehow a magic laser sword that CUTS THROUGH HARDENED STEEL only leave a tiny mark when its rammed into your stomach. Like, really? I don’t believe that at all.

Protagonists have to suffer consequences or else the audience doesn’t get invested in them. Look at Tony Stark in Iron Man. He’s a playboy millionaire in the beginning of the movie, banging hot chicks while riding around in limousines. And then in the first half hour of the movie, he gets captured, tortured, hooked up to a battery, and has to build his way out of a mess. Along the way, he loses a friend that is a far more ethical and moral person than him, all because Tony wasn’t strong or fast enough to save him. It’s heart wrenching. We got from thinking Tony’s a total loser to rooting for the guy to punch terrorists on his way out of a cave.

More importantly, consequences have to be permanent. Tony Stark has metal shards that must be held outside of his heart. He turns this otherwise bad turn of events into a power source for a suit to do good. He uses his bad consequences to grow and become a better person in the end. But Sabine, Ahsoka and Ezra never do. Nothing is permanent. Lightsaber gut stabs, isolation in another galaxy, getting knocked off a cliff…nothing permanently damages our heroes. They are never in danger, and thus they never need a reason to grow.

Lastly, our bad guys are weak. Grand Admiral Thrawn in the Timothy Zahn books is amazing. He’s cunning and smart. He takes over planets through trickery. He rebuilds the Empire. He defeats enemies by studying their art and understanding them as a person. Thrawn always has a plan B. He’s like Bismark, always scheming, always taking advantage of the situation, always one step ahead.

Thrawn in Ahsoka? Not imposing at all. Why even be scared of him? He lays mines for space whales…that fail. He uses some mystical Night Sister magic to try and ambush Ahsoka…which fails. He sends his troops to kill Sabine Wren and Ezra…fails (why didn’t he kill Ezra earlier, btw??). He’s not imposing. None of this plans come off.

In less than 15 minutes in Star Wars: A New Hope, Darth Vader lifts a dude in the air and chokes him to death. He is imposing and downright frightening. He never loses his cool, and he ALWAYS wins, right up till his last fight with Luke and the Emperor. He’s imposing, intimidating, and when he is finally defeated, we all sigh in relief at how HARD he was.

Thrawn in Ahsoka? Or even Thrawn in Rebels? Lame. It’s not significant when our heroes beat him because he’s just not imposing.

I wish Disney would stop focusing on “ooooo oooo we’ve got a female character!!” and instead build us cool protagonists and scary villains that interact in a cool setting with an intriguing story. That’s what we need now more than ever.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Five Random Thoughts Under the Fedora: A Side Effect of Texas Success, An inconsistent COVID stat, Good Advice delivered the right way, The Three Second Solution and Groktoberfest Oct 28th

Posted: October 7, 2023 by datechguy in catholic, culture, medicine, opinion/news, personal, special events, Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

There is a story about how the special rare style of eclipse that will be viewed from Texas is going to produce issues with Texas’ power grid renewable side because said eclipse will be so long.

This highlights one of the things that sane Red States need to address. As people flee to them the demand on basic services from Electricity to water are going to increase which means you have to build the infrastructure to handle said increases. This means power stations, dams etc which will mean some expense for state budgets.

Of course they might decide not doing this will keep the liberals out.

There was a story out of New Zealand that I referenced briefly yesterday that based on their specialties Doctors were given Covid Vaccine exemptions but only if they did not reveal said exemptions is yet another “post Christian” horror story where the general population was kept in the dark for fun and profit but there was a stat in the story that I must confess throws me off. To wit:

The most highly Covid vaccinated nations in the OECD are in order Portugal, Chile, Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, Spain and Australia. Their average percentage of the population vaccinated is 91 per cent. Their average rate of excess deaths so far in 2023 is 12 per cent above the five-year historical average.

The least Covid vaccinated nations in the OECD are Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Poland, Estonia, Czech Republic, Hungary and Switzerland. Their average percentage of the population vaccinated is just 63 per cent. Their average rate of excess deaths so far in 2023 is 0 per cent compared to the five-year historical average. In other words, they have averaged a normal death rate.

The great difference between excess deaths is not a surprise but the 0% figure from countries that have a 63% of the population vaxxed is. 63% is a solid majority of the population. I’m no doctor but the math seems inconsistent that there would be no statistical excess deaths given that more than 3 in 5 of the population took the jab if the jab is the cause.

I’d be interested in seeing the historical rates of some of the known COVID jab side effects pre-covid in those countries vs the others and I wonder what the booster rates were in those countries. That might be the difference.

Stacy McCain took on the Trevor Bauer story on great Major League pitcher who insisted on his innocence and had the courage and wisdom to hold out till said innocence could be proven.

While I suspect the lawsuit against MLB will be epic as his suspension cost him tens of millions of dollars the bottom line is that by not embracing the Church’s teaching on marriage and sex Bauer put himself in that situation. However as many young rich men won’t listen to that point Stacy pointed out some basic facts both about there statistical odds of a genital herpes but more importantly a basic fact of life that might make a more effective argument:

If a woman is very attractive, why is she still single at age 27? Why is she still in the dating market? What’s wrong with her?

Now if you’re date her for a while with the thought of Christian marriage you might be able to find out the answer to that question but if you’re out for a quick lay these are the risks you take.

God’s laws aren’t just the right thing they’re the smart thing.

Thursday I was at a stop light in Fitchburg with a large truck on my left next to me. The light turned green and because I was running early I paused before going because our two lanes were going to merge into one not wanting to bottle neck.

It’s a good thing I did because the very next moment a car from the lane whose light just turned red passed just in front of me at high speed, jumped the curb and crashed into a parked car at the bank parking lot where I had been five minutes earlier.

If I had been a second or two faster in moving forward that car would have hit my drivers door square and you would be reading something else this morning.

I seem to have run into a lot of things over my lifetime where the difference between life and death was a split second away. I guess all those Rosaries make a difference.

Finally if you are in the New England area on Saturday October 28th consider Groktoberfest put on by the good folks at Granite Grok .

It will be an excellent chance to meet up with other conservatives. There will be music, comedy, Local Groups and Vendors, food, beverages, Speakers and even a gun raffle. (Ruger 10-22)!

Tickets are on sale now here. I’ll be buying mine before the end of the week.

Older Entries
Newer Entries