Hurrah, a TWIB! We haven’t had one in ages! Headline link goes to Mr. Michener’s Thriftbooks author page. All other links go to various Amazon Kindle pages.
James A. Michener
It has been a while, so I am going to do a very broad coverage of some books, specifically an author, which would make a good read, or even a good gift.
I did promise to approach the case for and against Sad Sam in Once An Eagle, Anton Myrer, as it was presented to me as a study in leadership. I'll get to that when I have the time to properly approach the subject.
The famous, prolific James Michener. I am late to the game with his books, specifically Poland, Centennial, and now his breakout story Hawaii. I was about half way through Poland when I ordered the other two books. I will say, I'm glad I had an inter-act between books as Michener has a very distinct and strong tempo, as one must have to cover such swaths of history and remain readable, so that the books didn't blend into each other.
Currently, I am reading Hawaii, and not that far into it so to quote the book outside of what I have read is unreasonable. That said, the chapter "From the Sun-Swept Lagoon" is perhaps the best written piece about how people allow bad things to happen to just get along, and how bad actors are created and used to push bad things to accomplish an agenda. It was spooky, in a word.
Teroro saw things more simply. He was outraged. His thoughts were forthright and purposeful. The death of the slaves he could condone, for that was the law of the world, on every island. But to execute for trivial reasons the best fighters on Bora Bora, merely to appease a new god, was obviously wrong and disastrous. "Look at the body of Terupe, lying there between the shark and the turtle! He was the best steersman I have had. And the High Priest knew it. And Tapoa, useless beside the shark. He was wise and would have made a good counselor." Teroro was so furious that he did not trust himself to look either at his brother or at the High Priest, lest he uncover his thoughts. Instead, he contented himself with staring ahead at the impressive canoes and listening to the mournful drums, speaking of death. He thought: "Unless we settle the High Priest now, these drums are the requiem of Bora Bora." He saw clearly that the death of eight or ten more key warriors would lay the island open to assault. "I'll work out a plan," he swore to himself.
I cannot go beyond this chapter with quotes, but this chapter alone was pretty amazing.
The locations and events in Centennial I am more familiar with, and found the characters and story very engaging. This book is why I think Michener would make a good read for you or as a gift to somebody who has visited one of Michener's topics, or maybe even live there is they are new to the area.
Of course, these are adult books dealing with tough topics, so keep that in mind before wrapping a book up for a thirteen year old; there needs to be a certain maturity and understanding to pull the stories and lessons from, at least, these three books.
For the straight up history buffs, one of my favorites, Roger Crowley, released a book in 2019 I had just come across: The Accursed Tower: The Fall of Acre and the End of the Crusades. If you recall, I have been fond of all of his books, so this was an obvious grab. It is not a long book, and I do not have it handy for quotes, but it is Crowley's classic style of writing: engaging, concise, informative, and sensory. It was interesting in the sense that it covers a time and place a lot of history lessons just kind of skip over or talk around. Crowly was like, "Yeah, this happened." and I'm glad I took the time for it.
Daylight Savings Time
Yeah, its that time of year when grumpy Kansas sweeps the leaves off of the driveway and reminds everyone, including myself especially, to do the semi-annual home safety check. Alarm battery check or even replacement, especially your smoke detectors. On the topic of batteries, doesn't hurt to replace any electronic lock batteries as well. Obviously don't throw out working batteries, just don't take the chance of something important not working, though I will admit the defeat of the electronic safe was interesting. Buddy of mine was tasked with opening the safe, and was very excited. To say how quickly he won is to say how disappointed both him and I were in this safe's security. But the point was not to hide the family jewels from Black Bart, but to have a location secure from my kids who were smart enough to use a key and understand PIN combinations, and didn't trust myself to a rotary combination lock on a good day in high school.
Also, boogie bags or bug-out bags need a review and a change of clothes for those of us who have seasons. Review your threat matrix, perhaps there is a new road, or an old road closed, or the most likely danger is not Mother Nature but something more Man Made.
Keep your emergency stores up. It is possible if you went super squirrel some of your food items are coming up on date and is time to rotate them out. Be discreet, don't be that fish hole posting pictures of the garage full of TP when people are about to knife fight for a single roll. Don't leave it out where guests, or maintenance for some of you, can give it a gander.
This is an opinion piece, not an advice article. That said, I am anxious that Thanksgiving weekend will rile people up. Trip to Mom's was $40 gas, now $80. Stuck at airports. Stuff like that. I know the basic no frills items in my line have gone up around 15% in the 2020 price book, and quality seems to be declining, from straight up lemons to stuff like receiving two right side door slides instead of a left and right, general dinkary.
Baseline seems to be 2 weeks food, 2 weeks portable food, ability to purify water, and medications for that 4 weeks. The rest is up to you to personalize. Role play it out, and if you are not good at that or know that beating yourself in chess doesn't mean you are a good chess player, grab that person who is. Have some fun with it, have that alien invasion. Just remember, in real life you won't be fighting the communist soldier zombie from planet Arachis with nothing but your shotgun, chainsaw hand, and wolf familiar+5. You might have an exciting opening scene, but the rest of the show is the very unglamorous, very pass/fail security, shelter, water, food game.
If I were to GM this, my final set of advice before Game On! would be remember the survivor of The Balkins: flashy gets you mugged, mugged gets you dead.
[Modern War Institute - West Point] Over the course of two decades and at a price tag of over $88 billion, the United States and its NATO partners built a modern and well-equipped Afghan military—one that, like a Fabergé egg, boasted a glossy exterior but shattered under stress after US military advisors departed.
Confronted by a smaller, technologically outmatched military, the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) rapidly disintegrated, in most cases avoiding major battles and negotiating their surrenders to Taliban commanders instead of fighting. Within weeks of the US withdrawal, the Taliban had seized the majority of Afghanistan’s provincial capitals with little to no bloodshed.
If the United States ever wants to build a partner military again, it had better learn the lessons of Afghanistan—and overhaul how it plans and implements US security assistance programs.
The long and thorough analysis ends with this thought:
The next time the United States decides to build a foreign army, success will largely depend on avoiding the issues that afflicted the Afghan military. But in places like Mali and Somalia, armies built by Western forces exhibit many similar tendencies. Without serious reform, the United States will continue building expensive militaries—ones whose viability is only surface deep, contingent on advisors babysitting partner forces indefinitely.
#1
MWI used an interesting Russian Fabergé egg analogy. A pity Russian 'Lessons Learned' in Afghanistan could not have been given an in-depth study as well. But perhaps it was, and the concept of "Endless Wars" was given the MIC stamp of approval.
#2
You mean the rise of ISIS and overrunning Iraq didn't give you a hint? It's all those happy and glad reports you demanded of the trainers that you could pass upward for your careerist track.
It's what happens when you blind yourselves to social anthropology and what makes up a population. They're tribal. Period.
Now about indoctrinating your own troops to hate themselves and America...
#6
The problem is, upper echelon military people and upper level gummint people gravitate towards the corrupt wherever we go. They are merely seeking out kindred spirits.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/07/2021 8:43 Comments ||
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#7
They were there (those that actually were there, there was supposed to be a lot of 'ghosts'), for a paycheck. Not because they wanted to do it. And they had to kick back to the boss.
When things went south, they went home. This is what happens when you treat the military as jobs program.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
11/07/2021 11:16 Comments ||
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#8
Per the late great political scientist Sam Huntington, there are societies that have effective governance, and a much larger number (at least 5x as many) societies where the government does not govern.
In Huntington's day, he placed the USSR in the former category along with the USA. His point was that we could not think about rallying the chaotic, ungoverned world to the cause of democracy.
The term is simply irrelevant to the main challenge those societies face, which is simply to establish political order defined largely in terms of effective governance that is not shambolicly inept and corrupt.
We Are Ruled By Morons ...who never read or learned from Huntington and 2,000 years of history
[DW] A year ago, Æthiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched a military campaign against Tigray fighters, promising a quick victory. But Tigrayans managed to turn the tide. DW explains who they are and why they're fighting.
FROM BANDIDOSGUNNIES TO RULERS
In the mid-1970s, a small group of bandidosgunnies founded the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF). With a left-wing nationalist ideology, they vowed to fight for the rights of Tigrayans, a relatively small ethnic group that account for just 5% of the population and had long been marginalized by the central government.
Throughout the 1980s the TPLF emerged as a formidable challenger to Æthiopia's then Marxist military dictatorship. The group eventually led an alliance of militia organizations, the Æthiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), that overthrew the Soviet Union-backed regime in 1991.
The alliance then began to run Æthiopia under a federal system, with TPLF holding sway over the other groups and dominating politics for nearly three decades.
Tigrayan leader Meles Zenawi was Æthiopia's transitional president from 1991 until poorly contested elections in 1995, when he was elected prime minister. He would go on to rule the country until his death in 2012, and was succeeded by Hailemariam Desalegn. During this time, Æthiopia saw economic growth, but the government clamped down on dissent.
The EPRDF government led the country through periodic drought and famine, and the 1998-2000 border war with northern neighbor Eritrea ...is run by the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), with about the amounts of democracy and justice you'd expect from a party with that name. National elections have been periodically scheduled and cancelled; none have ever been held in the country. The president, Isaias Afewerki, has been in office since independence in 1993 and will probably die there of old age... . Human rights deteriorated during this time, with opposition groups complaining of persecution and corruption, which fed into growing public discontent.
In early 2018, after several years of frequent anti-government protests from different ethnic groups had seriously damaged the legitimacy of the EPRDF government, Hailemariam stepped down. The EPRDF selected Abiy Ahmed, of the Oromo ethnic group, as his successor and he was soon elected prime minister.
Abiy, a non-Tigrayan politician with little ties to the TPLF, enjoyed widespread popularity. He unseated many Tigrayan officials, charged some with corruption and introduced a set of political reforms which sidelined the TPLF. In late 2019, Abiy disbanded the EPRDF coalition government and moved to create the new Prosperity Party (PP). Refusing to join the group, the TPLF moved back to its stronghold.
After the 2020 general election was postponed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the TPLF and some other opposition leaders accused Abiy of delaying the vote to stay in power. Despite the delay, officials in the Tigray region went ahead with regional elections in September 2020. A month later, the federal government began withholding funds from the regional administration.
In early November 2020, TPLF forces were accused of having attacked and looted federal military bases in the region. Abiy kicked off a military campaign in the Tigray region, known as Operation Law enforcement, and promised to swiftly defeat the TPLF fighters.
But since June 2021, the Æthiopian army has endured continued setbacks and has been forced to withdraw from Tigray. Now the front line is getting closer and closer to Addis Ababa, with the prime minister calling on residents to be ready to defend the capital.
The Tigray fighters might have the upper hand, but capturing Addis Ababa will not be easy. They are likely to face resistance from other Æthiopians who fear the return to power of a party that ruled the country for nearly three decades.
[Unherd] A hinge moment happened this week in South Africa. The country finally transitioned from rainbow utopianism to reality.
The turning point was the municipal elections in which the 110-year-old ruling African National Congress failed to gain a majority of the vote. The party is, despite its manifest failings, still custodian of the liberator’s mantle among many black South Africans — a recent survey showed that although 60% of ANC voters associated their party with corruption, they would nonetheless vote for it; such is the brand loyalty — but the party’s once hegemonic power is in retreat. The decline over the years is neatly in tandem with the nation’s trajectory towards a failed state. At its peak in 2004, the ANC pulled nearly 70% of the national vote. This week, it could barely pull past 46%.
The party has lost majority control of all the major metropolitan areas; across 62 municipalities, desperate, if informal, coalition negotiations on power and patronage are underway. And the collapse is being blamed on the fact that so few ANC supporters bothered to vote.
This is surely the result of catastrophic declines in public trust across all institutions of state — and particularly in the political classes during President Cyril Ramaphosa’s term. According to some under-reported polling in August, two thirds of respondents said they were willing — 46% were "very willing" — to give up elections altogether in favour of a non-elected government that could provide security, houses and jobs. The death of the USSR shows that communism isn't forever. It's just that it has to die over and over again in other places.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/07/2021 00:00 ||
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#1
46% were "very willing" — to give up elections altogether in favour of a non-elected government that could provide security, houses and jobs.
Wait until they discover 'Guaranteed minimum income (GMI), SNAP, COVID checks, Planned Parenthood, endless unemployment insurance, Uniparty, Dominion Voting Machines, BLM, Antifa, The National School Board Association (NSBA), Build Back Better, reparations, Affirmative Action hiring and promotions.
#2
No, actually the "grip" will tighten. The Marikana platinum mine massacre of 2012 clearly illustrated that. The ANC may undergo a name change, but the same elitists will control the mines and resources.
Chinese control over African and global mining—past, present and future, an excerpt:
Sinosteel’s acquisition of the Dilokong chromite mine in 1997 marked the start of Chinese investment into African mining. This was not, however, the first contact between African and Chinese miners. In 1904, in the aftermath of the Boer wars, the shortage of labourers on the South African gold mines was acute. In the next two years, a total of 64,000 indentured Chinese workers were imported to South Africa. In 1906, they represented 34% of the total number of unskilled workers on the mines.
The Chinese workers were treated as an international commodity and stayed on a three-year contract with conditions in principle similar to the African migrant labour. In 1907, the risk of having a large group of Chinese workers as immigrants when their contract ended made the Chinese question a key issue in the elections in Transvaal. The Boer generals Smuts and Botha won the elections, and all the Chinese workers were repatriated to China after their contracts ended. By 1910, all of them had been shipped home (Allen 1992).
#1
Boys during that period began training ning for warfare at the age of 10. The sword, battle axe, dagger, spear, shield and bow were weapons they trained with. This is why he did well in battle. Wallace did have the body of a giant. He also did act independently of other Scottish royals who did have a propensity to surrender to the English who almost always outnumbered them in battle. He was betrayed by another Scot to the English. Since historical record of people who existed 1000 years ago is scant, Gibson had leeway in his creation of the film to Wikipedia accounts of Wallace. The name Gibson originated out of the United Kingdom region by the way so Gibson's ancestors would be from that part of the world. Some of the original inhabitants of Scotland included the Vikings of Norway.
#3
At that time in Scotland the kilt was not worn. The first mention of kilts is in 1538. They were worn as full-length garments by Gaelic-speaking Scots Highlander men. The knee-length kilt that we see today didn't come around until the early 18th century.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/07/2021 11:53 Comments ||
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#4
Loved that movie, also Rob Roy
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/07/2021 12:29 Comments ||
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[American Thinker] Mollie Hemingway has written a blockbuster book about all the strands of deception and falsehoods that converged to take down Donald Trump on Nov. 3 and 4 and beyond (and before) in her book: Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech and the Democrats Seized Our Elections (Regnery, 2021). I twice asked two Barnes and Noble stores in two weeks whether they had it in stock, and each time -- no. So I finally had to order it online. It has ten chapters, plus a prologue and an epilogue. The total number of endnotes is 1,243 (I added them up), many having extensive commentaries. Only a large and excellent team of researchers could put together a book like this, and she credits them by name in her acknowledgments.
Hemingway’s conclusion: It is clear that the Dem party has followed a pattern of cheating, inch by inch, for a long time.
As a class, the Dem leadership and journalists have turned into liars and false prophets. However, Ms. Hemingway begins the book with this encouragement: "You are not wrong" (the Prologue). Don't allow the media to gaslight you. You are not crazy. Hemingway thoroughly presents the end-noted evidence.
The evidence can be boiled down as follows. Trump won a fair election on Nov. 3, but lost a fraudulent one late on Nov. 3 (about 22:00) and on to Nov. 4 and beyond, in some important Electoral College states. The Dems believed their own (fake) polling data that had said Trump was far behind. But they were shocked when they saw that he was about to win by a huge margin in those states. No matter. That's when they went to Plan B and did their dirty work, in the early hours.
Instead of calling the election for Trump, the Dems, with their allies in the lying media, unprecedentedly stopped the normal vote count "coincidentally" around the same time in some of those states, sent the monitors home, and in the late hours illegally rammed through numerous lopsided ballots (a "surge"), favoring Basement Biden, such that he "won" by 10,000 to 30,000 votes, on Nov. 4+ in the targeted Electoral College States. By video, we fortuitously saw boxes filled with votes pulled out from under tables after the observers were told to go home, in Fulton County, Atlanta (Chapter 10). (In contrast, Texas and Florida got their vote counting done on time, and their populations are larger than the selected "special states.") Don't let the media gaslight you. Those ballots really were fixed and unaccounted for.
Over the next decade or two, the Dems plan to flip red states blue by their methods. They have been doing this in carefully selected states already, over several election cycles. Here is the Dem's long-range, gradual strategy, which was exposed most visibly during election "season" (not day): (1) Find dark blue vote counting centers. (2) Promote mail-in ballots and call anyone a racist who objects (huge bundles of ballots have been found at drop-boxes). (3) Ram through those fake, lopsided Dem ballots. (4) Or the vote counters in dark-blue cities will count many Dem ballots twice. (5) They may even employ questionable vote counting software. (6) Result: The Dem nominee wins!
#3
This happen now OVER 1 year ago.
So it is abundantly clear the Socialcrats Junta hold offices based on a Illegal Phony Election.
So Where are, and What is the DOJ, State AG's and Federal Courts doing about this Mass Civil Rights Violation?
OH! That's there is the flaw in the process.
Once they are ILLEGALLY in office.
They get to surround themselves with political appointees that will Cover The Crimes.
But, surely they can only sit on their thumbs for so long before the Voters force its way to the surface for relief.
But !, how much damage will have been done to our rights by then?
#12
^ "There were roughly 2,000 votes between them and 100% of precincts reporting. Durr led by 32,742 votes, or 51.8%, while Sweeney trailed with 30,444, or 48.2%."
Sooo they missed 12K votes in addition to 63K reported. You'd think they'd notice 16% of "the votes" were unaccounted for. Lying POS
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/07/2021 12:25 Comments ||
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#14
Here are the votes Sweeney got in the last several elections. Prior to 2021, those were the winning totals.
2021 30,268
2017 31,541
2013 31,045
2100 25,299
2007 29,908
He would need 7200+ (24% of his vote total so far) of the 12000 "found votes" to win. Even Biden's people didn't cheat that much.
#15
Sweeney spend ca. $14 million on his last campaign -- the most in history for any state senate race. In terms of walking around money, that's about $2,000 per each of 7,200 votes.
Or more likely a payout of around $200,000 for every "harvester" of 100 votes or more in Newark, Camden, Patterson, trailer parks or nursing homes across the state.
Could NJ State Senate Leader for Life Sweeney have found 70 vote harvesters willing to round up 100 votes each for a cool $200k? Seems plausible to me.
If so, then apply the same logic and calculations to the ridiculous shit that happened in MI and GA and PA last November.
How much of the $800 billion or so that Zuckerpunch, Soros and Steyer funneled was used to pay for "harvesters" pulling in 50,000 obviously-doctored ballots in the wee hours in Detroit, Atlanta and Philly?
#17
As I've been saying for 10 years now (and been kicked off Fecesbook for saying), it's past time to start hanging politicians. By the gross. Of both parties.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/07/2021 14:56 Comments ||
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#18
OP - assuming it's rhetorical. Please respect Fred's rules to survive a shutdown. Thanks
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/07/2021 15:12 Comments ||
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#19
This is not limited to just Federal Elections. I suspect some states like Oregon and Washington are 'redder' than they appear because the local elections are simularly fixed (Washington has had mandatory mail-in ballots for some time now). Heck even California might not be as blue as they claim.
#25
I’d be willing to treat voter fraud as a felony and permanently withdraw all voting privileges after the massive fines and prison sentences is served. But that would include all who connive at it as well as those who actually execute the fraud — so the Progressive “charities” should be on notice. Dominion comes to mind as well...
[Mercer] The Learjet liberals—the world’s wokerati—flew into Glasgow, Scotland, to plot against gasoline, goshawks (birdies) and you.
The annual "Conference of the Parties" (COP26), as well as Joe Biden’s plans for greenhouse-gas pollution reduction and clean-energy technologies demand the following reminders:
Gasoline is a glorious resource. Drilling for oil is the second most efficient, cheapest—and hence cleanest—source of energy. "It requires only a narrow hole in the earth," explained the Wall Street Journal, "and is extracted as a highly concentrated form of energy"—it "is up to 1,000 times more efficient than solar energy, which requires large panels collecting a less-concentrated form of energy known as the midday sun. But even solar power is roughly 10 times as efficient as biomass-derived fuels like ethanol."
The more efficient the source of energy, the less waste and pollution are involved in its conversion into energy. Think of the totality of the production process! The fewer resources expended in bringing a fuel to market, the cleaner and cheaper is the process.
State-sponsored "sexy" technologies in the West, moreover, have decidedly ugly outcomes for worker bees in the East. The Glasgow Crowd’s cravings must be sated, but not by despoiling California, if you know what I mean.
Enter the Chinese worker.
"You buy a Prius hybrid car and think you’re saving the planet," divulged Lindsey Hilsum of PBS’s "News Hour," "but each motor contains a kilo of neodymium and each battery more than 10 kilos of lanthanum, rare earth elements from China. Green campaigners love wind turbines, but the permanent magnets used to manufacture a 3-megawatt turbine contain some two tons of rare earth."
Mining for rare earth metals is a filthy undertaking. Hybrid hypocrites prefer by far that it be done by the poor villagers of the Baiyunkuang District of Darhan Muminggan in Inner Mongolia, northern China. There lie the largest deposits of rare earth metals.
The Prius is packed with these toxins.
The Limousine and Learjet liberals who legislate "green" industries into being prefer to outsource all energy-related extraction. Leave it to the industrious Chinese to "meet 95 percent of the world’s demand for rare earth." As most of the separation and extraction of rare earth metals is done in China, "the pollution stays in China, too," reports Hilsum from Baiyunebo in Inner Mongolia.
#2
Follow the $, indeed. Electric Vehicle companies and related battery startups are the biggest source of baksheesh and payola for Democrat pols today
#3
So while China is deliberately despoiling our economy, we’re more permanently despoiling the Chinese environment? Or do they not care because it’s Mongolia rather than Han Chinese territory?
#4
Time to start a rumor that will drive eco-lefties nuts: "(The mass of) all those rare earth metals dug up in China and turned into batteries and wind turbine parts shipped to the West will knock the Earth's orbit off. And increase gerbil worming!"
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/07/2021 9:46 Comments ||
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#5
"And the shift in magnetic properties will create a hole in the magnetosphere and O-Zone, hence the increase in Aurora sightings."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Unherd] A hinge moment happened this week in 
[American Thinker] 
