[Townhall] We keep hearing that a vibrant news media is essential to a vibrant democracy, but we are not a democracy, and the regime media is trash. It is as useful as a thong on Chris Christie and as helpful to our society as a herpes chancre on your upper lip on a first date.
Mr. Schlichter has a memorable way with a simile.
Here’s my position, one you should adopt: I wish to do anything possible, legal, and moral (and there is a lot of latitude on that last one) to hurt the regime media and help hasten its agonizing suicide.
The new book by Steve Krakauer, “Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy with Power, Abandoned Its Principles, and Lost the People,” which I liked enough to get in both audio and ebook, disagrees. His argument is important, and you need to understand it to understand the reality of the situation. Krakauer likes the media, or rather the idea of the media as he thinks it should be. Whether it ever was, that is open to debate, but it ultimately does not matter. The regime media is unsalvageable.
Krakauer worked at various media outlets, including a pre-insane CNN, and now works with Megyn Kelly on her podcast (she was, of course, famously canceled over nonsense). He believes that the media needs to go back to its allegedly objective roots, albeit after making allowances for Twitter and other changes that disrupt the financial models and create incentives for journalists to forgo actual journalism in favor of personal branding. And I believe in unicorns – hey, there’s Chet now!
It is interesting how many of the media folks that Krakauer talks to (all but one named and on the record) who you will know as being liberal – because they are –bemoan the current cancel climate, mostly mildly. They claim to be troubled by how objectivity has been abandoned and how the post-adolescent lunatics on the staffs of these famed institutions are terrifying the leadership and bending the alleged adults in the room to their woke will. Remember Tom Cotton and his pretty anodyne NYT column about using the military to crush the scumbag 2020 rioters? I thought his position was substantively flawed, but that was not why it sparked a Schiffstorm. Substantive criticism does not matter – the woke staff rebelled because it claimed Cotton’s article was “endangering” them. A sitting senator, explaining a view that a huge number of people now, and throughout history, have held, was beyond the pale and could not be countenanced. The management actually caved instead of firing every one of these jerks (a recent trans coverage revolt at the Times was gently suppressed, but gentle is not going to get it done). Read the rest at the link
#1
The media has never been "objective." There's always an agenda, from the unwritten rule of "never step on an advertiser's toes" to the well understood operating principle that you can't alienate the people at the courthouse or police station if you want to cover the news.
Now, the agenda is "the current thing," AKA trans, Ukraine, punish the innocent to protect the guilty.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/24/2023 6:53 Comments ||
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#2
When you unshackled the 'media' from libel and allowed advertising to be a tax write off, you got the crap that we have now.
by Daniel Greenfield
[FrontPage] The “age of American naval dominance is over”, Jerry Hendix, a former Navy Captain warned in a high-profile article in The Atlantic.
Hendrix’s article imagines a scenario in which China or other enemy nations seize control of what are now international waters and the cargo that moves across them. “The great container ships and tankers of today would disappear, replaced by smaller, faster cargo vessels capable of moving rare and valuable goods past pirates and corrupt officials.” A handful of nations would end up controlling the chokepoints of international trade and America would not be one of them.
Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro has already conceded China’s naval supremacy.
Last month, the Biden appointee stated that China has “got a larger fleet now so they’re deploying that fleet globally.”
The People’s Liberation Army Navy topped the US Navy in 2020. By 2025, it will have an estimated 400 ships. We’re still below 300.
Biden’s current defense plan is to have 350 by 2045. And by then we will have lost.
“They have 13 shipyards, in some cases their shipyard has more capacity — one shipyard has more capacity than all of our shipyards combined. That presents a real threat,” Del Toro conceded. “They’re a communist country, they don’t have rules by which they abide by.”
We don’t have China’s shipyard capacity because it isn’t a priority. Biden’s Navy budget would buy 9 ships and retire 24. That means we’ll be down to 280 by 2027. The administration has plenty of money, with over $1 billion directed to Afghanistan aid, hundreds of millions for the ‘Palestinians’, and foreign aid for every one of our enemies, but plans for a shrinking military.
Communist China has its priorities, but so do Biden and Del Toro.
“As the Secretary of the Navy, I can tell you that I have made climate one of my top priorities since the first day I came into office,” Del Tore declared a week after admitting that China had taken the naval lead and would hold on to it for the conceivable future.
The Navy’s 2023 budget wastes $718 million on fighting global warming. That’s more than 10% of the $6.2 billion in maintenance costs for 151 Navy vessels.
China’s Communist leadership is focused on building warships to win a war, ours isn’t.
What does it mean that under Biden, the Navy has made global warming into its priority?
Last year, the Navy joined California and assorted failed blue states in committing to “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050”. Net Zero emissions is an impossibility. In practice it means wasting a fortune on buying carbon credits from politically connected leftist companies. It also means that we will not be quickly and efficiently constructing warships because that’s not ‘green’. Winning wars isn’t green either, losing them however might be.
A Navy official absurdly claimed that, “to remain the world’s dominant maritime force, the Department of the Navy must adapt to climate change.” Going ‘green’ means that being a dominant marine force is not the priority. Much like diversity, equity and inclusion, which the woke brass have taken to claiming will improve our deadliness, it’s a betrayal of the mission.
China, which is rapidly becoming the dominant marine force, doesn’t give a damn about adapting to climate change except when it comes to peddling its junk solar panels assembled by slave labor to woke companies that will resell them at a massive markup while gobbling up tax credits because when we go ‘green’, it only weakens us and strengthens our enemies.
Communist China aims for a ‘victory-ready’ force while Biden’s after a ‘climate-ready’ force.
While China builds warships to achieve naval dominance in the next decade, the US Navy’s goal for the next decade is to have “100 percent zero-emission vehicles by 2035” and “100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity”. No word on whether firing torpedoes will also be carbon-pollution free, but that’s not a problem for a leadership that never intends to use them.
[AmericanThinker] A little over a week ago, on Sunday, March 12, a near-catastrophic event occurred that could have wrecked the lives of everyone reading this:
A Powerful Solar Eruption on Far Side of Sun Still Impacted Earth.
A massive eruption of solar material, known as a coronal mass ejection or CME, was detected escaping from the Sun at 11:36 p.m. EDT on March 12, 2023. The CME erupted from the side of the Sun opposite Earth.
This was a replay of the Carrington event of September 1, 1859:
Suddenly, [British astronomer Richard Christian] Carrington spotted what he described as “two patches of intensely bright and white light” erupting from the sunspots. Five minutes later the fireballs vanished, but within hours their impact would be felt across the globe.
That night, telegraph communications around the world began to fail; there were reports of sparks showering from telegraph machines, shocking operators and setting papers ablaze. All over the planet, colorful auroras illuminated the nighttime skies, glowing so brightly that birds began to chirp and laborers started their daily chores, believing the sun had begun rising. Some thought the end of the world was at hand…
What happened on March 12 was similar to the 1859 outburst – only worse. Early estimates suggest that this explosion was ten to a hundred times more powerful than the one of 1859. Such events – if not quite so extreme -- are not uncommon. One serious difference from 1859 was that explosion took place on the side of the sun facing away from earth. If it had been facing in our direction, if the earth had borne the full brunt of that blast, we can scarcely imagine the results. It’s likely that all operating electrical systems would have been immediately destroyed, the same as the telegraph systems in 1859. Any active electronic instruments – and possibly even those that happened to be shut down – would have been fried, transformed into useless hunks of plastic, metal, and silicon. The electrical and electronic networks (e.g., the Net) that form the framework of Third Millennial civilization would have been annihilated. Once they were destroyed, all power would vanish. Industry would grind to a halt. Massive amounts of data, including almost all financial data, would simply disappear. All methods of communication beyond voice range would no longer exist. It wouldn’t be a matter of waiting to be rescued by a government of any sort. Government would have shrunk to little more than a notion. The very tools on which relief, and even recovery, depend would simply have vanished. The consequences beggar the imagination. A new Dark Age would have been the best option to expect.
The event did have some effects. Spectacular auroras were seen much farther south than usual. For some hours, radio transmission was down above the Arctic Circle globally. Oddly enough, AT itself may well have been affected. That Sunday night I was on duty, as I usually am, and was just shutting things down when the wave front of this thing struck earth a little after 11:30. My PC immediately slowed down, and certain functions started acting iffy. While putting in the final article graphics, I soon learned that they wouldn’t insert, and that the entire graphics system was useless. After a little work I came up with a plausible hack that I thought would cover things – only to learn the next day that the server was down and not loading any scheduled material. It took AT’s excellent tech team several hours to straighten this out.
Events like this are valuable in that they lend perspective. One of the major flaws of conservatism is its defeatism. If leftism is apocalyptic, conservatism is chiliastic, always eager for that eschatological moment of doom and judgment. It doesn’t matter what it is – China, Soros, fentanyl, the cartels, CRT, transgenderism – every time a cat falls from a tree, a mob suddenly pops out of hyperspace ready equipped with sackcloth and ashes. The Last Day is always dawning, the seals ever breaking open. There’s an entire school of paleoconservative thought devoted to utter defeatism calling itself the “Remnant,” but more on that at another time.
There are always several doomsdays-of-the-moment making the rounds. A recent example has been a revival of WW III due to the war in Ukraine, that events will at any moment escalate until the siloes open up and the missiles start flying. Well… I have my doubts. If I were Vlad Putin and had spent the last year watching my much-vaunted tanks, fighter-bombers, and Hind gunships falling apart on the front lines, I’d think twice about calling out my far more complex strategic missiles.
Similarly, people – very informed people, scientists of the first rank – had been predicting a return of the Carrington event for fifty years or more, as long as it has been understood what had actually happened. They didn’t know when it was coming; a century, maybe, or a century and a half (my sympathies to those who insisted that it would be 500 years). And they were right – it did come. But not in the manner expected. Because of a very simple aspect of celestial mechanics – the rotation of the sun – all that energy blew off into empty space, and humanity did not go the way of the dinosaurs. The moral is, as a wise man once pointed out, “If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure nine will run into a ditch before they get to you.”
And what about our poor sun, victimized by its very nature? To my understanding, this event just past resets the clock. We should have little to worry about for another century or so. But on the other hand, we know so little about solar dynamics – astrophysicists are very unclear about what the precise cause of CMEs is, for one thing – that we can’t be certain. We do know that we have two more years before the current solar cycle tops out, and so far, this has been one of the most intense on record.
So take some time to reflect on the bullet that we just dodged, and give thanks that we’re not right this minute battling amid the dark ruins for the last can of baked beans. Life can be terrible, cruel, and harsh, but it also can be none of those things.
Put that up there with the man made global warming apocalypse. Somehow the species survived without electrical energy for several millennium. We'd be back to the 19th century. Remember trains were operating well before the 'electric' revolution.
#4
What SPF level would I have needed to survive? Would I have had to go full Tammy Fae Baker?
Posted by: Super Hose ||
03/24/2023 12:27 Comments ||
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#5
ref #2 P2K
The pre-electrical infrastructure of horses, water-powered milling and manual coal mining does not exist in scale. 85-90 of western civilization has none of the requisite skills to recommence farming and steam energy before famine wiped them out. The articles suggested literally every electrical device used in modern life, every pump, every motor, every computer, every farm implement that operated on any form of electricity would be fried. Consider the impact and disaster in the first week. That is what prompted the description of near extinction event.
#6
This EME was not like a jet directed at a point but more like a 180 degree big explosion
I'm not sure it would have done the damage people are asserting
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/24/2023 15:49 Comments ||
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#7
#5 I didn't say it wouldn't have impacts, just not to the extinction level. The Amish would be among the least hit. Third world countries across the globe would weather it far better as they far less to fall. Electronic stock materials that is not fully assembled will likely not to be as radically effected. Your military has EMP proofed stock that has been rigorously tested which offers a limited but functional backup infrastructure. As far as social resilience, adaptivity to the new environment will determine who survives. The Greenies will get their darkest wish, though I suspect a lot of them will not be among the survivors 5+ years later.
#8
There was a kinda fun thought story floating around there for a bit. Something like:
Back in ancient times, an electronic technology had enslaved humans. One day, there was a sunburst, and soon after all the electronic technology quit working and humans were free. Henceforth, humans in various ways worshiped the sun.
Nowadays though, I'm afraid NoMoreBS is correct but I'd go so far as not just Western Civ but the world after all things sort out.
If its been a while, or know someone who hasn't seen it - especially youngsters:
Strategic depth, the Great Game, and the fact that the Taliban reconquest of Afghanistan led to hundreds of TTP attacks in Pakistan are mentioned.
[ANInews] Recently, a high-level Pak delegation comprising Defence Minister, DG ISI, and Foreign Secretary visited Kabul and held discussions with the Taliban ...Arabic for students... While both sides were reticent to discuss the outcomes of the meetings, it is evident that the recent spike in violence constituted the core of the discussions, the Politeia Research Foundation said in a report.
In February, a suicide squad carried out a brazen attack on the Bloody Karachi
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
03/24/2023 02:41 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
High time? More like past time. They have chosen the form of their destroyer and he is not a giant Marshmallow man.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
03/24/2023 12:32 Comments ||
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[Wire] Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and his panel of seven renowned scholars explore the purpose and importance of God’s laws, the meaning and limits of an "eye for an eye," and what saying "no" really means in the newest episode of "Exodus," streaming now on DailyWire+.
Peterson and company continue through their study and discussion of Exodus, the second book of the Bible and Torah, with this episode focusing on chapters 21 through 24. In the episode, they explore the significance of God’s laws in those chapters and how they establish moral order.
The panel discusses Exodus 21:23-24, which reads, "And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." Dennis Prager, co-founder of PragerU, says that these verses are a "massive statement" in history, and he brings the topic of the nature of human evil to the conversation.
"I think it depends, to some degree, on the canniness of the interlocutor," Peterson said of human evil. "I would say that if you’re going to entice someone malevolent back onto the path of proper being, you have to be as canny in your good as they are in their evil. That’s an echo of the notion that you should be as wise as a serpent, as harmless as a dove."
"I don’t know what the limit to that is, because I’ve seen people in extreme situations walk the path so precisely that they could entice even someone hell-bent on malevolence out of that insistence," Peterson continued.
Another topic Peterson and his panel discussed centered around the philosophy of punishment, what saying "no" means, and the consequences of doing something you were told not to, contributing to a broader conversation on moral order.
"’No’ in the final analysis means if you do that, something you do not like will certainly happen to you," Peterson said. "If that isn’t the promise behind your words when you say no, there’s no promise there at all."
In the episode, Peterson is joined by social critic Os Guinness, Cambridge assistant professor James Orr, president of Ralston College Stephen Blackwood, president of Hillsdale College Larry Arnn, Christian thinker Jonathan Pageau, Dennis Prager, and Douglas Hedley, professor of philosophy of religion at Cambridge University. Select future episodes will include Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro.
#4
whatever the 'eye for an eye' meant the first time it was promulgated
- there are no examples in the Bible of a literal eye for an eye punishment
- by the time of the early compilation of oral law, the phrase was considered to require monetary compensation -- and the way it is written there, implies that this was the interpretation for many years before that - Mishnah Tractate Bava Kamma
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/24/2023 10:52 Comments ||
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#5
didnt Jordan Petersen get " reprogrammed" by the Canukistan communists?
I believe they insisted he report for re-education, but he told them to fook off or however you say that in Canadian.
#6
there are no examples in the Bible of a literal eye for an eye punishment
Matthew 5:29-30 King James Version
"29 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell."
#8
“If you come across your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to return it. If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help them with it.” Exodus 23:4-5
The idea of loving your enemy was present in the Christian version of the Old Testament.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
03/24/2023 14:43 Comments ||
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#9
Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury. Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a human being is to be put to death. Leviticus 24: 19-21
The Old Testament verse referenced in Matthew seems to be a message of restraint rather than a call for vengeance. Again it is The Christian version of the Old Testament.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
03/24/2023 14:47 Comments ||
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#10
Not exactly on topic , but close, here is what A. E. Housman wrote:
If it chance your eye offend you,
Pluck it out, lad, and be sound:
'Twill hurt, but here are salves to friend you,
And many a balsam grows on ground.
And if your hand or foot offend you,
Cut it off, lad, and be whole;
But play the man, stand up and end you,
When your sickness is your soul.
#12
“If you come across your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to return it. If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help them with it.” Exodus 23:4-5
The idea of loving your enemy was present in the Christian version of the Old Testament.
The translation from the Hebrew is similar in my copy of the Torah, Jewish Publication Society 1962. It isn’t about love so much as treating fairly with all, regardless of personal feelings. Or tribal feelings, as enemies in that place and time were more in the vein of Ukraine vs Russia or Jets vs Sharks than Tommy vs Joey.
And Leviticus 24: 19-21 is rounded off by verse 22: “You shall have one standard for stranger and citizen alike: fot I the Lord am your God.”
The entire sequence revolves around a man whose mother was Israelite and whose father was Egyptian (Leviticus 24:10). This person got into a fight with a full Israelits, and the half Israelite blasphemed using God’s name. So he was arrested and brought to judgement before Moses, who passed on God’s judgement that the half-Israelite was to be treated under the law the same as a full Israelite, as was the stranger in the camp. It is in that context that eye for an eye, etc. is stated, and it is in that same context of equality before the law is stated clearly in verse 22.
A new idea under the sun, whether during the Bronze Age, during the time of Jesus, and in this time when Progressives attempt to hold on to power without pity for those who believe themselves free men: that citizens and non-citizens alike, rich and poor, priest and layman — all are subject to the same laws and the same punishments.
[NPASYRIA] On the eve of Newroz, March 20, members of Ahrar al-Sharqiya, a faction operating within the Ottoman Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), opened fire on local residents celebrating the Kurdish holiday in Jindires town in the Afrin region, northwestern Syria, killing four. What could be categorized as another episode of otherwise near-systematic anti-Kurdish violence in Ottoman Turkish-occupied areas of Syria may yet have profound consequences.
According to on-the-ground accounts, members of Ahrar al-Sharqiya, a large faction from Deir ez-Zor Governorate, eastern Syria, which controls the town of Jindires and its surrounding area, beat a young man for lighting a fire near his home on the eve of Newroz, the Kurdish new year’s celebration. Afrin Post, a local news site, reported that the young man was insulted by the armed snuffies as an ’infidel’. His father and two of his uncles came to the young Kurd’s aid and were themselves met with beatings. The turban then opened fire on the family, killing all four men. Three bystanders were maimed.
The violence is shocking, though hardly out of the ordinary, as a recent North Press report outlines. Kurds in Afrin, which was occupied by Ottoman Turkish forces and affilaited Syrian factions in 2018, are regularly and systematically exposed to violence as they celebrate the Kurdish holiday.
On the same Monday evening, Afrin Post reported that snuffies intimidated Kurds celebrating Newroz in the villages of Hajj Hasna and Miske (also in Jindires). In February alone, at least 10 civilians have been arbitrarily arrested by SNA factions in Afrin, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a local watchdog, reports. The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire... has pursued a policy of demographic engineering in the region for the past five years. Afrin’s population was once near-homogenously Kurdish; today, it is majority Arab.
UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCES
The aftermath of the killing, however, was out of ordinary. The bodies of at least three of the men were transferred to the hospital in Afrin city, 20km east of Jindires. There, the slain men’s family members were driven away when they began to protest the killing. Eventually, a delegation comprising the family members, the dead bodies in tow, headed south, to the town of Atmeh, which is controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else ...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State... (HTS, formerly al-Nusra ...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli al-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ... Front). The SOHR reports that they were driven there in cars owned by HTS. In parallel, protests against the killing formed in Jindires; some demonstrators demanded that the HTS enter the area.
In Atmeh, the delegation met with HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani. The details of the conversation have not been published, but all accounts suggest al-Jolani promised to hold the perpetrators to account. The delegation was then escorted by HTS snuffies back to Jindires in order to bury their loved ones.
HTS has maintained a presence in Ottoman Turkish-occupied Afrin since it took control over large swathes of the region’s southwest in October 2022, before a feigned withdrawal days later. The jihadist group has outposts in Jindires, as well as in the town of Sheikh al-Hadid, 15 km north, and near Bassouta, 14 km east.
The Syrian Interim Government, the SNA’s political arm, initially attempted to deflect blame by arguing that the shooting was the result of a quarrel, not a targeted policy. Within 24 hours of the incident and HTS’ take-over, the Liberation and Construction Movement (LCM), a coalition of factions headed by Ahrar al-Sharqiya, announced that they had arrested three young Deir ez-Zor-born men for the crime in a nearby camp for earthquake victims. The LCM stated that they were not "formal" members of Ahrar al-Sharqiya, according to Syria TV. No commanders have yet been implicated in the shooting.
These measures have been found wanting by the local Kurdish population, which has continued to protest throughout March 21 and 22. Thousands have travelled from various parts of Afrin to attend the popular demonstrations.
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.
[Wire] Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and his panel of seven renowned scholars explore the purpose and importance of God’s laws, the meaning and limits of an "eye for an eye," and what saying "no" really means in the newest episode of "Exodus," streaming now on DailyWire+.
...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...
