Current Events

A Politically Incorrect US View of the UK Election

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It is hard to get any real news of the UK elections through the Patriots/Tim Brady deflated NFL football scandal and the on-going hate campaign against Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer for the “Thought Crime” of offensive to multiculturalism free speech after the Garland, Texas shootings. And for those that try, no one is explaining the rise of the Scottish National and United Kingdom Independence Parties and collapse of the Conservatives (AKA Tories), Labour and Liberal Democratic Party. And especially the across the boards collapse of Labour in its heartland of Scotland. The PBS News Hour last night spent five minutes on the subject and completely ignored the two monstrous political elephants in the UK political room.

Labour’s Rotherham Horror, and Tory sex scandals as depicted in the UK political cartoon below —

The Real issues of the UK Election -- Rotherham Horror & Tory Sex Scandals
The Real issues of the UK Election — Rotherham Horror & Tory Sex Scandals

As the UK Telegraph summarized:

More than 1,400 children were sexually abused over a 16 year period by gangs of pedophiles after police and council bosses turned a blind eye for fear of being labelled racist, a damning report has concluded.
 
Senior officials were responsible for “blatant” failures that saw victims, some as young as 11, being treated with contempt and categorised as being “out of control” or simply ignored when they asked for help.
 
In some cases, parents who tried to rescue their children from abusers were themselves arrested. Police officers even dismissed the rape of children by saying that sex had been consensual.

This was a 16-year (between 1997 at the beginning of the Blair premiership and ending in 2013) long orgy of organized pedophilia by a Pakistani Muslim gang targeting under age, poor, white females and was defacto officially sanctioned by the Labour run Rotherham Council government, UK social services and the UK Police. The defacto acts of ratification being the prosecution and removal of female children from parents trying to save their daughters from the aforementioned Pakistani Muslim pedophile prostitution ring. Then the attacking of the UK Daily Mail reporter Sue Reid as “racist” for talking to the families of the victims and publicizing those stories.

This scandal has caused both the white working class and the white chav underclass in Scotland to abandon Labour en mass for the Scottish National Party (SNP) because they know that Labour will leave its children quite literally naked and defenseless before other “Asian” (the BBC code word for Pakistani and other non-white Muslim) gangs and that Labour will use the police to prevent the parents of those children from trying to save their kids.

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Shawyer Space Drive…Arriving.

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A science fiction writer acquaintance of mine, John Ringo, is already going nuts about this “Shawyer Drive” on his Facebook page, because he
is friends with one of the scientists involved.

See power point page and the links below:

Magnetron driven, reaction massless, "Shawyer Drive"
Magnetron driven, reaction massless, “Shawyer Drive”

Magnetron powered EM-drive construction expected to take two months
http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/04/magnetron-powered-em-drive-construction.html

Emdrive Roger Shawyer believes midterm EMdrive interstellar probe could flyby Alpha Centauri
http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/04/emdrive-roger-shawyer-believes-midterm.html

The drive seems to be a quantum “zero-point energy” phenomena that you put electricity into and get reaction massless thrust out of.

_AND_ it looks to be both scalable and improvable with better magnetrons.

This is also dovetailing nicely with a Lockheed Martin compact fusion reactor that

1. Generates more power than it uses and
2. Produces something on the order of 7.4 megawatts

See:

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_beta_fusion_reactor

Given the reality of Space X’s and Blue Origin’s reusable rocket successes, and it seems that Mankind is about to burst out from this planet in a very big way.

See:

http://www.spacex.com/news
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-just-launched-flagship-rocket/

And all of the above is driving John Ringo to despair on his science fiction writing career.

History Friday: A Vietnam Meditation

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(Posted a bit early, as I have been reminded of the anniversary of the fall of Saigon. I wrote a version of this early on at SSDB, around 2004.)

Never been there, never particularly wanted to: to someone of my age, it is Bad Place, a haunted place, where ugly things happened. It gave nightmares to friends, co-workers, and lovers for years after it dropped out of the headlines and the six-o-clock news. Today in light of the current war, it seems as far away in time and nearly as pointless as the Western Front. You look, and remember, and wonder, knowing that yes, it really happened, but really, what was the point of it all? Platoon seems as much of a relic as Journey’s End, the image of a helicopter hovering over jungle with “All Along the Watchtower” on the soundtrack an image as archaic as doughboys with puttees and soup-plate helmets, marching along and singing “Mademoiselle from Armentieres”.

But it was a beautiful place. My friends Xuan-An and Hai brought away pictures of where they lived in Dalat, in the highlands, where they married and lived with their three older children, snaps of cool, misty green pines and gardens of rhododendrons, and a horizon of mountains. Eventually, they had to flee Dalat for Saigon, where their youngest daughter was born, and Xuan-An’s mother came to live with them. Hai had left Hanoi as a teenager when the Communists took over there, his family being well to do, part Chinese, and immensely scholarly. He worked as a librarian for the USIS, and Xuan-An as a teacher of English and sciences, so they were on the Embassy list of Vietnamese citizens to be evacuated in the spring of 1975, with their four children, aged 12 to 2 years old. They were waiting at their home, for someone to come fetch them, on that last day. Perhaps someone from the Embassy might have come for them eventually, but Xuan-An’s brother who was the captain of a Vietnamese coastal patrol vessel came to their house after dark, instead. He had sent his crewmen all to fetch their families, they were going to make a run for safety out to sea, and he came to get his and Xuan-Ans’ mother. He was appalled to find his sister and brother-in-law and the children still there, and urged them to come with him straight away, and not wait any longer for rescue. They brought away no more luggage than what the adults could carry, in small packs the size of student’s book-bags, and the youngest daughter was a toddler and had to be carried herself. Xuan-An’s brother’s motor launch was a hundred feet long, and there were a hundred people crammed onto it, carrying them out to an American cargo ship, the Pioneer Contender, which waited with other American rescuers, just beyond the horizon.

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Poor Optics

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As we all know, Baltimore is going through some interesting times. I sat down for a bit last night and popped on the news to watch the spectacle. One thing I noticed right away was the optics. I don’t want to get all crazy about the mayor saying it was OK for the cops to let the fine, upstanding citizens of Baltimore destroy their own city. Many, many others are doing that just fine. I wanted to comment on the optics of the situation and how bad they were. Here is the original press conference from a couple days ago (the “destroy” part is around the 7.30 mark)

What is she dressed in? Why is the pastor dressed with the odd black top and leather sleeves – and what in the world was he talking about? What on earth is the guy in the hoodie with “true religion” emblazoned across the chest doing there? To say that this doesn’t exactly instill confidence in being able to handle a situation of this sort would be quite the understatement. This is the mayor of Baltimore’s inner circle?

Here is the presser from last night, where the mayor announces the week long curfew:

Ah hah. Someone got a phone call. She now has make up on, jewelry, a nice top. Guys in suits and uniforms around her appeared later in the presser. The optics have certainly changed.

Then the governor of Maryland came on:

He is in a suit, tie and is surrounded by well dressed people (i.e. adults) and a person in a military uniform. He is decidedly overweight and looks pretty bad, but that is getting a bit off track. The Maryland governor stated later that he signed the emergency orders “about 30 seconds” after the mayor of Baltimore requested it. I imagine it was before that, but whatever.

Tonight is another night, and I assume the optics of that first presser won’t be seen again.

Is Iran risking a Vietnam-style Quagmire ?

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I have previously expressed concerns that Saudi Arabia was in a fight for its life.

The question is whether the Saudis will fall to their own Shiite population and whether the capture of Aden will allow Iran to block Saudi oil shipments.

“Once hailed by President Barack Obama as a model for fighting extremism, the U.S. counterterrorism strategy in Yemen has all but collapsed as the country descends into chaos, according to U.S. and Yemeni officials.”

Now, the Saudis take this war very seriously.

As for Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom is waging the first war in its history. Yet with its small, weak and inexperienced army, it cannot commit ground troops to fight both the Shiite Houthis or the Sunni Jihadists, and is relying mainly on its air power that has, thus far, caused the death of many innocent civilians.

It also is blockading ports to prevent Iranian resupply of Yemeni clients.

The Saudi-led coalition that’s fighting against Shiite rebels in Yemen said it completed a blockade of the country’s ports and is ready to step up airstrikes.
Bombing missions are seeking to stop the Shiite Houthis from moving forces between Yemen’s cities, Ahmed Asseri, a Saudi military officer, told reporters in Riyadh on Monday. Coalition aircraft and warships targeted the rebels as they advanced toward Aden, the southern port that’s the last stronghold of Saudi Arabia’s ally in Yemen, President Abdurabuh Mansur Hadi. Shipping routes to and from the ports are under the coalition’s control, Asseri said.

The Egyptians are planning to help in Yemen. Even though Nasser’s campaign in Yeman was a disaster, that was in 1962 and run by Nasser, an incompetent.

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