I think have seen several cooler solar boats (there is a solar desal ferry working in Australia that transports cars) but NASA must want to soft pedal tech and honor this guy for some reason other than firstness.
World Solar record contenders Solar Navigator and PlanetSolar
Electric boats have been plying waterways in Europe since around 1890. In 1905 the 'Victory' was launched on the river Thames, at that time the largest electric boat in the world. She was 93 feet long and wood built. The Victory could carry 350 passengers. Before the internal combustion engine became popular electric boating rivaled steam and horse drawn barges. Battery powered pleasure-boats were charged-up by steam powered generators and overhead cables. In England canals provided a comprehensive network for working narrow-boats carrying cargo. After 1905 the internal combustion engine became popular, ironically, due the the invention of the electric starter motor.
The solar canoe above is owned by Cedric Lynch. It was featured in the Guinness Book of Records and held the record speed for a solar-powered boat. Source: EBA
[I guess if we apply such a concept we could produce a solar sail that uses my TFPV in its design optimally. Like a portable helical wind solar turbine generator would convert air flow and solar power and drive and generate browns gas for cooking and "fuel storage" even a electric boat motor.]
[ It is ok that music can make you cry inexplicably... But what does it mean if you see a painting or a picture and feel something for nothing is not enough and you decide to do something but what go watch some TV or get on your computer and checkout some porn & forget about that feeling or make a cup of coffee or get drunk. If pictures can make you feel sad what about people and the con artiest and advertisers who can rebuild how you feel about any thing so you will not want to do any thing but buy stuff. ED.]
This is why I covered it. Reading the morning newspapers on yesterday's illegal immigrant march in Phoenix, you'd think it was just a nice outing for families to stand up against Arizona's SB 1070. But this was no weekend picnic. The event was more about revolution and reconquista than about "immigration reform." The Arizona Republic, CNN, and the New York Times all publised blasé reports, riddled with inaccuracies and omissions. And check the screencap at yesterday's Los Angeles Times below. It's hard to find a better image that captures the media's pro-illegal immigration reporting: "A girl waits to join the march through downtown Phoenix." See how seemingly normal things appear. The editorial choices made by MSM functionaries are staggering sometimes:
Captain Fogg, who is one of the most bellicose bloggers I've ever encountered on the web, wrote this yesterday:
That people who are college professors can openly mock the idea that there is a history of black America worth regarding isn't sad, it's as disgusting as anything that ever came out of the mouth of Goebbels ....
And here's Captain Fogg's comment this morning, at my blog, at last night's post:
Just for the record, is it possible to be a bully for responding to repeated provocation even if the response is deemed excessive by the serial provocateur? If so, we would have to rewrite a bit of history, wouldn't we, since it would have been the US bullying the Japanese after December 1941 and the English after 1776, and al Qaeda after 2001 for instance. You're the professor, you should be able to explain that easily instead of hiding behind preemptive and absurd accusations of Marxist dementia and illicit relations with various bogeymen. After all I didn't call you a bully when you accused me of planning to murder Rush Limbaugh when I suggested he be fired ...
The people who watch Fox usually don't watch anything else. They have no idea that the lies and distortions they've been hearing are often repudiated and disproved by all the other news services. They haven't a clue that one of the largest anti-American campaigns, indeed the most organized program of treason against truth, justice and democracy is broadcasting 24 hours a day. Fox is using and will use everything they can find to undermine confidence in our government and anything it does and as you can see is hoping our country will fall and our hopes will fail. To me, it constitutes as great a danger to our future as any foreign enemy or global economic collapse. Traitors, saboteurs, liars and purveyors of irrational hate, Fox News is the enemy and anyone who hopes not just for our survival, but our improvement owes it to the world to use every opportunity to expose them.
So frankly, Captain Fogg can bite the bone. He's launched merciless attacks on American Power more times that I can recount, starting at Libby Spencer's blog back in the day. Surely this execrable hate-master extremist would do the Schutzstaffel proud. Pure toxic evil, mark my words.indeed, all of these people are unprincipled bullies, the lot of them, a rogue demonology detachment of the first order: Captain Fogg, Comrade Repsac3, David Hillman, Green Eagle, James B. Webb, TNLib, RockyNC, and TRUTH 101.
Cuffy Meigs said...
It's Leftists that constantly insist upon censuring news they do not approve of - regardless of its objectivity or closeness to the facts. FOXNews viewers may frequently (and rightly) complain about the prevalent Left-wing bias in the established news outlets, but none of them call for the censorship or closing of these outlets. And most FOXNews viewers are regularly bombarded by alternate views - many of them, because of said mainstream bias, in ideological Left-wing lockstep with each other.
I occasionally watch FOXNews myself, but I'm not a big fan of American news outlets. I also listen to NPR, much more so than I watch FOXNews. It's because of my frequent contact with news from NPR that I can authoritatively comment on how biased, Left-leaning, and quite frequently wrong the commentary there is. Tom Ashbrooke ("On Point") is a particularly annoying and insipid commentator. I invariably am compelled to switch channels because of some stupid, insulting quip by Terry Gross on her fetid "Fresh Air". About the only shows they have that don't regularly insult my intelligence and principles are the excellent BBC news broadcasts and Car Talk.
These Leftist jerks had better get used to the idea of a free press. And if their mainstream outlets can't start improving the quality of their news to match the intellectual level of the public, they will continue to bleed viewership, listeners and influence. If they continue to push their kleptocratic, self-serving version of socialism, and the wacky news that results from forcing it through that worldview, they will soon be at the helm of "mainstream" outlets that no one listens to. Then, like NPR, the only way they'll be able to survive is through taxpayer subsidies and foundations run by the liberal widows of deceased capitalists.
Commentary, analysis, and diabolical satire of American politics, culture, national identity, and universal anomie - from a nihilist, denialist, postmodernist, post-racial perspective... "a rogue demonology detachment of the first order"
Human rights attorney Scott Horton tells the sorry tale in Interrorgation NationNo Comment 11/15/2010:
Since Barack Obama became president, the debate over torture in America has taken a morally corrupt turn. Defenders of the old regime continue to defend the use of torture as essential to the nation's defense. Their claims are contradicted by the facts: torture was used to extract false confessions that fueled, among other things, the invasion of Iraq on false pretenses. The fact that America tortured is still a principal recruiting tool for radical Islamists. But Obama has kept silent in the face of all of this, not wishing to engage torture apologists in debate. More significantly, he has apparently encouraged his Justice Department to squelch any meaningful investigation of torture, in violation of the clear requirements of law. A policy that says "don't look back" means the triumph of torture: while we may not be captives of our past, we are the captives of our perception of the past.When one side offers an airbrushed version of the past and the other is silent, then, in the binary world of Washington, victory goes to the falsifiers. [my emphasis]
By not pursuing prosecutions of known torturers, the Obama Administration is breaking the law. For an issue so serious, a President should have to worry about being impeached. The Republicans will get the impeachment train rolling in the new Congress, but not on the torture issue. They support torture, even enthusiastically support it. And the Democrats for the most part are not going to oppose the Administration's passive position, even though it too is breaking the law. This truly is "morally corrupt".
The torture issue isn't going away. But it's going to do more damage to American democracy before it's adequately dealt with.
Foreign policy justified by fear, enabled by indifference
The American public for a combination of reasons views our general foreign policy with an indifference that seems completely disproportionate to the huge impact it has around the world. But as Stephen Walt suggests in Republic or empire?Foreign Policy 11/29/2010, that indifference may very well be indispensable to that foreign policy even being possible:
Americans think we ought to be managing the whole world, but we shouldn't have to pay taxes or sacrifice our way of life in order to do it. We use our military machine to kill literally tens of thousands of Muslims in different countries, and then we are surprised when a handful of them get mad and try (usually not every effectively) to hit us back. But then we docilely submit to all sorts of degrading and costly procedures at airports, because we demand to be protected from threats whose origins we've been refusing to talk about honestly for years. We are constantly warned about grave dangers, secret plots, impending confrontations, slow-motion crises, etc., and we are told that these often hypothetical scenarios justify compromising liberties here at home and engaging in practices (torture, targeted assassinations, preventive missile strikes at suspected terrorists, etc.) that we would roundly condemn if anyone else did them. We think it is an outrage when North Korea shells a South Korean island and kills four people, (correct), yet it is just "business as usual" when one of our drones hits some innocent civilians in Pakistan or Yemen. We have disdain for our politics and our politicians, but instead of questioning the institutions and practices that fuel this dysfunction, we indulge in fairy tales about so-called leaders who will somehow lead us out of the darkness. [my emphasis]
The Mustache (Tom Friedman) on green energy and American power
Tom Friedman's weekend New York Times column The Big American Leak 12/04/2010 is revealing. Not because it has more than the usual low level of insight from the influential columnist. But because it shows the superficiality of his approach
Tommy complains that the United States is losing clout. He doesn't think, though, that it's because some of the most respected and influential commentators acted as cheerleaders for a completely unnecessary war in Iraq. Or because they displayed the attitudes of six-year-olds in doing so, like that guy who said the benefit of the Iraq War was to tell some Arabs somewhere: "Suck.On.This." No, here's Tommy's definition:
Geopolitics is all about leverage. We cannot make ourselves safer abroad unless we change our behavior at home. But our politics never connects the two.
Think how different our conversations with Saudi Arabia would be if we were in the process of converting to electric cars powered by nuclear, wind, domestic natural gas and solar power? We could tell them that if we detect one more dollar of Saudi money going to the Taliban then they can protect themselves from Iran.
Think how different our conversations with China would be if we had had a different savings rate the past 30 years and China was not holding $900 billion in U.S. Treasury securities — but was still dependent on the U.S. economy and technology. We would not be begging them to revalue their currency, and maybe our request that China prevent North Korea from shipping ballistic missile parts to Iran via Beijing airport (also in the cables) wouldn't be rebuffed so brusquely.
And think how much more leverage our sanctions would have on Iran if oil were $20 a barrel and not $80 — and Iran's mullah-dictators were bankrupt?
Less far-sighted geopoliticians than Tommy Friedman might look at this a bit differently.
If we were moving rapidly toward using green energy, we suddenly would have to worry nearly as much about the problems of the Saud monarchy. Or spreading American military bases around in the Middle East and South Asia which inevitably involve intervening in those countries' politics and increasing temptations to use military power in those places. And creates all kinds of opportunities for "blowback".
If we weren't borrowing so much money from China, we would be borrowing it from somewhere else. Welcome to the 20th century. Not to mention the 21st. Also, if we weren't borrowing from China, people like Tommy Friedman and the neoconservatives would be far more likely to be looking for opportunities to start political and military conflicts with China.
If we had that advancing green energy economy, we wouldn't be so entangled in Middle East politics and wouldn't need to worry so much about Iran. Of course, if oil prices were to plunge, Iran could expect far less export income and would probably perceive they had a greater incentive to use nuclear power for their domestic needs to maximize the amount of oil they can export. And we would still have the same risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, if not a greater one. On the other hand, if we weren't so militarily committed in the Middle East, the US would be less inclined to threaten war, which probably would discourage the kind of constant saber-rattling that has probably inhibited rather than promoted a solution to the Iran proliferation problem.
Parliamentary parties, structural deficiencies and big money in politics
Jack Balkin has a thoughtful and thought-provoking discussion about the Constitutional separation of power in Parliamentary Parties in a Presidential SystemBalkinization 11/30/2010. Summarized very briefly, he argues that disciplined political parties that vote as a block make our non-parliamentary governmental system dysfunctional, which allows the Chief Executive to be a member of a different party than that of the Congressional majority.
Balkin's post is challenging because it looks at a longer-term issue - the Constitutional separation of powers that could only be changed by a Constitutional amendment - and at its implications for the next two years. I want to highlight one of his points up front, with which I very much agree:
... one important step would be to change the rules of the Senate and reform the system of filibusters and holds. Senate reform would mean that important legislation would require only a simple majority of both houses to be sent to the President, and executive branch appointments could be filled with only a simple majority of the Senate.
It would be hard to argue that our system presents challenges that parliamentary systems do not. Including the one he highlights, the fact that the Presidency can be held by a different party than holds the Congress. (And the Judiciary for that matter.) And while the Founders weren't assuming the presence of political parties in the sense we know them today, their guiding vision included the assumption that separation of powers recommended was vital to preserving freedom and preventing tyranny. Put a different way, they intended for the federal government's basic structures to be clunky. Part of the structural problem Balkin is addressing is due to the American use of winner-take-all electoral districts, which have tended in practice to lock in a two-party system, which can exist in parliamentary systems, as well.
But parliamentary systems have their own disadvantages. One present-day cautionary example is Israel, a democratic country with a parliamentary system and many parties. Whether Labor, Likud or Kadima wins a plurality, they typically have to include small, religion-based parties to put together a governing coalition. That has made it difficult in practice for any government to pursue peace negotiations, because the defection of one of the small parties can bring down the government. In another example, though not a typical one, the parliamentary system that emerged from our nation-building in Iraq has been trying for months to form a new government after their last national election.
Balkin argues that by becoming ideologically polarized, the Democrats and Republicans are now functioning largely as "parliamentary parties". And he sees that as unworkable:
The American system has long presumed that in periods of divided government, the President will be able to create coalitions with members of both parties in order to pass legislation. This is possible in part because, at least since the Civil War, and until very recently, American political parties have been agglomerations of heterogenous interests, and relatively ideologically diverse. (During the New Deal, for example, northern liberals, Catholics, and blacks coexisted in the same Democratic party as Southern whites). ... Parliamentary parties in most countries, by contrast, tend to be more ideologically coherent and centrally controlled. ...
But parliamentary parties are not well designed for the particular forms of give and take that are generally required in a presidential system. In a presidential system, members of different parties are expected to regularly cross party lines to form coalitions on particular questions (rather than on the formation of a government as a whole). Ideologically coherent and politically polarized parties do not perform these functions particularly well. Indeed, the most recent example of the rise of parliamentary parties in the United States is the party system shortly before the Civil War, in which political compromise increasingly became impossible.
He thinks that the Democratic minority in the new House will be as obstructionist as the Republican minority has been in the outgoing one. And that "is a disaster in the making for the political system in which we live".
I have reservations about his analysis. As he points out, we have had "parliamentary parties", i.e., parties able to enforce consistent discipline on voting in Congress on major issues, in the living memory of anyone alive today, except in recent years, according to Balkin's analysis. And since that's the case, we can't really say based on American experience that disciplined parties are unworkable in this system.
Another reservation is one he articulates in his post: the Republicans are far more disciplined than the Democrats. "Perhaps ironically, given their anti-European rhetoric, the Republicans behave more like a European-style parliamentary party than the Democrats, who still retain more moderates in the House and Senate."
A third reservation is his argument that "there is no reason to think that the Democrats will not eventually adopt many of the same tactics that the Republicans have perfected if, once again, they find themselves out of power." I'd have to say that this flies in the face of much of what we've seen these past two years. I can't improve on Digby's comment on this point. Her "Tip and Ronnie" reference is to the story, one of the favorite anecdotes of our Pod Pundits, that House Democratic Leader Tip O'Neill and President Ronald Reagan used to have huge political fights in public during the day and get together in the evening and have a beer together:
I actually think there is every reason to believe the Democrats will not adopt many of the tactics Republicans have perfected because they are just not temperamentally equipped to do it. I think they will continue to pretend, as the media still does, that the beautiful world of Tip and Ronnie will return if only these awful people would just stop making their congressmen and Senators do things they don't want to do until they are pushed hard by the people to change their ways. At this point they do not have a whole lot to lose by losing --- the revolving door takes very good care of them if they promise not to make too many waves, which is exactly what they hate.
She gets at something Balkin's post ignores, which is that there are good reasons we have different political parties. Thomas Jefferson, the first leader of what evolved into today's Democratic Party, thought it was a matter of deep-rooted human inclinations, in which some people are eager to adapt to the future and "embrace change" (to use a current favorite management buzz-phrase) while others are just stodgy conservatives. Okay, he put it more eloquently than that, but you get the point.
James Madison had a more materialistic explanation in the famous Federalist #10:
The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government. [my emphasis]
Glenn Beck would likely take this as evidence that Madison was a Marxist, but this was written before Karl Marx had even been born, decades before actually, and the word "socialism" hadn't even been invented yet.
The paralyzing debility in our system today is the dominance of money, particularly in campaigns. This problem Balkin essentially dismisses with a resigned sigh: "The system of campaign finance that helps parties control their members seems well entrenched."
But it would be easier to change the campaign finance system than to institute a parliamentary system in the US. And, in any case, recent American experience gives very good reason for thinking - I would say dead certain - that the wide-open, deeply-corrupt approach we have to campaign financing that the Roberts Supreme Court made even worse this year with the Citizens United decision would corrupt a parliamentary system just as it has corrupted our current system. It is that more than what Balkin calls the Presidential system of government that is making our national government "pathological and unsustainable in the long run" and producing "bad and ineffective government that will harm the national interest" and creating "persistent forms of political pathology", to use his description of the problem.
Another key point is one raised by John Kenneth Galbraith in The Culture of Contentment (1992), and one I hope to discuss here in more detail soon. The dynamics of our politics means that that the more affluent voters tend to have a favorable view of government not being able to respond to problems promptly. If you live a gated community with its own security force, to take one example, you don't necessarily care if the federal, state and local governments take action to prevent layoff of public safety personnel. Why should you pay taxes for services that benefit someone else anyway? On a more macro issue, if the weather generally seems tolerable to you, you may just as soon see the government delay action on global climate change indefinitely because, hey, what do you care if some Third World coastal city gets flooded out of existence 50 years from now?
The delay of federal action that results from the institutional dysfunctions that Balkin identifies, in other words, itself often serves perceived class interests. Taking the urgently needed steps now on global climate change might mean that the Koch oil billionaires might have to shell out more money for pollution-control equipment, or won't get to profit from deepwater oil drilling as much as they might want to. A lot of dysfunction in the federal government isn't simply an unfortunate by-product of political developments. To a major extent, it's a conscious goal of the powerful and well-funded Republican Party.
Conservative David Brooks and liberal (?!) Ruth Marcus agree: Grandma should eat catfood
Social Security Phaseout seems to be the most popular idea among the Beltway Village. Washington Post's alleged liberal columnist Ruth Marcus took the place of Sleep Mark Shields on the PBS Newshour Friday as David "Bobo" Brooks' discussion partner on the Political Wrap (12/03/2010). Bobo and Ruth both agreed that the Catfood Commission's recommendations are wonderful, i.e., that Social Security should be phased out and Grandma left to live on catfood, if she can afford it. Both agreed that this is the only "adult" thing to do because of the terrible menace of the deficit. Neither mentioned that Social Security does not contribute to the deficit. Bobo quotes Lenin supposedly saying (in some context back in God-knows-when) that the worse things get, the better. Republican Leninism? Or just Bobo babbling?
Rarely before in American history has there been more disconnect between Washington and the rest of the nation. Washington is obsessing about the projected federal budget deficit. Everyone else in America is worried about jobs.
Bobo and Ruth both say they've noticed that Democratic base voters - or at least their few media colleagues who reflect those attitudes - are not pleased with President Obama's timidity. But Ruth seems to think that just means all Serious People need to think about the State of the Union message in January, the next landmark dramatic moment in the Village script.
One set of documents from the latest Wikileaks dump concern pressure that the US government brought on Spain to head off what the Cheney-Bush Administration clearly understood was a real danger: that Americans involved in torture or war crimes were vulnerable to prosecution under international law. Spain is well known for prosecutor Baltasar Garzón's willingness to apply universal jurisdiction to bring charges against accused perpetrators of war crimes committed in other countries.
As one example, this cable from the US Embassy in Madrid of 03/23/2007 noted (Cable en el que la Embajada de EE UU ...El País 30/11/2010; the PSOE has been the ruling party in Spain since March 2004):
As reported in reftel, magistrate Baltasar Garzon wrote an op-ed on March 20 that proposed an investigation into "criminal responsibility" for the war. Socialist Party (PSOE) secretary Jose Blanco hopped on the bandwagon in a TV ... interview that evening. The Ambassador immediately contacted National Security Adviser Casajuana to express concern. Casajuana promised to take the message to President Zapatero. [my emphasis]
The article to which the cable refers is this article by Garzón, AniversarioEl País 20/03/2007. El País has a special report webpage on this round of Wikileaks.
Summary. In a volatile political climate leading up to regional/municipal elections in late May, the ruling Socialist Party (PSOE) and far left political allies have ramped up criticism of the war in Iraq, in part to counteract opposition Popular Party (PP) attacks on the Zapatero Government's controversial policies on the ETA issue. The Madrid Regional PSOE joined the far left "United Left" (IU), unions, and pacifist groups staged mass demonstrations against the war on March 17 - though the turnout was lower than for the anti-ETA march. On March 20, high profile magistrate Baltasar Garzon published an editorial in the left leaning "El Pais" saying that the time had arrived to investigate "criminal responsibility" for the war in Iraq, to include possible charges against former President Aznar, PM Blair, and President Bush (Spaniards frequently refer to the "Picture of the Azores" in 2003 of the three leaders as the moment in which the decision to go to war was made, thus linking Aznar not just with the Spanish troop deployment, but with full responsibility for the war). PSOE Secretary Jose Blanco said in a March 20 television interview that "someone must pay" for the war in Iraq, and that if someone could demonstrate criminal culpability on the part of political leaders, Blanco said he was "all for it." The Ambassador contacted National Security Adviser Carles Casajuana on March 21 to convey his deep concern regarding the direction and tenor of PSOE statements on Iraq, which could only harm bilateral relations. Casajuana discussed the heated political context of the statements and said he expected them to abate soon, but assured the Ambassador that he would convey the Ambassador's concerns to President Zapatero immediately. The DCM is following up with PSOE Secretary Blanco to insist that the PSOE avoid dragging the ... USG [US Government] into its domestic conflict with the PP. End summary.
Things like this are not a surprise. But it is good to see it laid out like this, because Dick Cheney and George Bush were claiming their actions were legal, leaning on the dishonest internal legal opinions they flunkies like John Yoo generated.
[President Zapatero] may even take credit, as in the case of adjustments in U.S.-Cuba policy, for shaping USG views. He is not innately ill-disposed to the USG. For him, foreign policy is subordinate to domestic political interests, and the U.S. relationship is just one more element to be viewed XXXXXXXXXXXX.
MADRID 00000614 003.2 OF 004
currently a wave of goodwill for President Obama in Spain, which is the answer to Zapatero's prayers in that it enables him to engage the USG without being dinged by the traditional anti-U.S. sentiment among his socialist base. XXXXXXXXXXXX. Zapatero does not speak English, though we think he may understand it.
I'm surprised that the Embassy wouldn't know something like that about a head of state. I also can't believe that Zapatero doesn't speak some English.
On the Wikileaks revelations in general, the Guardian has comments from several figures in US embassy cables: Verdict on the leaks about the Middle East 11/29/2010. One of the them is former British diplomat Craig Murray:
It is seriously argued that ambassadors will not in future give candid advice if there is a chance that that advice might become public. In the past 12 hours I have heard this remarkable proposition put forward on five different television networks, without anybody challenging it. ...
Put it another way and the cracks start to appear. The best advice is advice you would not be prepared to defend in public. Really? Why? In today's globalised world, embassies are not a unique source of expertise. Often, expatriate, academic and commercial organisations are a lot better informed. The best policy advice is not advice that is shielded from peer review. What the establishment mean is that ambassadors should be free to recommend things that the general public would view with deep opprobrium, without any danger of being found out. But should they really be allowed to do that, in a democracy? [my emphasis]
This 11/29/2010 PBS interview with (How Will New WikiLeaks Revelations Affect Diplomatic Candor?) includes Zbigniew Brzezinski of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and former George W. Bush advisor Stephen Hadley discussing Wikileaks. Brzezinski, and hardcore devotee of the Realist foreign policy school has some worthwhile comments. (Hadley, as I said, was a Bush II Administration advisor.)
Edward Lionel Terry (1873-1952) was a New Zealand white supremacist and ... that he was a white supremacist when he wrote and privately published The Shadow. ... Chinese and East Asian immigration to New Zealand, but failed to do so. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Terry - Cached - Similar
Nov 13, 2010 ... People do sometimes associate that with the White supremacy and Nazi thing. ... by Shadow :-). Member since: June 14, 2008 ...Chinese and stuff are proud of what they ARE doing not what their ANCESTORS have done. ...
answers.yahoo.com/question/index%3Fqi... - Cached - Similar
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socialismtheoryandpractice.blogspot.c... - Cached - Similar
Overt White supremacists and segregationists had to go, as did obvious .... as the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, he gave the meager ...
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... a coded message of white supremacy made the rounds on the Web before the Virginia ... US cable: China leaders ordered hacking on Google. 18 MINUTES AGO ... Ireland's Ghost Estates: Shadows of Prosperity Past · Upwardly Fertile: The ...
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Feb 27, 2009 ... Steps 1 to sildenafil tablets 50mg 7 years, China will surpass ..... The accusation of white supremacy is without focus and irrelevant. ...
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While stressing white supremacy as the one major motivation of the Klan, .... Ku Klux Klan America's First Terrorists Exposed (Shadow History of the United ...
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Jul 23, 2010 ... “My view is you can't separate white supremacists from what is going on with .... I call him my shadow, because wherever I post, he posts too lol. ...... aren't made in China, chances are they're made in Mexico instead. ...
www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stori... - Cached - Similar
Mar 5, 2008 ... For example, Nigeria is under the thumb of white supremacy, .... the powers that lend some sort of assistance in a nation's reign (say China's recent .... vestiges or shadows of that which was a state of white supremacy. ...
www.nathanielturner.com/nigeriaandwhi... - Cached - Similar
Disclaimer: This piece deals with racism and white supremacy in MMA. The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the various authors on this web site do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the thefightnerd.com. The editor of this site has chosen to censor a few sensitive words in this piece as well.
The bell rang. Round four of the five round title bout between the newly crowned Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and everyone’s favorite red-head, clown underdog Forrest Griffin had just come to a close. I had the champion up by one point on my scorecard, but the majority of the rounds were close enough to go either way. With five minutes left, the most coveted title in all of MMA, the UFC light heavyweight belt, was still up for grabs.
It was the perfect fight, except for the locale. Some poor choices I made that day had me observing the drama from a Hooters in rural Pennsylvania. The waitress, who I guess did the best she could to cover her caesarian scar while still displaying her midriff, couldn’t seem to get the hint that what I was spectating was far more important than whatever horrible food I had to choose from.
The crowd were also Hooters. And Hollerers to boot. Fiercely pro-Griffin based on the nonsensical advice that every drunk has to shout at live sporting events.
Griffin has been a fan favorite ever since his bout with Stephan Bonnar at the end of the first Ultimate Fighter reality series. The Bonnar fight was a slobber knocker with less competent defense than a Harlem Globe Trotters game, far inferior to the technical drama that was unfolding on the big flat screen. But Griffin’s eagerness to bleed for fans has always taken precedence over his ability to win for them. His history of hard-fought brawls and his whacky sense of humor had this crowd won long before he stepped into the cage that night.
Or maybe that wasn’t why they liked him.
“Kill the n****r!”
The shout came from behind me as the round five bell opened. It was the first time I did a 180 away from the action all night. I looked through the room, wondering who could be so classless. But, among the Hooters and the Hollerers, everyone and no one fit the description. What I heard was a ghost.
A specter of something I thought was long dead before that light heavyweight tilt.
During the days before the Unified Rules of MMA, the competitive circuit was nowhere near as robust or standardized as it is, today. No Holds Barred fighting ranged from legitimate precursors to American MMA to bar-room Tough Man fights.
In many rural areas, including small pocket locations in Pennsylvania, NHB clubs were used as a front for white supremacist groups. While a few had real skill, the vast majority were glorified fight clubs. The membership were local tough guys: Strong. Throw mostly overhands. Angry. Care more about laying a beating on someone than accumulating competitive skill. Sucker for a straight left. Perfect for cult or paramilitary recruitment, really.
Long before Forrest or Rampage were household names, I was an 18 year old fight fan going to college in Pennsylvania looking to get back into competitive martial arts. I had become intimately familiar with these groups. It actually took me a solid year to find a legitimate coach.
For all the credit that people give to the UFC for growing the sport of mixed martial arts, there’s one accolade that is often left out. The boom of the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s popularity encouraged real training centers to pop up in main stream America. Every region developed its own fight teams and MMA promotions, cutting the cancer of white supremacist rhetoric out of the sport in just a few years.
By the time Griffin squared off against Jackson, the weight advantage of the majority had won out. Google hits for the UFC and the short-lived stroll of EliteXC onto network television had buried the remains of the sport’s darker time. The Hooters and the Hollerers were probably as much a stranger to the idea of extremists in MMA as anyone who grew up training in New York, where the culture was mercifully absent.
But, hearing those three words, “kill the n****r,” my mind started to play tricks on me. Maybe the crowd was pro-Griffin because he’s one of the most beloved name in the sport. Certainly likely.
But maybe I was sitting in the middle of a bastion of something that I thought was long dead. A bunch of hard line white supremacists gathered to witness their great white hope taking the belt from a black man who cut his fighting teeth in Japan.
Of course, it’s far more likely that the voice I heard was just that of an asshole- a creature indigenous to sports bars the world around- just shouting the most obnoxious thing he could think of. But, looking around that night, all I could see was a room full of ghosts.
Listening to UFC middleweight contender Chael Sonnen talk up his title contention against Anderson Silva, I started seeing those ghosts again.
Sonnen, previously an obscure grinder known for getting some upset victories by sacrificing damage to his body to score takedowns, has quickly risen to prominence through his sheer ability to talk trash. Sonnen’s sheer lack of respect for his opponent and the sport’s most dominant champion has resonated with the MMA fan base.
Anderson Silva’s recent show boating and temper tantrums in the octagon have given him a reputation as a Prima Donna. And the champion’s falling out of favor has provided the perfect spring stage for Sonnen’s mouth.
However, many of the challenger’s comments have had an increasingly less subtle subtext of bigotry. A full treatment of his commentary, including a tweet where he recommends Silva’s manager, Brazilian-American Ed Soares, pray to “whatever voodoo idol” he believes in, can be found on Bloody Elbow. The short version is that Sonnen’s talk has had an air of nationalistic superiority over countries with an African influenced culture. My initial reaction to Sonnen’s nationalism is, “well, yeah.” Combat Sports are inherently nationalistic. Fighters are always talking about representing their country, which they do. Filipino national treasure Manny Pacquiao is arguably the best pound for pound boxer in the world. Now, they love fighters in the Philippines, but I think the near god-like status of the Pac-Man might have something to do with the fact that he is from the Pacific isle.
Ricardo Mayorga says worse things ordering lunch than Sonnen has said in his entire media circus. Sensitivity to Chael’s fight selling tactics may lead newer fans to wonder why suburban white males are the only people who seem suspicious when they root for the guy they most identify with.
The reason is that specter of white supremacy. Fans could have any of the logical reasons to root for Sonnen mentioned above. But as soon as comments start touching the race line, every Sonnen fan has that phantasmagorical shadow cast on them. Because every legitimate fan is a hiding space for that subculture we wished long dead.
It might seem a radical, even paranoid suspicion. Except for the fact that the Nazis at Hoelzer Reich had to be banned from sponsoring fighters as recently as last year.
This bares repeating. As recently as last year, a group of bonafide, SS thunderbolt wearing, my grandfather proudly displayed his medals for shooting them Nazis were sponsoring fighters.
Some things just won’t stay dead.
Peter Lampasona is a guest contributor for thefightnerd.com. He may be reached for comment or questions at PeterLampasona@gmail.com.
"There are economic and social aspects of Eugenics distinct from the blatant hatred of anti-Semitism or the anti-Black prejudice that's common in the U.S. Often the justifications offered by proponents of Eugenics focus on economic and social gains to society that can be achieved by its application. Mayor Giuliani's defenders claim he's not a racist. In a very limited sense they may be right. The Mayor's ideology in terms of race and Eugenics focuses on economic issues and so-called quality of life. Let us not forget however that the main justification the Southern States offered for slavery was also economic as was Hitler's justification for euthanizing and sterilizing millions of German citizens, for invading Eastern Europe and to a large extent for the Holocaust itself.
German business interests reaped huge economic benefits from the Holocaust and from the application by the Nazis of Eugenics.
Here in New York City, business interests also have been the prime beneficiaries of Giuliani's Eugenics based policies.
Eugenics treats human beings as breeding stock, like farm animals. Eugenicists are preoccupied with issues of racial superiority, racial mixing, racial degeneration and the effects on modern economic society of race generally. So-called "positive" Eugenics deals with promoting socially and economically advantageous human breeding while "negative" Eugenics focuses on the culling out of those with undesirable traits. "
2"Long before Hitler created German laws requiring forcible sterilization, euthanasia and his ultimate Eugenics program, the Holocaust, the pioneers of Eugenics who originated Hitler's ideas were British and American scientists.
With the financial backing of some of the world's most famous industrialists like John D. Rockefeller, Cecil Rhodes, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford, they were able to promote Eugenics to an amazingly successful degree. Thanks to a century of propaganda distorting and disguising their real purposes, the influential foundations these men endowed with their wealth are viewed as humanitarian, even as mankind's hope for salvation.
William Bradford Shockley was one of the winners of the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for the transistor. There was a controversy hanging over his win — backed up by corroborating accounts from his colleagues Walter Houser Brattain and John Bardeen (the other two Nobelists in the Prize),[33] — which critics[who?] characterized as due mainly to Shockley's then-directorship position and self-promotion efforts.[34] The original design Shockley presented to Brattain and Bardeen did not work. His share of the Nobel prize results from his development of the superior junction transistor, which was the basis of the electronics revolution.[34][35] He excluded Brattain and Bardeen from this process, even though the idea may have been theirs.[34] The main controversy associated with Shockley, however, is his support of eugenics.[36] He regarded his published works on this topic as the most important work of his career.[37] His ideas are largely based on the research of Cyril Burt. He is the only Nobel Laureate who publicly admitted to donating sperm to the Repository for Germinal Choice,[38] a sperm bank founded (1980) by Robert Klark Graham in the hopes of passing down humanity's best genes. The repository was shut down in 1999.
"This circuit was actually spoken over and by switching the device in and out a distinct gain ... he realized that's because there wasn't an oxide layer. ... Shockley asked Bardeen and Brattain to show off their little plastic triangle ...
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Though Alexander Graham Bell's 1875 invention of the telephone is ...Shockley had continued his semiconductor work, and in 1948 patented the modern junction transistor. ... It wasn't till 1956 that Japan's ETL Mark 3, probably the first ... I remember buying bags of random transistors from Radio Shack in the 60s...
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So discredited did Bill Shockley become that a kind of revisionist history took over. 'Oh, you know he really wasn't that important to the invention of the...
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The Bendix Corporation was founded in 1924 by the inventor Vincent Bendix. ..... In 1950, Shockley Semiconductor Labs (later known as Shockley Transistor Corporation) .... It was soon nicknamed “Toshiba”, but it wasn't until 1984 that the .... Later in the 60s Philips bought Erres totally and the company was over. ...
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He [Douglas] shall have no occasion to ever ask it again, for I tell him very frankly that I ..... Instead, we get the words "racist," used as a generalized smear, ...Shockley took this to reflect the genetic inheritance of intelligence ... to see a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained and ...
The Pseudo-Scientific Theory of William Bradford Shockley Contrasted with the views of the Black Muslims are scientific doctrines that posit the racial...
“racists“ who seek to dismantle the civil rights of American blacks. ..... work ever touched on. Jensen knew Cattell reasonably well and most likely ... researcher William Shockley, and Jensen's thoughts about Shockley's own ... political commentary and fails to credibly refute Herrnstein and Murray's analysis of ...
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It's Leftists that constantly insist upon censuring news they do not approve of - regardless of its objectivity or closeness to the facts. FOXNews viewers may frequently (and rightly) complain about the prevalent Left-wing bias in the established news outlets, but none of them call for the censorship or closing of these outlets. And most FOXNews viewers are regularly bombarded by alternate views - many of them, because of said mainstream bias, in ideological Left-wing lockstep with each other.
I occasionally watch FOXNews myself, but I'm not a big fan of American news outlets. I also listen to NPR, much more so than I watch FOXNews. It's because of my frequent contact with news from NPR that I can authoritatively comment on how biased, Left-leaning, and quite frequently wrong the commentary there is. Tom Ashbrooke ("On Point") is a particularly annoying and insipid commentator. I invariably am compelled to switch channels because of some stupid, insulting quip by Terry Gross on her fetid "Fresh Air". About the only shows they have that don't regularly insult my intelligence and principles are the excellent BBC news broadcasts and Car Talk.
These Leftist jerks had better get used to the idea of a free press. And if their mainstream outlets can't start improving the quality of their news to match the intellectual level of the public, they will continue to bleed viewership, listeners and influence. If they continue to push their kleptocratic, self-serving version of socialism, and the wacky news that results from forcing it through that worldview, they will soon be at the helm of "mainstream" outlets that no one listens to. Then, like NPR, the only way they'll be able to survive is through taxpayer subsidies and foundations run by the liberal widows of deceased capitalists.
Admit it Doc - ya love to hear 'em holler!
http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/as-disgusting-as-joseph-goebbels.html