Last year, I sat down with author David Hardy and filmmaker Dan Gifford for a 13-hour in-depth review of the ATF, FBI and US Army’s slaughter of the Branch Davidians of Waco, Texas on this day in 1993. Also feat. James Tabor, Paul Fatta, David Thibodeau, Jim Bovard, Barbara Grant and Mike McNulty. Listen here.
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TSA Gets a Raise
Are you bummed because inflation’s got you again wit’ yer broke ass?
Well take heart. Federal Government employees are doing better than ever at your expense.
So at least they’ve got that going for them.
Lexington and Concord: The Fire Begins
The divorce proceedings between London and America began on this day in 1775, 249 years ago.
In Episode 011 of my podcast, I did a historical memorium to the events at Lexington and Concord.
In honor of this day, give it a listen.
The “Israel Has the Most Moral Army in the World” Trope
On April 17, ZeroHedge hosted a debate on the Israel-Palestine conflict moderated by Saagar Enjeti of Breaking Points, which pitted libertarian comedian and political commentator Dave Smith and The Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur against conservative talk show host Dennis Prager and Newsweek deputy opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon.
The main topic of debate was whether Israel’s ongoing military operation in Gaza is justified. Smith and Uygur argued in the negative while Prager and Ungar-Sargon argued in the affirmative.
The apologists for what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has deemed to be a plausible genocide in Gaza premised their position on the claim that Israel does everything possible to avoid harming civilians, and Palestinian civilians have only been dying because Hamas was using them as human shields.
Ungar-Sargon additionally argued that the “kill ratio” of combatants to civilians is evidence that Israel is trying to avoid harm to civilians.
She also argued that Israel’s warnings for Palestinians to flee northern Gaza is additional evidence of its benevolent intent — which she immediately conceded, before even being challenged on the point, could also be construed as evidence that Israel was at least guilty of the crime of ethnic cleansing.
Prager went so far as to describe the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as “the most moral army in the world”, citing as evidence the word of Colonel Richard Kemp, a retired former commander of British forces in Afghanistan.
Kemp is frequently cited by Israel’s apologists as though his statements about the IDF’s wondrous munificence can be considered credible and serious.
Alan Dershowitz, for example, has rolled out the same talking point about Israel being “the most moral army in the world”, similarly citing Kemp.
But we’ll come back to Kemp. First, let’s briefly examine the “human shields” and “kill ratio” arguments.
Wheels Within Wheels: Complexity is Real in War
“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tent-show whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.”
– Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
Sober observers may find another reason for the Iranian attack against Israel this month in retaliation for the Israeli bombing of the Iranian consulate annex building adjacent to the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria on April Fools Day.
May I suggest it is more important in this case to exhaust the kinetic Israeli/US air defense assets and accuracy doesn’t matter as long as exquisite munitions are exhausted; whether shoot/shoot/look or shoot/look/shoot which is a slight permutation on dynamic retasking, controlled pairs or more of air defense munitions are launched as a matter of course to service incoming ordnance. If the object here is to empty the western magazine cupboards by sending your older and less effective munitions aloft (Iran), mission accomplished and you have a very sufficient intelligence mapping of Israeli Anti-Access Air Defense (A2AD) dispositions and tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) for follow-on responses.
Nations and regions do stumble into war precipitously but there are conflicts in history where the weaker opponents plan and shape the conditions to prevail before the conflict is started; Vietnam is the best example in recent history of reading the tea leaves and setting the stage for success against superior forces.
The west has a manufacturing crisis right now that is existential in restocking and reconstituting the emptying stocks of war materiel. One can either favor or oppose doing that but the fact remains the manufacturing base and capability is an open question for America and its allies.The chaos avalanche of the competency crisis, the reproducibility problems in STEM research & application and the very real infrastructure failures increasing in frequency year by year doesn’t bode well for those wishing to replenish the diminished war stocks potentially reconstituting with stuff that simply doesn’t work.
The second 155mm artillery shell manufacturing plant in the west just went up in flames in the UK in less than a week. One in Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in PA and the BAE Systems Glascoed Plant in Monmouthshire, UK.
In war, there is a lot to be said for how to leverage shaping the conflict left of bang.
I’m fond of saying that many people are in charge but no one is in control.
F35 Fat Amy Follies: The Gift That Keeps on Giving
Two Trillion Dollars…
Pretty soon, we’re talking real money.
So we put this in perspective: Two trillion U.S. dollars in $100 notes would be 1,356 miles high. If they were one dollar bills, it would be 135,600 miles high (the moon is 238,900 miles from Earth).
During testimony with Rep Matt Gaetz, the U.S. Air Force Secretary testified that only 29 percent of F35 aircraft are fully operational.
“While the Pentagon now expects the plane to fly until 2088, GAO found the services are planning to slash flight hours, which can help hold down the program’s topline.”
The cloudy sustainment picture comes as the F-35 program is failing to meet mission capable rate goals, which GAO covered in the September 2023 sustainment report. The program is meeting 17 of 24 reliability and maintainability goals as of August 2023, GAO found today, but woes ranging from depot capacity to a dearth of spare parts continue to drag down fleet readiness. Still, the program has managed to eke out some relatively good news in recent months, the most recent being the mostly symbolic move to approve the jet’s full rate production after years of delays.
In total, GAO said DoD has implemented just 13 of 43 recommendations the watchdog has made since 2014 on operating and sustaining the F-35. Lawmakers plan to further probe the program’s performance in a hearing the House Armed Services tactical air and land forces subcommittee is scheduled to hold Tuesday.”
New Hampshire GOP Adds ‘Defend the Guard’ to Party Platform
With a resounding “Aye,” Defend the Guard was made an official part of the New Hampshire Republican Party platform.
On Saturday, April 13, the New Hampshire GOP held a meeting to vote on platform amendments. Among the list of proposals was the following text:
“Demand that Congress exercise their sole authority over war declarations and protect the New Hampshire National Guard by requiring a Congressional declaration of war prior to any National Guardsman deployment to overseas combat zones.”
After some remarks from supporters, and one or two in opposition, it went to a voice vote, and the “Ayes” had it by a large margin. This means that Defend the Guard legislation is officially a plank of the the New Hampshire Republican Party platform, located under the “Federalism” section on the state party website. The platform can be read here.
This marks an important step in proving the demand for this legislation, especially as H.B. 229 sees a rocky committee recommendation in the New Hampshire Senate. The Finance Committee voted 7-0 to send the bill to Interim Study, which is a soft way to kill the bill, but it will still see a vote on the Senate floor. It is imperative that Republicans in the Senate are encouraged to defeat the IS motion, and to honor the Republican platform by passing the bill. Democrats, too, may be convinced to support the bill, even if it is not part of the Democratic Party platform, and it is important for them to be encouraged to do so.
The vote is on April 18; therefore, if you have time, please contact the NH Senate and encourage them to defeat the IS and pass the bill.
USC Bows Down to Pro-Israel Terrorists, Cancels Muslim-American’s Valedictorian Speech
No one hates Americans’ sacred right of free speech more than Israel’s American fifth column.
No one is a bigger group of cowards than the USC Trojans. Always have been a bunch of sniveling little weaklings.
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