George Rebane

The persecution of Christians, almost overwhelmingly by Muslim extremists in their lands, and leftwing secular humanists in more civilized regions, is picking up steam.  The latest of about which the lamestream is silent today goes on in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.  There the Fulani Muslims have taken up gun and machetes against entire villages of Christians.  These attacks take place all over the country and consist of the most horrendous acts of violence against innocent and unarmed civilians, leaving behind the dead and mutilated.  Lop amputations are again the favored way to leave survivors who can then relate the horrors of the ‘religion of peace’ to those yet to be visited.  The government’s military is in cahoots with the religious fanatics, showing up late, if ever, and then confiscating anything that looks like an implement with which the surviving villagers could defend themselves, citing the national law against civilians bearing arms, no matter how primitive or useful they are as a farming implement.  (more here)

Boeing’s grounded 737MAX may be the final instigation for the long-talked of conversion to take human pilots out of cockpits.  The modern commercial aircraft is so complex that it needs a lot of smart machinery to operate it.  And that requires a much more extensive training curriculum for today’s pilots than what they are used to, and of what many (most?) are capable of executing in the cockpit, especially during anomalous or emergency conditions.  We have demonstrated that large drone aircraft are capable of operating autonomously over wide areas and/or with ground-based pilots who primarily monitor flight.  The 737MAX will fly again, there is too much pressure to increase passenger air traffic, and too few airplane models and manufacturers to satisfy the demand. (more here)  But now the productive dialogue has begun between manufacturers, regulators, and airlines to plan for the inevitable advent of smart, autonomous, and much safer aircraft; especially when suborbital hypersonic aircraft are introduced with flight profiles that require orders of magnitude more complex decisions to be made and correctly executed in milliseconds.

‘American Liberty Depends on the Deep State’ argues noted historian Francis (“the end of history”) Fukuyama.  He ties his lamentably weak arguments to an unfortunately partisan definition which is more true than false.  Today’s ‘deep state’ is the ‘administrative state’ of yesteryear that is now composed of “unelected officials who are supposedly partisan Democrats ready to do anything to undermine the Trump presidency.”  In the sequel he ignores the overwhelming evidence that gives credence to such a definition.  He claims that all “modern democracies” like the US need deep state governance “because it is crucial to fighting corruption and upholding the rule of law”, ignoring the record of the wide incidence of corruption and criminality that hides in a byzantinely structured deep state.  Fukuyama lauds the supposed meritocracy of the deep state establishments of Britain, France, Germany, …, without any comparison of the relative benefits over the US that these countries have enjoyed.  The Pendleton Act of 1883 was supposed to make our civil service a meritocracy.  As we all know, it did not.  Our historian ends his apologetic for the deep state with a red herring, citing a scenario in which our president (hint Trump) refuses to leave office at the end of his term and orders the military to protect his stay.  Then it would be only through the good graces of the deep state that such a president would not be defended and would have to vacate his office.  Astounding!

More left-leaners than right-leaners now appear to make up the cohort of RR commenters.  This is apparent from just a simple count of the handles used by the progressives.  I have no idea how the total readership breaks down, but I suspect there are at least as many of the Left as of the Right.  It is certain that they follow the content of this website with great interest and attention, taking every opportunity to counter the slings and arrows we launch against their ideology cum religion.  As I have stated for years, their presence is more than welcome, else we would be an echo chamber as are almost all socio-political sites of the liberal persuasion.  A local leftwing weblog serves as an ample illustration of the effects of such censorship of opposing thought.  Well, that’s not the entire reason for its dearth of comment streams – it is also poorly edited, filled with bulletin board boring and narcoleptically numbing topics, and empty of any intellectual challenges to its occasional stasist and statist progressive mantras.  However, for completeness we do feature it in Our Links found in the left panel.

Stephen Miller, Trump administration senior adviser and a Jew, is an example of a target of leftwing attack as being anti-Semitic simply because he cited news reported on Breitbart.  These Democrat congresscritters want him fired. (more here)  They accuse him of "documented support for white nationalist and virulently anti-immigrant tropes (which) is wholly unacceptable and disqualifying for a government employee."  There is no evidence of either that they can present or that even exists.  Mr Miller is white and presumably a nationalist.  He is not anti-immigrant but simply against illegal entry into the United States.  So none of the accusing Democrat Jews can give a coherent definition of nationalism or show why embracing such a socio-political stance is somehow toxic to this country.  Neither can they defend porous borders that permit the illegal entry of hordes of foreigners with unknown diseases, crime records, skill levels, disjoint cultures, and doubtful allegiance to everything that America has stood for in the past (before our anti-American left has begun making its mark).