Praxis: Behold! The Mighty Spork!

A spork or a foon is a hybrid form of cutlery taking the form of a spoon-like shallow scoop with three or four fork tines. Spork-like utensils, such as the terrapin fork or ice cream fork, have been manufactured since the late 1800s; patents for spork-like designs date back to at least 1874, and the word "spork" was registered as a trademark in the US and the UK decades later. They are used by fast food restaurants, schools, prisons, the military, and backpackers.

The spork is a portmanteau word combining spoon and fork. Similarly, the word foon is a blend of fork and spoon. The word "spork" appeared in the 1909 supplement to the Century Dictionary, where it was described as a trade name and "a 'portmanteau-word' applied to a long, slender spoon having, at the end of the bowl, projections resembling the tines of a fork". -- Wikipedia.

Folks,

My good friend Pete at WRSA suggested some weeks ago that I do a praxis on the mighty Lexan spork, so, after some study and deliberation, here it is.



My first camping experiences were, as many folks of my generation may share, part of my Boy Scout membership. There I learned to like the above eating utensil combination of stainless steel. It was heavy, but it being stainless steel you could actually boil it and get it sanitary for your next meal, unlike some of the wooden and early plastic utensils that some Scouts used. Indeed, the first spork I can recall seeing was one made of wood, crafted of some exotic wood, teak perhaps, in a high school shop class by a fellow Scout. But as for the weight, I was young and didn't know any better. This Boy Scout kit is still serviceable today, and in the 90s I spotted many of these at militia FTXs.

(I also learned in my scouting days what a sorry piece of cookware the issue Boy Scout aluminum mess kit was, but that is for another future praxis post.)

Sporks come in two basic designs and a variety of materials, shapes and colors. Here is the spork that anyone who has eaten at Taco Bell will recognize.

Four versions of the one-ended Spork, in Stainless Steel, Lexan-Plastic,Disposable Plastic, & Titanium. (I particularly like the can opener on the end of the titanium example.)

This is the one-ended spork, with the tines made onto the bowl. Now this is fine, as far as it goes, but if you're like me, you have discovered that trying to eat liquids and other runny stuff, or noodles, is problematic. Ever tried to clean out the last bits of stuff that adheres to the bottom crevices in a cooking pot or canteen cup with a Spork. It is almost as frustrating an experience as my first marriage. Other folks must have thought so too, for the double-ended spork is now almost as ubiquitous as the single-ended and much more popular with hikers and other folks who have to provide for their own "One-Man Logistics" (to borrow a phrase from S.L.A. Marshall's perceptive 1949 study, The Soldier's Load and The Mobility of a Nation, published by the Marine Corps Association Press, Quantico VA, 1980).

Behold, then, the double-ended Lexan Spork (weight approximately 0.3 oz):



Now, the double-ended Lexan spork is mighty fine, but where it fails is putting the utensil to the test of fire.



Note the Lexan sample on the left versus a modified titanium one on the right. This was the fate of many an MRE spoon in the 90s when we were doing extensive "armed camping trips." If it is made of plastic, it WILL melt, even if it is of Lexan.

Stainless steel, of course, will not melt, but it is, by the ounce-allergic standards of today, inordinately heavy. And ounces DO count. "Light is right", is my mantra. Thus we come to the Titanium spork, the ne plus ultra of modern camp cutlery.



This is my current favorite: the LightMyFire Titanium Spork. At almost twenty bucks it is expensive, true, but being titanium it is well-nigh indestructible and weighs in at a feathery 0.6 ounces (17 grams). It combines a knife, fork and spoon in one design and one review says it should be more properly referred to as a "knifoon."

There are many other titanium sporks available, some for as little as five bucks. PureBound.com, here, shows how a titanium spork can be modified to use as a measuring device for cooking in lieu of a measuring cup. Which, if you're like me and have a tough time estimating water volume for recipes, is a "goodness thing."

Anyway, that is my review of the might spork. Feel free to contribute your own cooking gear ideas and experiences in the comments below.

Mike
III

Comes the dawn . . . (No, not "Red Dawn.")

OK, folks, (he said sheepishly) this is what comes from posting after midnight. As Magwa observes in my original post on the new Executive Order below, this comes about as a result of Public Law 110-181. That is, it was passed by the 110th Congress in 2008. The authorizing language:

(Sec. 1822) Requires the President to establish a bipartisan Council of Governors to advise the Secretary, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the White House Homeland Security Council on matters related to the National Guard and civil support missions.

GovTrack.us shows:

Senate Vote On Passage: H.R. 4986 [110th]: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008

Number: Senate Vote #1 in 2008 [primary source]

Date: Jan 22, 2008 5:32PM
Result: Bill Passed

Also, the roll call shows:

Illinois
Yea IL Durbin, Richard [D]
Not Voting IL Obama, Barack [D]

Thus, Barack Obama wasn't even there because he was busy running for president.

Now, that said, the Obamanoids can still make mischief with this and the GOP shouldn't cooperate with it, but it does not come about from some nefarious plan of Obama's. (Not that His Royal Lightness doesn't have other nefarious plans.)

Mike
III

"And remember, whatever you do, never, ever post after midnight."

Formation of the Military Council of Czarist Governors: Looks like old Obama's working himself up to something.

""I know something you don't know." or, Why is this lying anal sphincter smiling?


My thanks to Typeay and others for forwarding me this little surprise.

Money quote:

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release January 11, 2010

EXECUTIVE ORDER

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COUNCIL OF GOVERNORS

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America,including section 1822 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2008 (Public Law 110-181), and in order to strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State governments to protect our Nation and its people and property,it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Council of Governors.

(a) There is established a Council of Governors (Council).The Council shall consist of 10 State Governors appointed by the President (Members), of whom no more than five shall be of the same political party. The term of service for each Member appointed to serve on the Council shall be 2 years, but a Member may be reappointed for additional terms.

(b)The President shall designate two Members, who shall not be members of the same political party, to serve as Co-Chairs of the Council.

Sec. 2. Functions. The Council shall meet at the call of the Secretary of Defense or the Co-Chairs of the Council to exchange views, information, or advice with the Secretary of Defense; the Secretary of Homeland Security; the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; the Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement; the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas' Security Affairs; the Commander,United States Northern Command; the Chief, National Guard Bureau; the Commandant of the Coast Guard; and other appropriate officials of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, and appropriate officials of other executive departments or agencies as may be designated by the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of Homeland Security. Such views, information, or advice shall concern:

(a) matters involving the National Guard of the various States;

(b) homeland defense;

(c) civil support;

(d) synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States; (Emphasis supplied, MBV) and

(e) other matters of mutual interest pertaining to National Guard, homeland defense, and civil support activities.

My first thought: And you were putting off that purchase of more ammunition, why, exactly?

My second thought: The Tea Parties ought to hold the GOP governors feet to the fire and demand that NONE OF THEM participate in this farce and thereby add legitimacy to it.

Mike
III

"Hey, peasants, enough with this Czar crap! You're going to give Czars a bad name!"

"How many shoes?"

Go to WRSA here. Read the links and Pete's comments. Then try to answer the questions Pete asks of you.

Mike
III

Ken Melson's got a problem (more than one, actually). Big doings last week at the "Concrete Asshole of the Universe."

"Things are going to change, or else." -- Attributed to John Spencer, Chief of ATF Firearms Technology Branch.

The "Concrete Asshole of the Universe": ATF Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

CPT R.A. Bear, S-2 of the feared and fabled Dogtown Rangers, has checked in with a more complete briefing on the big meeting held at the new ATF headquarters (dubbed by COL "Mad Bob" REDACTED as "the Concrete Asshole of the Universe") last Wednesday.

Before going on about the participants and the substance of that meeting, let us introduce you to the current Acting Director of the BATFE (the latest of many, if you keep track of them as they go by).

Meet Ken Melson.

From the press release in April 2009, announcing Ken Melson's appointment:

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder today announced that he will appoint Kenneth E. Melson to serve as acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), H. Marshall Jarrett to head the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA), and Mary Patrice Brown to serve as acting head of the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).

"These extremely experienced and capable long time career prosecutors are uniquely qualified to lead these important offices," said Attorney General Holder. "I am pleased that these dedicated public servants, Ken, Marshall, and Mary Pat, have accepted their new challenges with enthusiasm. I know that they will lead their new offices with their usual high standards of professionalism, integrity and dedication."

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, is one of the Department’s principal law enforcement agencies dedicated to preventing terrorism, reducing violent crime and enforcing federal criminal laws and regulations in the firearms and explosives industries.

Since 2007, Melson has been the Director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys. Previous to that, he was the First Assistant for the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. From 1991 to 2001, Melson served as Acting and Interim U.S. Attorney of that office during various periods of time. He began his career as a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia in 1983 where he was an Assistant U.S. Attorney until he became First Assistant in 1986.

From 1975 to 1983, Melson served in different positions for the Commonwealth’s Attorney, Arlington County, Va. From 1980 to 1983, he was the Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney, from 1978 to 1980, he was the Chief Assistant, and from 1975 to 1978 he was an Assistant. He served in private law practice in Arlington, Va., from 1974 to 1975.

Melson is a past President and Distinguished Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and currently participates on behalf of the Department on the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board. He has been an adjunct professor at George Washington University for almost 30 years teaching both law and forensic science courses.

Melson received his B.A. from Denison University in 1970 and his J.D. from George Washington University in 1973.

"Ken’s more than 25 years of career federal prosecutor service and his knowledge in forensic science will make him a valuable asset to ATF," said Attorney General Holder. "I am pleased that he will provide his talents to such an important Department of Justice agency."

"As the head of ATF, I am looking forward to using my management and prosecutorial experience, as well as my knowledge of crime labs and forensic science to combat violent crime," said Melson.

The Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys acts as a liaison between the Department and the 94 U.S. Attorneys offices throughout the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, the Marianas Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Now Melson is viewed as a techo guy and although he's a career prosecutor, forensics has always been his interest. The street agents are less than impressed with him, calling him a "geek" and other less printable names. He is viewed as someone with no street sense.

But as evidenced by the meeting last week, Melson is a man running an agency with many problems, few of them easily solvable. The meeting, according to CPT Bear, included Melson, a noted, high-ranking representative from Main Justice, the entire Firearms Technology Branch (now led by Iraq War veteran John Spencer, by most accounts one of the few honest men in the whorehouse) and the leading lights of the NFA branch and the ATF Chief Counsel's Office (they run the whorehouse).

A goodly portion of the meeting was given over to a discussion of my friend who was the subject of my initial letter to Eric Holder, "No More Free Wacos." It would seem that they are now beyond simple plots to kill him in a dynamic raid and are now looking for an end game solution to that tawdry affair of felonious bureaucratic revenge.

In short, there are various parts of the agency chewing on one another, some of it beyond mere ankle biting. Finger pointing and blame shifting abound. More departures and lateral transfers are in motion and everyone is playing the game of "pin-the-blame-on-the-lowest-man (not me)."

Now, this process can either be very good or very bad, depending upon the intentions of Main Justice. The Friesen case demonstrated that the NFA registry is worthless as a means of future prosecutions. So, will they declare an amnesty to "correct" the list? If so, what effect will that have on the rights of firearm owners? Will arms currently considered non-NFA weapons be reclassified as "destructive devices"? (Fifty-cals come instantly to mind.) The citizen disarmament lobby will go nuts at any amnesty. Will other restrictions like expanding the DD list be thrown to them as a sop to our detriment? As pissed off as most of these people are at being put to the trouble of following rules, any rules, it wouldn't surprise me. If so, we must be prepared to resist them. Remember: NOT ONE STEP BACK. PERIOD.

It is also evident to the higher echelon at Main Justice, and to US Attorneys all over the country, that the number of cases which have blown up in the faces of the ATF Chief Counsels Office makes any case they bring subject to great skepticism. These are questions of competence that ATF higher-uppers, especially those in the Counsels' Office, are not used to being asked, let alone answering.

One thing is plain, even without being in the meeting: the adults at Main Justice can no longer ignore the incompetent idiocies which have abounded at that subordinate agency.

Whether that is good news or bad news for firearms owners remains to be seen.

Mike
III

PS This analysis is brought to you courtesy of Jody Keeku, the principal ATF railroader of David Olofson. After all, I wouldn't be blogging if it weren't for ole Jody's malfeasances. Ya gotta love the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Praxis: The ALICE Pack -- A classic combat pack, but still the best for militia use?

ALICE pack, as issued, circa 1980s-1990s

Folks,

I received this email request early this morning:

From: REDACTED
To: GeorgeMason1776@aol.com
Sent: Mon, Jan 11, 2010 12:54 am
Subject: Gear

Dear Sir,

First, I appreciate your efforts and enjoy reading your work. Thanks!

I am looking for some durable packs suitable for a few days in the woods. I hoped you might point me in the right direction.

Thanks!!

Keith

Now, my experience with lugging packs around in the boonies was limited to a few years (mostly of intensive cache preparation) back in the 90s. Then, I became quite fond of the ALICE system. It had the advantage of being the only easily obtainable and inexpensive military pack around back then. I also liked its modularity. The same frame and straps could carry a pack, or, with the removal of the pack and installation of shelves, the frame could be used as a cargo carrier which was much more robust than the old plywood packboards.

Indeed, I probably used the ALICE system with the shelves more than the pack back then as we assiduously prepared for the time when the Clintonistas might get froggy. They didn't. The caches are still there, however, awaiting froggy Obamanoids, Chinese bill collectors, societal collapse or interstellar interlopers with cookbooks entitled, "To Serve Man." Preparedness is still a virtue, regardless of the threat.

My old friend, the ALICE cargo frame.

I also came to appreciate these little boogers:



Meet NSN 8465-00-001-6477 Strap, Cargo Tie-Down, LC-1. These are handy substitutes for rope, the poor man's load binder. And believe me, I speak from experience. After several dumped loads with shifting rope, I found these to be slicker than snot on a doorknob.

Fifty-three inches long, one end has a metal hook permanently attached by folding the strap upon itself and sewing. A metal buckle can slide along the length of the strap and can not slide off since the other end of the strap has a stop formed by rolling three turns of material and then sewing together. They make loading and unloading an ALICE frame oh so quick and easy. I'm still picking these up as I find them cheap. They are so mundane and so specialized that they interest few military collectors or even other militia folk, so often I can find them for as little as fifty cents or a buck apiece.

But I digress. The original question from Keith was for a "durable pack suitable for a few days in the woods." The ALICE system is still widely available and cheap, although experience has shown that the original can greatly benefit from a few upgrades. One of these I covered a little while back in my post Breathing New Life Into an Old ALICE Pack.

Another necessary mod is replacing the old thin and narrow shoulder straps with more robust and comfortable ones. For example, this is a set of SuperStraps from Tactical Tailor. They are twice as long as the issue straps and are made with 3/4" foam padding for added comfort with heavy loads. Thyey are better contoured to fit your shoulders than the issue set and feature an adjustable sternum strap to help distribute weight. They are available in Coyote Brown, OD and ACU and sell for $40.00.

Tactical Tailor's SuperStraps.

A better kidney pad is also a great addition. Here is a commercial example of an upgraded ALICE pack from PackMasters.



This mod was a steal, in my opinion, at $75.00 per, and I have several friends, younger, much more tactically savvy than me, who swear by them.

Designed by an ex-Ranger, here are some of the particulars from the description at FreezeDryGuy.

Alice Pack Heavy Duty, Light Weight Suspension System

* Heavy Duty shoulder straps and waist belt.
* Heavy Duty materials used throughout.
* Heavy Duty pack cloth construction.
* The best closed cell foam available in the back pack industry.
* Contoured shoulder straps.
* Heavy Duty "FASTEX" brand buckles used exclusively.
* Exceeds military specifications.
* Unequaled comfort from your ALICE Pack.
* Reduces the "Felt Weight" of your ALICE Pack by up to 40%.
* Waist Belt: contoured 1" thick wrap around closed cell foam for your comfort.
* Belt has 2" nylon webbing for hanging ammo pouches, canteens, and other LC2 gear.
* Suspension compatible with LBE/LBV.
* Closely approximates the comfort of a fine civilian pack.
* This system offers the greatest comfort you will ever experience with an ALICE Pack.
* You will walk farther and with less fatigue with this suspension system than any other.

Note well that comment, "Suspension compatible with LBE/LBV." Are there many civilian packs which are lighter and better designed, taking advantage of modern materials, ergonomics and CAD design? Absolutely. But try to find one that wears well over a combat harness or load-bearing vest.

LATER: Unfortunately, a quick call to FreezeDryGuy this morning revealed that they are out of the complete systems and do not expect to get them in anytime soon. They do still offer the belt/kidney pad but those are now $55.00 each. This came as a distinct disappointment to me, because I was so impressed by the system. I suppose that you can take your existing ALICE and retrofit the PackMaster belt and good set of replacement straps, but the overall cost of doing that makes this much less attractive to the cash-strapped militiaman. Still, if you already have the ALICE . . .

PackMaster can be contacted here:

FREEZE DRY GUY, P.O. Box 1476, Grass Valley, CA 95945. Phone: 866.404.3663. Email: info@FreezeDryGuy.com

There are other commercially available ALICE mods, notably this one from Tactical Tailor:



Dubbed the MALICE Pack, for "Modified ALICE," this system is big and like everything from Tactical Tailor, very well made and expensive. For the purposes outlined by Keith, it is too big in my opinion, and too expensive for the average militiaman.

This gets to the question of what sort of pack you need. A large sustainment pack carrying everything you need for weeks in the bush? Or, as Keith is seeking, a combat pack for short-term sustainment to carry "snivel gear," dry socks, extra ammo, more dry socks, more ammo and more dry socks? Did I mention more ammo and dry socks?

The medium ALICE, with modifications, is excellent for this purpose. A word about sizes and provenance. The military procured ALICEs in Medium and Large. If you find a "Small" ALICE, it is certainly civilian production and most likely of PRC manufacture and shoddy construction. Remember you get what you pay for. Ideally, when looking for a serviceable ALICE, you should be trying to get what the government paid for already. I learned early that civilian ALICE packs and cheap replacement parts were a waste of time and money. The same goes for frames. (Obviously this doesn't apply to quality military products made by PackMasters or Tactical Tailor.)

Look, the best made GI frame will pop a rivet or two under maximum load and stress. The civvy frames are far more fragile, which is the last thing you want in a pack frame. (Popped rivets can be repaired by drilling them out with a 7/32� drill bit and replacing them with one inch 10-32 stainless steel bolts. Use a locking washer and Loc-Tite. Some guys do this with all their rivets prophylactically, but that always struck me as too much trouble.)

Another thing to remember is never hoist a pack under maximum load by a single shoulder strap. Install a grab handle made of strapping or even para-cord on the top of the frame so you can move it around without causing a catastrophic failure of the system.

A word about the belly band. ALICEs originally did not have a belly band to help steady the load over difficult terrain. Later ones were issued, but in tip-of-the-spear outfits like the 82nd Airborne, these were more often removed and here's why:

The as-issued straps were long and, when unbuckled, trailed and flapped miserably. Yet, if you were on the approach march and suddenly came into contact with the OPFOR, the dumping of the pack by way of the quick-release buckles on the straps was mandatory to get light and fight. If the belly band buckle was forgotten in haste, the trooper would be pulled down from behind by the weight of the falling pack, often becoming, for a few critical moments, hopelessly entangled and out of the fight. In the 90s, I passed this bit of wisdom on to the men and women of 1ACR and we most often removed them. ALICEs without belly-bands were most often seen when training exercises took us into the Talladega National Forest. (I have always been a fan of the butt pack, too, but that's another post.)

A PackMaster ALICE viewed from the front.

A modification of the PackMaster ALICE that I saw recently impressed me as a solution to this problem. The militiaman had taken the band fasteners and sewed onto them, one on each side, a fastex buckle component to fit that part of the buckle that corresponded. Thus, he would buckle the band back in place when marching in most terrain, or when contact might be expected, thus keeping the two straps from dragging. When moving over rough terrain, or when contact was very unlikely, he would fasten the buckle in front to keep the pack from shifting. Altogether a useful modification. Of course, he didn't use the belly band/kidney pad to hang a canteen or pouches on as in the illustration above, but then that is what his combat harness was for. The ALICE rode nicely over top and above the back of his vest.

You can read more about the ALICE system here, and there is an excellent discussion of the ALICE pack from a user's point of view at the Backpacker.com here.

The above, then, is the extent of my knowledge and recommendations regarding packs. Whether the ALICE is still the best combination of features, price and utility for the modern militia is, of course, open to discussion. Which is why I post the question here, with the hope that other Irregulars can fill in the gaps of my own knowledge. Comments?

Mike
III

The reason they want to "body scan" octogenarian nuns.

It isn't that Big Sister Napolitano doesn't understand the current threat from jihadis. It is because these people consider ALL of the American people to be potential threats to their regime. They want the ability to "keep an eye on" all of us, and put us into situations where those of us who will resist totalitarianism can be identified, and later, winnowed out. This is why the petty Hitlers of the TSA detain anyone who complains. They demand compliance in return for non-safety, knowing that it is merely the assertion of safety on their part and not the reality of it.

Who then should we fear more? The jihadi underwear bombers, or the domestic enemies of liberty and the Constitution?

Both is the correct answer.

Mike
III

Oliver Stoned: A Perfect Example of "Suicidalism"

Memetic Warfare is the use of advanced propaganda, utilizing memes as weapons. A good example of this is the Borgian use of "Resistance is futile." If you believe it, it is. If you don't, you can beat the Borg.-- CPT R.A. Bear, S-2, Dogtown Rangers (A graduate cum laude of some of the finer courses at Fort Huachuca, Arizona).

The most important weapons of al-Qaeda and the rest of the Islamist terror network are the suicide bomber and the suicide thinker. The suicide bomber is typically a Muslim fanatic whose mission it is to spread terror; the suicide thinker is typically a Western academic or journalist or politician whose mission it is to destroy the West’s will to resist not just terrorism but any ideological challenge at all.

But al-Qaeda didn’t create the ugly streak of nihilism and self-loathing that afflicts too many Western intellectuals. Nor, I believe, is it a natural development. It was brought to us by Department V of the KGB, which was charged during the Cold War with conducting memetic warfare that would destroy the will of the West’s intelligentsia to resist a Communist takeover. This they did with such magnificent effect that the infection outlasted the Soviet Union itself and remains a pervasive disease of contemporary Western intellectual life. -- "Armed and Dangerous," in his essay on "Suicidalism."

In his piece entitled Gramscian Damage A&D points out:

In a previous post on Suicidalism, I identified some of the most important of the Soviet Union’s memetic weapons. Here is that list again:

* There is no truth, only competing agendas.

* All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.

* There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.

* The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.

* Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.

* The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)

* For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But ‘oppressed’ people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.

* When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.

As I previously observed, if you trace any of these back far enough, you’ll find a Stalinist intellectual at the bottom.

Two of history's poor, misunderstood babies.

Now comes Oliver Stone to provide the most recent example of A&D's point.

January 09, 2010

Oliver Stone's 'Secret History' to put Hitler 'in context'

Director Oliver Stone's upcoming Showtime documentary miniseries "Secret History of America" promises to put mass murderers such as Stalin and Hitler "in context."

"Stalin, Hitler, Mao, McCarthy -- these people have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history," Stone told reporters at the Television Critics Association's semi-annual press tour in Pasadena.

"Stalin has a complete other story," Stone said. "Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any single person. We can't judge people as only 'bad' or 'good.' Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and its been used cheaply. He's the product of a series of actions. It's cause and effect ... People in America don't know the connection between WWI and WWII ... I've been able to walk in Stalin's shoes and Hitler's shoes to understand their point of view. We're going to educate our minds and liberalize them and broaden them. We want to move beyond opinions ... Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM. Hitler is just a man who could have easily been assassinated."

The controversial director's 10-part documentary series for Showtime promises to focus on events that "at the time went under-reported, but crucially shaped America's unique and complex history of the last 60 years." Subjects in "History" include President Harry Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan and the origins of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

"You cannot approach history unless you have empathy for the person you may hate," Stone said during the show's trailer, which promised to put historical villains "in context." "I don't want to put out conventional History Channel product where it's easy to like it."

"He's not saying we're going to come out with a more positive view of Hitler," emphasized professor Peter Kuznick, the lead writer on the project. "But we're going to describe him as a historical phenomenon and not just somebody who appeared out of nowhere."

Stone said that conservative pundits will dislike the show.

"Obviously, Rush Limbaugh is not going to like this history and, as usual, we're going to get those kind of ignorant attacks," said Stone, who also also compared the experience of sympathizing with war criminals to making his "W" movie about George W. Bush. "I'm trying to understand somebody I thoroughly despised."

Stone also warned that the same military industrial complex forces that he's explored in movies such as "JFK" and in "Secret History," are now corrupting Barack Obama.

"You can understand why Obama is following in Bush's footsteps in Afghanistan," Stone said."Obama is very much trapped, we believe, in that system. And so that's what we're going to try and show you -- the way it works."

The project will also show lesser-known positive aspects of American history and unsung heroes. Stone eventually hopes to send "Secret History" to schools as a teaching curriculum.

"It would be a very different counterweight to what they're learning," Stone said. "Nobody is going to force it down anybody's throat."

"A no-shit Sherlock: Escalating Complexity and the Collapse of Elite Authority"

"Elementary, my dear Watson."

Armed and Dangerous has an essay, forwarded by John Robb of Global Guerrillas, that is an excellent analysis of David Brooks' recent moaning in the New York Times about the "Tea Party Teens." (All links are below in A&D's piece.)

I have been so busy with computer breakdown and catch-up that I haven't read several of A&D's recent perceptive pieces. A sample snippet is this observation on "Gramscian Damage":

"The most paranoid and xenophobic conservatives of the Cold War were, painful though this is to admit, the closest to the truth in estimating the magnitude and subtlety of Soviet subversion. Liberal anticommunists (like myself in the 1970s) thought we were being judicious and fair-minded when we dismissed half of the Right’s complaint as crude blather. We were wrong; the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss really were guilty, the Hollywood Ten really were Stalinist tools, and all of Joseph McCarthy’s rants about 'Communists in the State Department' were essentially true. The Venona transcripts and other new material leave no room for reasonable doubt on this score."

I urge all of you who have time this Sunday afternoon to read and consider A&D's piece below. Follow all the links and read them as well. Some of the comments are particularly on-point and trenchant. Read and consider what "complex adaptive system" you can link into to preserve your life, your liberty and your property.

Mike
III

A no-shit Sherlock

Escalating Complexity and the Collapse of Elite Authority

In yesterday’s New York Times, David Brooks wrote perceptively about the burgeoning populist revolt against the “educated classes”. Brooks was promptly slapped around by various blogosphere essayists such as Will Collier, who noted that Brooks’s column reads like a weaselly apologia for the dismal failures of the “educated classes” in the last couple of decades.

Our “educated classes” cannot bring themselves to come to grips with the fact that fundamentalist Islam has proclaimed war on us. They have run the economy onto recessionary rocks with overly-clever financial speculation and ham-handed political interventions, and run up a government deficit of a magnitude that has never historically resulted in consequences less disastrous than hyperinflation. And I’m not taking conventional political sides when I say these things; Republicans have been scarcely less guilty than Democrats.

In the first month of a new decade, unemployment among young Americans has cracked 52% and we’re being officially urged to believe that an Islamic suicide bomber trained by Al-Qaeda in Yemen was an “isolated extremist”.

One shakes one’s head in disbelief. Is there anything our “educated classes” can’t fuck up, any reality they won’t deny? Will Collier fails, however to ask the next question: why did they fail?

The obvious and most tempting hypothesis for a libertarian student of history like myself is that the Gramscian damage caught up with them. And I think there’s something to that argument, especially when the President of the U.S. more beloved of those “educated classes” than any other in my lifetime routinely behaves exactly as though he’d been successfully conditioned to believe the hoariest old anti-American tropes in the Soviet propaganda arsenal. And is praised for this by his adoring fans!

I think there’s much more to it than that, though. When I look at the pattern of failures, I am reminded of something I learned from software engineering: planning fails when the complexity of the problem exceeds the capacity of the planners to reason about it. And the complexity of real-world planning problems almost never rises linearly; it tends to go up at least quadratically in the number of independent variables or problem elements.

I think the complexifying financial and political environment of the last few decades has simply outstripped the capacity of our “educated classes”, our cognitive elite, to cope with it. The “wizards” in our financial system couldn’t reason effectively about derivatives risk and oversimplified their way into meltdown; regulators failed to foresee the consequences of requiring a quota of mortgage loans to insolvent minority customers; and politico-military strategists weaned on the relative simplicity of confronting nation-state adversaries thrashed pitifully when required to game against fuzzy coalitions of state and non-state actors.

Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein argued tellingly in their 1994 book The Bell Curve that 20th-century American society had become a remarkably effective machine for spotting the cognitively gifted of all socioeconomic and racial backgrounds and tracking them into careers that would maximize their output. They pointed out, though, that the “educated class” produced by this machine was in danger of becoming self-separated from the mass of the population. I agree with both arguments, and I think David Brooks and Will Collier are pointing us at the results.

In retrospect, I think race- and class-blind meritocracy bought us about 60 years (1945-2008) of tolerably good management by Western elites. The meritocracy developed as an adaptation to the escalating complexity of 20th-century life, but there was bound to be a point at which that adaptation would run out of steam. And I think we’ve reached it. The “educated classes” are adrift, lurching from blunder to blunder in a world that has out-complexified their ability to impose a unifying narrative on it, or even a small collection of rival but commensurable narratives. They’re in the exact position of old Soviet central planners, systemically locked into grinding out products nobody wants to buy.

My readers might well ask, at this point, “Great. Does this mean we’re screwed?” If a meritocracy drawn from the brightest, best-educated people in history can’t cope with our future, what do we do next?

The answer is, I think implied by three words: Adapt, decentralize, and harden. Levels of environmental complexity that defeat planning are readily handled by complex adaptive systems. A CAS doesn’t try to plan against the future; instead, the agents in it try lots of adaptive strategies and the successful ones propagate. This is true whether the CAS we’re speaking of is a human immune system, a free market, or an ecology.



Since we can no longer count on being able to plan, we must adapt. When planning doesn’t work, centralization of authority is at best useless and usually harmful. And we must harden: that is, we need to build robustness and the capacity to self-heal and self-defend at every level of the system. I think the rising popular sense of this accounts for the prepper phenomenon. Unlike old-school survivalists, the preppers aren’t gearing up for apocalypse; they’re hedging against the sort of relatively transient failures in the power grid, food distribution, and even civil order that we can expect during the lag time between planning failures and CAS responses.

CAS hardening of the financial system is, comparatively speaking, much easier. Almost trivial, actually. About all it requires is that we re-stigmatize the carrying of debt at more than a very small proportion of assets. By anybody. With that pressure, there would tend to be enough reserve at all levels of the financial system that it would avoid cascade failures in response to unpredictable shocks.

Cycling back to terrorism, the elite planner’s response to threats like underwear bombs is to build elaborate but increasingly brittle security systems in which airline passengers are involved only as victims. The CAS response would be to arm the passengers, concentrate on fielding bomb-sniffers so cheap that hundreds of thousands of civilians can carry one, and pay bounties on dead terrorists.



Yes, this circles back to my previous post about the militia obligation. I’m now arguing for this obligation to be seen as, actually, larger than arming for defense (although that’s a core, inescapable part of it). I’m arguing that we need to rediscover CAS behavior in politics and economics — not because financiers or bureaucrats are dangerous or evil, but because even with the best will in the world they can’t cope. The time when they could out-think and out-plan the challenges of the day operating as an elite has passed.

The people who will resist the end of the engineered society, the managed economy and the paternalist state are, of course, the “educated classes” themselves. Having become accustomed to functioning as the aristocracy of our time, they will believe in anything except their own obsolescence as rulers. It remains to be seen how much longer events will permit their delusions to continue.

"And now, for something completely different . . ."

Looking for a factoid for Absolved and found this. It was such a hoot, I had to share it.

From the Official North Korean News Agency . . .

http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm

anuary 8. 2010 Juch 99

Refurnished Restaurants in Changgwang Street

Pyongyang, January 8 (KCNA) -- The restaurants in Changgwang Street in the heart of Pyongyang have been refurnished splendidly to grade up with the Songun era.

They, standing in rows on both sides of the street, have been recoated with encaustic tiles, while keeping their original architectural style. Their front yards and sideways have also been paved with square colored blocks, adding beauty to the street.

The Sagyejol (four seasons) Restaurant has been facelifted in such a way as making customers enjoy dishes in different seasonal mood in each room. Also taking on a new look is the Unjong Teahouse serving various kinds of soft drinks including famous Kangryong green tea and black tea.

Wonderful is the central hall of the Porter House with a pipe connected directly with a black beer producer.

The walls and columns of other restaurants serving soft bean curd, entrails and tangogi food, noodle and pancakes have been wainscoted with tiles, metal and stone decorations and other quality coasting materials suitable to shapes of the buildings.

Kitchens are now equipped with modern cooking facilities to prepare various dishes as quickly as possible.

In the evening light devices controlled by computers emit colorful and bright light automatically and electric decorative lights installed in the exterior of the restaurants produce a harmonious light effect, providing a fascinating night view to the street.

The refreshed look of Changgwang Street lined up with restaurants, associated with deep concern of the Workers' Party of Korea for the development of national dishes for the people, is one of what Pyongyang is boasting.

"Whenevel Team Amelica visit Pyongyang, they arways eat entlails in Changgwang Stleet."

Praxis: "Swift, elusive sword."

Go here:

http://westernrifleshooters.blogspot.com/2010/01/swift-elusive-sword.html

Read all the links.

'Nuff said.

Mike
III

"We need to check under the burqas, not the halter tops."

O's 'fixes' will fail

Feeding more fat to obese US intelligence

Ralph Peters
New York Post
January 9, 2010

On Christmas day, a terrorist known to our intelligence system tried to blow up 300 innocents on a US-bound flight. Our government's response is to take porno pictures of your wife and daughter. A radical-Islamist US Army major, known to our intelligence system, massacred his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood. Our government's response was to offer counseling sessions. A triple agent, known to our intelligence system, detonated a suicide bomb at a CIA outpost, killing seven Americans and a cousin of Jordan's king. Our government's response is to shift intelligence assets away from targeting terrorists to support development efforts.

Our president assures us that no individual is to blame. No one will be fired. It was only "the system," that elusive beast, that failed.

Well, our intelligence system is made up of people. People failed. Starting at the top. The dazzlingly incompetent Janet Napolitano, a "man-caused disaster" if ever there was one, needs to be removed from her job heading Homeland Security. White House counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan should be placed on double-secret probation and warned to pull up his grades. As for the National Counterterrorism Center chief who abandoned his post to go on a ski vacation the day after Christmas, I leave his fate to you, gentle reader.

None of these people, including our president, took what almost happened on Christmas seriously -- until the public outcry spooked them. To energize the bureaucratic proles, you have to chop off aristocratic heads. But President Obama won't use the guillotine. He's protecting incompetents. At our nation's expense.

The corrective measures announced Thursday boil down to two things: Buy more stuff (additional computer systems, full-body scanners, etc.), and re-arrange the deck chairs.

That won't do it. These measures don't address the two enduring handicaps our intelligence community (and our government) suffers in our duel with Islamist terrorists.

First, you can't win by playing defense. Our unseemly protective measures relinquish the initiative to our enemies. Punishing law-abiding US citizens at airports is a disgrace, not a virtue. The only effective way to reduce the terrorist threat is to kill terrorists. Nothing else -- not even the humiliation of innocent air travelers -- will work.

Yet the politically correct group-think mentality in Washington is so pervasive and pernicious that even Robert Gates, who's been a great secretary of defense in so many ways, parrots the cliché that "we can't kill our way out of this."

Oh, really? Suppose we had killed young Umar Abdulmutallab on the ground with al Qaeda in Yemen? Might that not have protected Americans more effectively than making them miss their holiday flight connections? Any program that takes intelligence assets away from finding and killing terrorists is a mistake. Improving crop yields in southern Afghanistan won't keep Americans safe from Islamist fanatics. What about this is hard to understand?

Problem No. 2 is the nature of our intelligence system itself: It's morbidly obese. The well-intentioned creation of new bureaucracies after 9/11 only worsened the problem, creating more layers of fat. I prescribe a rigorous diet and exercise -- not force-feeding the system more funding calories.

Our intel system is vast, redundant, intractable, self-satisfied, cautious and slower than crosstown traffic during a presidential motorcade. Our Islamist enemies are lean, really mean, agile, ruthless and, above all, imaginative. Ragtag fanatics are out-thinking us. Why? Because bureaucracy, although it has its place, hates fresh ideas. The terrorists grab a good concept and run with it. We staff it to death, then decide it's far too risky.

Before launching an attack on a confirmed terrorist target in Afghanistan, our combat units need up to a dozen different permission slips. Think al Qaeda or the Taliban work that way?

We're not being defeated. We're defeating ourselves.

As a former Military Intelligence officer, I know the answer isn't more inexperienced hires or throwing more money at well-connected defense contractors. The answer is to emphasize quality, and for our leaders to foster a culture of risk in the field and personal responsibility in the Cabinet. We need to be creative and willing to commit sins of commission, rather than waiting for terrorists to expose our sins of omission.

Instead, we'll continue to penalize honest citizens (handing al Qaeda a massive, continuing win). Those full-body scanners? If you don't think porn shots of innocent women will end up on the Internet, you probably believe that trying terrorist butchers in civilian courts will make al Qaeda respect us.

We need to check under the burqas, not the halter tops.

Brady Bunch's Henigan demonstrates his political erectile dysfunction.

"Look! I have no dick!" Dennis Henigan demonstrates his political inability to get it up in front of God and the news media.

Go here to read the Brady Bunch's latest BS on gun control as a defense against terrorism.

Of course, any sane person understands that creating more and more complete victim disarmament zones is an encouragement to terrorism not a hindrance, but no matter, Henigan is on a roll. This time, he tries to use Rahm Emanuel's own words against him in a public open forum to embarrass the White House Chief of Staff into pushing for more gun control in the name of counter-terrorism.

All this does is demonstrate Henigan's own political erectile dysfuction. If he had any power whatsoever, he would simply pick up the phone and call the rabidly anti-firearm rights Emanuel to cajole him.

The fact that Henigan is reduced to trying to embarrass somebody who should be a bosom ally -- certainly someone who Henigan worked long and hard to put into power -- says more about his own political impotence than anything.

Now, that said, it is certain that this argument is one of timing not intent. When and if Emanuel believes that he can restrict more of our liberty, he will. Until then, Henigan's piece is the political equivalent of flashing the body politic and screaming: "Look! I have no dick!"

BATFE swaps out division personnel with unforeseen and unintended consequences.

Folks,

Well, it seems the most recent rumors are true. It has been whispered in the ATF national headquarters toilets (by those detailed to discourage vandalism) that the new acting director is so pissed off at certain department's recent screw-ups that he's going to swap out personnel from different departments in big chunks. Here we see the results of swapping the Chief Counsel's Office with the Firearms Testing Branch.

"So, what do I do now? Pull the trigger?"

Sadly, enforcement agents in the background told him to fire the weapon, which he did. The recoil dismounted the pistol from the table, which dismounted the lawyer's head from his body, with results too gruesome to depict on this family-friendly blog.

It is rumored that the street agents cheered.

"Faith and Begorrah! At least we don't have to worry what HE had for breakfast!"

ATF Testing photo courtesy of CPT R.A. Bear, consummate undercover operative and S-2 of the Dogtown Rangers, Alabama's roughest, toughest constitutional militia.

Oath Keeper CDR David R. Gillie on Caesarism, Juntoism and the genius of the Founders' Oath.

Folks,

I met then LTCDR David Gillie at the original Oath Keepers ceremony on Lexington Green, 19 April 2009. He is one impressive American, though he is the first of his family to be one. The speech in four parts below, given at the National Convention of Oath Keepers late last year, is outstanding, both as an example of a stand up officer, but also as instruction of how our Constitution is designed to prevent both Caesarism and Juntoism, which have both been the bane and cause of the eventual death of almost all republics throughout history.

To some, this speech will seem incomplete in some of its particulars. I remind you that this is a current serving Naval officer and you should not expect him to go beyond discussion of standing down and refusing an unlawful order.

The mission of Oath Keepers is to make sure that all soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines instruction is up to par, both on their duties, on the history, and on the Constitution itself, not just the laws of war, so they know when to "just say no."

Mike
III

PART ONE:



PART TWO:



PART THREE:



PART FOUR:

What they know that we don't: Elections can be stolen by those audacious enough to try.

Bill Clinton signs the Motor-Voter Law, with Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven standing in the background, beaming.

Read this article from today's American Thinker. I will have comments on the other side.

Mike
III

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/what_the_dems_know_universal_v.html

January 06, 2010

What the Dems Know: Universal Voter Registration

By James Simpson

Many are puzzled that Democrats persist in ramming unpopular and destructive legislation down our collective throats with no apparent concern for their plummeting poll numbers. A widespread belief is that the Democrats are committing political suicide and will be swept from one or both houses of Congress with unprecedented electoral losses next November. But since Democrat politicians rarely do things that will not ultimately benefit themselves, this column asked two weeks ago, "What do they know that we don't?"

We may have found out. It's called universal voter registration. The Wall Street Journal's John Fund described the Democrat plan recently at a David Horowitz Freedom Center forum.

Watch the video here.

Fund describes the proposal as follows:

In January, Chuck Schumer and Barney Frank will propose universal voter registration. What is universal voter registration? It means all of the state laws on elections will be overridden by a federal mandate. The feds will tell the states: 'take everyone on every list of welfare that you have, take everyone on every list of unemployed you have, take everyone on every list of property owners, take everyone on every list of driver's license holders and register them to vote regardless of whether they want to be ...'


Fund anticipates that Congress will attempt to ram this legislation through, as with the health care bill. What a surprise! Fund covers the vote issue at greater length in his book, How the Obama Administration Threatens to Undermine Our Elections.

Leftist groups are already arguing that universal voter registration will solve all the problems with our voting system. But the left created most of these problems. The radical leftist Nation Magazine, for example, absolutely loves the idea of universal voter registration. This is the same magazine, however, that advanced Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven's Manufactured Crisis strategy. The Cloward/Piven strategy was designed to undermine government institutions by overwhelming them with impossible demands for services. Cloward and Piven focused on welfare, housing, and voting as the main targets of this strategy, and the radical group ACORN was specifically created for the purpose of executing it.

The Nation article enthusiastically lists Cloward/Piven-inspired organizations like Project Vote, the ACORN group where President Obama cut his teeth. It also discusses the left's efforts to push enforcement of the Motor Voter law and explains how universal voter registration could assist in these efforts. Cloward and Piven were the ones who crafted Motor Voter legislation in the early 1980s and pushed for its enactment until 1993, when President Clinton signed it into law.

Cloward and Piven considered Motor Voter to be their crowning, lifetime achievement. The picture at right, from White House photo archives, shows Cloward (light gray suit) and Piven (green coat and navy dress) standing directly behind Clinton at the Motor Voter signing ceremony.

The left has predictably launched vicious smear attacks against John Fund for bringing universal voter registration to our attention. A Google search of the issue brings up any number of nasty ad hominem attacks. Most notable is Media Matters, the leftist group whose sole purpose seems to be to smear Republicans and defend the left's indefensible policies. They put up this gem: "Right-Wing Ass Weasel John Fund Doesn't Like Universal Voter Registration because of ACORN."

The problems with universal voter registration are numerous and obvious. Many states' lists include vast numbers of illegals, including some states which allow illegals to obtain drivers licenses; because many homeowners have more than one home, there will be duplicates; because so many people are on so many separate federal and state government agency lists, there will be duplicates; and because so many lists exist with little or no cross-checking capability, all of these duplicates are likely to go uncorrected. Add to this the fact that Dems hope to extend voting rights to felons, and the whole thing begins to look like a nationwide Democrat voter registration drive facilitated by taxpayers.

Universal voter registration will create massive vulnerabilities to systemic voter fraud nationwide, and if Democrats have proven anything in recent years, it is that they can win elections that way. The George-Soros-funded Secretary of State project (SOS) was designed to take advantage of such vulnerabilities and may have been developed in anticipation of the universal voter registration plan. Al Franken's stolen election in Minnesota was a trial run for the SOS project. Longtime ACORN friend Mark Ritchie was elected Minnesota Secretary of State in 2006 with Soros's SOS and ACORN money, and what followed in Norm Coleman's Senate runoff election was a frightening demonstration of just how far Democrats will go to win. Franken won the runoff, and the Democrats got their filibuster-proof sixty-vote Senate majority.

The Motor Voter law was correctly identified as a facilitator of vote fraud. One of the few legal issues Barack Obama actually participated in as a lawyer was a 1995 suit against the State of Illinois, which he brought on behalf of ACORN. Then-Republican Governor Jim Edgars saw the newly passed Motor Voter act as creating the potential for massive vote fraud and refused to implement it. With the assistance of the Clinton Justice Department, Obama's legal team won that suit. Obama himself actually participated very little, a strategy that seems to have served him well in life. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, after identifying himself in court proceedings, Obama sat back and let "the heavy-hitters at the Justice Department make the arguments."

It is not surprising that the Democrats are now choosing to push this new initiative, for universal voter registration will be Motor Voter on turbochargers. And who better to sign it into law than the president from ACORN?

James Simpson authored the landmark article Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis.

My comment: My father-in-law voted in the eight elections after his death in West Memphis, Arkansas. And WHERE did ACORN start? That's right, Arkansas.

If this thing is rammed through the Congress and becomes law, it is a casus belli. Period. They think the Tea Parties were rowdy? Hold onto your hats, folks. You ain't seen nothin' yet.

Joe Shannon, air warrior for freedom, RIP.

Joe Shannon at the Birmingham Museum of Flight

As the story below reports, we lost a good man yesterday. Joe Shannon, air warrior for freedom and an Alabamian beloved by the Cuban exiles who fought Castro and lost at the Bahia de Cochinos in, died after a brief illness. Joe was the last surviving Alabama National Guard pilot who flew support for Brigade 2506. He was 88. If health allows me, I will go to his funeral to pay my respects. He was, said a long-time friend of mine who knew him better than me, "One hell of a man . . . A hell of an AMERICAN man."

Following the AP notice is an earlier story from the Birmingham News which contains more detail on Joe's remarkable life.

RIP, Joe Shannon. And thanks for all you did.

Mike
III

Bay of Pigs pilot Joe Shannon dies at 88 in Ala.

By JAY REEVES
Associated Press Writer
5 January 2010

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- Joe Shannon, a retired Alabama National Guard pilot who trained anti-Castro pilots and flew in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba nearly five decades ago, died Tuesday. He was 88.

Lewis Shannon, one of Shannon's three children, said his father died after a brief illness.

"It was just a couple of weeks," he said.

About 1,500 Cuban exiles trained under CIA guidance in Guatemala and invaded the island in April 1961 trying to overthrow Fidel Castro's communist regime.

Shannon was among about 60 Alabama National Guard members who were recruited to help in the invasion. He both trained Cuban pilots and flew a last-ditch mission into Cuba before the invasion failed.

Speaking in an interview with The Associated Press in 2006, Shannon described turning his B-26 bomber into the path of a Cuban T-33 fighter and staying out of the pilot's sight by hugging the ocean.

"It was the only way I had to escape," said Shannon, who was barred from publicly discussing his role in the invasion for years because of national security.

The director of the Southern Museum of Flight in Birmingham, Jim Griffin, said Shannon was the last surviving Alabama Guard pilot who flew in the invasion.

Shannon, an Army Air Corps pilot during World War II, was a member of the Alabama Aviation Hall of Fame.

"He was a remarkable individual," hall chairman Billy J. Singleton said. "He knew anything and everything about aviation."

Shannon remained close to a Cuban pilot he helped train for the Bay of Pigs, and he wanted to visit Cuba a few years ago with a university group traveling to the island nation. The U.S. government advised him against going, however.

"Castro still had me on a hit list," Shannon said in the 2006 interview.

Joe Shannon sits in the cockpit of his P-38.

Sky soldier Joe Shannon worthy of honor

November 11, 2007, 2:00AM

Birmingham News

By NIKI SEPSAS

In the midst of the cheering thousands who turned out to welcome Charles Lindbergh to Birmingham in 1927 was a 6-year-old boy who resolved then and there to pursue a career among the clouds.

Joe Shannon grew up in Fairfield in a family that had followed the military. Unable to wait until the calendar said he was old enough to enlist, Shannon signed up for the Army National Guard squadron headquartered in Birmingham while still a student at Fairfield High School.

The boyhood days of Shannon and his friends, like those of an entire generation of American boys, came to an abrupt end when Birmingham's Guard unit was activated in 1940. After completing his Army Air Corps training, Shannon's pilot wings were pinned on his uniform, and he shipped out for England to train in British Spitfires.

At just 19 years old, Staff Sgt. Joe Shannon was learning how to stay alive in aerial dogfights against Germany's Luftwaffe pilots in the skies over North Africa.

When Rommel's Afrika Korps was defeated, Shannon's squadron remained in hot pursuit, flying combat missions in Italy during the Salerno landings. He flew missions in the P-40 fighter plane, the P-51 Mustang escort fighter for long-range bombers and the P-38.

"The P-38 was the most sophisticated fighter we had, and the one I found most challenging to fly," Shannon says.

After surviving 50 combat missions during his tour in Africa and Europe, Shannon received orders returning him stateside to train in the B-25 bomber. He then saw action in the China/Burma/India Theater of Operations, where his squadron flew aerial reconnaissance missions from China to the Indian Ocean.

Shannon was recalled to active duty for service during the Korean War. Jet aircraft were now streaking through the skies, and Shannon became qualified to fly them, as well. He also flew during the Berlin Crisis.

Following that action, Shannon received a call from the Central Intelligence Agency. Highly qualified B-26 pilots were being recruited for a top-secret mission that would involve training Cuban exiles to fly aircraft in support of an operation designed to topple Castro's communist government, which President Kennedy deemed a threat to the security of the Western Hemisphere.

"The CIA did not want any active-duty U.S. military personnel involved in the operation," Shannon says. "The operation was not intended to defeat Castro's forces, but to spark an internal uprising which would eventually bring about the downfall of the Castro government."

Shannon and his colleagues were flown to Guatemala, where they trained Cuban exiles to fly the B-26 bomber. The action began in April 1961 at the Bay of Pigs, the site selected by the CIA as the insertion point of the men and materiel. The round-trip flights in support of the landings were exhausting, however, and the decision was made to scrap the no-fly policy for American pilots. A search went out for the pilots who had trained the Cubans, and Shannon and three other pilots were located in time to join the operation.

Wreckage of a Brigade 2506 B-26 shot down by a Cuban jet, flown by fellow pilots of Joe Shannon's unit.

An uproar at the United Nations over the assault led Kennedy to cancel the remaining flights. Without air cover, the campaign was doomed. The invasion troops were killed or captured as soon as they landed in the swampy Bay of Pigs area.

Shannon retired from the Air Force in 1972 after more than three decades of service to his country and began flying as a corporate pilot. His career in aviation has now spanned more than 60 years, and he has logged more than 20,000 hours in the air. The sergeant stripes on the uniform once worn by a novice flier have been replaced by the silver oak leaf cluster of a lieutenant colonel awash in decorations, including the Distinguished Flying Cross, an Air Medal with 14 Oak Leaf clusters, the Distinguished Unit Citation, the Chinese Air Medal and the Cuban Liberation Air Force Medal for Valor. The state of Alabama also awarded him its Distinguished Service Medal and Commendation Award. He was inducted into the Alabama Aviation Hall of Fame in 1999.

The award that stands out most prominently in Shannon's mind, however, is the Seal Medallion he received from the CIA for his role in the Bay of Pigs operation.

"I believed in President Kennedy's dream of freedom for the Cuban people," Shannon says. "He wanted to offer them a chance at a better life."

At 80-something years old, Shannon continues to take to the skies. He joins a group of aviation junkies every Saturday morning at Pell City Airport to fly and swap aviation stories.

Military aviation history today is being written by a generation of pilots who are streaking though the skies at supersonic speeds in aircraft equipped with laser-guided bombs, heat-seeking missiles and other space-age weaponry that allow them to engage an enemy often without ever seeing him. Shannon represents the dwindling number of fliers of an earlier age who dueled in the skies with an enemy whose faces they were close enough to see.

The history that Joe Shannon helped write and the sacrifices of the men and women of his generation are particularly worth remembering on this Veterans Day.

Niki Sepsas is a free-lance writer who lives in Birmingham.

re: "Pissing on Legs."

Here's a comment below on the Gaddy piece:

I didn't see Gaddy's message as an attack at all, simply his opinion of the situation. Gee whiz Mike, you're sure easy to take umbrage. "Let's chalk this up to "Gaddy is somewhere back in the pack", and rather than piss on his legs, maybe offer him some encouragement." Good idea.

Here's my reply:

I do not perceive Gaddy's essay as an attack on me, I DO perceive it as an attack on Oath Keepers, and the Tea Parties and the 9/12ers and others less "enlightened" than him. I thought my response was measured and reasoned. If anybody whipped his rhetorical dick out to piss on anybody else's legs it was Gaddy. My defense is and was a defense primarily of Oath Keepers, the idea, the men and women and the promise. I think I made clear my respect for Gaddy in the piece. That is not "pissing on somebody's legs."

Mike
III

Note: The image above is proof positive that you can find literally anything on the Internet. Sheesh!