Bernake’s monetary policy and the Fed’s bailout plan has and will continue to flatten economic growth like a cow pie drying in the sun.
China’s growth will slow but nowhere near U.S. levels, so China has pulled the “thanks, but no thanks” to U.S. stocks because it knows that the U.S. stock market won’t rebound for some time. They know that layoffs in the U.S. manufacturing jobs will result in new hires in their country, and foreign investors are fleeing U.S. markets.
Projection: China’s growth will hit 8% in 2009 compared with the U.S. growth of 2%
The Chinese banking system is dominated by four big state-owned banks that can write a whenever the party – and the Army – tells them to, and to whom, and with $1.4 trillion in cash there’s no liquidity crisis in China.
China is using its capital to build more infrastructure: roads, bridges and cities at record pace.
The McKinsey Global Institute reports that:
“In 20 years, China’s cities will have added 350 million people—more than the entire population of the United States today.”
“By 2025, China will have 221 cities with more than one million inhabitants—compared with 35 in Europe today—and 24 cities with more than five million people.”
“By 2030, 1 billion people will live in China’s cities…170 mass-transit systems could be built…40 billion of square meters of floor space will be built in five million buildings—50,000 of which could be skyscrapers.”
By the year 2025 China will have 221 cities with more than one million people living in them, you can only imagine the kind of money that is going to be made, as China’s newfound consumer class enters the marketplace and replaces the American consumer as the supreme driver of world growth.
..And we paid them to do it…while dumbed down Americans remain blinded by the daily news about petty issues and the ups and downs in the Dow…
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Feed Lot Diet
CARBOHYDRATES CAUSE DISEASE
By Kent Rieske
Carbohydrates cause nearly all age-related diseases because of the many popular myths and distortions about nutrition – especially low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets. Age-related diseases could best be described as Excessive Carbohydrate Consumption Syndrome, which leads to diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.
The scientific evidence is clear. Carbohydrates are a sinister, sly food category that has powerful allies in the food industry that grows, manufactures and markets thousands of carbohydrate products made from fruit, grains and starchy-vegetables. The supermarket floor space allotted to these manufactured carbohydrate foods is about 80 percent of the store, and yet
The scientific minimum requirement for carbohydrates in the diet is ZERO.
Carbohydrates are not an essential element for health. In fact, optimal health lies in keeping the amount of carbohydrates in the diet to a minimum.
The supermarket departments that contain the healthy essential proteins and essential fats are the fresh meats, fresh fish and seafood, dairy and non-starchy vegetables.
Carbohydrates:
turn to glucose in the liver
hype the metabolism and
trigger the release of disease-causing hormones like
insulin
cortisol
adrenaline.
A low metabolism is ideal for long life and good health. A high metabolism excites hormones in the body that eventually cause age-related diseases.
The pathogenic effects of carbohydrates are slow but sure.
The "20-year rule" was coined to describe the length of time between the start of the high-carbohydrate diet and the onset of disease.
The number of diseases, severity and time to develop are directly related to the percentage of carbohydrates in the diet. In the advanced stage many diseases are prevalent in the sufferer before death occurs.
Carbohydrates displace essential protein and essential fats in the diet to cause a double health reversal. The carbohydrates themselves cause disease, and the deficiency of protein and fats contribute or cause other diseases.
The consumption of carbohydrates generally begins showing the disease effects in either one of two directions.
Body fat accumulation leads to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, gallbladder disease, degenerative bone diseases and many others.
Damage to the intestinal tract leads to leaky gut syndrome, inflammatory bowel diseases and a medical textbook listing of autoimmune diseases. These illnesses generally make the sufferer underweight and deficient in vitamins and minerals caused by poor digestion.
The primary high-carbohydrate foods to avoid:
Sugars
Honey
Flour
Grains
Legumes
Fruit
Milk
Starchy-vegetables
Whole grains cause disease in both humans and animals. Whole grain breads and bagels are not the healthy food as people are lead to believe.
All grains have a very high level of omega-6 fatty acids, which are pro-inflammatory.
Grains are a poor source of protein. Grains are the most allergenic of all foods. Multiple sclerosis, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis are rare in populations where no grain products are consumed such as the Paleolithic (hunter-gatherer) diet.
The Awful Truth About Eating Grains
Grain fed to feedlot steers makes them fat and causes intestinal diseases. Want to put on the pounds and fatten up like a steer?
The feedlot diet given to steers is almost identical to the USDA Food Guide Pyramid!
Both diets are very high in grains. The feedlot operator is deliberately making the steers fat. Fatty beef is given higher grading, receives the best price and has the best ‘flavor’ - so eat THE MEAT instead of the Grain-based diet that made it so tasty.
The time in the feedlot is short and the steer is sent to slaughter prior to developing any serious health problem.
People get fat and develop disease for the very same reasons. Grains are worse for humans because we are omnivores. Steers are herbivores, but the grains still make them fat and give them diseases.
Primitive cultures that primarily ate meat from the hunt lived in relative good health. Those people who switched to a grain-based diet obtained from the cultivation of grains suffered poor health, diseases and a smaller stature.
Fruit is Not as Healthy as Many Claim
Fruit is not the healthy food many claim. Fruit is mostly fructose sugar with some vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. Those vitamins and nutrients are easily obtained from meat and non-starchy vegetables without the fructose.
The body processes fructose from fruit in the same way as it processes fructose from soft drinks. There is no difference.
Fructose is fructose and fructose is sugar no matter what the source. Fructose causes insulin resistance. Fructose is highly addictive and most people simply refuse to give up fruit no matter how sick they become. This is identical to lung cancer patients who continue to smoke cigarettes. See links below for more information:
Fructose, weight gain, and the insulin resistance syndrome.
Tissue-specific impairment of insulin signaling in fructose-fed rats.
Carbohydrates Trigger Disease-Causing Hormones
Hormones involved in the carbohydrate disease loop are metabolism hormones.
The process starts when carbohydrates are eaten in the form of sugars such as sucrose, fructose, lactose and others.
Simple carbohydrates are molecules made by chains of glucose that are short. Longer glucose chains form carbohydrates that are classified as complex. The body breaks the chains apart until individual molecules of glucose are released into the blood stream.
Then the problems start. The body is very sensitive to the amount of glucose in the blood, commonly called blood sugar. A small part of the brain called the midbrain that is about 1 inch (25 mm) long and red blood cells require glucose as they lack mitochondria (powerhouse of the cell) and cannot use fatty acids for fuel.
The lack of glucose (hypoglycemia) as energy for the brain can cause symptoms ranging from headache, mild confusion and abnormal behavior, to loss of consciousness, seizure, coma and death. The body can maintain an ideal level of glucose by creating it in the liver from amino acids derived from protein and/or from triglyceride fatty acids in a process called gluconeogenesis.
The low-carbohydrate diet results in a perfectly controlled and stable blood glucose level in this way. On the other hand, the high-carbohydrate diet results in the body's constant attempt to prevent blood glucose swings both to the low-side (hypoglycemia) or the high-side (hyperglycemia). This control is regulated by the hormone insulin to reduce the glucose level and the hormone adrenaline to act as an emergency method of raising the glucose level.
Hypoglycemia is the train whistle signaling the diabetes train is coming down the track.
The diabetes engine is powered by carbohydrates and gaining speed. Nibbling complex carbohydrates throughout the day to control the blood sugar swings will do nothing more than slow the train a year or two.
The diabetes train can be stopped dead on the tracks only by avoiding all carbohydrates.
The condition of uncontrolled blood sugar swings is called diabetes mellitus, or type 2 diabetes, and has become epidemic in all English-speaking countries.
It will soon become a catastrophe. (Experts: World Facing Diabetes Catastrophe.)
Younger people appear to handle carbohydrates without a problem because the cells of the younger body readily accept the glucose with a small insulin response and turn the glucose into energy, which they burn with their characteristic high energy.
However, cells get resistant to this constant bombardment of glucose and increasing levels of insulin are necessary to maintain a normal blood glucose level.
As the cells become resistant, the insulin assists in the conversion of the extra glucose into triglycerides, which raise the triglyceride level in the blood and are deposited as body fat.
Insulin is a Disease-Causing Hormone
Insulin is a hormone made by the beta cells in the islets of langerhans in the pancreas. Body cells require insulin in order to use blood glucose.
A high level of blood insulin causes many unhealthy body reactions, which eventually lead to diseases of all types.
Glucose derived from carbohydrate consumption is turned to body fat by insulin and is deposited in arteries and organs causing arterial diseases, heart disease, strokes, blood clots and other diseases.
High blood glucose signals increasing insulin production until the pancreas becomes fatigued after many years, making the disease seem age-related. Glucose rises uncontrollably when insulin production drops. The result causes diseases of the eyes, kidneys, blood vessels and nerves.
Carbohydrates drive insulin production and insulin levels, therefore, contribute to cardiovascular heart disease (CHD).
Heart attack patients are surprised to learn that they are also diabetic, usually in the hospital emergency room where they are being treated for a heart attack. Rarely are patients be told about the close relationship between their two conditions.
Blood insulin reaches high levels and remains high as one moves in stages from hypoglycemia to Type II diabetes - where insulin production collapses.
Insulin is a very strong anabolic hormone. It pushes blood glucose into cells. It turns blood glucose into triglycerides and stores them as body fat. This sudden appearance of heart disease has been described by the author as the "Instant Atherosclerosis Cycle" (IAC).
Insulin also pushes small dense LDL molecules into the artery wall which starts the atherosclerosis process. Animal research with insulin proved many years ago that the artery will plug with atherosclerosis just downstream from the point of injection.
Carbohydrates cause the LDL molecules to be the unhealthy small, dense variety.
High high-fat, low-carbohydrates diet causes the LDL molecules to the safe large fluffy light density variety.
Higher LDL blood levels on the low-carbohydrate diet do not present the same CHD risk as do LDL levels on the USDA Food Guide Pyramid diet of 60 percent carbohydrates.
High-Insulin (Hyperinsulinemia) Increases Cancer Risks
High-Carbohydrate Diet Is Implicated in Pancreatic Cancer
Low-Fat, High-Carbohydrate Diets Contribute to Hyperinsulinemia and Hypertriglyceridemia
Diet and Colorectal Cancer: The Possible Role of Insulin Resistance
Fasting Insulin and Outcome of Early-Stage Breast Cancer
Diet, Lifestyle, and Colorectal Cancer:
Hyperinsulin – emia: the Missing Link? Carbohydrates drive blood insulin production that causes cancer.
There are strong associations between a high-carbohydrate diet and many diseases that present a secondary cancer risk. Cancer risks are greatly increased with diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease and many other unhealthy conditions caused by the high-blood glucose and high-blood insulin levels.
High-Insulin (Hyperinsulinemia) Increases Cardiovascular Disease Risks
Insulin Resistance is an Important Determinant of Left Ventricular Mass in the Obese.
Insulin Resistance Syndrome Predicts the Risk of Coronary Heart Disease and Stroke.
Coronary Heart Disease Mortality Risk: Plasma Insulin Level Is a More Sensitive Marker Than Hypertension or Abnormal Glucose Tolerance.
Hyperinsulinemia as an Independent Risk Factor for Ischemic Heart Disease.
The only way to prevent diseases caused by insulin spikes and plunges is to eat a low-carbohydrate diet.
‘Primitive’ societies that live with very few carbohydrates in the diet and have proven diabetes and all the diseases of consequence do not exist. A great example is the Eskimos of the far north prior to the introduction of white-man food.
The bad effects of insulin do not end here. High insulin spikes signal the body to release cortisol and adrenaline hormones, which also contribute to disease.
Cortisol is a Disease-Causing Hormone
Cortisol is the major stress hormone of the natural glucocorticoid family, which regulates metabolism and provides resistance to stress. Glucocorticoids are made in the outside portion (the cortex) of the adrenal gland and are chemically classified as steroids. Glucocorticoids increase the rate at which proteins are catabolized (broken down) and amino acids are removed from cells, primarily muscle fiber, and transported to the liver.
Glucocorticoids cause amino acids to be synthesized into new proteins, such as enzymes.
They also raise blood pressure by constricting vessels, which is a benefit in case of injury. They are also anti-inflammatory. All of this is well and good in a healthy individual with normal glucose and insulin levels. Unfortunately, high cortisol levels cause many unhealthy reactions.
Understanding Adrenal Function
"An excessive ratio of carbohydrates to protein results in excess secretion of insulin, which often leads to intervals of hypoglycemia. The body, in an attempt to normalize blood sugar, initiates a counter-regulatory process during which the adrenals are stimulated to secrete increased levels of cortisol and adrenalin. It follows that an excessive intake of carbohydrates often leads to excessive secretion of cortisol."
Excess cortisol:
Diminishes cellular utilization of glucose
Increases blood sugar levels
Decreases protein synthesis
Increases protein breakdown that can lead to muscle wasting
Causes demineralization of bone that can lead to osteoporosis
Interferes with skin regeneration and healing
Causes shrinking of lymphatic tissue
Diminishes lymphocyte numbers and functions
Lessens SIgA (secretory antibody productions). This immune system suppression may lead to increased susceptibility to allergies, infections, and degenerative disease
High-cortisol levels caused by excessive carbohydrate consumption and high-insulin levels cause
the body to extract high-tensile strength collagen protein fibers from bones, remove the mineral matrix by demineralization and weaken connective tissue at the joints.
The protein loss is accelerated by a low-protein diet, and the bone minerals are lost in the urine.
One is literally peeing his/her bones away. The result is a rapid and shocking diagnosis of osteoporosis and degenerative disk disease where the spine can lose as much as one inch (25 mm) in height in as little as one year. Bones fracture more easily, and the dreaded hip fracture is much more likely to occur.
Women are told to drink lots of milk and eat plenty of yogurt to get additional calcium with the promise it will prevent bone loss, but the advice is based on faulty logic:
The additional lactose in the milk and yogurt plus the additional sugar and fruit added to yogurt only serve to increase the dietary carbohydrate load. The net result is harmful to the bones - as many women are discovering.
All of this can be prevented by eating a high-protein, high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet.
Adrenaline is a Disease-Causing Hormone
Adrenaline (epinephrine) is the "fight-or-flight" stress hormone. Epinephrine is a neurotransmitter secreted by the adrenal gland that is associated with sympathetic nervous system activity. It prolongs and intensifies the following effects of the sympathetic nervous system.
Causes the pupils of the eyes to dilate
Increases the heart rate, force of contraction, and blood pressure
Constricts the blood vessels of nonessential organs such as the skin
Dilates blood vessels to increase blood flow to organs involved in exercise or fighting off danger, skeletal muscles, cardiac muscle, liver, and adipose tissue
Increases the rate and depth of breathing and dilates the bronchioles to allow faster movement of air in and out of the lungs
Raises blood sugar as the liver glycogen is converted to glucose
Slows down or even stops processes that are not essential for meeting the stress situation, such as muscular movements of the gastrointestinal tract and digestive secretions
All of these effects are great if one is being chased by a lion or attacked by an intruder into the home. However, these effects are unhealthy to a person sitting in an office, watching a football game or simply going about his everyday life.
The last item on the above list is very disruptive to the intestinal tract and leads to intestinal diseases. People are advised to eat more high-fiber whole grains and high-fiber fruit to overcome the constipation resulting from this slow down of the intestinal system, but this advice is backward. These are very high-carbohydrate foods, which cause a surge in insulin and adrenaline that shut down the digestive processes!!!
Bowel Diseases and Candida Infections
High-insulin and hypoglycemia (low-blood sugar) cause adrenaline to increase when no fight-or-flight stress situation exists and thereby causes unhealthy body changes.
The helpful body responses to adrenaline become a health hazard when adrenaline is elevated over a period of time. The long-term elevation of adrenaline is very unhealthy and leads to many diseases.
These changes include effects to the cardiovascular system that increase the risk of coronary heart disease.
The low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet as recommended by the USDA Food Guide Pyramid is disease causing because it promotes hypoglycemia, hyperinsulinemia, hypertriglyceridemia and hyperadrenalemia. Prolonged elevated adrenaline has the following effects on the cardiovascular system:
Increases in the production of blood cholesterol, especially the undesirable LDL
Decreases the body's ability to remove cholesterol
Increases the blood's tendency to clot
Increases the deposits of plaque on the walls of the arteries
Adrenaline addiction is very common. Type-A personalities become addicted to their excessive activity by the stimulation and arousal of adrenaline. People who are constantly angry, fearful, guilty, or worrisome arouse their adrenaline hormone even though they may sit around doing nothing else. People who are excessive in their participation in jogging, exercise, bodybuilding, aerobics, sports, skiing, mountain climbing, car racing or flying aerobic airplanes become addicted because of the adrenaline rush from their activity. They describe the "rush" they get from their activity and feel depressed when they can't participate for some unexpected reason.
Jim Fixx was addicted to running and wrote the famous jogger's book, The Complete Book of Running.
He was a marathon runner and vegetarian on a diet of high-carbohydrates and low-protein - a perfect setup to arouse and maintain a high level of adrenaline, and he died of a massive heart attack on his daily run…
Curiously, Fixx wrote that his own research showed that the athletes from his university alumni had a shorter life span than the "couch potato" students.
This difference may have been caused by the difference in adrenaline between the two groups.
Hypoglycemia and stress are a deadly combination.
By Kent Rieske
Carbohydrates cause nearly all age-related diseases because of the many popular myths and distortions about nutrition – especially low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets. Age-related diseases could best be described as Excessive Carbohydrate Consumption Syndrome, which leads to diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.
The scientific evidence is clear. Carbohydrates are a sinister, sly food category that has powerful allies in the food industry that grows, manufactures and markets thousands of carbohydrate products made from fruit, grains and starchy-vegetables. The supermarket floor space allotted to these manufactured carbohydrate foods is about 80 percent of the store, and yet
The scientific minimum requirement for carbohydrates in the diet is ZERO.
Carbohydrates are not an essential element for health. In fact, optimal health lies in keeping the amount of carbohydrates in the diet to a minimum.
The supermarket departments that contain the healthy essential proteins and essential fats are the fresh meats, fresh fish and seafood, dairy and non-starchy vegetables.
Carbohydrates:
turn to glucose in the liver
hype the metabolism and
trigger the release of disease-causing hormones like
insulin
cortisol
adrenaline.
A low metabolism is ideal for long life and good health. A high metabolism excites hormones in the body that eventually cause age-related diseases.
The pathogenic effects of carbohydrates are slow but sure.
The "20-year rule" was coined to describe the length of time between the start of the high-carbohydrate diet and the onset of disease.
The number of diseases, severity and time to develop are directly related to the percentage of carbohydrates in the diet. In the advanced stage many diseases are prevalent in the sufferer before death occurs.
Carbohydrates displace essential protein and essential fats in the diet to cause a double health reversal. The carbohydrates themselves cause disease, and the deficiency of protein and fats contribute or cause other diseases.
The consumption of carbohydrates generally begins showing the disease effects in either one of two directions.
Body fat accumulation leads to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, gallbladder disease, degenerative bone diseases and many others.
Damage to the intestinal tract leads to leaky gut syndrome, inflammatory bowel diseases and a medical textbook listing of autoimmune diseases. These illnesses generally make the sufferer underweight and deficient in vitamins and minerals caused by poor digestion.
The primary high-carbohydrate foods to avoid:
Sugars
Honey
Flour
Grains
Legumes
Fruit
Milk
Starchy-vegetables
Whole grains cause disease in both humans and animals. Whole grain breads and bagels are not the healthy food as people are lead to believe.
All grains have a very high level of omega-6 fatty acids, which are pro-inflammatory.
Grains are a poor source of protein. Grains are the most allergenic of all foods. Multiple sclerosis, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis are rare in populations where no grain products are consumed such as the Paleolithic (hunter-gatherer) diet.
The Awful Truth About Eating Grains
Grain fed to feedlot steers makes them fat and causes intestinal diseases. Want to put on the pounds and fatten up like a steer?
The feedlot diet given to steers is almost identical to the USDA Food Guide Pyramid!
Both diets are very high in grains. The feedlot operator is deliberately making the steers fat. Fatty beef is given higher grading, receives the best price and has the best ‘flavor’ - so eat THE MEAT instead of the Grain-based diet that made it so tasty.
The time in the feedlot is short and the steer is sent to slaughter prior to developing any serious health problem.
People get fat and develop disease for the very same reasons. Grains are worse for humans because we are omnivores. Steers are herbivores, but the grains still make them fat and give them diseases.
Primitive cultures that primarily ate meat from the hunt lived in relative good health. Those people who switched to a grain-based diet obtained from the cultivation of grains suffered poor health, diseases and a smaller stature.
Fruit is Not as Healthy as Many Claim
Fruit is not the healthy food many claim. Fruit is mostly fructose sugar with some vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. Those vitamins and nutrients are easily obtained from meat and non-starchy vegetables without the fructose.
The body processes fructose from fruit in the same way as it processes fructose from soft drinks. There is no difference.
Fructose is fructose and fructose is sugar no matter what the source. Fructose causes insulin resistance. Fructose is highly addictive and most people simply refuse to give up fruit no matter how sick they become. This is identical to lung cancer patients who continue to smoke cigarettes. See links below for more information:
Fructose, weight gain, and the insulin resistance syndrome.
Tissue-specific impairment of insulin signaling in fructose-fed rats.
Carbohydrates Trigger Disease-Causing Hormones
Hormones involved in the carbohydrate disease loop are metabolism hormones.
The process starts when carbohydrates are eaten in the form of sugars such as sucrose, fructose, lactose and others.
Simple carbohydrates are molecules made by chains of glucose that are short. Longer glucose chains form carbohydrates that are classified as complex. The body breaks the chains apart until individual molecules of glucose are released into the blood stream.
Then the problems start. The body is very sensitive to the amount of glucose in the blood, commonly called blood sugar. A small part of the brain called the midbrain that is about 1 inch (25 mm) long and red blood cells require glucose as they lack mitochondria (powerhouse of the cell) and cannot use fatty acids for fuel.
The lack of glucose (hypoglycemia) as energy for the brain can cause symptoms ranging from headache, mild confusion and abnormal behavior, to loss of consciousness, seizure, coma and death. The body can maintain an ideal level of glucose by creating it in the liver from amino acids derived from protein and/or from triglyceride fatty acids in a process called gluconeogenesis.
The low-carbohydrate diet results in a perfectly controlled and stable blood glucose level in this way. On the other hand, the high-carbohydrate diet results in the body's constant attempt to prevent blood glucose swings both to the low-side (hypoglycemia) or the high-side (hyperglycemia). This control is regulated by the hormone insulin to reduce the glucose level and the hormone adrenaline to act as an emergency method of raising the glucose level.
Hypoglycemia is the train whistle signaling the diabetes train is coming down the track.
The diabetes engine is powered by carbohydrates and gaining speed. Nibbling complex carbohydrates throughout the day to control the blood sugar swings will do nothing more than slow the train a year or two.
The diabetes train can be stopped dead on the tracks only by avoiding all carbohydrates.
The condition of uncontrolled blood sugar swings is called diabetes mellitus, or type 2 diabetes, and has become epidemic in all English-speaking countries.
It will soon become a catastrophe. (Experts: World Facing Diabetes Catastrophe.)
Younger people appear to handle carbohydrates without a problem because the cells of the younger body readily accept the glucose with a small insulin response and turn the glucose into energy, which they burn with their characteristic high energy.
However, cells get resistant to this constant bombardment of glucose and increasing levels of insulin are necessary to maintain a normal blood glucose level.
As the cells become resistant, the insulin assists in the conversion of the extra glucose into triglycerides, which raise the triglyceride level in the blood and are deposited as body fat.
Insulin is a Disease-Causing Hormone
Insulin is a hormone made by the beta cells in the islets of langerhans in the pancreas. Body cells require insulin in order to use blood glucose.
A high level of blood insulin causes many unhealthy body reactions, which eventually lead to diseases of all types.
Glucose derived from carbohydrate consumption is turned to body fat by insulin and is deposited in arteries and organs causing arterial diseases, heart disease, strokes, blood clots and other diseases.
High blood glucose signals increasing insulin production until the pancreas becomes fatigued after many years, making the disease seem age-related. Glucose rises uncontrollably when insulin production drops. The result causes diseases of the eyes, kidneys, blood vessels and nerves.
Carbohydrates drive insulin production and insulin levels, therefore, contribute to cardiovascular heart disease (CHD).
Heart attack patients are surprised to learn that they are also diabetic, usually in the hospital emergency room where they are being treated for a heart attack. Rarely are patients be told about the close relationship between their two conditions.
Blood insulin reaches high levels and remains high as one moves in stages from hypoglycemia to Type II diabetes - where insulin production collapses.
Insulin is a very strong anabolic hormone. It pushes blood glucose into cells. It turns blood glucose into triglycerides and stores them as body fat. This sudden appearance of heart disease has been described by the author as the "Instant Atherosclerosis Cycle" (IAC).
Insulin also pushes small dense LDL molecules into the artery wall which starts the atherosclerosis process. Animal research with insulin proved many years ago that the artery will plug with atherosclerosis just downstream from the point of injection.
Carbohydrates cause the LDL molecules to be the unhealthy small, dense variety.
High high-fat, low-carbohydrates diet causes the LDL molecules to the safe large fluffy light density variety.
Higher LDL blood levels on the low-carbohydrate diet do not present the same CHD risk as do LDL levels on the USDA Food Guide Pyramid diet of 60 percent carbohydrates.
High-Insulin (Hyperinsulinemia) Increases Cancer Risks
High-Carbohydrate Diet Is Implicated in Pancreatic Cancer
Low-Fat, High-Carbohydrate Diets Contribute to Hyperinsulinemia and Hypertriglyceridemia
Diet and Colorectal Cancer: The Possible Role of Insulin Resistance
Fasting Insulin and Outcome of Early-Stage Breast Cancer
Diet, Lifestyle, and Colorectal Cancer:
Hyperinsulin – emia: the Missing Link? Carbohydrates drive blood insulin production that causes cancer.
There are strong associations between a high-carbohydrate diet and many diseases that present a secondary cancer risk. Cancer risks are greatly increased with diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease and many other unhealthy conditions caused by the high-blood glucose and high-blood insulin levels.
High-Insulin (Hyperinsulinemia) Increases Cardiovascular Disease Risks
Insulin Resistance is an Important Determinant of Left Ventricular Mass in the Obese.
Insulin Resistance Syndrome Predicts the Risk of Coronary Heart Disease and Stroke.
Coronary Heart Disease Mortality Risk: Plasma Insulin Level Is a More Sensitive Marker Than Hypertension or Abnormal Glucose Tolerance.
Hyperinsulinemia as an Independent Risk Factor for Ischemic Heart Disease.
The only way to prevent diseases caused by insulin spikes and plunges is to eat a low-carbohydrate diet.
‘Primitive’ societies that live with very few carbohydrates in the diet and have proven diabetes and all the diseases of consequence do not exist. A great example is the Eskimos of the far north prior to the introduction of white-man food.
The bad effects of insulin do not end here. High insulin spikes signal the body to release cortisol and adrenaline hormones, which also contribute to disease.
Cortisol is a Disease-Causing Hormone
Cortisol is the major stress hormone of the natural glucocorticoid family, which regulates metabolism and provides resistance to stress. Glucocorticoids are made in the outside portion (the cortex) of the adrenal gland and are chemically classified as steroids. Glucocorticoids increase the rate at which proteins are catabolized (broken down) and amino acids are removed from cells, primarily muscle fiber, and transported to the liver.
Glucocorticoids cause amino acids to be synthesized into new proteins, such as enzymes.
They also raise blood pressure by constricting vessels, which is a benefit in case of injury. They are also anti-inflammatory. All of this is well and good in a healthy individual with normal glucose and insulin levels. Unfortunately, high cortisol levels cause many unhealthy reactions.
Understanding Adrenal Function
"An excessive ratio of carbohydrates to protein results in excess secretion of insulin, which often leads to intervals of hypoglycemia. The body, in an attempt to normalize blood sugar, initiates a counter-regulatory process during which the adrenals are stimulated to secrete increased levels of cortisol and adrenalin. It follows that an excessive intake of carbohydrates often leads to excessive secretion of cortisol."
Excess cortisol:
Diminishes cellular utilization of glucose
Increases blood sugar levels
Decreases protein synthesis
Increases protein breakdown that can lead to muscle wasting
Causes demineralization of bone that can lead to osteoporosis
Interferes with skin regeneration and healing
Causes shrinking of lymphatic tissue
Diminishes lymphocyte numbers and functions
Lessens SIgA (secretory antibody productions). This immune system suppression may lead to increased susceptibility to allergies, infections, and degenerative disease
High-cortisol levels caused by excessive carbohydrate consumption and high-insulin levels cause
the body to extract high-tensile strength collagen protein fibers from bones, remove the mineral matrix by demineralization and weaken connective tissue at the joints.
The protein loss is accelerated by a low-protein diet, and the bone minerals are lost in the urine.
One is literally peeing his/her bones away. The result is a rapid and shocking diagnosis of osteoporosis and degenerative disk disease where the spine can lose as much as one inch (25 mm) in height in as little as one year. Bones fracture more easily, and the dreaded hip fracture is much more likely to occur.
Women are told to drink lots of milk and eat plenty of yogurt to get additional calcium with the promise it will prevent bone loss, but the advice is based on faulty logic:
The additional lactose in the milk and yogurt plus the additional sugar and fruit added to yogurt only serve to increase the dietary carbohydrate load. The net result is harmful to the bones - as many women are discovering.
All of this can be prevented by eating a high-protein, high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet.
Adrenaline is a Disease-Causing Hormone
Adrenaline (epinephrine) is the "fight-or-flight" stress hormone. Epinephrine is a neurotransmitter secreted by the adrenal gland that is associated with sympathetic nervous system activity. It prolongs and intensifies the following effects of the sympathetic nervous system.
Causes the pupils of the eyes to dilate
Increases the heart rate, force of contraction, and blood pressure
Constricts the blood vessels of nonessential organs such as the skin
Dilates blood vessels to increase blood flow to organs involved in exercise or fighting off danger, skeletal muscles, cardiac muscle, liver, and adipose tissue
Increases the rate and depth of breathing and dilates the bronchioles to allow faster movement of air in and out of the lungs
Raises blood sugar as the liver glycogen is converted to glucose
Slows down or even stops processes that are not essential for meeting the stress situation, such as muscular movements of the gastrointestinal tract and digestive secretions
All of these effects are great if one is being chased by a lion or attacked by an intruder into the home. However, these effects are unhealthy to a person sitting in an office, watching a football game or simply going about his everyday life.
The last item on the above list is very disruptive to the intestinal tract and leads to intestinal diseases. People are advised to eat more high-fiber whole grains and high-fiber fruit to overcome the constipation resulting from this slow down of the intestinal system, but this advice is backward. These are very high-carbohydrate foods, which cause a surge in insulin and adrenaline that shut down the digestive processes!!!
Bowel Diseases and Candida Infections
High-insulin and hypoglycemia (low-blood sugar) cause adrenaline to increase when no fight-or-flight stress situation exists and thereby causes unhealthy body changes.
The helpful body responses to adrenaline become a health hazard when adrenaline is elevated over a period of time. The long-term elevation of adrenaline is very unhealthy and leads to many diseases.
These changes include effects to the cardiovascular system that increase the risk of coronary heart disease.
The low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet as recommended by the USDA Food Guide Pyramid is disease causing because it promotes hypoglycemia, hyperinsulinemia, hypertriglyceridemia and hyperadrenalemia. Prolonged elevated adrenaline has the following effects on the cardiovascular system:
Increases in the production of blood cholesterol, especially the undesirable LDL
Decreases the body's ability to remove cholesterol
Increases the blood's tendency to clot
Increases the deposits of plaque on the walls of the arteries
Adrenaline addiction is very common. Type-A personalities become addicted to their excessive activity by the stimulation and arousal of adrenaline. People who are constantly angry, fearful, guilty, or worrisome arouse their adrenaline hormone even though they may sit around doing nothing else. People who are excessive in their participation in jogging, exercise, bodybuilding, aerobics, sports, skiing, mountain climbing, car racing or flying aerobic airplanes become addicted because of the adrenaline rush from their activity. They describe the "rush" they get from their activity and feel depressed when they can't participate for some unexpected reason.
Jim Fixx was addicted to running and wrote the famous jogger's book, The Complete Book of Running.
He was a marathon runner and vegetarian on a diet of high-carbohydrates and low-protein - a perfect setup to arouse and maintain a high level of adrenaline, and he died of a massive heart attack on his daily run…
Curiously, Fixx wrote that his own research showed that the athletes from his university alumni had a shorter life span than the "couch potato" students.
This difference may have been caused by the difference in adrenaline between the two groups.
Hypoglycemia and stress are a deadly combination.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Viet Nam War in Poetry
Viet Nam War in Poetry
An American Sonnet
If freedom is Heaven on Earth,
Then communism is Hell
If freedom is hope,
Then communism is despair
If freedom is man’s happiness,
Then communism his sufferings
If freedom is life,
Then communism is death.
The Vietnam Veteran Wall lives on
The Berlin Wall has perished
We, free citizens of the world,
Yearn to see Vietnam’s future cherished.
Let go of Uncle Ho’s oppression
Let God lead our liberty mission.
Linh Duy Vo
(The Boy in the Poem)
13 March 1999 ©
An American Sonnet
If freedom is Heaven on Earth,
Then communism is Hell
If freedom is hope,
Then communism is despair
If freedom is man’s happiness,
Then communism his sufferings
If freedom is life,
Then communism is death.
The Vietnam Veteran Wall lives on
The Berlin Wall has perished
We, free citizens of the world,
Yearn to see Vietnam’s future cherished.
Let go of Uncle Ho’s oppression
Let God lead our liberty mission.
Linh Duy Vo
(The Boy in the Poem)
13 March 1999 ©
Monday, December 1, 2008
NVA In Laos, Cambodia, and Viet Nam: The United Battlefield
NVA in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia: Laos
© John Puzzo 29 November 2008
Sources:
I. Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress, Country Studies/Area Handbook Program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Army. Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office.
II. http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/lima/laos1962.htm
III. http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/lima/laos1954.htm
IV. http://www.geocities.com/pentagon/2527/jhviet.html
V. http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/world/A0859186.html
VI. http://countrystudies.us/laos/
VII. http://countrystudies.us/laos/14.htm
VIII. http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9058717/Pathet-Lao
IX. Communist Party of Vietnam: http://www.cpv.org.vn/english/archives/details.asp?topic=14&subtopic=99&leader_topic=42&id=BT2750372918
X. Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe column, April 30, 2000
XI. No More Vietnam’s,” Richard Milhous Nixon, Arbor House;1985
XII. Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992, by Jane Hamilton-Merritt; Indiana University Press; 1993.
The Lao People’s Revolutionary Party that now controls Laos is a Marxist-Leninist party patterned after the Vietnamese Communist Party and was strongly influenced by the Soviet Union and the USSR's Communist Party. It practices Marxism Leninism, as does Viet Nam. Since 1975, it has monopolized political power in Laos. The policy-making organs are the politburo and the central committee.
Ho Chi Minh was a hard-line Bolshevik Dictator. Communism and the Leninist principle that Communist nations should subordinate their interests to those of international Communism dictated Ho Chi Minh’s entire life and give the lie to the oft repeated but false claim that he was a nationalist first and a Communist second. Many years after his death, his party, the Communist Party, admitted the true nature of Ho Chi Minh:
“…from his youth to the last minute of his life, President Ho Chi Minh devoted his life to the revolutionary cause of our people and to the people of the world (emph. added). He … creatively applied Marxism-Leninism …for the Vietnamese revolution… to realize the lofty ideas of socialism and communism…To constantly enhance pure internationalist sentiments…and unity in the socialist camp…on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism and make a contribution to the world revolution.”(Updated on 5/27/2003 at 20:15; citation date: 26 November 2008: Communist Party of Vietnam Online Newspaper Citation Reference: http://www.cpv.org.vn/english/archives/details.asp?topic=14&subtopic=99&leader_topic=42&id=BT2750372918
Ho Chi Minh was a founding member of the French Communist Party (1920) and a member of the fourth (1922) and fifth (1923) Communist Internationals – the COMINTERN - and held rank and salary in the Soviet system (see: Le Van Tien, “The Disintegration of the Vietnamese Communist Movement and Its Consequences.” Thoi Su Magazine, February, March, and April, 1995).
The COMINTERN's priority was exporting the Revolution, specifically the export of subversion, terror, and the employment of murder and assassination against selected opponents and informers by paramilitary wings (terror networks), tactics that would destabilize target nations and make them vulnerable to takeover. The COMINTERN was thoroughly infused with secret informers and intelligence operatives working under the Party.
Cannibalistic:
By 1943, 133 out of 492 Comintern staff members became Party victims. Many were convinced to relocate to the Soviet Union where they were liquidated. During WW II, more than a thousand were betrayed by the International Socialists (Communists) to the National Socialists (Nazi’s). The leaders of the Indian, Korean, Mexican, Iranian and Turkish Communist parties were simply executed where they were.
COMINTERN member, Ho Chi Minh, on the cover of ‘Time’ magazine three times as ‘Man of the Year’ in 1954, 1965, and 1975, employed similar tactics and turned the whole of SE Asia into a cavern of slaughter: "Better 10 innocent deaths than one enemy survivor," was a both a philosophy and a means to an end for Ho Chi Minh and the Communist Party.
"Hundreds of thousands of North Vietnamese were killed as 'class enemies' and 'counterrevolutionaries.' During Hanoi's brief occupation of Hue in 1968, Tet Offensive, thousands of citizens -- priests, doctors, bureaucrats -- were butchered.
“It was not to satisfy some imperial craving that America went to war in Vietnam.
“It went to save the South from murder."
Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe columnist, April 30, 2000
After organizing his political cadre and network of couriers, organizers, agents and spies into the Indochina Communist Party, Ho Chi Minh commenced formation of a military apparatus throughout SE Asia in the 1930’s. Although not well known, the ICP played a significant role in the attempt to overthrow the Lao monarchy in 1932.
By February 1951 the ICP had formed separate revolutionary front parties for Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, implementing Hanoi’s strategy of making revolution on "one battlefield."
Whether revolution is ‘war’ that is waged on a battlefield is arguable. Certainly ‘the Revolution’ waged in SE Asia began and continues with attacks on civilians by the Revolutionary parties and the military forces they field.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail, a clandestine supply route, extended from the Soviet Union and China through North Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia to service the communist terror network of increasingly conventional armed forces, which has never ceased their predations against civilians continuing today as they do against the Montagnard and Hmong.
As the NVA occupied more and more territory in these sovereign nations, terror and atrocity against the civilian populations became progressively more severe with locals pressed into service as laborers, soldiers, and sex slaves.
Communist-style terrorism as it was practiced by Ho Chi Minh and the NVA, like that of the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea before it, is the model and method of revolution and population control used by all modern totalitarian dictatorships.
This terror was practiced throughout SE Asia. Characteristically, statistics are more available for Viet Nam, but illustrative of what occurred in Laos and Cambodia as well as in Viet Nam, dominated first by the Indochina Communist Party and then by the NVA, proxy army for international Communism:
“From 1957 to 1973, the National Liberation Front death squads assassinated 36,725 South Vietnamese and abducted another 58,499 and focused on leaders at the village level and on anyone who improved the lives of the peasants such as medical personnel, social workers, and schoolteachers.”[See: Nixon] No More Vietnams by Richard Nixon]
New waves of Vietnamese Communist political and military agents infiltrated Laos between 1946 and 1947, beginning with 500-700 personnel. That figure grew to approximately 7,000 agents between 1950 and 1951. By 1953, 17,000 Vietnamese were in Laos, organizing the revolution even as the Geneva Accords were in the process of formulation.
By the closing months of WWII, the nucleus of one full division was in place and others were in service along the Vietnamese border with Laos. One full division, the 335th NVA, occupied portions of Laos in violation of international law.
By 1951, the NVA could field 5 full infantry divisions of between 10,000 - 15,000 soldiers each, with artillery, AA, and support units.
Two months after the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indochina, the North Vietnamese established ‘Group 100’ on the Laotian Border near the Thanh Hoa-Houaphan region of Ban Namèo. This unit provided arms, cadre, and war matériel to support pro-Hanoi Pathet Lao forces.
In a major diplomatic affront to Communism and affirmation of its sovereignty and liberty, Laos angered Communists in China and Hanoi by admitting diplomats from free Taipei and Saigon in the summer of 1958.
In retaliation, the North Vietnamese Army, armed and equipped by China and the Soviet Union, occupied the Xépôn District of Laos, an area strategically located near the DMZ between North and South Vietnam. Hanoi claimed the villages as Vietnamese territory and organized the Laotian Popular Front in the same way that they created the National Liberation Front – the Viet Cong, in South Viet Nam.
Laos immediately protested these intrigues and open belligerency. With no ability to match an experienced army that had invaded its territory, Laos hoped for a greater degree of United States support.
By July 1959 Laos ordered the arrest of Lao Popular Front insurgents and North Vietnamese regular army units immediately launched operations along the Laotian border. NVA forces led the attacks, crushed the inexperienced and poorly equipped Laotian army, and turned defeated areas over to Pathet Lao forces, which remained in place as the Vietnamese withdrew.
This tactic had the advantage of concealing Hanoi’s use of their army against a sovereign nation. Due to their characteristic brutality against civilians, mere rumors of North Vietnamese Army presence spread terror across the Laotian landscape.
War waged by Atrocity throughout SE Asia
In Viet Nam, Newsweek magazine for May 15, 1967 reported, "…over the past decade the Viet Cong have murdered, mutilated and otherwise brutalized tens of thousands of Vietnamese civilians. And far from attempting to conceal their atrocities, the guerrillas have performed them in the most ostentatious fashion possible."
In September 1959, North Vietnamese Army ‘Group 959’ began operations with a major effort to expand Pathet Lao forces. As Communist military planners widened the war and moved against the government of Laos, they created NVA ‘Group 959’ to move supplies to the Pathet Lao. North Vietnam and Lao Communist parties together established ‘Group 959,’ headquartered at Hanoi but with local command and support units stationed just inside the Laotian border.
‘Group 959’ "served the ‘(Lao) Military Commission’ and ‘Supreme Command of the Lao People's Liberation Army,’ distributed money and Vietnamese war matériel to fuel the Laotian revolution, and commanded Vietnamese personnel operating in Laos in violation of the 1954 Geneva Conference that prohibited interference in the internal affairs of Laos, specific language that had been written into the Geneva Accords as a result of Hanoi’s open belligerence against Laos.
In their long term strategy to dominate all of SE Asia, NVA planners outlined a role for Laotian communists and Pathet Lao forces as architects of the revolution in Laos and to support NVA operations against South Viet Nam.
Hanoi opened the first tracks of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in mid-1959 through the rugged mountain jungles of Xépôn district.
‘Group 559’ of the North Vietnamese Army was originally a transportation and logistical unit was established to move troops, weapons, and matériel to Vietcong and NVA units into northern and western South Vietnam. By 1960, the Soviet Union was openly airlifting supplies to the NVA and Pathet Lao in Laos.
By 1963, the force level of ‘Group 559’grew to 24,000 troops and included six motorized transport battalions plus engineering, anti-aircraft, and infantry units to provide security forces.
The Hanoi Regime went so far as to declare the trail system and its base areas inside Laos and Cambodia a North Vietnamese ‘Military Region,’ with staff reporting directly to the Military Affairs Party Committee and the General Staff of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Hanoi.
By 1965, not less than three subordinate commands were created for the supply corridors that ran through Laos. The NVA 316th Division was moved to Laos to shield their base areas and supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
As Giap and the central planners of Hanoi’s junta readied their forces for the 1972 Easter Offensive, they felt the need to protect their Western flank and sanctuaries in Laos which would play key roles in the massive but doomed offensive against South Viet Nam.
Accordingly, between December 1971 and April 1972, twenty North Vietnamese independent maneuver battalions engaged a much smaller force of 10,000 Hmong Special Guerrilla Units and Royal Lao Army defenders.
The Hmong SGU’s halted an attack of Soviet T-34 tanks against the airfield at Longtiang with well placed land mines and individual action, and together with Royal Lao Army forces, drove off a stunned NVA.
Both sides experienced heavy losses, but the NVA was startled by the tenacity of the Hmong and Royal Lao forces, a shock they would feel more acutely in the months ahead as the ARVN, with US Airpower, threw back 22 full NVA divisions back across the DMZ and to their sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia. It remains the most significant defeat of the North Vietnamese Army in it’s entire history.
US POW’s in Laos.
Apart from their wanton use of atrocity against the innocent, no issue more describes the hubris, arrogance, illegitimacy, and dishonor of communist regimes than their treatment of POW’s, and this holds special significance for the US POW’s held in Laos, from which no US POW ever returned.
Under Chapter II, Article 5 of the Vientiane Agreement, the communists in control of Laos were obligated to repatriate all persons held captive, regardless of nationality.
The Pathet Lao held a number of United States citizens captured by them or the North Vietnamese in Laos, but they neither provided lists of those who had fallen into their hands nor adhered to international conventions on treatment of POWs. The US Department of Defense listed 555 Americans as unaccounted for, either as POWs, missing in action (MIA) or killed in action/body not recovered, in Laos.
Five days prior to the signing of the Vientiane Agreement, the Pathet Lao delegate in Vientiane told the editor of the Vientiane newspaper ‘Xat Lao’ (The Lao Nation) that the Pathet Lao leadership had a detailed accounting of United States prisoners and the locations where they were being held and that they would be released after the cease-fire. He added: "If they were captured in Laos, they will be returned in Laos."
On the day the Vientiane Agreement was signed, the United States obtained confirmation of those statements and requested further details but was informed that the release of eight prisoners in Hanoi, whose names had previously been given to the US by the North Vietnamese in Paris, had been held in North Vietnam for some time, not Laos.
Later the Pathet Lao told the United States embassy that this fulfilled their POW release obligations. The North Vietnamese did not respond to requests for clarification of the discrepancy between the number of POWs and MIAs carried by the Department of Defense and the small number of POWs released.
Official Department of Defense figures list 13 American POW’s captured by Pathet Lao as having been turned over to the NVA and released in 1973. http://www.miafacts.org/laos.htm#captured%20in%20laos
The Vientiane Agreement was signed on September 14, 1973. The only United States citizen released by the Pathet Lao in Laos in accordance with these provisions was a civilian pilot captured after the cease-fire. In the ensuing years, the Communists would calmly inform visiting United States officials and families of POW/MIAs that they knew nothing about the fate of United States POWs and MIAs in Laos.
The end of Laos as a free nation.
For fifteen years the Hmong Special Guerilla Units of General Vang Pao conducted successful operations against the NVA and punished Hanoi and its proxy army, the Pathet Lao. But on March 27, 1975, North Vietnamese-Pathet Lao forces launched a strong attack against Vang Pao's Hmong defenders and this time there would be no support. The Hmong were being abandoned and the Pathet Lao vowed to "wipe them out.”
Vang Pao requested evacuation for his soldiers and their families to safe haven in Thailand but the CIA offered to evacuate only the families of key officers. Vang Pao requested an airlift for 5,000.
Facing an ultimatum, Vang Pao and twelve Hmong leaders signed a treaty on May 10 reminding the United States of the pledges made to them and agreed to leave Laos and never return. In the next days a motley collection of planes piloted by United States volunteers, Hmong, and Lao flew out a few hundred Hmong. With great sadness, Vang Pao left on May 14, 1975.
His people still in Laos are hunted yet by the Communists. Other Lao remained to be judged by communist ideologues now in power in Laos, and the familiar gulag was called up out of the darkness to throw its shadow over Laos and its people.
Prisoners were force to build their own prison camps – ‘Seminar Camps,’ similar to the re-education camps of the Vietnamese. “Reactionaries,” “Saboteurs,” and “Subversives,” described the inmates, some of whom survived 15 years of depravation. Even the Buddhist monks were spied on and intimidated.
How bad would it get? “As 1975 drew to a close, 11 year old Xiong Pao Xe, who, six months earlier had been taken by the Pathet Lao to be trained, received a real gun and an assignment. “The P.L. gave each of us a gun-something like a Soviet-made machine gun-and ordered us back to our villages to kill our parents…” (Quoted in Tragic Mountains; Hamilton-Merritt, p. 376. (Note: The boy used the AK-47 instead against the Pathet Lao)
A worse fate: Hunted Like animals:
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2008
Hmong: After the War, The Killing
Review of "HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS,” a Documentary by REBECCA SOMMER
Question: What do you call it when a war is over but the killing goes on?
Answer: Communism
The advent of Communism has ushered in things the world had never seen before the Bolsheviks took over Russia in 1917 and instituted the 'Soviet.' Since then, the bloodletting has not ceased.
Hitler is a piker when compared to Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro...all Communists and purveyors of the greatest violence the world has seen.
Nazism passed away at the end of WWII. Communism, the other side of the socialist coin, persists, its brutality undiminished, its thirst for blood unquenched, its march toward world revolution refueled, replenished, and strengthened by integration with the world’s economies and therefore remains unopposed to devour its new victims.
Socialist Fascism/Nazism took a fraction of the lives that Socialist Communism has consumed and continues to swallow (see: 'Death By Government,' by Rudy Hummel, U. of Hawaii, and, 'The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression,' authored by several scholars and edited by Stéphane Courtois.).
This documentary by Rebecca Sommer is witness to the ongoing reality of Communism. It provides details of a largely unknown war against civilians, a genocidal war waged against the Hmong Lao by Communist Laotian and Vietnamese military forces. These forest dwelling Hmong live their entire lives running and hiding from the Communists in the remote mountains of Laos.
Every day since 1975, Communist forces have carried out their aggressions against this largely unarmed, defenseless, simple, and abjectly poor people who remain in the forests because to venture out is to invite rape, murder, and death by execution, torture, and dismemberment, the typical tools of Communist repression. Once employed against the host population, this parasitic form of government relies on the calculus of fear inspired by such atrocities to do whatever it wants.
Many Hmong fought the communists during the Viet Nam War and retreated back into the inaccessible mountains of Laos after the U.S. pulled out of SE Asia in 1975, the war supposedly over with a Communist victory.
With no one left to fight, the Communists only promised - and delivered- a bloodbath and the 'peace of the cell, the shackle, and the grave’ to those whom they defeated: the people of SE Asia. Communism demands human sacrifice.
The Hmong became targets of persecution and retaliation by Communist forces because they fought against them. Whether or not they had sided with America is almost irrelevant, as the North Vietnamese Army, on its relentless (by 1975) 30 year march to revolution and the domination of all Indochina, would have swallowed them up anyway. The NVA, proxy army of Communism, meant to have Laos, and Cambodia, and Viet Nam and deliver the populations of those countries into the Revolutionary furnace.
While most Lao-Hmong were re-integrated into their country after 1975, many other Hmong faced the Vietnamese and Laotian gulag of persecution, enslavement, and execution after they surrendered. Those who remained in the jungle with well justified fears are forced to starve and bring children into a terrifying, uncertain world.
Transgressions against the Hmong by the Lao Communist authorities and Vietnamese soldiers have persisted over a span of more than thirty years since 1975. So have the reports of such abuse, only to fall on deaf ears. Where is the UN?
A generation after the Viet Nam War supposedly ended the only free Laotians – the Hmong, hide from their own government and from the NVA who had turned Laos into their sanctuary and supply depot during the war. These little groups of families are attacked with military weapons - aircraft, artillery, chemical weapons, and by ground forces that shoot them and place land mines around their meager food sources.
The Hmong are chased through the jungles like wild animals and killed when caught by Laotian and Vietnamese soldiers. The women, even very young girls, are raped and often mutilated and killed when the soldiers are done with them.
The Hmong understand that those who surrender face an uncertain fate. Therefore, with no options and mostly for their children only the most desperate drizzle out of the jungle. Knowing the fate of others who have been lured by false promises, the desperation must be very great for them to leave their jungle hiding places, many never to be seen again after surrendering to Communist forces and bureaucrats.
The Hmong are also used as targets by communist forces in SE Asia who train their armies and air force by conducting military exercises against them. Facing this genocide, many try to escape to neighboring Thailand as refugees, but the Thai have begun forcibly returning them to a hostile Communist government where their fate is much at question.
This documentary by Rebecca Sommer is a story of human rights violations on a scale and intensity that is hard to imagine for those who live comfortable, secure lives. But it must be told, and "HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS” tells it, in the words of the victims themselves.
Even the 'Diary of Anne Frank' was not told with more poignancy, sadness, and fear.
Where is the UN? Where are the Jews, who say, "Never again?"
Filmmaker Rebecca Sommer traveled in 2005 and 2006 to the Hmong refugee camp of Ban Huay Nam Khao, Petchabun, in Thailand, where she focused on the Hmong Lao who fled military aggressions against them in their beloved homeland, the beautiful Laotian mountains.
The testimony of these Hmong refugees, with footage filmed by the Hmong themselves who carried digital camcorders back to the danger zones inside of Laos reveals the human face of contemporary genocide.
These 'human rights violations' occur daily in the remote mountains of Laos, where the gentle Hmong, marked for extinction by the Communists who hate them, are ‘Hunted like Animals.’
Never again?
For more information and to obtain copies of the film, contact:
sommerfilms@gmail.com
LABELS: COMMUNISM, GENOCIDE, HMONG, HO CHI MINH, HO CHI MINH TRAIL, LAOS, NVA, PATHET LAO, VIET NAM WAR
WARNING
Nom Chomsky, a presenter on one of the videos, is a bifurcated, anti-American, twisted intellectual who never seems to offer criticisms against communists, communism, or socialism. He is brilliant, dangerous to liberty, and to be regarded with highest suspicion.
See: ‘Hmong’ on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJnUaH6_-cc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzpyC-KtU1I&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcxo8BwwURU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcxo8BwwURU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-yEvi_3aB0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-yEvi_3aB0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqQPU2YdZFk&feature=related
Documentary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4fVWoZydWs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtW08-HrGPI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqQPU2YdZFk&feature=related
Hunted like animals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1xngfvVN6k&feature=related
Evicted from Thailand
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfdYWL0yd1M&feature=related
Profaned
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB-nrE2mcJI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJHerGolvR0&feature=related
© John Puzzo 29 November 2008
Sources:
I. Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress, Country Studies/Area Handbook Program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Army. Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office.
II. http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/lima/laos1962.htm
III. http://www.onwar.com/aced/data/lima/laos1954.htm
IV. http://www.geocities.com/pentagon/2527/jhviet.html
V. http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/world/A0859186.html
VI. http://countrystudies.us/laos/
VII. http://countrystudies.us/laos/14.htm
VIII. http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9058717/Pathet-Lao
IX. Communist Party of Vietnam: http://www.cpv.org.vn/english/archives/details.asp?topic=14&subtopic=99&leader_topic=42&id=BT2750372918
X. Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe column, April 30, 2000
XI. No More Vietnam’s,” Richard Milhous Nixon, Arbor House;1985
XII. Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992, by Jane Hamilton-Merritt; Indiana University Press; 1993.
The Lao People’s Revolutionary Party that now controls Laos is a Marxist-Leninist party patterned after the Vietnamese Communist Party and was strongly influenced by the Soviet Union and the USSR's Communist Party. It practices Marxism Leninism, as does Viet Nam. Since 1975, it has monopolized political power in Laos. The policy-making organs are the politburo and the central committee.
Ho Chi Minh was a hard-line Bolshevik Dictator. Communism and the Leninist principle that Communist nations should subordinate their interests to those of international Communism dictated Ho Chi Minh’s entire life and give the lie to the oft repeated but false claim that he was a nationalist first and a Communist second. Many years after his death, his party, the Communist Party, admitted the true nature of Ho Chi Minh:
“…from his youth to the last minute of his life, President Ho Chi Minh devoted his life to the revolutionary cause of our people and to the people of the world (emph. added). He … creatively applied Marxism-Leninism …for the Vietnamese revolution… to realize the lofty ideas of socialism and communism…To constantly enhance pure internationalist sentiments…and unity in the socialist camp…on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism and make a contribution to the world revolution.”(Updated on 5/27/2003 at 20:15; citation date: 26 November 2008: Communist Party of Vietnam Online Newspaper Citation Reference: http://www.cpv.org.vn/english/archives/details.asp?topic=14&subtopic=99&leader_topic=42&id=BT2750372918
Ho Chi Minh was a founding member of the French Communist Party (1920) and a member of the fourth (1922) and fifth (1923) Communist Internationals – the COMINTERN - and held rank and salary in the Soviet system (see: Le Van Tien, “The Disintegration of the Vietnamese Communist Movement and Its Consequences.” Thoi Su Magazine, February, March, and April, 1995).
The COMINTERN's priority was exporting the Revolution, specifically the export of subversion, terror, and the employment of murder and assassination against selected opponents and informers by paramilitary wings (terror networks), tactics that would destabilize target nations and make them vulnerable to takeover. The COMINTERN was thoroughly infused with secret informers and intelligence operatives working under the Party.
Cannibalistic:
By 1943, 133 out of 492 Comintern staff members became Party victims. Many were convinced to relocate to the Soviet Union where they were liquidated. During WW II, more than a thousand were betrayed by the International Socialists (Communists) to the National Socialists (Nazi’s). The leaders of the Indian, Korean, Mexican, Iranian and Turkish Communist parties were simply executed where they were.
COMINTERN member, Ho Chi Minh, on the cover of ‘Time’ magazine three times as ‘Man of the Year’ in 1954, 1965, and 1975, employed similar tactics and turned the whole of SE Asia into a cavern of slaughter: "Better 10 innocent deaths than one enemy survivor," was a both a philosophy and a means to an end for Ho Chi Minh and the Communist Party.
"Hundreds of thousands of North Vietnamese were killed as 'class enemies' and 'counterrevolutionaries.' During Hanoi's brief occupation of Hue in 1968, Tet Offensive, thousands of citizens -- priests, doctors, bureaucrats -- were butchered.
“It was not to satisfy some imperial craving that America went to war in Vietnam.
“It went to save the South from murder."
Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe columnist, April 30, 2000
After organizing his political cadre and network of couriers, organizers, agents and spies into the Indochina Communist Party, Ho Chi Minh commenced formation of a military apparatus throughout SE Asia in the 1930’s. Although not well known, the ICP played a significant role in the attempt to overthrow the Lao monarchy in 1932.
By February 1951 the ICP had formed separate revolutionary front parties for Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, implementing Hanoi’s strategy of making revolution on "one battlefield."
Whether revolution is ‘war’ that is waged on a battlefield is arguable. Certainly ‘the Revolution’ waged in SE Asia began and continues with attacks on civilians by the Revolutionary parties and the military forces they field.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail, a clandestine supply route, extended from the Soviet Union and China through North Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia to service the communist terror network of increasingly conventional armed forces, which has never ceased their predations against civilians continuing today as they do against the Montagnard and Hmong.
As the NVA occupied more and more territory in these sovereign nations, terror and atrocity against the civilian populations became progressively more severe with locals pressed into service as laborers, soldiers, and sex slaves.
Communist-style terrorism as it was practiced by Ho Chi Minh and the NVA, like that of the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea before it, is the model and method of revolution and population control used by all modern totalitarian dictatorships.
This terror was practiced throughout SE Asia. Characteristically, statistics are more available for Viet Nam, but illustrative of what occurred in Laos and Cambodia as well as in Viet Nam, dominated first by the Indochina Communist Party and then by the NVA, proxy army for international Communism:
“From 1957 to 1973, the National Liberation Front death squads assassinated 36,725 South Vietnamese and abducted another 58,499 and focused on leaders at the village level and on anyone who improved the lives of the peasants such as medical personnel, social workers, and schoolteachers.”[See: Nixon] No More Vietnams by Richard Nixon]
New waves of Vietnamese Communist political and military agents infiltrated Laos between 1946 and 1947, beginning with 500-700 personnel. That figure grew to approximately 7,000 agents between 1950 and 1951. By 1953, 17,000 Vietnamese were in Laos, organizing the revolution even as the Geneva Accords were in the process of formulation.
By the closing months of WWII, the nucleus of one full division was in place and others were in service along the Vietnamese border with Laos. One full division, the 335th NVA, occupied portions of Laos in violation of international law.
By 1951, the NVA could field 5 full infantry divisions of between 10,000 - 15,000 soldiers each, with artillery, AA, and support units.
Two months after the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indochina, the North Vietnamese established ‘Group 100’ on the Laotian Border near the Thanh Hoa-Houaphan region of Ban Namèo. This unit provided arms, cadre, and war matériel to support pro-Hanoi Pathet Lao forces.
In a major diplomatic affront to Communism and affirmation of its sovereignty and liberty, Laos angered Communists in China and Hanoi by admitting diplomats from free Taipei and Saigon in the summer of 1958.
In retaliation, the North Vietnamese Army, armed and equipped by China and the Soviet Union, occupied the Xépôn District of Laos, an area strategically located near the DMZ between North and South Vietnam. Hanoi claimed the villages as Vietnamese territory and organized the Laotian Popular Front in the same way that they created the National Liberation Front – the Viet Cong, in South Viet Nam.
Laos immediately protested these intrigues and open belligerency. With no ability to match an experienced army that had invaded its territory, Laos hoped for a greater degree of United States support.
By July 1959 Laos ordered the arrest of Lao Popular Front insurgents and North Vietnamese regular army units immediately launched operations along the Laotian border. NVA forces led the attacks, crushed the inexperienced and poorly equipped Laotian army, and turned defeated areas over to Pathet Lao forces, which remained in place as the Vietnamese withdrew.
This tactic had the advantage of concealing Hanoi’s use of their army against a sovereign nation. Due to their characteristic brutality against civilians, mere rumors of North Vietnamese Army presence spread terror across the Laotian landscape.
War waged by Atrocity throughout SE Asia
In Viet Nam, Newsweek magazine for May 15, 1967 reported, "…over the past decade the Viet Cong have murdered, mutilated and otherwise brutalized tens of thousands of Vietnamese civilians. And far from attempting to conceal their atrocities, the guerrillas have performed them in the most ostentatious fashion possible."
In September 1959, North Vietnamese Army ‘Group 959’ began operations with a major effort to expand Pathet Lao forces. As Communist military planners widened the war and moved against the government of Laos, they created NVA ‘Group 959’ to move supplies to the Pathet Lao. North Vietnam and Lao Communist parties together established ‘Group 959,’ headquartered at Hanoi but with local command and support units stationed just inside the Laotian border.
‘Group 959’ "served the ‘(Lao) Military Commission’ and ‘Supreme Command of the Lao People's Liberation Army,’ distributed money and Vietnamese war matériel to fuel the Laotian revolution, and commanded Vietnamese personnel operating in Laos in violation of the 1954 Geneva Conference that prohibited interference in the internal affairs of Laos, specific language that had been written into the Geneva Accords as a result of Hanoi’s open belligerence against Laos.
In their long term strategy to dominate all of SE Asia, NVA planners outlined a role for Laotian communists and Pathet Lao forces as architects of the revolution in Laos and to support NVA operations against South Viet Nam.
Hanoi opened the first tracks of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in mid-1959 through the rugged mountain jungles of Xépôn district.
‘Group 559’ of the North Vietnamese Army was originally a transportation and logistical unit was established to move troops, weapons, and matériel to Vietcong and NVA units into northern and western South Vietnam. By 1960, the Soviet Union was openly airlifting supplies to the NVA and Pathet Lao in Laos.
By 1963, the force level of ‘Group 559’grew to 24,000 troops and included six motorized transport battalions plus engineering, anti-aircraft, and infantry units to provide security forces.
The Hanoi Regime went so far as to declare the trail system and its base areas inside Laos and Cambodia a North Vietnamese ‘Military Region,’ with staff reporting directly to the Military Affairs Party Committee and the General Staff of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Hanoi.
By 1965, not less than three subordinate commands were created for the supply corridors that ran through Laos. The NVA 316th Division was moved to Laos to shield their base areas and supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
As Giap and the central planners of Hanoi’s junta readied their forces for the 1972 Easter Offensive, they felt the need to protect their Western flank and sanctuaries in Laos which would play key roles in the massive but doomed offensive against South Viet Nam.
Accordingly, between December 1971 and April 1972, twenty North Vietnamese independent maneuver battalions engaged a much smaller force of 10,000 Hmong Special Guerrilla Units and Royal Lao Army defenders.
The Hmong SGU’s halted an attack of Soviet T-34 tanks against the airfield at Longtiang with well placed land mines and individual action, and together with Royal Lao Army forces, drove off a stunned NVA.
Both sides experienced heavy losses, but the NVA was startled by the tenacity of the Hmong and Royal Lao forces, a shock they would feel more acutely in the months ahead as the ARVN, with US Airpower, threw back 22 full NVA divisions back across the DMZ and to their sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia. It remains the most significant defeat of the North Vietnamese Army in it’s entire history.
US POW’s in Laos.
Apart from their wanton use of atrocity against the innocent, no issue more describes the hubris, arrogance, illegitimacy, and dishonor of communist regimes than their treatment of POW’s, and this holds special significance for the US POW’s held in Laos, from which no US POW ever returned.
Under Chapter II, Article 5 of the Vientiane Agreement, the communists in control of Laos were obligated to repatriate all persons held captive, regardless of nationality.
The Pathet Lao held a number of United States citizens captured by them or the North Vietnamese in Laos, but they neither provided lists of those who had fallen into their hands nor adhered to international conventions on treatment of POWs. The US Department of Defense listed 555 Americans as unaccounted for, either as POWs, missing in action (MIA) or killed in action/body not recovered, in Laos.
Five days prior to the signing of the Vientiane Agreement, the Pathet Lao delegate in Vientiane told the editor of the Vientiane newspaper ‘Xat Lao’ (The Lao Nation) that the Pathet Lao leadership had a detailed accounting of United States prisoners and the locations where they were being held and that they would be released after the cease-fire. He added: "If they were captured in Laos, they will be returned in Laos."
On the day the Vientiane Agreement was signed, the United States obtained confirmation of those statements and requested further details but was informed that the release of eight prisoners in Hanoi, whose names had previously been given to the US by the North Vietnamese in Paris, had been held in North Vietnam for some time, not Laos.
Later the Pathet Lao told the United States embassy that this fulfilled their POW release obligations. The North Vietnamese did not respond to requests for clarification of the discrepancy between the number of POWs and MIAs carried by the Department of Defense and the small number of POWs released.
Official Department of Defense figures list 13 American POW’s captured by Pathet Lao as having been turned over to the NVA and released in 1973. http://www.miafacts.org/laos.htm#captured%20in%20laos
The Vientiane Agreement was signed on September 14, 1973. The only United States citizen released by the Pathet Lao in Laos in accordance with these provisions was a civilian pilot captured after the cease-fire. In the ensuing years, the Communists would calmly inform visiting United States officials and families of POW/MIAs that they knew nothing about the fate of United States POWs and MIAs in Laos.
The end of Laos as a free nation.
For fifteen years the Hmong Special Guerilla Units of General Vang Pao conducted successful operations against the NVA and punished Hanoi and its proxy army, the Pathet Lao. But on March 27, 1975, North Vietnamese-Pathet Lao forces launched a strong attack against Vang Pao's Hmong defenders and this time there would be no support. The Hmong were being abandoned and the Pathet Lao vowed to "wipe them out.”
Vang Pao requested evacuation for his soldiers and their families to safe haven in Thailand but the CIA offered to evacuate only the families of key officers. Vang Pao requested an airlift for 5,000.
Facing an ultimatum, Vang Pao and twelve Hmong leaders signed a treaty on May 10 reminding the United States of the pledges made to them and agreed to leave Laos and never return. In the next days a motley collection of planes piloted by United States volunteers, Hmong, and Lao flew out a few hundred Hmong. With great sadness, Vang Pao left on May 14, 1975.
His people still in Laos are hunted yet by the Communists. Other Lao remained to be judged by communist ideologues now in power in Laos, and the familiar gulag was called up out of the darkness to throw its shadow over Laos and its people.
Prisoners were force to build their own prison camps – ‘Seminar Camps,’ similar to the re-education camps of the Vietnamese. “Reactionaries,” “Saboteurs,” and “Subversives,” described the inmates, some of whom survived 15 years of depravation. Even the Buddhist monks were spied on and intimidated.
How bad would it get? “As 1975 drew to a close, 11 year old Xiong Pao Xe, who, six months earlier had been taken by the Pathet Lao to be trained, received a real gun and an assignment. “The P.L. gave each of us a gun-something like a Soviet-made machine gun-and ordered us back to our villages to kill our parents…” (Quoted in Tragic Mountains; Hamilton-Merritt, p. 376. (Note: The boy used the AK-47 instead against the Pathet Lao)
A worse fate: Hunted Like animals:
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2008
Hmong: After the War, The Killing
Review of "HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS,” a Documentary by REBECCA SOMMER
Question: What do you call it when a war is over but the killing goes on?
Answer: Communism
The advent of Communism has ushered in things the world had never seen before the Bolsheviks took over Russia in 1917 and instituted the 'Soviet.' Since then, the bloodletting has not ceased.
Hitler is a piker when compared to Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro...all Communists and purveyors of the greatest violence the world has seen.
Nazism passed away at the end of WWII. Communism, the other side of the socialist coin, persists, its brutality undiminished, its thirst for blood unquenched, its march toward world revolution refueled, replenished, and strengthened by integration with the world’s economies and therefore remains unopposed to devour its new victims.
Socialist Fascism/Nazism took a fraction of the lives that Socialist Communism has consumed and continues to swallow (see: 'Death By Government,' by Rudy Hummel, U. of Hawaii, and, 'The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression,' authored by several scholars and edited by Stéphane Courtois.).
This documentary by Rebecca Sommer is witness to the ongoing reality of Communism. It provides details of a largely unknown war against civilians, a genocidal war waged against the Hmong Lao by Communist Laotian and Vietnamese military forces. These forest dwelling Hmong live their entire lives running and hiding from the Communists in the remote mountains of Laos.
Every day since 1975, Communist forces have carried out their aggressions against this largely unarmed, defenseless, simple, and abjectly poor people who remain in the forests because to venture out is to invite rape, murder, and death by execution, torture, and dismemberment, the typical tools of Communist repression. Once employed against the host population, this parasitic form of government relies on the calculus of fear inspired by such atrocities to do whatever it wants.
Many Hmong fought the communists during the Viet Nam War and retreated back into the inaccessible mountains of Laos after the U.S. pulled out of SE Asia in 1975, the war supposedly over with a Communist victory.
With no one left to fight, the Communists only promised - and delivered- a bloodbath and the 'peace of the cell, the shackle, and the grave’ to those whom they defeated: the people of SE Asia. Communism demands human sacrifice.
The Hmong became targets of persecution and retaliation by Communist forces because they fought against them. Whether or not they had sided with America is almost irrelevant, as the North Vietnamese Army, on its relentless (by 1975) 30 year march to revolution and the domination of all Indochina, would have swallowed them up anyway. The NVA, proxy army of Communism, meant to have Laos, and Cambodia, and Viet Nam and deliver the populations of those countries into the Revolutionary furnace.
While most Lao-Hmong were re-integrated into their country after 1975, many other Hmong faced the Vietnamese and Laotian gulag of persecution, enslavement, and execution after they surrendered. Those who remained in the jungle with well justified fears are forced to starve and bring children into a terrifying, uncertain world.
Transgressions against the Hmong by the Lao Communist authorities and Vietnamese soldiers have persisted over a span of more than thirty years since 1975. So have the reports of such abuse, only to fall on deaf ears. Where is the UN?
A generation after the Viet Nam War supposedly ended the only free Laotians – the Hmong, hide from their own government and from the NVA who had turned Laos into their sanctuary and supply depot during the war. These little groups of families are attacked with military weapons - aircraft, artillery, chemical weapons, and by ground forces that shoot them and place land mines around their meager food sources.
The Hmong are chased through the jungles like wild animals and killed when caught by Laotian and Vietnamese soldiers. The women, even very young girls, are raped and often mutilated and killed when the soldiers are done with them.
The Hmong understand that those who surrender face an uncertain fate. Therefore, with no options and mostly for their children only the most desperate drizzle out of the jungle. Knowing the fate of others who have been lured by false promises, the desperation must be very great for them to leave their jungle hiding places, many never to be seen again after surrendering to Communist forces and bureaucrats.
The Hmong are also used as targets by communist forces in SE Asia who train their armies and air force by conducting military exercises against them. Facing this genocide, many try to escape to neighboring Thailand as refugees, but the Thai have begun forcibly returning them to a hostile Communist government where their fate is much at question.
This documentary by Rebecca Sommer is a story of human rights violations on a scale and intensity that is hard to imagine for those who live comfortable, secure lives. But it must be told, and "HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS” tells it, in the words of the victims themselves.
Even the 'Diary of Anne Frank' was not told with more poignancy, sadness, and fear.
Where is the UN? Where are the Jews, who say, "Never again?"
Filmmaker Rebecca Sommer traveled in 2005 and 2006 to the Hmong refugee camp of Ban Huay Nam Khao, Petchabun, in Thailand, where she focused on the Hmong Lao who fled military aggressions against them in their beloved homeland, the beautiful Laotian mountains.
The testimony of these Hmong refugees, with footage filmed by the Hmong themselves who carried digital camcorders back to the danger zones inside of Laos reveals the human face of contemporary genocide.
These 'human rights violations' occur daily in the remote mountains of Laos, where the gentle Hmong, marked for extinction by the Communists who hate them, are ‘Hunted like Animals.’
Never again?
For more information and to obtain copies of the film, contact:
sommerfilms@gmail.com
LABELS: COMMUNISM, GENOCIDE, HMONG, HO CHI MINH, HO CHI MINH TRAIL, LAOS, NVA, PATHET LAO, VIET NAM WAR
WARNING
Nom Chomsky, a presenter on one of the videos, is a bifurcated, anti-American, twisted intellectual who never seems to offer criticisms against communists, communism, or socialism. He is brilliant, dangerous to liberty, and to be regarded with highest suspicion.
See: ‘Hmong’ on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJnUaH6_-cc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzpyC-KtU1I&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcxo8BwwURU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcxo8BwwURU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-yEvi_3aB0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-yEvi_3aB0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqQPU2YdZFk&feature=related
Documentary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4fVWoZydWs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtW08-HrGPI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqQPU2YdZFk&feature=related
Hunted like animals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1xngfvVN6k&feature=related
Evicted from Thailand
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfdYWL0yd1M&feature=related
Profaned
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB-nrE2mcJI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJHerGolvR0&feature=related
The 5,000 Year Leap
28 fundamental beliefs of the Founding Fathers which they said must be understood and perpetuated by every people who desired peace, prosperity, and freedom:
These beliefs have made possible more progress in 200 years than was made previously in over 5,000 years.
Thus the title of the book, "The 5,000 Year Leap."
As you read through these principles, aske yourselves, what happened?
The following is a brief overview of the principles found in The 5,000 Year Leap, and one chapter is devoted to each of these 28 principles.
Principle 1 -
The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law.
Natural law is God's law. There are certain laws which govern the entire universe, and just as Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence, there are laws which govern in the affairs of men which are "the laws of nature and of nature's God."
Principle 2
- A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong.
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." - Benjamin Franklin
Principle 3
- The most promising method of securing a virtuous people is to elect virtuous leaders.
"Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who ... will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man." - Samuel Adams
Principle 4
- Without religion the government of a free people cannot be maintained.
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.... And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion." - George Washington
Principle 5
- All things were created by God, therefore upon him all mankind are equally dependent, and to him they are equally responsible .
The American Founding Fathers considered the existence of the Creator as the most fundamental premise underlying all self-evident truth. They felt a person who boasted he or she was an atheist had just simply failed to apply his or her divine capacity for reason and observation.
Principle 6
- All mankind were created equal.
The Founders knew that in these three ways, all mankind are theoretically treated as:
Equal before God.
Equal before the law.
Equal in their rights.
Principle 7
- The proper role of government is to protect equal rights, not provide equal things.
The Founders recognized that the people cannot delegate to their government any power except that which they have the lawful right to exercise themselves.
Principle 8
- Mankind are endowed by God with certain unalienable rights.
"Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as are life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal [or state] laws to be inviolable. On the contrary, no human legislation has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner [of the right] shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture." - William Blackstone
Principle 9
- To protect human rights, God has revealed a code of divine law.
"The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the Holy Scriptures. These precepts, when revealed, are found by comparison to be really a part of the original law of nature, as they tend in all their consequences to man's felicity." - William Blackstone
Principle 10
- The God-given right to govern is vested in the sovereign authority of the whole people.
"The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of the consent of the people. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legislative authority." - Alexander Hamilton
Principle 11
- The majority of the people may alter or abolish a government which has become tyrannical.
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes ... but when a long train of abuses and usurpations ... evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."
- Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence
Principle 12
- The United States of America shall be a republic.
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America And to the republic for which it stands...."
Principle 13
- A Constitution should protect the people from the frailties of their rulers.
"If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.... [But lacking these] you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." - James Madison
Principle 14
- Life and liberty are secure only so long as the rights of property are secure.
John Locke reasoned that God gave the earth and everything in it to the whole human family as a gift. Therefore the land, the sea, the acorns in the forest, the deer feeding in the meadow belong to everyone "in common."
However, the moment someone takes the trouble to change something from its original state of nature, that person has added his ingenuity or labor to make that change. Herein lies the secret to the origin of "property rights."
Principle 15
- The highest level of prosperity occurs when there is a free-market economy and a minimum of government regulations.
Prosperity depends upon a climate of wholesome stimulation with four basic freedoms in operation:
The Freedom to try.
The Freedom to buy.
The Freedom to sell.
The Freedom to fail.
Principle 16
- The government should be separated into three branches .
"I call you to witness that I was the first member of the Congress who ventured to come out in public, as I did in January 1776, in my Thoughts on Government ... in favor of a government with three branches and an independent judiciary. This pamphlet, you know, was very unpopular. No man appeared in public to support it but yourself." - John Adams
Principle 17
- A system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power by the different branches of government.
"It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it." - James Madison
Principle 18
- The unalienable rights of the people are most likely to be preserved if the principles of government are set forth in a written Constitution.
The structure of the American system is set forth in the Constitution of the United States and the only weaknesses which have appeared are those which were allowed to creep in despite the Constitution.
Principle 19
- Only limited and carefully defined powers should be delegated to government, all others being retained by the people.
The Tenth Amendment is the most widely violated provision of the bill of rights. If it had been respected and enforced America would be an amazingly different country than it is today. This amendment provides:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Principle 20
- Efficiency and dispatch require that the government operate according to the will of the majority, but constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority.
"Every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation to every one of that society to submit to the determination of the majority, and to be concluded [bound] by it." - John Locke
Principle 21
- Strong local self-government is the keystone to preserving human freedom.
"The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent [to perform best]. - Thomas Jefferson
Principle 22
- A free people should be governed by law and not by the whims of men.
"The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence of others, which cannot be where there is no law." - John Locke
Principle 23
- A free society cannot survive as a republic without a broad program of general education.
"They made an early provision by law that every town consisting of so many families should be always furnished with a grammar school. They made it a crime for such a town to be destitute of a grammar schoolmaster for a few months, and subjected it to a heavy penalty.
So that the education of all ranks of people was made the care and expense of the public, in a manner that I believe has been unknown to any other people, ancient or modern. The consequences of these establishments we see and feel every day [written in 1765]. A native of America who cannot read and write is as rare ... as a comet or an earthquake." John Adams
Principle 24
- A free people will not survive unless they stay strong.
"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." - George Washington
Principle 25
- "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations -- entangling alliances with none."- Thomas Jefferson, given in his first inaugural address.
Principle 26
- The core unit which determines the strength of any society is the family; therefore the government should foster and protect its integrity.
"There is certainly no country in the world where the tie of marriage is more respected than in America, or where conjugal happiness is more highly or worthily appreciated." Alexis de Tocqueville
Principle 27
- The burden of debt is as destructive to human freedom as subjugation by conquest.
"We are bound to defray expenses [of the war] within our own time, and are unauthorized to burden posterity with them.... We shall all consider ourselves morally bound to pay them ourselves and consequently within the life [expectancy] of the majority." - Thomas Jefferson
Principle 28
- The United States has a manifest destiny to eventually become a glorious example of God's law under a restored Constitution that will inspire the entire human race.
The Founders sensed from the very beginning that they were on a divine mission. Their great disappointment was that it didn't all come to pass in their day, but they knew that someday it would. John Adams wrote:
"I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the illumination of the ignorant, and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth."
These beliefs have made possible more progress in 200 years than was made previously in over 5,000 years.
Thus the title of the book, "The 5,000 Year Leap."
As you read through these principles, aske yourselves, what happened?
The following is a brief overview of the principles found in The 5,000 Year Leap, and one chapter is devoted to each of these 28 principles.
Principle 1 -
The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law.
Natural law is God's law. There are certain laws which govern the entire universe, and just as Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence, there are laws which govern in the affairs of men which are "the laws of nature and of nature's God."
Principle 2
- A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong.
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." - Benjamin Franklin
Principle 3
- The most promising method of securing a virtuous people is to elect virtuous leaders.
"Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who ... will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man." - Samuel Adams
Principle 4
- Without religion the government of a free people cannot be maintained.
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.... And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion." - George Washington
Principle 5
- All things were created by God, therefore upon him all mankind are equally dependent, and to him they are equally responsible .
The American Founding Fathers considered the existence of the Creator as the most fundamental premise underlying all self-evident truth. They felt a person who boasted he or she was an atheist had just simply failed to apply his or her divine capacity for reason and observation.
Principle 6
- All mankind were created equal.
The Founders knew that in these three ways, all mankind are theoretically treated as:
Equal before God.
Equal before the law.
Equal in their rights.
Principle 7
- The proper role of government is to protect equal rights, not provide equal things.
The Founders recognized that the people cannot delegate to their government any power except that which they have the lawful right to exercise themselves.
Principle 8
- Mankind are endowed by God with certain unalienable rights.
"Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as are life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal [or state] laws to be inviolable. On the contrary, no human legislation has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner [of the right] shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture." - William Blackstone
Principle 9
- To protect human rights, God has revealed a code of divine law.
"The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the Holy Scriptures. These precepts, when revealed, are found by comparison to be really a part of the original law of nature, as they tend in all their consequences to man's felicity." - William Blackstone
Principle 10
- The God-given right to govern is vested in the sovereign authority of the whole people.
"The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of the consent of the people. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legislative authority." - Alexander Hamilton
Principle 11
- The majority of the people may alter or abolish a government which has become tyrannical.
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes ... but when a long train of abuses and usurpations ... evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."
- Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence
Principle 12
- The United States of America shall be a republic.
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America And to the republic for which it stands...."
Principle 13
- A Constitution should protect the people from the frailties of their rulers.
"If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.... [But lacking these] you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." - James Madison
Principle 14
- Life and liberty are secure only so long as the rights of property are secure.
John Locke reasoned that God gave the earth and everything in it to the whole human family as a gift. Therefore the land, the sea, the acorns in the forest, the deer feeding in the meadow belong to everyone "in common."
However, the moment someone takes the trouble to change something from its original state of nature, that person has added his ingenuity or labor to make that change. Herein lies the secret to the origin of "property rights."
Principle 15
- The highest level of prosperity occurs when there is a free-market economy and a minimum of government regulations.
Prosperity depends upon a climate of wholesome stimulation with four basic freedoms in operation:
The Freedom to try.
The Freedom to buy.
The Freedom to sell.
The Freedom to fail.
Principle 16
- The government should be separated into three branches .
"I call you to witness that I was the first member of the Congress who ventured to come out in public, as I did in January 1776, in my Thoughts on Government ... in favor of a government with three branches and an independent judiciary. This pamphlet, you know, was very unpopular. No man appeared in public to support it but yourself." - John Adams
Principle 17
- A system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power by the different branches of government.
"It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it." - James Madison
Principle 18
- The unalienable rights of the people are most likely to be preserved if the principles of government are set forth in a written Constitution.
The structure of the American system is set forth in the Constitution of the United States and the only weaknesses which have appeared are those which were allowed to creep in despite the Constitution.
Principle 19
- Only limited and carefully defined powers should be delegated to government, all others being retained by the people.
The Tenth Amendment is the most widely violated provision of the bill of rights. If it had been respected and enforced America would be an amazingly different country than it is today. This amendment provides:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Principle 20
- Efficiency and dispatch require that the government operate according to the will of the majority, but constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority.
"Every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation to every one of that society to submit to the determination of the majority, and to be concluded [bound] by it." - John Locke
Principle 21
- Strong local self-government is the keystone to preserving human freedom.
"The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent [to perform best]. - Thomas Jefferson
Principle 22
- A free people should be governed by law and not by the whims of men.
"The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence of others, which cannot be where there is no law." - John Locke
Principle 23
- A free society cannot survive as a republic without a broad program of general education.
"They made an early provision by law that every town consisting of so many families should be always furnished with a grammar school. They made it a crime for such a town to be destitute of a grammar schoolmaster for a few months, and subjected it to a heavy penalty.
So that the education of all ranks of people was made the care and expense of the public, in a manner that I believe has been unknown to any other people, ancient or modern. The consequences of these establishments we see and feel every day [written in 1765]. A native of America who cannot read and write is as rare ... as a comet or an earthquake." John Adams
Principle 24
- A free people will not survive unless they stay strong.
"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." - George Washington
Principle 25
- "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations -- entangling alliances with none."- Thomas Jefferson, given in his first inaugural address.
Principle 26
- The core unit which determines the strength of any society is the family; therefore the government should foster and protect its integrity.
"There is certainly no country in the world where the tie of marriage is more respected than in America, or where conjugal happiness is more highly or worthily appreciated." Alexis de Tocqueville
Principle 27
- The burden of debt is as destructive to human freedom as subjugation by conquest.
"We are bound to defray expenses [of the war] within our own time, and are unauthorized to burden posterity with them.... We shall all consider ourselves morally bound to pay them ourselves and consequently within the life [expectancy] of the majority." - Thomas Jefferson
Principle 28
- The United States has a manifest destiny to eventually become a glorious example of God's law under a restored Constitution that will inspire the entire human race.
The Founders sensed from the very beginning that they were on a divine mission. Their great disappointment was that it didn't all come to pass in their day, but they knew that someday it would. John Adams wrote:
"I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the illumination of the ignorant, and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth."
Friday, November 28, 2008
Obama and the New Cold War
America's Greatest Generation made the world safe for Communism, ushered in the Cold War, and started shooting wars in places like Korea and Viet Nam where they had no intention of winning.
Only eight days after Truman removed him from command of US Forces there, General MacArthur had this to say about Korea:
"The tragedy of Korea is further heightened by the fact that its military action is confined to its territorial limits. It condemns that nation, which it is our purpose to save, to suffer the devastating impact of full naval and air bombardment while the enemy's sanctuaries are fully protected from such attack and devastation. Of the nations of the world, Korea alone, up to now, is the sole one which has risked its all against communism." Farewell address to a Joint Session of Congress (1951-04-19) (MPEG audio)
Less than a generation later, the question of 'the enemy's sanctuaries' condemned another nation...Viet Nam, with sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia that gave the Communist all that he could hope for to refit, replenish, and reanimate himself for new depradations against the population of South Viet Nam.
What will repeat itself next?
In 1963 and after much preparation, Nikita "We will bury you" Khrushchev tested President Kennedy with 'the Cuban Missile Crisis' and brought the world close to a nuclear war. To coin a phrase, 'Obama is no Kennedy' and his ability to create an administration worthy of the United States of America is questionable - across the board.
Putin and Medvedev will put everything on the line and waste no time doing so. Putin is a chess master and his opening moves at chess are characteristically strong.
So he sent Medvedev to trash the Monroe Doctrine last week. Before giving Venezuela's Chavez the tour on a Russian nuclear warship (November 2008) Russian 'president' Medvedev met with Chavez's leftist allies, including 'presidents' Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador. He met with Castro in Cuba the next day...Cozy. All of the tablecloths were red...
This is not mere posturing.
Putin, like most serious Americans, doubts '57 -State" Obama's abilities and like most of us it is likely that he holds Obama in utter contempt. Putin is gonna Bitch-slap Barrack Obama 'til he owns him like a ho. That'd be fine with me except that there are 20,000 Russian nuclear warheads pointed at us, not to mention the proxy states of North Korea, and Cuba, China, Venezuela, and Vietnam...not exactly our friends.
By the way, where are all of those Russian Submarines at the moment?
And what wasn't on the jumbo screen in 1963 is radical, fundamentalist Islam, hater of al things American. Except for the leftist bombings that killed Americans in the 60's (250 bombs set between September 1969 and May 1979, and they allied themeselves to a foriegn power (North Viet Nam.) and 70's, only Islam has practised more deliberate death and destruction against America.
We have no equal and we have no friends.
What we have is a Commander in Chief who is duck out of the water.
Only eight days after Truman removed him from command of US Forces there, General MacArthur had this to say about Korea:
"The tragedy of Korea is further heightened by the fact that its military action is confined to its territorial limits. It condemns that nation, which it is our purpose to save, to suffer the devastating impact of full naval and air bombardment while the enemy's sanctuaries are fully protected from such attack and devastation. Of the nations of the world, Korea alone, up to now, is the sole one which has risked its all against communism." Farewell address to a Joint Session of Congress (1951-04-19) (MPEG audio)
Less than a generation later, the question of 'the enemy's sanctuaries' condemned another nation...Viet Nam, with sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia that gave the Communist all that he could hope for to refit, replenish, and reanimate himself for new depradations against the population of South Viet Nam.
What will repeat itself next?
In 1963 and after much preparation, Nikita "We will bury you" Khrushchev tested President Kennedy with 'the Cuban Missile Crisis' and brought the world close to a nuclear war. To coin a phrase, 'Obama is no Kennedy' and his ability to create an administration worthy of the United States of America is questionable - across the board.
Putin and Medvedev will put everything on the line and waste no time doing so. Putin is a chess master and his opening moves at chess are characteristically strong.
So he sent Medvedev to trash the Monroe Doctrine last week. Before giving Venezuela's Chavez the tour on a Russian nuclear warship (November 2008) Russian 'president' Medvedev met with Chavez's leftist allies, including 'presidents' Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador. He met with Castro in Cuba the next day...Cozy. All of the tablecloths were red...
This is not mere posturing.
Putin, like most serious Americans, doubts '57 -State" Obama's abilities and like most of us it is likely that he holds Obama in utter contempt. Putin is gonna Bitch-slap Barrack Obama 'til he owns him like a ho. That'd be fine with me except that there are 20,000 Russian nuclear warheads pointed at us, not to mention the proxy states of North Korea, and Cuba, China, Venezuela, and Vietnam...not exactly our friends.
By the way, where are all of those Russian Submarines at the moment?
And what wasn't on the jumbo screen in 1963 is radical, fundamentalist Islam, hater of al things American. Except for the leftist bombings that killed Americans in the 60's (250 bombs set between September 1969 and May 1979, and they allied themeselves to a foriegn power (North Viet Nam.) and 70's, only Islam has practised more deliberate death and destruction against America.
We have no equal and we have no friends.
What we have is a Commander in Chief who is duck out of the water.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Hmong: After the War, The Killing
Hmong in Laos: After the War, The Killing
Review of "HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS,” a Documentary by REBECCA SOMMER
JANUARY 2008:
Question: What do you call it when a war is over but the killing goes on?
Answer: Communism
The advent of Communism has ushered in things the world had never seen before the Bolsheviks took over Russia in 1917 and instituted the 'Soviet.'
Since then, the bloodletting has not ceased.
Hitler is a piker when compared to Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro...all Communists and purveyors of the greatest violence the world has seen.
Nazism passed away at the end of WWII. Communism, the other side of the socialist coin, persists, its brutality undiminished, its thirst for blood unquenched, its march toward world revolution refueled, replenished, and strengthened by integration with the world’s economies and therefore remains unopposed to devour its new victims.
Socialist Fascism/Nazism took a fraction of the lives that Socialist Communism has consumed and continues to swallow (see: 'Death By Government,' by Rudy Hummel, U. of Hawaii, and, 'The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression,' authored by several scholars and edited by Stéphane Courtois.).
This documentary by Rebecca Sommers is witness to the ongoing reality of Communism. It provides details of a largely unknown war against civilians, a genocidal war waged against the Hmong Lao by Communist Laotian and Vietnamese military forces. These forest dwelling Hmong live their entire lives running and hiding from the Communists in the remote mountains of Laos.
Every day since 1975, Communist forces have carried out their aggressions against this largely unarmed, defenseless, simple, and abjectly poor people who remain in the forests because to venture out is to invite rape, murder, and death by execution, torture, and dismemberment, the typical tools of Communist repression. Once employed against the host population, this parasitic form of government can rely on the calculus of fear inspired by such atrocities to do whatever it wants.
Many Hmong fought the communists during the Viet Nam War and retreated back into the inaccessible mountains of Laos after the U.S. pulled out of SE Asia in 1975, the war supposedly over with a Communist victory.
Never ones to practice magnanimity towards vanquished foes, Communists only promise - and deliver- the bloodbath and the 'peace of the cell, the shackle, and the grave’ to those whom they defeat. Communism demands human sacrifice.
The Hmong became targets of persecution and retaliation by Communist forces because they fought as soldiers against them. Whether or not they sided with America is almost irrelevant, as the NVA, on its relentless, 30 year march (by 1975) to revolution and the domination of all IndoChina, would have swallowed them up anyway. The NVA, proxy army of Communism, meant to have Laos, and Cambodia, and Viet Nam and deliver the populations of those countries into the Revolutionary furnace.
While most Lao-Hmong were re-integrated into their country after 1975, many other Hmong faced the Vietnamese and Laotion gulag, of persecution, enslavement, and execution after they surrendered. Those who remained in the jungle with well justified fears are forced to starve and bring children into an uncertain world.
Transgressions against the Hmong by the Lao Communist authorities and Vietnamese soldiers have persisted over a span of more than thirty years since 1975. So have the reports of such abuse, only to fall on deaf ears.
A generation after the Viet Nam War supposedly ended the free Hmong hide from those who use every opportunity to attack their little groups of families with military weapons that include aircraft, artillery, chemical weapons, and ground forces.
They are chased like wild animals and killed when caught by Laotian and Vietnamese soldiers. The women, even very young girls, are raped and often mutilated and killed when the soldiers are done with them.
They understand that those who surrender face an uncertain fate. Therefore, with no options and mostly for their children, only the most desperate drizzle out of the jungle. Many simply disappear. Knowing the fate of those who have been lured by false promises, the desperation must be very great for them to leave their jungle hiding places...never to be seen again after surrendering to Communist forces and bureaucrats.
The Hmong are also used as targets by communist forces in SE Asia who train their armies by conducting military exercises against them.
Facing this genocide, many escape to neighboring Thailand as refugees.
This documentary by Rebecca Sommers is a story of human rights violations on a scale and intensity that is hard to imagine for those who live comfortable, secure lives. But it must be told, and "HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS” tells it, in the words of the victims themselves.
Even the 'Diary of Anne Frank' was not told with more poignancy, sadness, and fear.
Where are the Jews, who say, "Never again?"
Filmmaker Rebecca Sommers traveled in 2005 and 2006 to the Hmong refugee camp of Ban Huay Nam Khao, Petchabun, in Thailand, where she focused on the Hmong Lao who fled military aggressions against them in their beloved homeland, the beautiful Laotian mountains.
The testimony of these Hmong refugees, with footage filmed by the Hmong themselves who carried digital camcorders back to the danger zones inside of Laos, is woven into the documentary like a tapestry and reveals the human face of contemporary genocide.
These 'human rights violations' occur daily in the remote mountains of Laos, where the gentle Hmong, marked for extinction by the Communists who hate them, are Hunted like Animals. Where is the UN?
Never again?
For more information and to obtain copies of the film, contact:
sommerfilms@gmail.com
Review of "HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS,” a Documentary by REBECCA SOMMER
JANUARY 2008:
Question: What do you call it when a war is over but the killing goes on?
Answer: Communism
The advent of Communism has ushered in things the world had never seen before the Bolsheviks took over Russia in 1917 and instituted the 'Soviet.'
Since then, the bloodletting has not ceased.
Hitler is a piker when compared to Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro...all Communists and purveyors of the greatest violence the world has seen.
Nazism passed away at the end of WWII. Communism, the other side of the socialist coin, persists, its brutality undiminished, its thirst for blood unquenched, its march toward world revolution refueled, replenished, and strengthened by integration with the world’s economies and therefore remains unopposed to devour its new victims.
Socialist Fascism/Nazism took a fraction of the lives that Socialist Communism has consumed and continues to swallow (see: 'Death By Government,' by Rudy Hummel, U. of Hawaii, and, 'The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression,' authored by several scholars and edited by Stéphane Courtois.).
This documentary by Rebecca Sommers is witness to the ongoing reality of Communism. It provides details of a largely unknown war against civilians, a genocidal war waged against the Hmong Lao by Communist Laotian and Vietnamese military forces. These forest dwelling Hmong live their entire lives running and hiding from the Communists in the remote mountains of Laos.
Every day since 1975, Communist forces have carried out their aggressions against this largely unarmed, defenseless, simple, and abjectly poor people who remain in the forests because to venture out is to invite rape, murder, and death by execution, torture, and dismemberment, the typical tools of Communist repression. Once employed against the host population, this parasitic form of government can rely on the calculus of fear inspired by such atrocities to do whatever it wants.
Many Hmong fought the communists during the Viet Nam War and retreated back into the inaccessible mountains of Laos after the U.S. pulled out of SE Asia in 1975, the war supposedly over with a Communist victory.
Never ones to practice magnanimity towards vanquished foes, Communists only promise - and deliver- the bloodbath and the 'peace of the cell, the shackle, and the grave’ to those whom they defeat. Communism demands human sacrifice.
The Hmong became targets of persecution and retaliation by Communist forces because they fought as soldiers against them. Whether or not they sided with America is almost irrelevant, as the NVA, on its relentless, 30 year march (by 1975) to revolution and the domination of all IndoChina, would have swallowed them up anyway. The NVA, proxy army of Communism, meant to have Laos, and Cambodia, and Viet Nam and deliver the populations of those countries into the Revolutionary furnace.
While most Lao-Hmong were re-integrated into their country after 1975, many other Hmong faced the Vietnamese and Laotion gulag, of persecution, enslavement, and execution after they surrendered. Those who remained in the jungle with well justified fears are forced to starve and bring children into an uncertain world.
Transgressions against the Hmong by the Lao Communist authorities and Vietnamese soldiers have persisted over a span of more than thirty years since 1975. So have the reports of such abuse, only to fall on deaf ears.
A generation after the Viet Nam War supposedly ended the free Hmong hide from those who use every opportunity to attack their little groups of families with military weapons that include aircraft, artillery, chemical weapons, and ground forces.
They are chased like wild animals and killed when caught by Laotian and Vietnamese soldiers. The women, even very young girls, are raped and often mutilated and killed when the soldiers are done with them.
They understand that those who surrender face an uncertain fate. Therefore, with no options and mostly for their children, only the most desperate drizzle out of the jungle. Many simply disappear. Knowing the fate of those who have been lured by false promises, the desperation must be very great for them to leave their jungle hiding places...never to be seen again after surrendering to Communist forces and bureaucrats.
The Hmong are also used as targets by communist forces in SE Asia who train their armies by conducting military exercises against them.
Facing this genocide, many escape to neighboring Thailand as refugees.
This documentary by Rebecca Sommers is a story of human rights violations on a scale and intensity that is hard to imagine for those who live comfortable, secure lives. But it must be told, and "HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS” tells it, in the words of the victims themselves.
Even the 'Diary of Anne Frank' was not told with more poignancy, sadness, and fear.
Where are the Jews, who say, "Never again?"
Filmmaker Rebecca Sommers traveled in 2005 and 2006 to the Hmong refugee camp of Ban Huay Nam Khao, Petchabun, in Thailand, where she focused on the Hmong Lao who fled military aggressions against them in their beloved homeland, the beautiful Laotian mountains.
The testimony of these Hmong refugees, with footage filmed by the Hmong themselves who carried digital camcorders back to the danger zones inside of Laos, is woven into the documentary like a tapestry and reveals the human face of contemporary genocide.
These 'human rights violations' occur daily in the remote mountains of Laos, where the gentle Hmong, marked for extinction by the Communists who hate them, are Hunted like Animals. Where is the UN?
Never again?
For more information and to obtain copies of the film, contact:
sommerfilms@gmail.com
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
General Douglas A. MacArthur, Duty, Honor, C0untry
General Westmoreland, General Grove, distinguished guests, and gentlemen of the Corps!
As I was leaving the hotel this morning, a doorman asked me, "Where are you bound for, General?" And when I replied, "West Point," he remarked, "Beautiful place. Have you ever been there before?"
No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this [Thayer Award].
Coming from a profession I have served so long, and a people I have loved so well, it fills me with an emotion I cannot express.
But this award is not intended primarily to honor a personality, but to symbolize a great moral code -- the code of conduct and chivalry of those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent.
That is the animation of this medallion.
For all eyes and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics of the American soldier. That I should be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal arouses a sense of pride and yet of humility which will be with me always.
"Duty, Honor, Country"
Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.
They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.
Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.
The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.
But these are some of the things they do.
They build your basic character.
They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation's defense.
They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.
They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future yet never neglect the past; to be serious yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.
They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.
And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory?
Their story is known to all of you.
It is the story of the American man-at-arms.
My estimate of him was formed on the battlefield many, many years ago, and has never changed.
I regarded him then as I regard him now -- as one of the world's noblest figures, not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless. His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give.
He needs no eulogy from me or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy's breast.
But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words.
He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom.
He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements.
In 20 campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people. From one end of the world to the other he has drained deep the chalice of courage.
As I listened to those songs [of the glee club], in memory's eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs, on many a weary march from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle-deep through the mire of shell-shocked roads, to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat of God.
I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory.
Always, for them: Duty, Honor, Country; always their blood and sweat and tears, as we sought the way and the light and the truth.
And 20 years after, on the other side of the globe, again the filth of murky foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts; those boiling suns of relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms; the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails; the bitterness of long separation from those they loved and cherished; the deadly pestilence of tropical disease; the horror of stricken areas of war; their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory -- always victory. Always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men reverently following your password of:
"Duty, Honor, Country."
The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral laws and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the uplift of mankind. Its requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong.
The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training: sacrifice.
In battle and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those divine attributes which his Maker gave when he created man in his own image.
No physical courage and no brute instinct can take the place of the Divine help which alone can sustain him.
However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind.
You now face a new world -- a world of change. The thrust into outer space of the satellite, spheres, and missiles mark the beginning of another epoch in the long story of mankind. In the five or more billions of years the scientists tell us it has taken to form the earth, in the three or more billion years of development of the human race, there has never been a more abrupt or staggering evolution. We deal now not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier.
We speak in strange terms: of harnessing the cosmic energy; of making winds and tides work for us; of creating unheard synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; to purify sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundreds of years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of space ships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all time.
And through all this welter of change and development, your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable: it is to win our wars.
Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication.
All other public purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishment.
But you are the ones who are trained to fight. Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory; that if you lose, the nation will be destroyed; that the very obsession of your public service must be:
"Duty, Honor, Country."
Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men's minds; but serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the Nation's war-guardian, as its lifeguard from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiator in the arena of battle.
For a century and a half you have defended, guarded, and protected its hallowed traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice.
Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government; whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing, indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as thorough and complete as they should be.
These great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution.
Your guidepost stands out like a ten-fold beacon in the night:
"Duty, Honor, Country."
You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the nation's destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds.
The Long Gray Line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses thundering those magic words:
"Duty, Honor, Country."
This does not mean that you are war mongers. On the contrary, the soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.
But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers:
"Only the dead have seen the end of war."
The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here.
My days of old have vanished, tone and tint.
They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were.
Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday.
I listen vainly, but with thirsty ears, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll.
In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.
But in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point.
Always there echoes and re-echoes:
"Duty, Honor, Country."
Today marks my final roll call with you, but I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of
...The Corps, and The Corps, and The Corps.
I bid you farewell.
As I was leaving the hotel this morning, a doorman asked me, "Where are you bound for, General?" And when I replied, "West Point," he remarked, "Beautiful place. Have you ever been there before?"
No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this [Thayer Award].
Coming from a profession I have served so long, and a people I have loved so well, it fills me with an emotion I cannot express.
But this award is not intended primarily to honor a personality, but to symbolize a great moral code -- the code of conduct and chivalry of those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent.
That is the animation of this medallion.
For all eyes and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics of the American soldier. That I should be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal arouses a sense of pride and yet of humility which will be with me always.
"Duty, Honor, Country"
Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.
They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.
Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.
The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.
But these are some of the things they do.
They build your basic character.
They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation's defense.
They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.
They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future yet never neglect the past; to be serious yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.
They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.
And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory?
Their story is known to all of you.
It is the story of the American man-at-arms.
My estimate of him was formed on the battlefield many, many years ago, and has never changed.
I regarded him then as I regard him now -- as one of the world's noblest figures, not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless. His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give.
He needs no eulogy from me or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy's breast.
But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words.
He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom.
He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements.
In 20 campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people. From one end of the world to the other he has drained deep the chalice of courage.
As I listened to those songs [of the glee club], in memory's eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs, on many a weary march from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle-deep through the mire of shell-shocked roads, to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat of God.
I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory.
Always, for them: Duty, Honor, Country; always their blood and sweat and tears, as we sought the way and the light and the truth.
And 20 years after, on the other side of the globe, again the filth of murky foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts; those boiling suns of relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms; the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails; the bitterness of long separation from those they loved and cherished; the deadly pestilence of tropical disease; the horror of stricken areas of war; their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory -- always victory. Always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men reverently following your password of:
"Duty, Honor, Country."
The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral laws and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the uplift of mankind. Its requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong.
The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training: sacrifice.
In battle and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those divine attributes which his Maker gave when he created man in his own image.
No physical courage and no brute instinct can take the place of the Divine help which alone can sustain him.
However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind.
You now face a new world -- a world of change. The thrust into outer space of the satellite, spheres, and missiles mark the beginning of another epoch in the long story of mankind. In the five or more billions of years the scientists tell us it has taken to form the earth, in the three or more billion years of development of the human race, there has never been a more abrupt or staggering evolution. We deal now not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier.
We speak in strange terms: of harnessing the cosmic energy; of making winds and tides work for us; of creating unheard synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; to purify sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundreds of years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of space ships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all time.
And through all this welter of change and development, your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable: it is to win our wars.
Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication.
All other public purposes, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishment.
But you are the ones who are trained to fight. Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory; that if you lose, the nation will be destroyed; that the very obsession of your public service must be:
"Duty, Honor, Country."
Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men's minds; but serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the Nation's war-guardian, as its lifeguard from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiator in the arena of battle.
For a century and a half you have defended, guarded, and protected its hallowed traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice.
Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government; whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing, indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as thorough and complete as they should be.
These great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution.
Your guidepost stands out like a ten-fold beacon in the night:
"Duty, Honor, Country."
You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the nation's destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds.
The Long Gray Line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses thundering those magic words:
"Duty, Honor, Country."
This does not mean that you are war mongers. On the contrary, the soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.
But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers:
"Only the dead have seen the end of war."
The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here.
My days of old have vanished, tone and tint.
They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were.
Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday.
I listen vainly, but with thirsty ears, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll.
In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.
But in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point.
Always there echoes and re-echoes:
"Duty, Honor, Country."
Today marks my final roll call with you, but I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of
...The Corps, and The Corps, and The Corps.
I bid you farewell.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Resist the Beautiful Hell
Resist the Beautiful Hell
The Roman: In Omnia Paratus"...will not be filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own. I will retain the ancient traditions of my faith, race, and culture, my individuality and particulars, and try as any man whose reputation is to endure must, to make the world relevant to principles and ideals rather than to accept the vague and increasingly shallow values of this world."
Sardonic, terse, intense; in slow, simmering anger The Roman vows unceasing defiance to the makers of treason and revolution and sounds the tocsin that the nation must now accept that it lives on an intellectual battlefield from which there can be only one victor.
Through the control of information at all levels the world is imposing on American Society mind control, thought transfer, psychological torture, and brainwashing, procedures that authoritarian governments make use of in either open or closed societies.
Whether it is dark, grey, and authoritarian as described by George Orwell or voluntary and submissive as proscribed by Aldus Huxley, in the end, the choice is to live free or as slaves.For The Roman there is no choice.
The peace of the cell, the shackle, and the grave is no peace at all.
Therefore, the role of every individual American is to resist an increasingly oppressing society, the ‘prison in the open’ that crushes independent spirits slowly and insidiously with the help of relentless, propagandizing 'experts,' talking heads, educators and 'facilitators' who debase and continually subvert Christian populations to ever lower societal, moral, and cultural standards.
The more dumbed-down citizens become the more readily they believe every calculated misinformation.
Separate a people from their history and they are more easily turned. The bureaucrats and administrators in public education have done exactly that.
The candidacy of Barack Hussein Obama is a prime example of just how effective these methods have been. An informed electorate, in full possession of its identity as Americans could not have supported an individual whose core values are so far removed from the national character of America.
Today, adherence to the Principles of our Founders is both reactionary and counter-revolutionary.
The Revolution in America, as put forth by a handful of well placed subversives like William Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn supported by a two party, one idea mockery of Republican government, has succeeded.
It remains to be seen what will ascend from the ashes. We will either caw with crows and shriek with buzzards for eternity, or we can bring back the eagles and songbirds.
Hidden microphones and intrusive cameras record activity and conversation and banks of computers store, monitor, and analyze everything according to what you buy, read, consume, and do or not do. Surveillance is constant. Big Brother is everywhere, even in your head.
Information is processed and produced for the masses but it is intended to be consumed by individuals. All of it is personal.
News and information appeals first to the individual’s emotions: Need, greed, status or non-status, by use of personal identifiers that define self-image and self-worth, motivate and shape personality and a once free people are filed, stamped, indexed, and numbered.
In an abundant society Greed comes before Need because everyone but the stupid or insane has food, shelter, and a place to procreate. Keep the dogs hungry and they will fight over the smallest bone.
Create classes of victims, preach resentment, and re-classify opportunity into opportunism and they will scrap and scrape and bow for crumbs.
Today, information of all types is language impoverished, increasingly devoid of complex ideas and deceptive of its true purposes - it is the socialist/utilitarian voice of revolution that hawks veiled euphemisms and existentialist nonsense in place of tried and true paradigms of rights AND responsibilities, right AND wrong, justice, and Biblical Truth vs the Lie of Satan.
Enslavement of the heart, mind, and soul will follow those who purchase these perversions and make them their own.
It is tempting to give in and settle for crumbs and a quiet life in the beautiful hell.Have none of it. Refuse to cooperate. Resist whenever possible.
When not possible to resist openly, retreat into anonymity, raise your families, find ways to prosper and live to fight another day.
But fight. Never quit and never cease to be vigilant against these forces that every minute of every day will try to own you and MORTGAGE your Posterity for eternity. We are witness today of 'bailout' stratagems that will ultimately separate your children and grandchildren from their national inheritance. Full of hubris, this is the blatant, arrogant application of Hegelian doctrine: those that caused the problems have the solutions to the very catastrophes they have created.
Escape the temptation accept it or to give in.
Work unceasingly to unmask the powers that run the 'Village' in this dramatic struggle, which is as old as man's deception in the Garden.Remember, Adam ate the forbidden fruit willingly, notwithstanding the fact that his trusted soul mate offered it to him after her own deception. Adam trusted fallible 'man' (Eve) forsaking infallible God the Father.
Learn to express yourself with clarity of thought. Be patient with ideas, balanced in your assessments, and suspect all forms of communication that do not operate in this way for deceivers are manipulators of all forms of communication: "By their fruit ye shall Know them…"
Take note of the inherent character of the players - the heroes, villains, and bystanders and in the full motivation of their actions. Then you will unmask them and know them for who and what they are.
Tell the truth.
Tell it, though the heavens may fall.
The Roman: In Omnia Paratus"...will not be filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own. I will retain the ancient traditions of my faith, race, and culture, my individuality and particulars, and try as any man whose reputation is to endure must, to make the world relevant to principles and ideals rather than to accept the vague and increasingly shallow values of this world."
Sardonic, terse, intense; in slow, simmering anger The Roman vows unceasing defiance to the makers of treason and revolution and sounds the tocsin that the nation must now accept that it lives on an intellectual battlefield from which there can be only one victor.
Through the control of information at all levels the world is imposing on American Society mind control, thought transfer, psychological torture, and brainwashing, procedures that authoritarian governments make use of in either open or closed societies.
Whether it is dark, grey, and authoritarian as described by George Orwell or voluntary and submissive as proscribed by Aldus Huxley, in the end, the choice is to live free or as slaves.For The Roman there is no choice.
The peace of the cell, the shackle, and the grave is no peace at all.
Therefore, the role of every individual American is to resist an increasingly oppressing society, the ‘prison in the open’ that crushes independent spirits slowly and insidiously with the help of relentless, propagandizing 'experts,' talking heads, educators and 'facilitators' who debase and continually subvert Christian populations to ever lower societal, moral, and cultural standards.
The more dumbed-down citizens become the more readily they believe every calculated misinformation.
Separate a people from their history and they are more easily turned. The bureaucrats and administrators in public education have done exactly that.
The candidacy of Barack Hussein Obama is a prime example of just how effective these methods have been. An informed electorate, in full possession of its identity as Americans could not have supported an individual whose core values are so far removed from the national character of America.
Today, adherence to the Principles of our Founders is both reactionary and counter-revolutionary.
The Revolution in America, as put forth by a handful of well placed subversives like William Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn supported by a two party, one idea mockery of Republican government, has succeeded.
It remains to be seen what will ascend from the ashes. We will either caw with crows and shriek with buzzards for eternity, or we can bring back the eagles and songbirds.
Hidden microphones and intrusive cameras record activity and conversation and banks of computers store, monitor, and analyze everything according to what you buy, read, consume, and do or not do. Surveillance is constant. Big Brother is everywhere, even in your head.
Information is processed and produced for the masses but it is intended to be consumed by individuals. All of it is personal.
News and information appeals first to the individual’s emotions: Need, greed, status or non-status, by use of personal identifiers that define self-image and self-worth, motivate and shape personality and a once free people are filed, stamped, indexed, and numbered.
In an abundant society Greed comes before Need because everyone but the stupid or insane has food, shelter, and a place to procreate. Keep the dogs hungry and they will fight over the smallest bone.
Create classes of victims, preach resentment, and re-classify opportunity into opportunism and they will scrap and scrape and bow for crumbs.
Today, information of all types is language impoverished, increasingly devoid of complex ideas and deceptive of its true purposes - it is the socialist/utilitarian voice of revolution that hawks veiled euphemisms and existentialist nonsense in place of tried and true paradigms of rights AND responsibilities, right AND wrong, justice, and Biblical Truth vs the Lie of Satan.
Enslavement of the heart, mind, and soul will follow those who purchase these perversions and make them their own.
It is tempting to give in and settle for crumbs and a quiet life in the beautiful hell.Have none of it. Refuse to cooperate. Resist whenever possible.
When not possible to resist openly, retreat into anonymity, raise your families, find ways to prosper and live to fight another day.
But fight. Never quit and never cease to be vigilant against these forces that every minute of every day will try to own you and MORTGAGE your Posterity for eternity. We are witness today of 'bailout' stratagems that will ultimately separate your children and grandchildren from their national inheritance. Full of hubris, this is the blatant, arrogant application of Hegelian doctrine: those that caused the problems have the solutions to the very catastrophes they have created.
Escape the temptation accept it or to give in.
Work unceasingly to unmask the powers that run the 'Village' in this dramatic struggle, which is as old as man's deception in the Garden.Remember, Adam ate the forbidden fruit willingly, notwithstanding the fact that his trusted soul mate offered it to him after her own deception. Adam trusted fallible 'man' (Eve) forsaking infallible God the Father.
Learn to express yourself with clarity of thought. Be patient with ideas, balanced in your assessments, and suspect all forms of communication that do not operate in this way for deceivers are manipulators of all forms of communication: "By their fruit ye shall Know them…"
Take note of the inherent character of the players - the heroes, villains, and bystanders and in the full motivation of their actions. Then you will unmask them and know them for who and what they are.
Tell the truth.
Tell it, though the heavens may fall.
JUDE 1:24 -1:25
JUDE 1:24 -1:25
1:24
Now unto him that is able to
Keep you from falling, and to present
You faultless before the presence of
His glory with exceeding joy,
1:25
To The only wise God our Saviour, be
Glory and majesty, dominion and
power, both now and ever.
Amen.
1:24
Now unto him that is able to
Keep you from falling, and to present
You faultless before the presence of
His glory with exceeding joy,
1:25
To The only wise God our Saviour, be
Glory and majesty, dominion and
power, both now and ever.
Amen.
Viet Nam and The Other Side of Eternity
“On the other side of eternity rest the fallen of Vietnam’s battlefield, forever ‘youthful and strong, loving and loyal,’ and there they look back on a nation that betrayed itself out of a generation of heroic influence and lost something of itself in the process.
“They didn’t return home to teach the finer and the ordinary points of life to the children they didn’t father and weren’t there to do so for the children they did.
They did not return to mature in their lives and take their places in the towns, farming communities, and cities they came from.
They didn’t live to bury their parents, see their children marry, coach little league, run for town council, or influence events they never saw.
For them, there were no parades, no 4th of July picnics, school plays, concerts, or recitals.
“They died ‘forever young,’ and forever in the heroic pose known to a choice few in the history of human events: as defenders of what is right and true and worth defending.
“For the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen, living and died who served there, Viet Nam was and will remain a moral triumph. What they did lives on as a privileged inheritance from those taught by long example that to achieve liberty is rare, to keep it, costly.
“The battlefield in Viet Nam was not lost. It was abandoned to the darkness, but not by those who fought and died there for freedom, for Viet Nam, and for each other.
John Puzzo
“They didn’t return home to teach the finer and the ordinary points of life to the children they didn’t father and weren’t there to do so for the children they did.
They did not return to mature in their lives and take their places in the towns, farming communities, and cities they came from.
They didn’t live to bury their parents, see their children marry, coach little league, run for town council, or influence events they never saw.
For them, there were no parades, no 4th of July picnics, school plays, concerts, or recitals.
“They died ‘forever young,’ and forever in the heroic pose known to a choice few in the history of human events: as defenders of what is right and true and worth defending.
“For the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen, living and died who served there, Viet Nam was and will remain a moral triumph. What they did lives on as a privileged inheritance from those taught by long example that to achieve liberty is rare, to keep it, costly.
“The battlefield in Viet Nam was not lost. It was abandoned to the darkness, but not by those who fought and died there for freedom, for Viet Nam, and for each other.
John Puzzo
Enemy of the People: How can a totalitarian government declare anyone an 'Enemy of the people'
Enemy of the people
See: ‘An Enemy of the People,’ a play by Henrik Ibsen.
The term enemy of the people is a fluid designation referring to political or class opponents of the group using the term, sometimes including former allies. Its usage is derogatory and meant to imply that the "enemies" have conspired against society as a whole.
The term "enemy of the people" has an extensive history. Its earliest use may have been by the Roman Empire, where the senate used the term to apply to the Emperor Nero as a pretext for his arrest (he committed suicide).
Since that time, many groups have used the phrase, including the Jacobins during the radical phase of the French Revolution (the Reign of Terror), and most notably and famously by the Soviet Union and other Communist countries.
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union made extensive use of the term (Russian language: враг народа, "vrag naroda"), as it fit in well with the idea that the people were in control.
Indeed, so great a number of people were labeled with the term that most modern connotations of the phrase associate it with communism. It was in official use under the Bolsheviks' rule after the October Revolution.
Other similar terms were in use as well:
enemy of the workers
enemy of the proletariat
class enemy.
The term "enemy of the workers" was formalized in the Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code).
At various times these terms were applied, in particular, to the Romanov’s, all aristocrats, the bourgeoisie, clerics (and in Cambodia, anyone who wore glasses), the intelligentsia, business entrepreneurs, kulaks, monarchists, Mensheviks, Esers, Buddhists, Bundists, Christians, Trotskyists, Bukharinists, the "old Bolsheviks", the army and police, emigrants, immigrants, saboteurs, wreckers (?), "social parasites" "tuneyadtsy"), Kavezhedists (people who administered and serviced the ‘KVZhD’ (China Far East Railway), particularly the Russian population of Harbin, China), those considered bourgeois nationalists (notably Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian nationalists, Zionists, Basmachi), and members of certain ethnic groups (see Population transfer: Soviet Union), and anybody who loved freedom and liberty.
An enemy of the people could be imprisoned, expelled or executed, and his property could be confiscated. Close relatives of enemies of the people were branded "relatives of an enemy of the people," which effected restrictions of their rights.
Any family members of the victim still enjoying their freedom were not allowed to hold positions of importance, and only in exceptional cases would they be tolerated as members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the key to advancement in the Soviet hierarchy. Being a friend of an enemy of the people automatically placed the person under suspicion.
A significant fraction of the enemies of the people were given this label not because of their hostile actions against the workers' and peasants' state, but simply because of their social origin or actions before the revolution: those who used hired labor, high-ranking clergy, former policemen, merchants, etc.
They were commonly known as lishentsy, derived from Russian word ‘deprivation,’ because by the Soviet Constitution they were deprived of their rights of voting. This automatically translated into a deprivation of various social benefits, some of them, e.g., rationing, were at times critical for survival.
Since 1927, Article 20 of the Common Part of the penal code that listed possible "measures of social defence" had the following item 20a: "declaration to be an enemy of the workers with deprivation of the union republic citizenship and hence of the USSR citizenship, with obligatory expulsion from its territory". Nevertheless most "enemies of the people" suffered labor camps, rather than expulsion.
In 1927, the penal code of the Soviet Union was changed drastically. The update of the penal code turned the country into a police state, full of informants, who were derogatorily called stukach (literally "knocker").
According to Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code), everyone was obligated to report all "anti-Soviet activity", including any expression of disagreement with the policy of the Party, even in casual jokes.
This policy resulted in significant growth of Gulag camp populations as those who failed to report their relatives or friends were often themselves reported on. State-sponsored propaganda and mandatory (officially voluntary) participation in the Pioneer Movement helped to indoctrinate Soviet youth to follow the example of Pavlik Morozov, a young boy who reported his own father, a kulak.
July 20, 1953 TIME magazine cover: "Lavrenty Beria: Enemy of the people.” One might wonder why there were so many enemies of workers left, seemingly contrary to the initial claims of Bolsheviks that the opponents of the proletariat were crushed as a class in the Soviet Union. This was handily explained by Stalinist doctrine, which included the "theory of the aggravation of class struggle under socialism".
The theory postulated that class struggle grows more intense during the dictatorship of the proletariat, thus requiring more extreme measures.
After 1937, the ranks of the "enemies of the people" were expanded to include those labeled as Traitor of Motherland Family Members. The extreme treatment of opponents is one of numerous reasons why the Soviet regime is often considered authoritarian or described as even totalitarian.
For further reading, see:
Nicolas Werth, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, 1999, hardcover, 856 pages, ISBN 0674076087
See: ‘An Enemy of the People,’ a play by Henrik Ibsen.
The term enemy of the people is a fluid designation referring to political or class opponents of the group using the term, sometimes including former allies. Its usage is derogatory and meant to imply that the "enemies" have conspired against society as a whole.
The term "enemy of the people" has an extensive history. Its earliest use may have been by the Roman Empire, where the senate used the term to apply to the Emperor Nero as a pretext for his arrest (he committed suicide).
Since that time, many groups have used the phrase, including the Jacobins during the radical phase of the French Revolution (the Reign of Terror), and most notably and famously by the Soviet Union and other Communist countries.
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union made extensive use of the term (Russian language: враг народа, "vrag naroda"), as it fit in well with the idea that the people were in control.
Indeed, so great a number of people were labeled with the term that most modern connotations of the phrase associate it with communism. It was in official use under the Bolsheviks' rule after the October Revolution.
Other similar terms were in use as well:
enemy of the workers
enemy of the proletariat
class enemy.
The term "enemy of the workers" was formalized in the Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code).
At various times these terms were applied, in particular, to the Romanov’s, all aristocrats, the bourgeoisie, clerics (and in Cambodia, anyone who wore glasses), the intelligentsia, business entrepreneurs, kulaks, monarchists, Mensheviks, Esers, Buddhists, Bundists, Christians, Trotskyists, Bukharinists, the "old Bolsheviks", the army and police, emigrants, immigrants, saboteurs, wreckers (?), "social parasites" "tuneyadtsy"), Kavezhedists (people who administered and serviced the ‘KVZhD’ (China Far East Railway), particularly the Russian population of Harbin, China), those considered bourgeois nationalists (notably Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian nationalists, Zionists, Basmachi), and members of certain ethnic groups (see Population transfer: Soviet Union), and anybody who loved freedom and liberty.
An enemy of the people could be imprisoned, expelled or executed, and his property could be confiscated. Close relatives of enemies of the people were branded "relatives of an enemy of the people," which effected restrictions of their rights.
Any family members of the victim still enjoying their freedom were not allowed to hold positions of importance, and only in exceptional cases would they be tolerated as members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the key to advancement in the Soviet hierarchy. Being a friend of an enemy of the people automatically placed the person under suspicion.
A significant fraction of the enemies of the people were given this label not because of their hostile actions against the workers' and peasants' state, but simply because of their social origin or actions before the revolution: those who used hired labor, high-ranking clergy, former policemen, merchants, etc.
They were commonly known as lishentsy, derived from Russian word ‘deprivation,’ because by the Soviet Constitution they were deprived of their rights of voting. This automatically translated into a deprivation of various social benefits, some of them, e.g., rationing, were at times critical for survival.
Since 1927, Article 20 of the Common Part of the penal code that listed possible "measures of social defence" had the following item 20a: "declaration to be an enemy of the workers with deprivation of the union republic citizenship and hence of the USSR citizenship, with obligatory expulsion from its territory". Nevertheless most "enemies of the people" suffered labor camps, rather than expulsion.
In 1927, the penal code of the Soviet Union was changed drastically. The update of the penal code turned the country into a police state, full of informants, who were derogatorily called stukach (literally "knocker").
According to Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code), everyone was obligated to report all "anti-Soviet activity", including any expression of disagreement with the policy of the Party, even in casual jokes.
This policy resulted in significant growth of Gulag camp populations as those who failed to report their relatives or friends were often themselves reported on. State-sponsored propaganda and mandatory (officially voluntary) participation in the Pioneer Movement helped to indoctrinate Soviet youth to follow the example of Pavlik Morozov, a young boy who reported his own father, a kulak.
July 20, 1953 TIME magazine cover: "Lavrenty Beria: Enemy of the people.” One might wonder why there were so many enemies of workers left, seemingly contrary to the initial claims of Bolsheviks that the opponents of the proletariat were crushed as a class in the Soviet Union. This was handily explained by Stalinist doctrine, which included the "theory of the aggravation of class struggle under socialism".
The theory postulated that class struggle grows more intense during the dictatorship of the proletariat, thus requiring more extreme measures.
After 1937, the ranks of the "enemies of the people" were expanded to include those labeled as Traitor of Motherland Family Members. The extreme treatment of opponents is one of numerous reasons why the Soviet regime is often considered authoritarian or described as even totalitarian.
For further reading, see:
Nicolas Werth, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, 1999, hardcover, 856 pages, ISBN 0674076087
F-14D Tomcat vs F-18 Super Hornet: When Progress is One step Forward and Two Steps Back
F-14D Tomcat vs F/A18 E/F Super Hornet
analysis: (Rear Adm. Paul Gillcrist U.S. Navy (Ret.); Bob Kress, aeronautical engineer at Grumman and Engineering Manager for the original design and development of the F-14 Tomcat.)
Super Hornet isn't so Super?
An F/A-18A was used to “chase” an F-14D test flight.
The F-14D was carrying four 2,000-pound bombs, two 280-gallon drop tanks, two HARM missiles and two Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. The chase airplane was in a relatively “clean” configuration with only a centerline fuel tank. At the end of each test flight and with the chase F-18 at full thrust, the chase plane was several miles behind the test airplane when the chase airplane reached “bingo” fuel and had to return to base.
• An F/A-18E Super Hornet is tested using the same chase airplane, an earlier model Hornet, in the same configuration. The chase airplane does not need full thrust to stay with the test airplane.
• An F/A-18E/F in maximum afterburner thrust cannot exceed Mach 1.0 in level flight below 10,000 feet even when it is in the clean configuration (no external stores). At 10,000 feet, the F-14D can exceed Mach 1.6.
• A quote from a Hornet pilot is devastatingly frank: “The aircraft is slower than most fighters fielded since the early 1960s.”
• The most devastating comment came from a Hornet pilot who flew numerous side-by-side comparison flights with F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and says: “We outran them, we out-flew them and we ran them out of gas. I was embarrassed for them.”
By Bob Kress and Rear Adm. Paul Gillcrist, U.S. Navy (Ret.)…argue that the Super Hornet is not necessarily the airplane the Navy needs for the future, and their backgrounds lend weight to their arguments.
Rear Adm. Paul Gillcrist U.S. Navy (Ret.) spent 33 years as a fighter pilot and wing commander and was operations commander of all Pacific Fleet fighters. Bob Kress is an aeronautical engineer and, during his long career at Grumman, he was directly involved in the development of a wide range of fighters. He was the Engineering Manager for the original design and development of the F-14 Tomcat. Their analysis makes an interesting statement when placed against the background of the war on terrorism.
The requirements for a practical deep interdiction fighter/bomber have long been the subject of controversy within the naval aviation community, especially when it comes to the F-14 Tomcat versus the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. Often, however, the definition of “deep interdiction” is changed to fit the aircraft under discussion, rather than taking into account the real-world theater of operations for which it is destined.
Events over Afghanistan, however, have forced us to formalize what is really needed if an aircraft is to strike an enemy deep within its country. Today, we know that the politics of surrounding countries can dictate mission distances that stretch the ability of current aircraft to their limits.
The U.S. relies on Navy aircraft carriers as bases. So, when putting fighter/ bombers over Afghan targets, which aircraft led the charge?—the tried-and-true F-14 Tomcat with the F/A-18 Hornet well behind.
This particular conflict motivated us to address what we see as a serious problem concerning Naval aviation assets and the realities of the fields over which we will fight.
As shown over Afghanistan, there are four basic requirements of any carrier strike force:
Reach the target.
Don't get shot down by SAMs, AAA, or enemy fighters.
Strike the target.
Return to the carrier before running out of gas.
Within these four seemingly simple rules are the needs for an airplane to have a long range while carrying sufficient munitions to hammer a target and still be able to fight its way through enemy aircraft and AAA threats.
“Third World countries all around the globe are purchasing the very latest operational Russian-built fighters that are also licensed for production in China. The Russian aerial threat still exists; what has changed is that the pilots aren't Russians.”
Because our government isn't telling us all of its secrets, we'll have to make some assumptions when using Afghanistan as an example. It is, however, obvious that reaching the target presents a great challenge.
To avoid Silkworm-class missiles, the carrier battle group probably would not want to venture north of a line joining Masqat, Oman and Ahmadabad, Pakistan.
Along this line, the group would be somewhat west of Karachi. Reaching Kabul would require a one-way flight of roughly 825 statute miles.
Assuming the use of S-3 tankers, an F-14 strike, refueling somewhere between Quetta and Sukkur, Pakistan, wouldn't have any trouble attacking targets in the northernmost parts of Afghanistan.
If, however, an F/A-18E/F refuels in the same spot, it will barely make it to Kabul.
The un-refueled radius of an F-14 carrying the normal strike load (four 2,000-pound LGBs, two HARM missiles and two Sidewinders plus 675 rounds of 20mm and two, 280-gallon external tanks) is at least 500 statute miles.
Accompanying E/F Super Hornets have only a 350-statute-mile radius carrying about half the bomb load. To complete the picture of mission distances, the S-3s would have to dash back to the CVs, hot-refuel and meet the raid coming out of Afghanistan, which would be much in need of JP-4 cocktails.
Afghan campaign an all-USAF show? NO. Carrier-fleet effectiveness proved more valuable than thought: map studies combined with knowledge of geopolitical restrictions showed that carrier assets, primarily the F-14, were just about the U.S.'s only option. This has clearly been substantiated by events.
Of course, the F-14s were not the first to hit targets in Afghanistan; B-2 stealth bombers each carried 16, 2,000-pound GPS-guided bombs. They flew from Whiteman AFB in Missouri—a 33-hour round trip. Further, big-time USAF strategic air assets—B-52s and B-1s—arrived shortly afterward.
It was soon apparent that USAF tactical aircraft were not being used in Afghanistan. We found that, even given unlimited in-flight tanker refueling, the USAF F-15 and F-16 could not be used without a Middle Eastern ground base.
Turkish bases were simply too far away and would require refueling over hostile areas. Only the use of tactical air bases in Turkmenistan and/or Uzbekistan would work, and this would allow only partial coverage of Afghanistan.
The big question becomes: does the Navy have the assets to be able to carry this kind of war into the future, and what kind of planning is in place? To cut to the chase, the discussion once again reverts to whether or not the new Super Hornet will really cut the mustard or the Navy has taken yet another wrong turn that will cost us dearly on the battlefield.
A History of Naval Aviation difficulties
The subject of the erosion of Naval aviation has nagged both of us ever since the cancellation of the A-12 program by the Secretary of Defense in the late '80s. It was a watershed for a number of reasons, not the least of which was a level of bad management that hadn't been seen in the Pentagon for decades!
We can look back on that day and clearly see that the unraveling of the fabric of Naval aviation would become a long-term trend. Neither of us contends that the A-12, as envisioned by Navy leaders, was the right airplane to develop at that point in history; in fact, it wasn't! That, however, is another story for another time.
We have put off writing this article simply because we know it is likely to ruffle many feathers in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, but events in Afghanistan again brought our main arguments into focus.
Is writing this kind of article worth it, we wondered; we might be seen to be “piling it on” when the Navy is in difficulty and clearly on a steep, downhill slide.
Well, we have listened, with no small restraint, to the pontifications that justify how well the Navy is doing with its favorite program, the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet—despite unimpeachable reports to the contrary from the guys in the fleet.
Comments made to us by young fleet pilots who have flown the airplane and describe it as “a dog” carry much more weight with us than statements from senior officers and civilians higher in the food chain.
But certain pontifications in a statement by a senior Naval officer who should have known better served as the last straw.
The pronouncement appeared along with a spate of triumphal announcements that celebrated the “successful” completion of the Super Hornet's first operational evaluation (OPEVAL).
In a publication called “Inside Washington,” the Navy's director of operational testing is quoted as saying that the Super Hornet was superior to its earlier models “… in every category but three: acceleration, maximum speed and sustained turning performance.”
This pronouncement boggled our minds because these are the very performance capabilities that determine a tactical airplane's survival. Then, as if to justify this “hand grenade,” the officer is quoted as stating that the Navy has sacrificed speed in the Super Hornet for other beneficial capabilities, and he asserts, “brute speed is no longer the discriminator it once was when the benchmark was the Soviet threat.”
It is clear to us that this Naval officer doesn't have a clue about aerial combat and the importance of total energy in the complex equations of energy maneuverability. Nor does he seem to understand that Third World countries all around the globe are purchasing the very latest operational Russian-built fighters that are also licensed for production in China. The Russian aerial threat still exists; what has changed is that the pilots aren't Russians.
As a nation, we have always had the means to protect our own global interests as well as those of other countries. Short of nuclear war, the carrier battle groups have been able to strike on very short notice. A President's first question in time of crisis is often, “Where are the carriers?”
F-14s carry a major punch:
This says a great deal about a carrier battle group's effectiveness. Remember that there are—or there can be—24 F-14s on a ship such as the John C. Stennis (CVN-71). Twenty four F-14s can deliver more weapons than the entire 16 aircraft B-2 fleet.
Unfortunately, the numbers of F-14s are dwindling, and they will be almost gone in another 10 years (retired from service in 2006) . What will be the replacement?
With a layered defense, including air assets, guided-missile cruisers and frigates and undersea backing, the carrier battle groups are pretty well invulnerable.
On the Nimitz-class carrier, the F-14 was a truly long-range fighter/bomber—plus lightweight F/A-18A fighter/bombers. The long-range A-6 bomber has gone forever, but its derivative, the EA-6B Electronic War-fare (EW) aircraft is in place and is in much demand by both the USN and the USAF.
This country's Desert Fox and Kosovo experiences have, at last—and correctly—shifted the focus away from stealth and toward electronic warfare.
We will have more to say on this important topic in a subsequent article. In short, at the moment, the deck complement looks adequate. The F-14 can pick up the A-6 role because it was designed to do so from scratch. Its performance in Kosovo as a very effective strike leader has more than borne out that fact.
With LANTIRN, night-vision devices and synthetic aperture A/G radar, the F-14 targeted not only its own four 2,000-pound weapons but also the ordnance of the F/A-18s, which don't have such capable sensors.
F/A-18s only have 36 percent of the F-14's payload/range capability.
The F/A-18E Super Hornet has been improved but still has, at best, 50 percent of the F-14's capability to deliver a fixed number of bombs (in pounds) on target.
This naturally means that the carrier radius of influence drops to 50 percent of what it would have been with the same number of F-14s. As a result, the area of influence (not radius) drops to 23 percent! No wonder the USN is working on “buddy tanker” versions of the Super Hornet.
By the way, now that the A-6 tanker has gone, how will the Hornets get to deep-interdiction targets?
Contrary to what we're officially told, a tanker variant of the Hornet is simply not the answer.
In an attempt to make it supersonic, the F-18E has been given a low aspect ratio, razor blade of a wing. This hurts subsonic drag and carrier takeoff payload when compared with a KA-6 tanker, which is an aerodynamically efficient solution.
Equally silly is the proposal for an EW version of the F-18E. The same aerodynamic reasons apply for this airplane, plus it has an external stores dilemma. To get sufficient range to support a deep-interdiction mission, the EF-18E would have to use up precious external store stations with fuel tanks rather than ECM pods as carried on the EA-6B.
Perhaps the Navy should consider putting the EA-6B back into upgraded and modernized production and build some of them as tankers? Or more Super A-6s?
As this is being written, it is too early to comment in an informed manner on the war on terrorism in Afghanistan. The USAF heavy bomber raids are fully public. However, it is evident that USN carrier strike groups that consist of F-14s and F-18s are conducting the tactical raids.
A study of maps shows that CVN airborne S-3 tankers facilitate the conduct of these raids by refueling, probably over Pakistan. At this time, USAF tactical air assets do not have bases close enough to Afghanistan to allow airborne refueling over friendly nations. By the time this finds its way in-to print, that may have changed.
We should resurrect as many retired F-14s (of any configuration) as we can.
Second, combine these with fleet F-14As, the remaining F-14As and even the Iranian F-14 assets that might be obtainable (Iran took delivery of approximately 80 F-14s under the Shah; about 30 are still airworthy).
Third, design a program to upgrade all of these aircraft to F-14Ds. This may sound wild, but Grumman experience in restoring Malaysian A4D basket cases to mint condition in the '80s was very successful, and they were not even Grumman airplanes!
Similar success in restoring fleet A-6s at Grumman's St. Augustine, Florida, facility was achieved. It would be appropriate for the Navy or DoD to launch a study by a blue ribbon team under the aegis of NAVAIR. We estimate that about 200 additional F-14s could be brought back into the fleet.
The titanium box beams and bulkheads are nearly indestructible as well as repairable using electron-beam welding; but this is not yet a Tomcat II.
At the other end, the mission payload/range is greatly increased by flying unswept, as is air combat maneuvering. Why the latter? Because dedicated air combat occurs at below about Mach 0.8 because of high turning drag—an arena in which the F-14's 20-degree sweep is optimal. And, of course, the F-14 has been to Mach 2.51 with four Sparrows loaded at 68 degrees of wing sweep.
The F-14B/D have been flown to Mach 1.35 at 5,000 feet (813 knots IAS), at which point the throttle had to be retarded to avoid over-speed!
Re-engine the TOmcat II with F-119 or the F-120 engines: The F-119 has already been checked for fit. Upgrades of the GE F-110 might also be viable. The objective would be a 40,000-pound class turbofan (per engine).
analysis: (Rear Adm. Paul Gillcrist U.S. Navy (Ret.); Bob Kress, aeronautical engineer at Grumman and Engineering Manager for the original design and development of the F-14 Tomcat.)
Super Hornet isn't so Super?
An F/A-18A was used to “chase” an F-14D test flight.
The F-14D was carrying four 2,000-pound bombs, two 280-gallon drop tanks, two HARM missiles and two Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. The chase airplane was in a relatively “clean” configuration with only a centerline fuel tank. At the end of each test flight and with the chase F-18 at full thrust, the chase plane was several miles behind the test airplane when the chase airplane reached “bingo” fuel and had to return to base.
• An F/A-18E Super Hornet is tested using the same chase airplane, an earlier model Hornet, in the same configuration. The chase airplane does not need full thrust to stay with the test airplane.
• An F/A-18E/F in maximum afterburner thrust cannot exceed Mach 1.0 in level flight below 10,000 feet even when it is in the clean configuration (no external stores). At 10,000 feet, the F-14D can exceed Mach 1.6.
• A quote from a Hornet pilot is devastatingly frank: “The aircraft is slower than most fighters fielded since the early 1960s.”
• The most devastating comment came from a Hornet pilot who flew numerous side-by-side comparison flights with F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and says: “We outran them, we out-flew them and we ran them out of gas. I was embarrassed for them.”
By Bob Kress and Rear Adm. Paul Gillcrist, U.S. Navy (Ret.)…argue that the Super Hornet is not necessarily the airplane the Navy needs for the future, and their backgrounds lend weight to their arguments.
Rear Adm. Paul Gillcrist U.S. Navy (Ret.) spent 33 years as a fighter pilot and wing commander and was operations commander of all Pacific Fleet fighters. Bob Kress is an aeronautical engineer and, during his long career at Grumman, he was directly involved in the development of a wide range of fighters. He was the Engineering Manager for the original design and development of the F-14 Tomcat. Their analysis makes an interesting statement when placed against the background of the war on terrorism.
The requirements for a practical deep interdiction fighter/bomber have long been the subject of controversy within the naval aviation community, especially when it comes to the F-14 Tomcat versus the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. Often, however, the definition of “deep interdiction” is changed to fit the aircraft under discussion, rather than taking into account the real-world theater of operations for which it is destined.
Events over Afghanistan, however, have forced us to formalize what is really needed if an aircraft is to strike an enemy deep within its country. Today, we know that the politics of surrounding countries can dictate mission distances that stretch the ability of current aircraft to their limits.
The U.S. relies on Navy aircraft carriers as bases. So, when putting fighter/ bombers over Afghan targets, which aircraft led the charge?—the tried-and-true F-14 Tomcat with the F/A-18 Hornet well behind.
This particular conflict motivated us to address what we see as a serious problem concerning Naval aviation assets and the realities of the fields over which we will fight.
As shown over Afghanistan, there are four basic requirements of any carrier strike force:
Reach the target.
Don't get shot down by SAMs, AAA, or enemy fighters.
Strike the target.
Return to the carrier before running out of gas.
Within these four seemingly simple rules are the needs for an airplane to have a long range while carrying sufficient munitions to hammer a target and still be able to fight its way through enemy aircraft and AAA threats.
“Third World countries all around the globe are purchasing the very latest operational Russian-built fighters that are also licensed for production in China. The Russian aerial threat still exists; what has changed is that the pilots aren't Russians.”
Because our government isn't telling us all of its secrets, we'll have to make some assumptions when using Afghanistan as an example. It is, however, obvious that reaching the target presents a great challenge.
To avoid Silkworm-class missiles, the carrier battle group probably would not want to venture north of a line joining Masqat, Oman and Ahmadabad, Pakistan.
Along this line, the group would be somewhat west of Karachi. Reaching Kabul would require a one-way flight of roughly 825 statute miles.
Assuming the use of S-3 tankers, an F-14 strike, refueling somewhere between Quetta and Sukkur, Pakistan, wouldn't have any trouble attacking targets in the northernmost parts of Afghanistan.
If, however, an F/A-18E/F refuels in the same spot, it will barely make it to Kabul.
The un-refueled radius of an F-14 carrying the normal strike load (four 2,000-pound LGBs, two HARM missiles and two Sidewinders plus 675 rounds of 20mm and two, 280-gallon external tanks) is at least 500 statute miles.
Accompanying E/F Super Hornets have only a 350-statute-mile radius carrying about half the bomb load. To complete the picture of mission distances, the S-3s would have to dash back to the CVs, hot-refuel and meet the raid coming out of Afghanistan, which would be much in need of JP-4 cocktails.
Afghan campaign an all-USAF show? NO. Carrier-fleet effectiveness proved more valuable than thought: map studies combined with knowledge of geopolitical restrictions showed that carrier assets, primarily the F-14, were just about the U.S.'s only option. This has clearly been substantiated by events.
Of course, the F-14s were not the first to hit targets in Afghanistan; B-2 stealth bombers each carried 16, 2,000-pound GPS-guided bombs. They flew from Whiteman AFB in Missouri—a 33-hour round trip. Further, big-time USAF strategic air assets—B-52s and B-1s—arrived shortly afterward.
It was soon apparent that USAF tactical aircraft were not being used in Afghanistan. We found that, even given unlimited in-flight tanker refueling, the USAF F-15 and F-16 could not be used without a Middle Eastern ground base.
Turkish bases were simply too far away and would require refueling over hostile areas. Only the use of tactical air bases in Turkmenistan and/or Uzbekistan would work, and this would allow only partial coverage of Afghanistan.
The big question becomes: does the Navy have the assets to be able to carry this kind of war into the future, and what kind of planning is in place? To cut to the chase, the discussion once again reverts to whether or not the new Super Hornet will really cut the mustard or the Navy has taken yet another wrong turn that will cost us dearly on the battlefield.
A History of Naval Aviation difficulties
The subject of the erosion of Naval aviation has nagged both of us ever since the cancellation of the A-12 program by the Secretary of Defense in the late '80s. It was a watershed for a number of reasons, not the least of which was a level of bad management that hadn't been seen in the Pentagon for decades!
We can look back on that day and clearly see that the unraveling of the fabric of Naval aviation would become a long-term trend. Neither of us contends that the A-12, as envisioned by Navy leaders, was the right airplane to develop at that point in history; in fact, it wasn't! That, however, is another story for another time.
We have put off writing this article simply because we know it is likely to ruffle many feathers in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, but events in Afghanistan again brought our main arguments into focus.
Is writing this kind of article worth it, we wondered; we might be seen to be “piling it on” when the Navy is in difficulty and clearly on a steep, downhill slide.
Well, we have listened, with no small restraint, to the pontifications that justify how well the Navy is doing with its favorite program, the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet—despite unimpeachable reports to the contrary from the guys in the fleet.
Comments made to us by young fleet pilots who have flown the airplane and describe it as “a dog” carry much more weight with us than statements from senior officers and civilians higher in the food chain.
But certain pontifications in a statement by a senior Naval officer who should have known better served as the last straw.
The pronouncement appeared along with a spate of triumphal announcements that celebrated the “successful” completion of the Super Hornet's first operational evaluation (OPEVAL).
In a publication called “Inside Washington,” the Navy's director of operational testing is quoted as saying that the Super Hornet was superior to its earlier models “… in every category but three: acceleration, maximum speed and sustained turning performance.”
This pronouncement boggled our minds because these are the very performance capabilities that determine a tactical airplane's survival. Then, as if to justify this “hand grenade,” the officer is quoted as stating that the Navy has sacrificed speed in the Super Hornet for other beneficial capabilities, and he asserts, “brute speed is no longer the discriminator it once was when the benchmark was the Soviet threat.”
It is clear to us that this Naval officer doesn't have a clue about aerial combat and the importance of total energy in the complex equations of energy maneuverability. Nor does he seem to understand that Third World countries all around the globe are purchasing the very latest operational Russian-built fighters that are also licensed for production in China. The Russian aerial threat still exists; what has changed is that the pilots aren't Russians.
As a nation, we have always had the means to protect our own global interests as well as those of other countries. Short of nuclear war, the carrier battle groups have been able to strike on very short notice. A President's first question in time of crisis is often, “Where are the carriers?”
F-14s carry a major punch:
This says a great deal about a carrier battle group's effectiveness. Remember that there are—or there can be—24 F-14s on a ship such as the John C. Stennis (CVN-71). Twenty four F-14s can deliver more weapons than the entire 16 aircraft B-2 fleet.
Unfortunately, the numbers of F-14s are dwindling, and they will be almost gone in another 10 years (retired from service in 2006) . What will be the replacement?
With a layered defense, including air assets, guided-missile cruisers and frigates and undersea backing, the carrier battle groups are pretty well invulnerable.
On the Nimitz-class carrier, the F-14 was a truly long-range fighter/bomber—plus lightweight F/A-18A fighter/bombers. The long-range A-6 bomber has gone forever, but its derivative, the EA-6B Electronic War-fare (EW) aircraft is in place and is in much demand by both the USN and the USAF.
This country's Desert Fox and Kosovo experiences have, at last—and correctly—shifted the focus away from stealth and toward electronic warfare.
We will have more to say on this important topic in a subsequent article. In short, at the moment, the deck complement looks adequate. The F-14 can pick up the A-6 role because it was designed to do so from scratch. Its performance in Kosovo as a very effective strike leader has more than borne out that fact.
With LANTIRN, night-vision devices and synthetic aperture A/G radar, the F-14 targeted not only its own four 2,000-pound weapons but also the ordnance of the F/A-18s, which don't have such capable sensors.
F/A-18s only have 36 percent of the F-14's payload/range capability.
The F/A-18E Super Hornet has been improved but still has, at best, 50 percent of the F-14's capability to deliver a fixed number of bombs (in pounds) on target.
This naturally means that the carrier radius of influence drops to 50 percent of what it would have been with the same number of F-14s. As a result, the area of influence (not radius) drops to 23 percent! No wonder the USN is working on “buddy tanker” versions of the Super Hornet.
By the way, now that the A-6 tanker has gone, how will the Hornets get to deep-interdiction targets?
Contrary to what we're officially told, a tanker variant of the Hornet is simply not the answer.
In an attempt to make it supersonic, the F-18E has been given a low aspect ratio, razor blade of a wing. This hurts subsonic drag and carrier takeoff payload when compared with a KA-6 tanker, which is an aerodynamically efficient solution.
Equally silly is the proposal for an EW version of the F-18E. The same aerodynamic reasons apply for this airplane, plus it has an external stores dilemma. To get sufficient range to support a deep-interdiction mission, the EF-18E would have to use up precious external store stations with fuel tanks rather than ECM pods as carried on the EA-6B.
Perhaps the Navy should consider putting the EA-6B back into upgraded and modernized production and build some of them as tankers? Or more Super A-6s?
As this is being written, it is too early to comment in an informed manner on the war on terrorism in Afghanistan. The USAF heavy bomber raids are fully public. However, it is evident that USN carrier strike groups that consist of F-14s and F-18s are conducting the tactical raids.
A study of maps shows that CVN airborne S-3 tankers facilitate the conduct of these raids by refueling, probably over Pakistan. At this time, USAF tactical air assets do not have bases close enough to Afghanistan to allow airborne refueling over friendly nations. By the time this finds its way in-to print, that may have changed.
We should resurrect as many retired F-14s (of any configuration) as we can.
Second, combine these with fleet F-14As, the remaining F-14As and even the Iranian F-14 assets that might be obtainable (Iran took delivery of approximately 80 F-14s under the Shah; about 30 are still airworthy).
Third, design a program to upgrade all of these aircraft to F-14Ds. This may sound wild, but Grumman experience in restoring Malaysian A4D basket cases to mint condition in the '80s was very successful, and they were not even Grumman airplanes!
Similar success in restoring fleet A-6s at Grumman's St. Augustine, Florida, facility was achieved. It would be appropriate for the Navy or DoD to launch a study by a blue ribbon team under the aegis of NAVAIR. We estimate that about 200 additional F-14s could be brought back into the fleet.
The titanium box beams and bulkheads are nearly indestructible as well as repairable using electron-beam welding; but this is not yet a Tomcat II.
At the other end, the mission payload/range is greatly increased by flying unswept, as is air combat maneuvering. Why the latter? Because dedicated air combat occurs at below about Mach 0.8 because of high turning drag—an arena in which the F-14's 20-degree sweep is optimal. And, of course, the F-14 has been to Mach 2.51 with four Sparrows loaded at 68 degrees of wing sweep.
The F-14B/D have been flown to Mach 1.35 at 5,000 feet (813 knots IAS), at which point the throttle had to be retarded to avoid over-speed!
Re-engine the TOmcat II with F-119 or the F-120 engines: The F-119 has already been checked for fit. Upgrades of the GE F-110 might also be viable. The objective would be a 40,000-pound class turbofan (per engine).
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