http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/01/31/legal-immigrants-must-watch-testimony-against-gun-control-in-america/
Hat tip to The Blaze.
No time to post tonight. High school wrestling meet went late. The good news is that my son pinned his opponent, who was quite strong and a very good wrestler.
We have another account of a person who came to the US from a nation in which the people are not allowed to own firearms. His testimony is brutally honest.
Of note should be his reference to what the Left has intensively cultivated with a passion but tries to keep out of public debate - "societal decay".
".
I wish that more Americans would be willing to bring this fact into the arena.
“Thank you for giving me this opportunity to express my opinion and give my testimony in opposition to the majority of the proposed bills, which do nothing to deter future crimes,” he added. “Gun control doesn’t work.”
Ong then launched into a impassioned diatribe about what he considers to be the real problem fueling gun gun violence — “societal decay.”
“Your own history is replete with high school rifle teams, boy scout marksmanship merit badges,” he explained. “You could buy rifles at hardware stores, you could order them… your country was awash in readily available firearms and ammunition, and yet in your past you did not have mass school shootings*.”
“What changed?” he asked. “It was not that the availability of guns suddenly exploded or increased, it actually was decreased. What changed was societal decay,” he added, resulting in more applause.".............
The Hot Gates - 480BC. An event that was to determine what path much of the Western World would follow occurred as the Persian army threatened to overwhelm Greece in 480BC. The West today again faces both external and internal threats to its identity and existence.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Military Officers Reportedly Asked About Firing on Citizens
http://bwcentral.org/2013/01/will-you-fire-on-american-citizens/
Hat tip to Free Republic.
I must preface this by noting that the person who is being interviewed does not provide a source by name. Whenever this happens, I have no choice but to hold back from accepting everything that I hear or read.
This does not mean that what you will hear in the video (Top link) should be dismissed outright. The Obama administration, fully aware of the hostile nature of their actions, has almost from the beginning taken steps to present loyal Americans as the problem. It's the perfect Orwellian Newspeak/Doublethink (Often rendered today as Doublespeak); present the abuses in which you are engaging as being consistent with American government and values, and paint those who oppose your oppressive acts as dangerous and unpatriotic.
The administration knows that they are pushing people up against the wall and that there will come a time when some will push back. My hope is that those who do so use political efforts to split the US into separate nations, one a Progressive state and the other a Republic, but I have little doubt that there will be those who see no hope in this.
The Left works like a professional wrestler tag-team match (Although they are not faking it). One make all sorts of claims that what they are doing is consistent with Constitutional thought, while the other runs around disparaging the supreme Law of the land as obsolete, aristocratic, or just plain evil. You are defending what the Constitution actually says on one side, and defending the document/law itself on the other.
Dr. Jim Garrow, a respected writer, he helps unwanted Chinese girls, and he is a one-time Nobel Prize nominee, reports that a former high-ranking officer in the US military reported to him that military officers, particularly those who are being vetted for influential positions, have had the question posed to them about how they would handle an order to fire on or otherwise engage US citizens in military actions.
If what Dr. Garrow says is true, I have to have a problem with his source. I know that people are afraid of losing their livelihood and possibly facing charges for discussing secret information, but if those who give the orders are in fact asking these questions, the people need to be made aware of this. If he is truly concerned enough to say something to a trusted friend or associate, then all bets for personal security are off.
I don't like watching videos because I am impatient and a fairly fast reader, but I did watch the one in the top link.. The link below has some text from the inerview.
http://www.examiner.com/article/shock-claim-obama-only-wants-military-leaders-who-will-fire-on-u-s-citizens?cid=db_articles
Hat tip to Free Republic.
I must preface this by noting that the person who is being interviewed does not provide a source by name. Whenever this happens, I have no choice but to hold back from accepting everything that I hear or read.
This does not mean that what you will hear in the video (Top link) should be dismissed outright. The Obama administration, fully aware of the hostile nature of their actions, has almost from the beginning taken steps to present loyal Americans as the problem. It's the perfect Orwellian Newspeak/Doublethink (Often rendered today as Doublespeak); present the abuses in which you are engaging as being consistent with American government and values, and paint those who oppose your oppressive acts as dangerous and unpatriotic.
The administration knows that they are pushing people up against the wall and that there will come a time when some will push back. My hope is that those who do so use political efforts to split the US into separate nations, one a Progressive state and the other a Republic, but I have little doubt that there will be those who see no hope in this.
The Left works like a professional wrestler tag-team match (Although they are not faking it). One make all sorts of claims that what they are doing is consistent with Constitutional thought, while the other runs around disparaging the supreme Law of the land as obsolete, aristocratic, or just plain evil. You are defending what the Constitution actually says on one side, and defending the document/law itself on the other.
Dr. Jim Garrow, a respected writer, he helps unwanted Chinese girls, and he is a one-time Nobel Prize nominee, reports that a former high-ranking officer in the US military reported to him that military officers, particularly those who are being vetted for influential positions, have had the question posed to them about how they would handle an order to fire on or otherwise engage US citizens in military actions.
If what Dr. Garrow says is true, I have to have a problem with his source. I know that people are afraid of losing their livelihood and possibly facing charges for discussing secret information, but if those who give the orders are in fact asking these questions, the people need to be made aware of this. If he is truly concerned enough to say something to a trusted friend or associate, then all bets for personal security are off.
I don't like watching videos because I am impatient and a fairly fast reader, but I did watch the one in the top link.. The link below has some text from the inerview.
http://www.examiner.com/article/shock-claim-obama-only-wants-military-leaders-who-will-fire-on-u-s-citizens?cid=db_articles
Monday, January 28, 2013
Record Set Straight on Nullifiation
http://www.trevorloudon.com/2013/01/nullification-deniers-this-is-what-james-madison-really-said/
http://newjerseypatriotblog.newjerseypatriot.us/?p=2310
Hat tip to New Jersey Patriot.
I know that preface my remarks with bits of my life story entirely too often, but there is a purpose for doing so. For many years, indeed decades, I resisted admitting to myself what was happening to our nation. I refused to accept that our nation was headed in a dangerous direction.
An old (And still) adamant Union and Lincoln man, I naively applied my reasoning for condemning the acts of the Confederacy to our current situation. I failed to understand that, although the South did commit a grievous wrong by seceding from the US government, this did not mean that later there could not arise conditions that could put us in a situation in which nullification or secession was necessary.
Here we are.
Firstly, our Federal government was not truly federal in nature. Our government is actually a national one that has aspects that are federal, such as sovereign states that have real political power. Those who supported adopting the Constitution took the initiative by taking the name of Federalist, which forced their opponents to, by default, be referred to as Anti-Federalists.
Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, made the point in the early 19th century that our federal government was clearly a national one.
The national government has assumed much stronger national powers than that which was provided for in the Constitution. A Civil War, along with slavery and suppression of rights of freedmen were the primary reasons for this. The rise of the Progressives, who gained the reigns of power by WWI, was the spark which accelerated the move towards a purely national government. FDR only completed the process.
With the schools creating more socialist-minded and anti-Western culture statists which each graduating class, generations of people made dependent by being placed on welfare, and the mass importation of people who come from countries that have no history of republican-type governments, the Left now has the political pull to empower the national government like never before.
We face a political situation that would be utterly unrecognizable to any of the framers. Our national government now exercises powers completely foreign to anything within the wildest imaginations of our founders or even Lincoln. While our founders fought for their rights over some taxes, restrictions on expansion to western lands and markets for our exports, we stand idly by while being hit again and again with one new oppressive law or regulation after another. Those who made a stand for their rights as Englishmen in the late 18th century did so for far less reasons than we have for doing so today.
Oh, to be able go back to the freedoms we had during the worst days of King George III and Parliament! We never had it so good.
Trevor Loudon is a New Zealander. He is a strong supporter of the US and its Constitution. As a citizen of a British Commonwealth nation, he has seen firsthand how quickly a people can be reduced to political impotence and how a free nation can, in the blink of an eye, be mired in stagnant socialism and full governmental control. Like a specter from A Christmas Carol, he works to warn us to stand up for our rights before it is too late.
Please read the article from his blog which is linked at top. It puts to rest many of the claims by the media and the elitists of Academia that we have no option other than to accept what is being rammed down our throats.
Regarding the portion of the article on the Supreme Court and the determination of the Constitutionality of laws, I want to add that, by providing the following three examples, we can know that we no longer have a court that will function as a bulwark for, and last defense of, our freedoms.
The first was Wikard v. Fillburn, in which the Court upheld a draconian FDR-era law that resulted in a man being fined for growing more than the allowed amount of grain on his own farm. Threatened with Justice-packing by the Mussolini and Stalin-admiring FDR (The President threatened to change the number from nine Justices and add more who would follow his lead), the Court ruled that, because the farmer may be able to grow enough grain to enable him to feed his own livestock without buying grain, the farmer's actions could be regulated under the Commerce Clause.
The next nail in the coffin was Kelo V. New London. Here the concept of eminent domain morphed from the state forcing the sale of private property in order to serve a public need (Roads, Schools, etc.) to a governing body being able to condemn a person's home in order to sell it to a private developer. There would not even be a need to prove that the municipality was in dire need of funds - all it had to say was that it could make more money from selling the property and maybe receive more tax revenue from the newly-developed seized properties.
The most recent and egregious case was on Obamacare. Here the Federal government could not only compel a person to purchase something (Insurance is merely the foot in the door for far more), the Court is now effectively able to assign new meanings to the law.The compulsion to purchase can, with no legislation or tax code to cite, be considered to be a tax.
I find no reason to believe that things will improve in time to arrest the collapse of what is left of our freedoms. The Court will see at least one more (Possibly three) new appointments in Obama's second term.
http://newjerseypatriotblog.newjerseypatriot.us/?p=2310
Hat tip to New Jersey Patriot.
I know that preface my remarks with bits of my life story entirely too often, but there is a purpose for doing so. For many years, indeed decades, I resisted admitting to myself what was happening to our nation. I refused to accept that our nation was headed in a dangerous direction.
An old (And still) adamant Union and Lincoln man, I naively applied my reasoning for condemning the acts of the Confederacy to our current situation. I failed to understand that, although the South did commit a grievous wrong by seceding from the US government, this did not mean that later there could not arise conditions that could put us in a situation in which nullification or secession was necessary.
Here we are.
Firstly, our Federal government was not truly federal in nature. Our government is actually a national one that has aspects that are federal, such as sovereign states that have real political power. Those who supported adopting the Constitution took the initiative by taking the name of Federalist, which forced their opponents to, by default, be referred to as Anti-Federalists.
Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, made the point in the early 19th century that our federal government was clearly a national one.
The national government has assumed much stronger national powers than that which was provided for in the Constitution. A Civil War, along with slavery and suppression of rights of freedmen were the primary reasons for this. The rise of the Progressives, who gained the reigns of power by WWI, was the spark which accelerated the move towards a purely national government. FDR only completed the process.
With the schools creating more socialist-minded and anti-Western culture statists which each graduating class, generations of people made dependent by being placed on welfare, and the mass importation of people who come from countries that have no history of republican-type governments, the Left now has the political pull to empower the national government like never before.
We face a political situation that would be utterly unrecognizable to any of the framers. Our national government now exercises powers completely foreign to anything within the wildest imaginations of our founders or even Lincoln. While our founders fought for their rights over some taxes, restrictions on expansion to western lands and markets for our exports, we stand idly by while being hit again and again with one new oppressive law or regulation after another. Those who made a stand for their rights as Englishmen in the late 18th century did so for far less reasons than we have for doing so today.
Oh, to be able go back to the freedoms we had during the worst days of King George III and Parliament! We never had it so good.
Trevor Loudon is a New Zealander. He is a strong supporter of the US and its Constitution. As a citizen of a British Commonwealth nation, he has seen firsthand how quickly a people can be reduced to political impotence and how a free nation can, in the blink of an eye, be mired in stagnant socialism and full governmental control. Like a specter from A Christmas Carol, he works to warn us to stand up for our rights before it is too late.
Please read the article from his blog which is linked at top. It puts to rest many of the claims by the media and the elitists of Academia that we have no option other than to accept what is being rammed down our throats.
Regarding the portion of the article on the Supreme Court and the determination of the Constitutionality of laws, I want to add that, by providing the following three examples, we can know that we no longer have a court that will function as a bulwark for, and last defense of, our freedoms.
The first was Wikard v. Fillburn, in which the Court upheld a draconian FDR-era law that resulted in a man being fined for growing more than the allowed amount of grain on his own farm. Threatened with Justice-packing by the Mussolini and Stalin-admiring FDR (The President threatened to change the number from nine Justices and add more who would follow his lead), the Court ruled that, because the farmer may be able to grow enough grain to enable him to feed his own livestock without buying grain, the farmer's actions could be regulated under the Commerce Clause.
The next nail in the coffin was Kelo V. New London. Here the concept of eminent domain morphed from the state forcing the sale of private property in order to serve a public need (Roads, Schools, etc.) to a governing body being able to condemn a person's home in order to sell it to a private developer. There would not even be a need to prove that the municipality was in dire need of funds - all it had to say was that it could make more money from selling the property and maybe receive more tax revenue from the newly-developed seized properties.
The most recent and egregious case was on Obamacare. Here the Federal government could not only compel a person to purchase something (Insurance is merely the foot in the door for far more), the Court is now effectively able to assign new meanings to the law.The compulsion to purchase can, with no legislation or tax code to cite, be considered to be a tax.
I find no reason to believe that things will improve in time to arrest the collapse of what is left of our freedoms. The Court will see at least one more (Possibly three) new appointments in Obama's second term.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Former Progressive David Mamet On Gun Control
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/01/26/former-brain-dead-liberal-filmmaker-pens-scathing-column-on-gun-control-a-political-appeal-to-the-ignorant/
Hat tip to The Blaze.
I must confess that I was unaware until today that the 1982 movie The Verdict was one of David Mamet's works That was a great movie.
Mamet is known for his direct and no-nonsense manner of writing and speech. Being at one time, in his own words, a "brain dead liberal", he abandoned that stagnant and intellect-numbing world and now is a firm Conservative and supporter of individual rights.
His remarks on gun control put most of us to shame for their brutal clarity. Noting that the Left wants us to believe that the conclusions of the debunked (Even by determined gun control advocates) Kellerman* study and others and accept that guns in homes make one less safe, he presents us with a logical argument that I wish I had made:
"The Left loves a phantom statistic that a firearm in the hands of a citizen is X times more likely to cause accidental damage than to be used in the prevention of crime, but what is there about criminals that ensures that their gun use is accident-free? If, indeed, a firearm were more dangerous to its possessors than to potential aggressors, would it not make sense for the government to arm all criminals, and let them accidentally shoot themselves? Is this absurd? Yes, and yet the government, of course, is arming criminals."
He does not let up with his brutally clear reasoning:
"The police do not exist to protect the individual. They exist to cordon off the crime scene and attempt to apprehend the criminal. We individuals are guaranteed by the Constitution the right to self-defense. This right is not the Government’s to “award” us. They have never been granted it.
The so-called assault weapons ban is a hoax. It is a political appeal to the ignorant…
Will increased cosmetic measures make anyone safer? They, like all efforts at disarmament, will put the citizenry more at risk. Disarmament rests on the assumption that all people are good, and, basically, want the same things.
But if all people were basically good, why would we, increasingly, pass more and more elaborate laws?
The individual is not only best qualified to provide his own personal defense, he is the only one qualified to do so: and his right to do so is guaranteed by the Constitution."
"Violence by firearms is most prevalent in big cities with the strictest gun laws. In Chicago and Washington, D.C., for example, it is only the criminals who have guns, the law-abiding populace having been disarmed, and so crime runs riot.
Cities of similar size in Texas, Florida, Arizona, and elsewhere, which leave the citizen the right to keep and bear arms, guaranteed in the Constitution, typically are much safer. More legal guns equal less crime. What criminal would be foolish enough to rob a gun store?But the government alleges that the citizen does not need this or that gun, number of guns, or amount of ammunition."
Hat tip to The Blaze.
I must confess that I was unaware until today that the 1982 movie The Verdict was one of David Mamet's works That was a great movie.
Mamet is known for his direct and no-nonsense manner of writing and speech. Being at one time, in his own words, a "brain dead liberal", he abandoned that stagnant and intellect-numbing world and now is a firm Conservative and supporter of individual rights.
His remarks on gun control put most of us to shame for their brutal clarity. Noting that the Left wants us to believe that the conclusions of the debunked (Even by determined gun control advocates) Kellerman* study and others and accept that guns in homes make one less safe, he presents us with a logical argument that I wish I had made:
"The Left loves a phantom statistic that a firearm in the hands of a citizen is X times more likely to cause accidental damage than to be used in the prevention of crime, but what is there about criminals that ensures that their gun use is accident-free? If, indeed, a firearm were more dangerous to its possessors than to potential aggressors, would it not make sense for the government to arm all criminals, and let them accidentally shoot themselves? Is this absurd? Yes, and yet the government, of course, is arming criminals."
He does not let up with his brutally clear reasoning:
The so-called assault weapons ban is a hoax. It is a political appeal to the ignorant…
Will increased cosmetic measures make anyone safer? They, like all efforts at disarmament, will put the citizenry more at risk. Disarmament rests on the assumption that all people are good, and, basically, want the same things.
But if all people were basically good, why would we, increasingly, pass more and more elaborate laws?
The individual is not only best qualified to provide his own personal defense, he is the only one qualified to do so: and his right to do so is guaranteed by the Constitution."
"Violence by firearms is most prevalent in big cities with the strictest gun laws. In Chicago and Washington, D.C., for example, it is only the criminals who have guns, the law-abiding populace having been disarmed, and so crime runs riot.
Cities of similar size in Texas, Florida, Arizona, and elsewhere, which leave the citizen the right to keep and bear arms, guaranteed in the Constitution, typically are much safer. More legal guns equal less crime. What criminal would be foolish enough to rob a gun store?But the government alleges that the citizen does not need this or that gun, number of guns, or amount of ammunition."
His scathing remarks on wholesale taking from the producers/taxpayers and distributing at the pleasure of the government should not be left out:
"Karl Marx summed up Communism as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” This is a good, pithy saying, which, in practice, has succeeded in bringing, upon those under its sway, misery, poverty, rape, torture, slavery, and death.
For the saying implies but does not name the effective agency of its supposed utopia. The agency is called “The State,” and the motto, fleshed out, for the benefit of the easily confused must read “The State will take from each according to his ability:the State will give to each according to his needs.” “Needs and abilities” are, of course, subjective. So the operative statement may be reduced to “the State shall take, the State shall give.' "
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*The 43:1 study, also called the Kellerman study, which was published in 1986 in the New England Journal of Medicine, was an atrocious example of false use and application of statistics. It was based on cherry-picked statistics in the Seattle area. It suffered from a complete lack of scientific responsibility. It was an attempt to get people to think that they, or someone else who was innocent, are 43 times more likely to be injured or killed by their own firearms than to wind up using it on an intruder. When later pressed about the manner in which he came up with his ratio, he then switched gears and threw out the 2.7:1 ratio - an equally false yet less outrageous number. To provide one example of how poorly the study was done, the only events that were counted as times when a person used a gun in defense of a home was when the bad guy got shot. This was the most pathetic portion of the finding since the vast majority of people who own firearms have, rightly so, no desire to kill people and show/produce/declare their weapon in order to cause the bad guy to leave in the overwhelming amount of circumstances. This fact alone completely threw off the entire average, even if the rest of the statistics had been honestly complied, which they were not. The awful and dishonest techniques used by Kellerman can be seen in part on the link below:
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-tainted-public-health-model-of-gun-control/
"Karl Marx summed up Communism as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” This is a good, pithy saying, which, in practice, has succeeded in bringing, upon those under its sway, misery, poverty, rape, torture, slavery, and death.
For the saying implies but does not name the effective agency of its supposed utopia. The agency is called “The State,” and the motto, fleshed out, for the benefit of the easily confused must read “The State will take from each according to his ability:the State will give to each according to his needs.” “Needs and abilities” are, of course, subjective. So the operative statement may be reduced to “the State shall take, the State shall give.' "
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*The 43:1 study, also called the Kellerman study, which was published in 1986 in the New England Journal of Medicine, was an atrocious example of false use and application of statistics. It was based on cherry-picked statistics in the Seattle area. It suffered from a complete lack of scientific responsibility. It was an attempt to get people to think that they, or someone else who was innocent, are 43 times more likely to be injured or killed by their own firearms than to wind up using it on an intruder. When later pressed about the manner in which he came up with his ratio, he then switched gears and threw out the 2.7:1 ratio - an equally false yet less outrageous number. To provide one example of how poorly the study was done, the only events that were counted as times when a person used a gun in defense of a home was when the bad guy got shot. This was the most pathetic portion of the finding since the vast majority of people who own firearms have, rightly so, no desire to kill people and show/produce/declare their weapon in order to cause the bad guy to leave in the overwhelming amount of circumstances. This fact alone completely threw off the entire average, even if the rest of the statistics had been honestly complied, which they were not. The awful and dishonest techniques used by Kellerman can be seen in part on the link below:
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-tainted-public-health-model-of-gun-control/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, January 26, 2013
The Push to Equate Electoral With Popular Vote
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/opinion/blow-rig-the-vote.html?ref=charlesmblow&_r=0
In another* classic instance of projection, the word 'evil' has been leveled at non-Progressives by a member of the Left. In this case, the efforts to ensure that electoral votes are distributed in the manner intended by the framers of the Constitution is the crime. Leftists have long censored a major factor in the decision making of the framers. School textbooks note only the fact that the electors themselves were intended to be, due to their presumed education and experience, the ones who were knowledgeable enough to vote for the Chief Executive.
What they intentionally leave out is that the count and distribution of votes themselves were carefully designed to ensure that states or regions that had the bulk of the population would not be able to dominate the Presidential vote. By creating a college of voters that wold be distributed by a total of Representatives and Senators (Two from each states to counterbalance the political power of the states that had the most people), we were blessed with at least a fighting chance of avoiding elections that would be a simple battle for the largest or most densely populated states.
Assuming that they would be unable to abolish the Electoral College altogether the Left strongly desires that the electoral votes of all states be a winner-take-all event. By doing so, rural and less densely populated suburban regions would in most cases would be robbed of all influence in Presidential elections.
As an example, the following map shows how easily the Left would be able to win these elections if the national popular vote would either decide on Presidents or if the States changed to winner-take all systems.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/images/rcp%20electoral/2004_results_by_county..gif
This is what the writer in the top-linked article wants - lock up the Electoral College votes of many states by simply making the Presidential vote a mere issue of getting the urban vote plus bit more from some suburban regions. Rural voters be damned.
The writer also (Most certainly accidentally) forgets that Democrats have been involved in their own Gerrymandering:
http://rslc.com/_blog/RedMap/post/Democratic_Gerrymandering_/?page=2
-The Left likes to project their evil onto the opposition:
*http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/01/progressives-not-hiding-contempt-for.html
In another* classic instance of projection, the word 'evil' has been leveled at non-Progressives by a member of the Left. In this case, the efforts to ensure that electoral votes are distributed in the manner intended by the framers of the Constitution is the crime. Leftists have long censored a major factor in the decision making of the framers. School textbooks note only the fact that the electors themselves were intended to be, due to their presumed education and experience, the ones who were knowledgeable enough to vote for the Chief Executive.
What they intentionally leave out is that the count and distribution of votes themselves were carefully designed to ensure that states or regions that had the bulk of the population would not be able to dominate the Presidential vote. By creating a college of voters that wold be distributed by a total of Representatives and Senators (Two from each states to counterbalance the political power of the states that had the most people), we were blessed with at least a fighting chance of avoiding elections that would be a simple battle for the largest or most densely populated states.
Assuming that they would be unable to abolish the Electoral College altogether the Left strongly desires that the electoral votes of all states be a winner-take-all event. By doing so, rural and less densely populated suburban regions would in most cases would be robbed of all influence in Presidential elections.
As an example, the following map shows how easily the Left would be able to win these elections if the national popular vote would either decide on Presidents or if the States changed to winner-take all systems.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/images/rcp%20electoral/2004_results_by_county..gif
This is what the writer in the top-linked article wants - lock up the Electoral College votes of many states by simply making the Presidential vote a mere issue of getting the urban vote plus bit more from some suburban regions. Rural voters be damned.
The writer also (Most certainly accidentally) forgets that Democrats have been involved in their own Gerrymandering:
http://rslc.com/_blog/RedMap/post/Democratic_Gerrymandering_/?page=2
-The Left likes to project their evil onto the opposition:
*http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2013/01/progressives-not-hiding-contempt-for.html
Friday, January 25, 2013
Catholic Hospital - Fetus Not a Person
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/24/fetuses-not-people-catholic-hospital-says-in-court-case/1863013/
Once again, I have to note that I am a Catholic and firmly believe in the teachings of the Church.
That does not mean that I will not call the Church or a Church-sponsored organization out when it is clearly in the wrong.
A Catholic hospital in Colorado, faced with a lawsuit in which the mother and two seven month-old fetuses died, has decided to hide behind the law and asserts that the babies must not be considered persons in the eyes of the court. No doubt caving in to the demands of their insurers and the lawyers, this hospital has shamelessly chosen to ape the position of the pro-abortion opposition in order to avoid being held liable.
"NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A Catholic hospital in Colorado has argued in court documents that it is not liable for the deaths of two 7-month-old fetuses because those fetuses are not people.
So far, courts have side with the hospital.
But that defense contradicts church teaching that human life is sacred from the moment of conception. At least one prominent abortion foe called the hospital's claims morally untenable.
The issue of whether a fetus is a person was raised in a lawsuit filed by Jeremy Stodghill, whose 31-year-old wife, Lori, died in 2006 at St. Thomas More Hospital in Canon City, Colo.
Lori Stodghill was 7 months pregnant with twins at the time. The suit claims the hospital failed to perform an emergency cesarean section to save the fetuses.
According to published reports, a brief filed by the hospital, owned by Englewood, Colo.-based Catholic Health Initiatives, said that the fetuses are not covered by state's Wrongful Death Act.
"Under Colorado law, a fetus is not a 'person' and plaintiff's claims for wrongful death must therefore be dismissed," the hospital argued......."
Once again, I have to note that I am a Catholic and firmly believe in the teachings of the Church.
That does not mean that I will not call the Church or a Church-sponsored organization out when it is clearly in the wrong.
A Catholic hospital in Colorado, faced with a lawsuit in which the mother and two seven month-old fetuses died, has decided to hide behind the law and asserts that the babies must not be considered persons in the eyes of the court. No doubt caving in to the demands of their insurers and the lawyers, this hospital has shamelessly chosen to ape the position of the pro-abortion opposition in order to avoid being held liable.
"NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A Catholic hospital in Colorado has argued in court documents that it is not liable for the deaths of two 7-month-old fetuses because those fetuses are not people.
So far, courts have side with the hospital.
But that defense contradicts church teaching that human life is sacred from the moment of conception. At least one prominent abortion foe called the hospital's claims morally untenable.
The issue of whether a fetus is a person was raised in a lawsuit filed by Jeremy Stodghill, whose 31-year-old wife, Lori, died in 2006 at St. Thomas More Hospital in Canon City, Colo.
Lori Stodghill was 7 months pregnant with twins at the time. The suit claims the hospital failed to perform an emergency cesarean section to save the fetuses.
According to published reports, a brief filed by the hospital, owned by Englewood, Colo.-based Catholic Health Initiatives, said that the fetuses are not covered by state's Wrongful Death Act.
"Under Colorado law, a fetus is not a 'person' and plaintiff's claims for wrongful death must therefore be dismissed," the hospital argued......."
Sad irony is commonplace today, and this case is no exception. Thomas More, the individual after whom the hospital is named, was martyred for refusing to swear that he would accept Henry VIII's usurpation of the supreme authority of the Church in England. He is a prime example of standing up for one's beliefs regardless of the consequences. He is described in his biography as "The King's Good Servant but God's First".
The hospital should change its name.
Although this is the cowardly stance of one hospital and does not appear to be the work of the local Diocese, this illustrates the continuing downfall that the lack of leadership in the Catholic Church in the US has caused. Even though it is not a governing body, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops had better its act together and condemn the hospital for this travesty.
People want leadership and truth from their Church, not week-kneed dodging of their responsibilities.
Let's see what the same body does concerning privately-owned firearms.
Although this is the cowardly stance of one hospital and does not appear to be the work of the local Diocese, this illustrates the continuing downfall that the lack of leadership in the Catholic Church in the US has caused. Even though it is not a governing body, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops had better its act together and condemn the hospital for this travesty.
People want leadership and truth from their Church, not week-kneed dodging of their responsibilities.
Let's see what the same body does concerning privately-owned firearms.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Refusal to Allow Smart Meter Cause for Arrest
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/01/24/woman-arrested-while-refusing-smart-meter-installation-on-her-property-tells-us-her-story/
This is one brave woman, People like this put many of us to shame for our failure to act. Appropriately her last name means 'steel' in German.
"Jennifer Stahl has been a strong advocate against the smart meter program in Naperville, Ill., for the last two years. The issue came to a head Wednesday afternoon when she was arrested while refusing to let the utility workers install the controversial device....
Stahl was at a friend’s house when she received the call from her husband that the utility workers had arrived. She was home within 15 minutes and saw they were at a neighbor’s house. Her neighbors were not home, but they had signs stating they did not permit the new meter to be installed.
Stahl said she waited on her porch for the workers to arrive at her house. When they did, she refused them access to her backyard through her locked gate. The police — including the police supervisor, a sergeant — were called. Stahl said the sergeant explained the workers had authorization to access the meter, but Stahl stood her ground saying she didn’t approve it. The sergeant continued to try and convince Stahl to comply and said if she didn’t, he’d arrest her.
“The city has always had and maintains the right to access our equipment, and today we were simply exercising that right,” City Manager Doug Kreiger told the Chicago Tribune, which reported Wednesday’s events.
The lock on Stahl’s fence was cut, and when Stahl wouldn’t step away from the meter, she was lead away by an officer, cuffed and waited for a marked squad car to arrive to take her to the department. When asked why she was being arrested, she was told it was for interfering with a police officer........"
This is one brave woman, People like this put many of us to shame for our failure to act. Appropriately her last name means 'steel' in German.
"Jennifer Stahl has been a strong advocate against the smart meter program in Naperville, Ill., for the last two years. The issue came to a head Wednesday afternoon when she was arrested while refusing to let the utility workers install the controversial device....
Stahl was at a friend’s house when she received the call from her husband that the utility workers had arrived. She was home within 15 minutes and saw they were at a neighbor’s house. Her neighbors were not home, but they had signs stating they did not permit the new meter to be installed.
Stahl said she waited on her porch for the workers to arrive at her house. When they did, she refused them access to her backyard through her locked gate. The police — including the police supervisor, a sergeant — were called. Stahl said the sergeant explained the workers had authorization to access the meter, but Stahl stood her ground saying she didn’t approve it. The sergeant continued to try and convince Stahl to comply and said if she didn’t, he’d arrest her.
“The city has always had and maintains the right to access our equipment, and today we were simply exercising that right,” City Manager Doug Kreiger told the Chicago Tribune, which reported Wednesday’s events.
The lock on Stahl’s fence was cut, and when Stahl wouldn’t step away from the meter, she was lead away by an officer, cuffed and waited for a marked squad car to arrive to take her to the department. When asked why she was being arrested, she was told it was for interfering with a police officer........"
Smart meters do little or nothing to help power companies know what hours are peak use times or those in which little electricity is consumed. If the companies were unable to figure this out before with the old meters, we would have seen brownouts throughout the year for decades. I won't go into detail on the meters but will simply note that these collect an enormous amount of data that can only be sued against us when "they" decide that it is time. These devices are, like the questions physicians now must ask about firearms in homes, serious threats to our privacy. The most likely consequence will be excise fees for those who use electricity for purposes that are not approved or considered necessary. That will probably include extra fees for my Christmas lights.
To uphold the fictional consensus of scientists (Yes, the one that bars honest ones), that we are warming the planet by CO2 emissions. The very gas that is released by forest fires caused by lightning, animals, volcanoes, etc, has been labeled as a pollutant that will be regulated by the State.
What makes this event even more frightening is that the police are allowing themselves to be drawn in to what clearly should be a civil action. The rights of the utility company to read and service the old meters were not questioned by Mrs. Stahl, therefore I can see no reason for the police to be making arrests. If the cops correctly ruled this to be a civil matter, they would not have ordered Mrs. Stahl to move away. Without such an order, she could not be arrested for failure to obey instructions of a law enforcement officer, obstructing administration of law, disturbing the peace, or whatever statute or local ordinance that was used to charge her.
I hope that Mrs, Srahl beats this charge in court. I also hope that police agencies across the nation take a stand and stay out of these matters. They are being monitored in their homes just as badly as we are. Without the moral support of our local police, the Left will have a much easier time establishing control over almost every aspect of our lives.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Panetta To Allow Women in Combat Units
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/23/panetta-opens-combat-roles-to-women/
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, acting ostensibly on the recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, left as his parting shot another Obama-inspired blow at the structure of our society. The one thing that must be remembered is that the Joint Chiefs no doubt only made whatever recommendation they were told to make by their nation-wrecking superiors. Not content with their pensions and book deals, these generals and admirals have sold out the organizations that made their careers possible in order to get commentator jobs thrown at them by CNN. The concept of civilian control of the military, albeit a necessary one, has been taken to the grossest of extremes by this administration more than once.
Women in all branches of the military soon will have unprecedented opportunities to serve on the front lines of the nation's wars.
Leon Panetta, in one of his last acts as President Obama's defense secretary, is preparing to announce the policy change, which would open hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando jobs after more than a decade at war, the Pentagon confirmed Wednesday...."
The Liberal elite continue to press their demands that women be allowed to serve in all Military Occupational Specialties (MOS) in the US military. The Army, being traditionally more inclined to be swayed by political and even social pressure, has taken far more steps in the direction of full integration than has the Marine Corps.
There seems to be no corner of the Western world that is not targeted for dilution. If the targeted group is comprised mostly or entirely of males, the attacks are nonstop. When the US Military faces a new offensive by Liberals that essentially demands that all restrictions are dropped, the question of whether or not females are inherently capably of shouldering the physical and psychological burdens of the Infantry Soldier/Marine is almost never included in the discussion. We hear that restrictions from Infantry assignments cause unfairly laid obstacles in the members career path, that women have successfully performed in combat situations in the past, etc.
When we fight, we are dealing with people who want to kill us. Training and physical conditioning, along with superior equipment, go a very long way to providing us with an advantage. We can not forget that the advantages from these are not without limit. At some point in the fight, which may be a period of extremely vicious and confusing violence ("The fog of war"), the time in which abject exhaustion has set in, or a combination of the two, the fighter must reach down deeply and tap into his basest of survival instincts. If the opponents are all men, then the opponents have an advantage at that point. Not only will they tend to have a greater collective will to destroy the enemy, they will also posses the physical resources from which they must draw to muster one or more necessary efforts.
I am a history fanatic. I obsess over reading historical accounts from all periods. I can tell you that, for example, I have immeasurable admiration for women who have engaged in combat such as Countess Matilda of Tuscany. I could waste my time by rattling off name after name but that would not do us any good. Yes, these women do exist, so the question has nothing to do with this. The main question is whether or not a woman has the abilities to carry tremendously heavy burdens on their shoulders for long periods of time and still be able to, weeks later, move from point A to point B with the speed necessary to keep up with the rest of the unit and thus engage the enemy from as safe and effective a vantage point as possible. The secondary question is if the female mind possesses the killer mentality that is needed to engage the enemy when each side is trying to destroy the other.
All in all, the male-only restriction is treated as if it is an artificial construct, one that has no basis in the inherent differences between men and women. We are supposed to believe that restricting infantry assignments to capable men (Not all men can do this either) is the same thing as prohibiting blacks from playing in the same leagues as whites in professional baseball or maintaining segregated military units or schools.
It is not even remotely the same thing.
Engaging in combat duties/situations for brief periods of time, especially when the vast majority of military personnel alongside you are men (Near 100%) is in no way comparable to performing these duties for weeks and months on end. The physical grind is incredibly demanding.
Marine Captain Katie Petronio has recently written an article on her positions on this subject. Her qualifications as an expert far exceed mine. She is the real deal as far as combat experience goes. She is clearly a physically and mentally tough professional Marine Officer whom I would want on my side in a fight. To add to that, I would not have a problem taking orders from a straight-shooter such as she. Although she restricts her arguments entirely to the physical demands of the work, (Which she concludes exceeds the long-term abilities of a woman, she does not treat the violent, killer mindset that is almost non-existent in the females mind but is so necessary to a infantry Soldier/Marine. She does discuss the danger of lowering standards in order to accommodate, and lessen attrition rates for, females in training courses. Her article is aptly titled-
"Get Over It! We Are Not All Created Equal".
Her article will appear after the following excerpts from previous posts.
-From the following posts from this site:
http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2011/09/australia-lifts-ban-on-women-soldiers.html
The societal current in the West is one of enforced silence on issues such as this. Those who dare raise their voices are met with mockery, outright hostility, or at best pursed lips and raised eyebrows. Anything that does not support the pretend-world that we have created is prohibited. We are effectively not allowed to make mention of the fact that women's and men’s bodies are appreciably different from each other. This applies to short-term bursts of strength as well and the ability to shoulder heavy burdens for long periods of time. It also includes standard infantry tasks like moving, wearing and employing increasingly heavy body armor, weaponry, ammunition, as well as manual labor such as digging and filling sand bags.
I have witnessed this topic being brought up on numerous occasions. This point will of course be dismissed as biased as currently in the US military women are still barred from serving in these unit, but the fact remains that men who have actually been in these units are not calling for women even to share the burden in the infantry. If anything, they would call for stronger restrictions on what men are allowed to be in the infantry. Barely a current or former infantryman exists who, weighed down by a machine gun, a tripod, water, ammunition, a base plate or tube for a mortar (Can't assume that all mortarmen are uninjured), optical equipment, radios, and more, did not have thoughts of dropping out of a formation due to exhaustion while simply moving the distance from Point A to Point B.
The reason that he did not was that his body has the ability to be pushed physically by his will to continue.
A person, even one who starts out in great physical shape, may have all the right intentions to push on, but if the body does not have the tools to do so, it will fail.
I served both in units that allowed females and those that did not. The women, although in good shape and spirits, simply did not posses the ability to perform this type of heavy manual labor that was required. The only people whom I have witnessed calling for such a move are those who have not been in that environment.
Today we define things from the outside. We decide things are what we would prefer they be.
An interesting note is that I have heard isolated support for allowances of this type from some civilian police officers. It is a known fact that females do indeed make fine law enforcement officers; especially since the days of needing the 6' 4" 220 lb Sheriff/Cop are long gone. Our tools, which include tasers, pepper spray, and vastly improved radio communications have eliminated much of the advantages of the big guys in this case.
Some cops who have never been in the military though, tend to heap much importance on their work tasks and thus equate their work more or less with that of infantry soldiers (This is particularly true with SWAT personnel). They move and communicate tactically, shoot military-type weapons, stay in better physical condition, etc. The similarities stop at that point. From there the infantryman picks up a long, extremely physically demanding grind of heavy and extended work that taxes every guy until he needs to call upon himself to continue, even if it is to avoid being ostracized by his peers for failing to keep up.
http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2012/05/female-soldiers-sue-for-combat.html
As societies become more safe and secure, one of the results is that women begin to demand to be allowed to everything that the boys can do. For most jobs, that works out well and fine. Few would hold that women cannot drive trucks, do tree cutting, roofing, sanitation removal, or any other civilian jobs.
Fighting, especially when it is done within the context of killing or destroying an enemy force's ability to destroy you, is an entirely different matter
When we begin to presume that the current level of security that we enjoy one that we have created as a result of years of technological and material superiority will continue forever, we paint ourselves into a dangerous corner.
Men's bodies are capable of shouldering much heavier burdens for long periods of time than are women. They have a much more aggressive, fighting-oriented mindset. This is of course partially due to environmental/cultural factors, but it is also a natural result of the male mind, which is formed by male hormones. When a man engages the enemy, he does it in a ruthless manner with the intention of killing him. This mindset is essentially foreign to that of a woman. The reason that men have borne the burden of fighting through the millennia has nothing to do with a “no girls allowed" mentality; the reason that women have not historically been fighters/soldiers is that they can not do the job in a manner that a guy can. Ancient societies needed soldiers that could wield clubs, swords, shields, armor, and other tools germane to those who will be either on a long campaign or sent to commit to a pitched battle. Any society that may have included women as part of its regular fighting force is no longer around. The reason for this is that any such force was annihilated in combat and therefore has been lost to history (For the record, although some ancient Iranic tribes did teach women to shoot arrows from horseback, the actual "Amazons" are an absolute myth).
An argument often employed in support of allowing women into combat roles is that we no longer have to fight with shield, sword and spear. The conclusion is that, since we now have so much heavy equipment and technology on which we can rely, brawn and killer instinct is no longer necessary.
Such a position leaves out a wealth of factors.
A fighting force needs people capable not only of being able to shoulder and fire a weapon, but also those who can carry, extra ammunition, body armor, communications gear, sufficient quantities of water, tripods for machine guns and base plates for mortars, etc., and still be able to relentlessly deliver aimed fire at their opponents for sustained periods of time.
Another factor not taken into account by the "girls are as good as boys" mentality is that nothing guarantees that any fighting force will always be able to operate in the manner in which they expected the operation to proceed. Sure, we have tanks, armored personnel; carriers, etc, but what happens of an enemy force of substantial size is able to approach one's position and attack at close quarters? When something like this occurs, being able to shoot a weapon like it is done at a rifle range or other training conditions is only a small part of what is now needed. The enemy must be repelled by vicious and terribly violent actions that are both physically and mentally exhausting. Not only must one be able to shoot, move and communicate while carrying his rifle, he may also have to pick up a machine gun, move it to another position, set it up, and have it delivering fire in a matter of seconds. We cannot ignore the possibility that the battle will turn into a matter of who can kill whom when ammunition is not longer available. At that point, swinging rifles and the utilization bayonets, knives, entrenching tools, and axes/tomahawks are what will make the difference.
Men are also much less likely to falter on a psychological level in combat. No one claims that men never suffer form Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The difference is that a man's mind is programmed to override the otherwise overwhelming fear during a high-stress situation. It is far more likely that a man, when faced with the powerful fear of being killed, will immediately be able to turn the switch and convert that fear into either a resolve to kill as many of the enemy as possible or to descend into an outright rage. A related factor is that that men are much more likely to so fear the loss of respect from their peers that would result from allowing fear to impair the ability to "keep up" in a fight that one, who would otherwise run away, will stand and fight with a fury to avoid having to be ashamed when faced with his teammates after a battle.
Even the normally mundane task of staffing a guard post at a checkpoint can turn into a maelstrom of hectic and savage violence in a second. That checkpoint is in place for a reason; it is needed both to prevent the entrance of an enemy and to serve as an observation post from with communications can be made so that reaction forces can be deployed in the event of an attack. If we allow women in combat roles, then we must allow that there will come a time when a checkpoint with be staffed entirely or almost entirely by females. In an event such as this, we are not looking at an infantry company in which one or two female soldiers are not going to make an appreciable difference in the fighting strength if the unit. At this point, those who staff the checkpoint are the fighting unit, and there is little between them and the inner perimeter of a military unit. That position must be defended with a ferocity, the nature of which is almost unimaginable. Are to assume that a force comprised of, say, experienced Taliban fighters, will be held off by females for a sufficient amount of time to deploy a reaction force to the threatened area?
The problem that we face is one inherent in political correctness. We are supposed to be so afraid of the social stigma of being branded a sexist that we bite our tongues when topics such as this arise.
Those in decision and policy-making positions at the Pentagon are going to have to be honest with themselves and the American public. War fighting, and the preparation for the same, is not a forum into which we can bring the “everyone gets a trophy” idea. If female soldiers want to be foolish enough to pretend that they are being unfairly discriminated against, then they need to be reminded do the facts. A Military is formed with the purpose of being able to destroy wither the entire enemy force or severely impair its ability to damage ours. It is not a place to make people feel good or “empowered”.
As an aside, we must also note that, is females are allowed in combat roles, there will be many more female prisoners of war. It is sickening that we are so afraid of hurting feelings that we would even consider subjecting our soldiers to, not torture and rape, but mob-rape. We cannot allow the hubris of some women who affect to be unconcerned about such a possibility to influence our decisions
Captain Petronio's article:
Bolding is added.
http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/article/get-over-it-we-are-not-all-created-equal
"The Marine Corps Times recently published a handful of articles in regard to opening Infantry Officer Course (IOC) to females and the possibility of integrating women into the infantry community. In mid-April the Commandant directed the “integration” of the first wave of female officers into IOC this summer following completion of The Basic School (TBS). This action may or may not pave the way for female Marines to serve in the infantry as the results remain to be seen. However, before the Marine Corps moves forward with this concept, should we not ask the hard questions and gain opinions of combat-experienced Marines (male and female alike) as to the purpose, the impact, and the gains from such a move? As a combat-experienced Marine officer, and a female, I am here to tell you that we are not all created equal, and attempting to place females in the infantry will not improve the Marine Corps as the Nation’s force-in-readiness or improve our national security.
As a company grade 1302 combat engineer officer with 5 years of active service and two combat deployments, one to Iraq and the other to Afghanistan, I was able to participate in and lead numerous combat operations. In Iraq as the II MEF Director, Lioness Program, I served as a subject matter expert for II MEF, assisting regimental and battalion commanders on ways to integrate female Marines into combat operations. I primarily focused on expanding the mission of the Lioness Program from searching females to engaging local nationals and information gathering, broadening the ways females were being used in a wide variety of combat operations from census patrols to raids. In Afghanistan I deployed as a 1302 and led a combat engineer platoon in direct support of Regimental Combat Team 8, specifically operating out of the Upper Sangin Valley. My platoon operated for months at a time, constructing patrol bases (PBs) in support of 3d Battalion, 5th Marines; 1st Battalion, 5th Marines; 2d Reconnaissance Battalion; and 3d Battalion, 4th Marines. This combat experience, in particular, compelled me to raise concern over the direction and overall reasoning behind opening the 03XX field.
Who is driving this agenda? I am not personally hearing female Marines, enlisted or officer, pounding on the doors of Congress claiming that their inability to serve in the infantry violates their right to equality. Shockingly, this isn’t even a congressional agenda. This issue is being pushed by several groups, one of which is a small committee of civilians appointed by the Secretary of Defense called the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Service (DACOWITS). Their mission is to advise the Department of Defense (DoD) on recommendations, as well as matters of policy, pertaining to the well-being of women in the Armed Services from recruiting to employment. Members are selected based on their prior military experience or experience with women’s workforce issues. I certainly applaud and appreciate DACOWITS’ mission; however, as it pertains to the issue of women in the infantry, it’s very surprising to see that none of the committee members are on active duty or have any recent combat or relevant operational experience relating to the issue they are attempting to change. I say this because, at the end of the day, it’s the active duty servicemember who will ultimately deal with the results of their initiatives, not those on the outside looking in. As of now, the Marine Corps hasn’t been directed to integrate, but perhaps the Corps is anticipating the inevitable—DoD pressuring the Corps to comply with DACOWITS’ agenda as the Army has already “rogered up” to full integration. Regardless of what the Army decides to do, it’s critical to emphasize that we are not the Army; our operational speed and tempo, along with our overall mission as the Nation’s amphibious force-in-readiness, are fundamentally different than that of our sister Service. By no means is this distinction intended as disrespectful to our incredible Army. My main point is simply to state that the Marine Corps and the Army are different; even if the Army ultimately does fully integrate all military occupational fields, that doesn’t mean the Corps should follow suit.
I understand that there are female servicemembers who have proven themselves to be physically, mentally, and morally capable of leading and executing combat-type operations; as a result, some of these Marines may feel qualified for the chance of taking on the role of 0302. In the end, my main concern is not whether women are capable of conducting combat operations, as we have already proven that we can hold our own in some very difficult combat situations; instead, my main concern is a question of longevity. Can women endure the physical and physiological rigors of sustained combat operations, and are we willing to accept the attrition and medical issues that go along with integration?
As a young lieutenant, I fit the mold of a female who would have had a shot at completing IOC, and I am sure there was a time in my life where I would have volunteered to be an infantryman. I was a star ice hockey player at Bowdoin College, a small elite college in Maine, with a major in government and law. At 5 feet 3 inches I was squatting 200 pounds and benching 145 pounds when I graduated in 2007. I completed Officer Candidates School (OCS) ranked 4 of 52 candidates, graduated 48 of 261 from TBS, and finished second at MOS school. I also repeatedly scored far above average in all female-based physical fitness tests (for example, earning a 292 out of 300 on the Marine physical fitness test). Five years later, I am physically not the woman I once was and my views have greatly changed on the possibility of women having successful long careers while serving in the infantry. I can say from firsthand experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, and not just emotion, that we haven’t even begun to analyze and comprehend the gender-specific medical issues and overall physical toll continuous combat operations will have on females.
I was a motivated, resilient second lieutenant when I deployed to Iraq for 10 months, traveling across the Marine area of operations (AO) and participating in numerous combat operations. Yet, due to the excessive amount of time I spent in full combat load, I was diagnosed with a severe case of restless leg syndrome. My spine had compressed on nerves in my lower back causing neuropathy which compounded the symptoms of restless leg syndrome. While this injury has certainly not been enjoyable, Iraq was a pleasant experience compared to the experiences I endured during my deployment to Afghanistan. At the beginning of my tour in Helmand Province, I was physically capable of conducting combat operations for weeks at a time, remaining in my gear for days if necessary and averaging 16-hour days of engineering operations in the heart of Sangin, one of the most kinetic and challenging AOs in the country. There were numerous occasions where I was sent to a grid coordinate and told to build a PB [Patrol Base] from the ground up, serving not only as the mission commander but also the base commander until the occupants (infantry units) arrived 5 days later. In most of these situations, I had a sergeant as my assistant commander, and the remainder of my platoon consisted of young, motivated NCOs.[Non-Commissioned Officers (Corporals and Sergeants)] I was the senior Marine making the final decisions on construction concerns, along with 24-hour base defense and leading 30 Marines at any given time. The physical strain of enduring combat operations and the stress of being responsible for the lives and well-being of such a young group in an extremely kinetic environment were compounded by lack of sleep, which ultimately took a physical toll on my body that I couldn’t have foreseen.
By the fifth month into the deployment, I had muscle atrophy [This appears to be opposite of atrophy from under-use] in my thighs that was causing me to constantly trip and my legs to buckle with the slightest grade change. My agility during firefights and mobility on and off vehicles and perimeter walls was seriously hindering my response time and overall capability. It was evident that stress and muscular deterioration was affecting everyone regardless of gender; however, the rate of my deterioration was noticeably faster than that of male Marines and further compounded by gender-specific medical conditions. At the end of the 7-month deployment, and the construction of 18 PBs later, I had lost 17 pounds and was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (which personally resulted in infertility, but is not a genetic trend in my family), which was brought on by the chemical and physical changes endured during deployment. Regardless of my deteriorating physical stature, I was extremely successful during both of my combat tours, serving beside my infantry brethren and gaining the respect of every unit I supported. Regardless, I can say with 100 percent assurance that despite my accomplishments, there is no way I could endure the physical demands of the infantrymen whom I worked beside as their combat load and constant deployment cycle would leave me facing medical separation long before the option of retirement. I understand that everyone is affected differently; however, I am confident that should the Marine Corps attempt to fully integrate women into the infantry, we as an institution are going to experience a colossal increase in crippling and career-ending medical conditions for females.
There is a drastic shortage of historical data on female attrition or medical ailments of women who have executed sustained combat operations. This said, we need only to review the statistics from our entry-level schools to realize that there is a significant difference in the physical longevity between male and female Marines. At OCS the attrition rate for female candidates in 2011 was historically low at 40 percent, while the male candidates attrite at a much lower rate of 16 percent. Of candidates who were dropped from training because they were injured or not physically qualified, females were breaking at a much higher rate than males, 14 percent versus 4 percent. The same trends were seen at TBS in 2011; the attrition rate for females was 13 percent versus 5 percent for males, and 5 percent of females were found not physically qualified compared with 1 percent of males. Further, both of these training venues have physical fitness standards that are easier for females; at IOC there is one standard regardless of gender. The attrition rate for males attending IOC in 2011 was 17 percent. Should female Marines ultimately attend IOC, we can expect significantly higher attrition rates and long-term injuries for women.
There have been many working groups and formal discussions recently addressing what changes would be necessary to the current IOC period of instruction in order to accommodate both genders without producing an underdeveloped or incapable infantry officer. Not once was the word “lower” used, but let’s be honest, “modifying” a standard so that less physically or mentally capable individuals (male or female) can complete a task is called “lowering the standard”! The bottom line is that the enemy doesn’t discriminate, rounds will not slow down, and combat loads don’t get any lighter, regardless of gender or capability. Even more so, the burden of command does not diminish for a male or female; a leader must gain the respect and trust of his/her Marines in combat. Not being able to physically execute to the standards already established at IOC, which have been battle tested and proven, will produce a slower operational speed and tempo resulting in increased time of exposure to enemy forces and a higher risk of combat injury or death. For this reason alone, I would ask everyone to step back and ask themselves, does this integration solely benefit the individual or the Marine Corps as a whole, as every leader’s focus should be on the needs of the institution and the Nation, not the individual?
Which leads one to really wonder, what is the benefit of this potential change? The Marine Corps is not in a shortage of willing and capable young male second lieutenants who would gladly take on the role of infantry officers. In fact we have men fighting to be assigned to the coveted position of 0302. In 2011, 30 percent of graduating TBS lieutenants listed infantry in their top three requested MOSs. Of those 30 percent, only 47 percent were given the MOS. On the other hand, perhaps this integration is an effort to remove the glass ceiling that some observers feel exists for women when it comes to promotions to general officer ranks. Opening combat arms MOSs, particularly the infantry, such observers argue, allows women to gain the necessary exposure of leading Marines in combat, which will then arguably increase the chances for female Marines serving in strategic leadership assignments. As stated above, I have full faith that female Marines can successfully serve in just about every MOS aside from the infantry. Even if a female can meet the short-term physical, mental, and moral leadership requirements of an infantry officer, by the time that she is eligible to serve in a strategic leadership position, at the 20-year mark or beyond, there is a miniscule probability that she’ll be physically capable of serving at all. Again, it becomes a question of longevity.
Despite my personal opinion regarding the incorporation of females into the infantry community, I am not blind to the fact that females play a key role in countering the gender and cultural barriers we are facing at war, and we do have a place in combat operations. As such, a potential change that I do recommend considering strongly for female Marine officers is to designate a new secondary MOS (0305) for a Marine serving as female engagement team (FET) officer in charge (OIC). 0305s would be employed in the same way we employ drill instructors, as we do not need an enduring FET entity but an existing capability able to stand up based on operational requirements. Legitimizing a program that is already operational in the Corps would greatly benefit both the units utilizing FETs and the women who serve as FET OICs. Unfortunately, FET OICs today are not properly screened and trained for this mission. I propose that those being considered for FET OIC be prescreened and trained through a modified IOC with an appropriately adjusted physical expectation. FET OICs need to better understand the infantry culture and mindset and work with their 0302 brethren to incorporate FET assistance during specific phases of operations to properly prepare them to serve as the subject matter experts to a regimental- or battalion-level infantry commander. Through joint OIC training, both 0302s and FET OICs can start to learn how to integrate capabilities and accomplish their mission individually and collectively. This, in my mind, is a much more viable, cost-effective solution, with high reward for the Marine Corps and the Nation, and it will also directly improve the capabilities of FET OICs.
Finally, what are the Marine Corps standards, particularly physical fitness standards, based on—performance and capability or equality? We abide by numerous discriminators, such as height and weight standards. As multiple Marine Corps Gazette articles have highlighted, Marines who can run first-class physical fitness tests and who have superior MOS proficiency are separated from the Service if they do not meet the Marine Corps’ height and weight standards. Further, tall Marines are restricted from flying specific platforms, and color blind Marines are faced with similar restrictions. We recognize differences in mental capabilities of Marines when we administer the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery and use the results to eliminate/open specific fields. These standards are designed to ensure safety, quality, and the opportunity to be placed in a field in which one can sustain and succeed.
Which once again leads me, as a ground combat-experienced female Marine Corps officer, to ask, what are we trying to accomplish by attempting to fully integrate women into the infantry? For those who dictate policy, changing the current restrictions associated with women in the infantry may not seem significant to the way the Marine Corps operates. I vehemently disagree; this potential change will rock the foundation of our Corps for the worse and will weaken what has been since 1775 the world’s most lethal fighting force. In the end, for DACOWITS and any other individual or organization looking to increase opportunities for female Marines, I applaud your efforts and say thank you. However, for the long-term health of our female Marines, the Marine Corps, and U.S. national security, steer clear of the Marine infantry community when calling for more opportunities for females. Let’s embrace our differences to further hone in on the Corps’ success instead of dismantling who we are to achieve a political agenda. Regardless of the outcome, we will be “Semper Fidelis” and remain focused on our mission to protect and defend the United States of America."
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, acting ostensibly on the recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, left as his parting shot another Obama-inspired blow at the structure of our society. The one thing that must be remembered is that the Joint Chiefs no doubt only made whatever recommendation they were told to make by their nation-wrecking superiors. Not content with their pensions and book deals, these generals and admirals have sold out the organizations that made their careers possible in order to get commentator jobs thrown at them by CNN. The concept of civilian control of the military, albeit a necessary one, has been taken to the grossest of extremes by this administration more than once.
Women in all branches of the military soon will have unprecedented opportunities to serve on the front lines of the nation's wars.
Leon Panetta, in one of his last acts as President Obama's defense secretary, is preparing to announce the policy change, which would open hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando jobs after more than a decade at war, the Pentagon confirmed Wednesday...."
The article describes this event as "groundbreaking". Yes, keep breaking ground until all that is left is a torn-up landscape.
The following is a previous post on this very subject. The last one is from a article written by a female Marine Capt. on her experiences with working long term in a combat environment.
There seems to be no corner of the Western world that is not targeted for dilution. If the targeted group is comprised mostly or entirely of males, the attacks are nonstop. When the US Military faces a new offensive by Liberals that essentially demands that all restrictions are dropped, the question of whether or not females are inherently capably of shouldering the physical and psychological burdens of the Infantry Soldier/Marine is almost never included in the discussion. We hear that restrictions from Infantry assignments cause unfairly laid obstacles in the members career path, that women have successfully performed in combat situations in the past, etc.
When we fight, we are dealing with people who want to kill us. Training and physical conditioning, along with superior equipment, go a very long way to providing us with an advantage. We can not forget that the advantages from these are not without limit. At some point in the fight, which may be a period of extremely vicious and confusing violence ("The fog of war"), the time in which abject exhaustion has set in, or a combination of the two, the fighter must reach down deeply and tap into his basest of survival instincts. If the opponents are all men, then the opponents have an advantage at that point. Not only will they tend to have a greater collective will to destroy the enemy, they will also posses the physical resources from which they must draw to muster one or more necessary efforts.
I am a history fanatic. I obsess over reading historical accounts from all periods. I can tell you that, for example, I have immeasurable admiration for women who have engaged in combat such as Countess Matilda of Tuscany. I could waste my time by rattling off name after name but that would not do us any good. Yes, these women do exist, so the question has nothing to do with this. The main question is whether or not a woman has the abilities to carry tremendously heavy burdens on their shoulders for long periods of time and still be able to, weeks later, move from point A to point B with the speed necessary to keep up with the rest of the unit and thus engage the enemy from as safe and effective a vantage point as possible. The secondary question is if the female mind possesses the killer mentality that is needed to engage the enemy when each side is trying to destroy the other.
All in all, the male-only restriction is treated as if it is an artificial construct, one that has no basis in the inherent differences between men and women. We are supposed to believe that restricting infantry assignments to capable men (Not all men can do this either) is the same thing as prohibiting blacks from playing in the same leagues as whites in professional baseball or maintaining segregated military units or schools.
It is not even remotely the same thing.
Engaging in combat duties/situations for brief periods of time, especially when the vast majority of military personnel alongside you are men (Near 100%) is in no way comparable to performing these duties for weeks and months on end. The physical grind is incredibly demanding.
Marine Captain Katie Petronio has recently written an article on her positions on this subject. Her qualifications as an expert far exceed mine. She is the real deal as far as combat experience goes. She is clearly a physically and mentally tough professional Marine Officer whom I would want on my side in a fight. To add to that, I would not have a problem taking orders from a straight-shooter such as she. Although she restricts her arguments entirely to the physical demands of the work, (Which she concludes exceeds the long-term abilities of a woman, she does not treat the violent, killer mindset that is almost non-existent in the females mind but is so necessary to a infantry Soldier/Marine. She does discuss the danger of lowering standards in order to accommodate, and lessen attrition rates for, females in training courses. Her article is aptly titled-
"Get Over It! We Are Not All Created Equal".
Her article will appear after the following excerpts from previous posts.
-From the following posts from this site:
http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2011/09/australia-lifts-ban-on-women-soldiers.html
The societal current in the West is one of enforced silence on issues such as this. Those who dare raise their voices are met with mockery, outright hostility, or at best pursed lips and raised eyebrows. Anything that does not support the pretend-world that we have created is prohibited. We are effectively not allowed to make mention of the fact that women's and men’s bodies are appreciably different from each other. This applies to short-term bursts of strength as well and the ability to shoulder heavy burdens for long periods of time. It also includes standard infantry tasks like moving, wearing and employing increasingly heavy body armor, weaponry, ammunition, as well as manual labor such as digging and filling sand bags.
I have witnessed this topic being brought up on numerous occasions. This point will of course be dismissed as biased as currently in the US military women are still barred from serving in these unit, but the fact remains that men who have actually been in these units are not calling for women even to share the burden in the infantry. If anything, they would call for stronger restrictions on what men are allowed to be in the infantry. Barely a current or former infantryman exists who, weighed down by a machine gun, a tripod, water, ammunition, a base plate or tube for a mortar (Can't assume that all mortarmen are uninjured), optical equipment, radios, and more, did not have thoughts of dropping out of a formation due to exhaustion while simply moving the distance from Point A to Point B.
The reason that he did not was that his body has the ability to be pushed physically by his will to continue.
A person, even one who starts out in great physical shape, may have all the right intentions to push on, but if the body does not have the tools to do so, it will fail.
I served both in units that allowed females and those that did not. The women, although in good shape and spirits, simply did not posses the ability to perform this type of heavy manual labor that was required. The only people whom I have witnessed calling for such a move are those who have not been in that environment.
Today we define things from the outside. We decide things are what we would prefer they be.
An interesting note is that I have heard isolated support for allowances of this type from some civilian police officers. It is a known fact that females do indeed make fine law enforcement officers; especially since the days of needing the 6' 4" 220 lb Sheriff/Cop are long gone. Our tools, which include tasers, pepper spray, and vastly improved radio communications have eliminated much of the advantages of the big guys in this case.
Some cops who have never been in the military though, tend to heap much importance on their work tasks and thus equate their work more or less with that of infantry soldiers (This is particularly true with SWAT personnel). They move and communicate tactically, shoot military-type weapons, stay in better physical condition, etc. The similarities stop at that point. From there the infantryman picks up a long, extremely physically demanding grind of heavy and extended work that taxes every guy until he needs to call upon himself to continue, even if it is to avoid being ostracized by his peers for failing to keep up.
http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2012/05/female-soldiers-sue-for-combat.html
As societies become more safe and secure, one of the results is that women begin to demand to be allowed to everything that the boys can do. For most jobs, that works out well and fine. Few would hold that women cannot drive trucks, do tree cutting, roofing, sanitation removal, or any other civilian jobs.
Fighting, especially when it is done within the context of killing or destroying an enemy force's ability to destroy you, is an entirely different matter
When we begin to presume that the current level of security that we enjoy one that we have created as a result of years of technological and material superiority will continue forever, we paint ourselves into a dangerous corner.
Men's bodies are capable of shouldering much heavier burdens for long periods of time than are women. They have a much more aggressive, fighting-oriented mindset. This is of course partially due to environmental/cultural factors, but it is also a natural result of the male mind, which is formed by male hormones. When a man engages the enemy, he does it in a ruthless manner with the intention of killing him. This mindset is essentially foreign to that of a woman. The reason that men have borne the burden of fighting through the millennia has nothing to do with a “no girls allowed" mentality; the reason that women have not historically been fighters/soldiers is that they can not do the job in a manner that a guy can. Ancient societies needed soldiers that could wield clubs, swords, shields, armor, and other tools germane to those who will be either on a long campaign or sent to commit to a pitched battle. Any society that may have included women as part of its regular fighting force is no longer around. The reason for this is that any such force was annihilated in combat and therefore has been lost to history (For the record, although some ancient Iranic tribes did teach women to shoot arrows from horseback, the actual "Amazons" are an absolute myth).
An argument often employed in support of allowing women into combat roles is that we no longer have to fight with shield, sword and spear. The conclusion is that, since we now have so much heavy equipment and technology on which we can rely, brawn and killer instinct is no longer necessary.
Such a position leaves out a wealth of factors.
A fighting force needs people capable not only of being able to shoulder and fire a weapon, but also those who can carry, extra ammunition, body armor, communications gear, sufficient quantities of water, tripods for machine guns and base plates for mortars, etc., and still be able to relentlessly deliver aimed fire at their opponents for sustained periods of time.
Another factor not taken into account by the "girls are as good as boys" mentality is that nothing guarantees that any fighting force will always be able to operate in the manner in which they expected the operation to proceed. Sure, we have tanks, armored personnel; carriers, etc, but what happens of an enemy force of substantial size is able to approach one's position and attack at close quarters? When something like this occurs, being able to shoot a weapon like it is done at a rifle range or other training conditions is only a small part of what is now needed. The enemy must be repelled by vicious and terribly violent actions that are both physically and mentally exhausting. Not only must one be able to shoot, move and communicate while carrying his rifle, he may also have to pick up a machine gun, move it to another position, set it up, and have it delivering fire in a matter of seconds. We cannot ignore the possibility that the battle will turn into a matter of who can kill whom when ammunition is not longer available. At that point, swinging rifles and the utilization bayonets, knives, entrenching tools, and axes/tomahawks are what will make the difference.
Men are also much less likely to falter on a psychological level in combat. No one claims that men never suffer form Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The difference is that a man's mind is programmed to override the otherwise overwhelming fear during a high-stress situation. It is far more likely that a man, when faced with the powerful fear of being killed, will immediately be able to turn the switch and convert that fear into either a resolve to kill as many of the enemy as possible or to descend into an outright rage. A related factor is that that men are much more likely to so fear the loss of respect from their peers that would result from allowing fear to impair the ability to "keep up" in a fight that one, who would otherwise run away, will stand and fight with a fury to avoid having to be ashamed when faced with his teammates after a battle.
Even the normally mundane task of staffing a guard post at a checkpoint can turn into a maelstrom of hectic and savage violence in a second. That checkpoint is in place for a reason; it is needed both to prevent the entrance of an enemy and to serve as an observation post from with communications can be made so that reaction forces can be deployed in the event of an attack. If we allow women in combat roles, then we must allow that there will come a time when a checkpoint with be staffed entirely or almost entirely by females. In an event such as this, we are not looking at an infantry company in which one or two female soldiers are not going to make an appreciable difference in the fighting strength if the unit. At this point, those who staff the checkpoint are the fighting unit, and there is little between them and the inner perimeter of a military unit. That position must be defended with a ferocity, the nature of which is almost unimaginable. Are to assume that a force comprised of, say, experienced Taliban fighters, will be held off by females for a sufficient amount of time to deploy a reaction force to the threatened area?
The problem that we face is one inherent in political correctness. We are supposed to be so afraid of the social stigma of being branded a sexist that we bite our tongues when topics such as this arise.
Those in decision and policy-making positions at the Pentagon are going to have to be honest with themselves and the American public. War fighting, and the preparation for the same, is not a forum into which we can bring the “everyone gets a trophy” idea. If female soldiers want to be foolish enough to pretend that they are being unfairly discriminated against, then they need to be reminded do the facts. A Military is formed with the purpose of being able to destroy wither the entire enemy force or severely impair its ability to damage ours. It is not a place to make people feel good or “empowered”.
As an aside, we must also note that, is females are allowed in combat roles, there will be many more female prisoners of war. It is sickening that we are so afraid of hurting feelings that we would even consider subjecting our soldiers to, not torture and rape, but mob-rape. We cannot allow the hubris of some women who affect to be unconcerned about such a possibility to influence our decisions
Captain Petronio's article:
Bolding is added.
http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/article/get-over-it-we-are-not-all-created-equal
"The Marine Corps Times recently published a handful of articles in regard to opening Infantry Officer Course (IOC) to females and the possibility of integrating women into the infantry community. In mid-April the Commandant directed the “integration” of the first wave of female officers into IOC this summer following completion of The Basic School (TBS). This action may or may not pave the way for female Marines to serve in the infantry as the results remain to be seen. However, before the Marine Corps moves forward with this concept, should we not ask the hard questions and gain opinions of combat-experienced Marines (male and female alike) as to the purpose, the impact, and the gains from such a move? As a combat-experienced Marine officer, and a female, I am here to tell you that we are not all created equal, and attempting to place females in the infantry will not improve the Marine Corps as the Nation’s force-in-readiness or improve our national security.
As a company grade 1302 combat engineer officer with 5 years of active service and two combat deployments, one to Iraq and the other to Afghanistan, I was able to participate in and lead numerous combat operations. In Iraq as the II MEF Director, Lioness Program, I served as a subject matter expert for II MEF, assisting regimental and battalion commanders on ways to integrate female Marines into combat operations. I primarily focused on expanding the mission of the Lioness Program from searching females to engaging local nationals and information gathering, broadening the ways females were being used in a wide variety of combat operations from census patrols to raids. In Afghanistan I deployed as a 1302 and led a combat engineer platoon in direct support of Regimental Combat Team 8, specifically operating out of the Upper Sangin Valley. My platoon operated for months at a time, constructing patrol bases (PBs) in support of 3d Battalion, 5th Marines; 1st Battalion, 5th Marines; 2d Reconnaissance Battalion; and 3d Battalion, 4th Marines. This combat experience, in particular, compelled me to raise concern over the direction and overall reasoning behind opening the 03XX field.
Who is driving this agenda? I am not personally hearing female Marines, enlisted or officer, pounding on the doors of Congress claiming that their inability to serve in the infantry violates their right to equality. Shockingly, this isn’t even a congressional agenda. This issue is being pushed by several groups, one of which is a small committee of civilians appointed by the Secretary of Defense called the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Service (DACOWITS). Their mission is to advise the Department of Defense (DoD) on recommendations, as well as matters of policy, pertaining to the well-being of women in the Armed Services from recruiting to employment. Members are selected based on their prior military experience or experience with women’s workforce issues. I certainly applaud and appreciate DACOWITS’ mission; however, as it pertains to the issue of women in the infantry, it’s very surprising to see that none of the committee members are on active duty or have any recent combat or relevant operational experience relating to the issue they are attempting to change. I say this because, at the end of the day, it’s the active duty servicemember who will ultimately deal with the results of their initiatives, not those on the outside looking in. As of now, the Marine Corps hasn’t been directed to integrate, but perhaps the Corps is anticipating the inevitable—DoD pressuring the Corps to comply with DACOWITS’ agenda as the Army has already “rogered up” to full integration. Regardless of what the Army decides to do, it’s critical to emphasize that we are not the Army; our operational speed and tempo, along with our overall mission as the Nation’s amphibious force-in-readiness, are fundamentally different than that of our sister Service. By no means is this distinction intended as disrespectful to our incredible Army. My main point is simply to state that the Marine Corps and the Army are different; even if the Army ultimately does fully integrate all military occupational fields, that doesn’t mean the Corps should follow suit.
I understand that there are female servicemembers who have proven themselves to be physically, mentally, and morally capable of leading and executing combat-type operations; as a result, some of these Marines may feel qualified for the chance of taking on the role of 0302. In the end, my main concern is not whether women are capable of conducting combat operations, as we have already proven that we can hold our own in some very difficult combat situations; instead, my main concern is a question of longevity. Can women endure the physical and physiological rigors of sustained combat operations, and are we willing to accept the attrition and medical issues that go along with integration?
As a young lieutenant, I fit the mold of a female who would have had a shot at completing IOC, and I am sure there was a time in my life where I would have volunteered to be an infantryman. I was a star ice hockey player at Bowdoin College, a small elite college in Maine, with a major in government and law. At 5 feet 3 inches I was squatting 200 pounds and benching 145 pounds when I graduated in 2007. I completed Officer Candidates School (OCS) ranked 4 of 52 candidates, graduated 48 of 261 from TBS, and finished second at MOS school. I also repeatedly scored far above average in all female-based physical fitness tests (for example, earning a 292 out of 300 on the Marine physical fitness test). Five years later, I am physically not the woman I once was and my views have greatly changed on the possibility of women having successful long careers while serving in the infantry. I can say from firsthand experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, and not just emotion, that we haven’t even begun to analyze and comprehend the gender-specific medical issues and overall physical toll continuous combat operations will have on females.
I was a motivated, resilient second lieutenant when I deployed to Iraq for 10 months, traveling across the Marine area of operations (AO) and participating in numerous combat operations. Yet, due to the excessive amount of time I spent in full combat load, I was diagnosed with a severe case of restless leg syndrome. My spine had compressed on nerves in my lower back causing neuropathy which compounded the symptoms of restless leg syndrome. While this injury has certainly not been enjoyable, Iraq was a pleasant experience compared to the experiences I endured during my deployment to Afghanistan. At the beginning of my tour in Helmand Province, I was physically capable of conducting combat operations for weeks at a time, remaining in my gear for days if necessary and averaging 16-hour days of engineering operations in the heart of Sangin, one of the most kinetic and challenging AOs in the country. There were numerous occasions where I was sent to a grid coordinate and told to build a PB [Patrol Base] from the ground up, serving not only as the mission commander but also the base commander until the occupants (infantry units) arrived 5 days later. In most of these situations, I had a sergeant as my assistant commander, and the remainder of my platoon consisted of young, motivated NCOs.[Non-Commissioned Officers (Corporals and Sergeants)] I was the senior Marine making the final decisions on construction concerns, along with 24-hour base defense and leading 30 Marines at any given time. The physical strain of enduring combat operations and the stress of being responsible for the lives and well-being of such a young group in an extremely kinetic environment were compounded by lack of sleep, which ultimately took a physical toll on my body that I couldn’t have foreseen.
By the fifth month into the deployment, I had muscle atrophy [This appears to be opposite of atrophy from under-use] in my thighs that was causing me to constantly trip and my legs to buckle with the slightest grade change. My agility during firefights and mobility on and off vehicles and perimeter walls was seriously hindering my response time and overall capability. It was evident that stress and muscular deterioration was affecting everyone regardless of gender; however, the rate of my deterioration was noticeably faster than that of male Marines and further compounded by gender-specific medical conditions. At the end of the 7-month deployment, and the construction of 18 PBs later, I had lost 17 pounds and was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (which personally resulted in infertility, but is not a genetic trend in my family), which was brought on by the chemical and physical changes endured during deployment. Regardless of my deteriorating physical stature, I was extremely successful during both of my combat tours, serving beside my infantry brethren and gaining the respect of every unit I supported. Regardless, I can say with 100 percent assurance that despite my accomplishments, there is no way I could endure the physical demands of the infantrymen whom I worked beside as their combat load and constant deployment cycle would leave me facing medical separation long before the option of retirement. I understand that everyone is affected differently; however, I am confident that should the Marine Corps attempt to fully integrate women into the infantry, we as an institution are going to experience a colossal increase in crippling and career-ending medical conditions for females.
There is a drastic shortage of historical data on female attrition or medical ailments of women who have executed sustained combat operations. This said, we need only to review the statistics from our entry-level schools to realize that there is a significant difference in the physical longevity between male and female Marines. At OCS the attrition rate for female candidates in 2011 was historically low at 40 percent, while the male candidates attrite at a much lower rate of 16 percent. Of candidates who were dropped from training because they were injured or not physically qualified, females were breaking at a much higher rate than males, 14 percent versus 4 percent. The same trends were seen at TBS in 2011; the attrition rate for females was 13 percent versus 5 percent for males, and 5 percent of females were found not physically qualified compared with 1 percent of males. Further, both of these training venues have physical fitness standards that are easier for females; at IOC there is one standard regardless of gender. The attrition rate for males attending IOC in 2011 was 17 percent. Should female Marines ultimately attend IOC, we can expect significantly higher attrition rates and long-term injuries for women.
There have been many working groups and formal discussions recently addressing what changes would be necessary to the current IOC period of instruction in order to accommodate both genders without producing an underdeveloped or incapable infantry officer. Not once was the word “lower” used, but let’s be honest, “modifying” a standard so that less physically or mentally capable individuals (male or female) can complete a task is called “lowering the standard”! The bottom line is that the enemy doesn’t discriminate, rounds will not slow down, and combat loads don’t get any lighter, regardless of gender or capability. Even more so, the burden of command does not diminish for a male or female; a leader must gain the respect and trust of his/her Marines in combat. Not being able to physically execute to the standards already established at IOC, which have been battle tested and proven, will produce a slower operational speed and tempo resulting in increased time of exposure to enemy forces and a higher risk of combat injury or death. For this reason alone, I would ask everyone to step back and ask themselves, does this integration solely benefit the individual or the Marine Corps as a whole, as every leader’s focus should be on the needs of the institution and the Nation, not the individual?
Which leads one to really wonder, what is the benefit of this potential change? The Marine Corps is not in a shortage of willing and capable young male second lieutenants who would gladly take on the role of infantry officers. In fact we have men fighting to be assigned to the coveted position of 0302. In 2011, 30 percent of graduating TBS lieutenants listed infantry in their top three requested MOSs. Of those 30 percent, only 47 percent were given the MOS. On the other hand, perhaps this integration is an effort to remove the glass ceiling that some observers feel exists for women when it comes to promotions to general officer ranks. Opening combat arms MOSs, particularly the infantry, such observers argue, allows women to gain the necessary exposure of leading Marines in combat, which will then arguably increase the chances for female Marines serving in strategic leadership assignments. As stated above, I have full faith that female Marines can successfully serve in just about every MOS aside from the infantry. Even if a female can meet the short-term physical, mental, and moral leadership requirements of an infantry officer, by the time that she is eligible to serve in a strategic leadership position, at the 20-year mark or beyond, there is a miniscule probability that she’ll be physically capable of serving at all. Again, it becomes a question of longevity.
Despite my personal opinion regarding the incorporation of females into the infantry community, I am not blind to the fact that females play a key role in countering the gender and cultural barriers we are facing at war, and we do have a place in combat operations. As such, a potential change that I do recommend considering strongly for female Marine officers is to designate a new secondary MOS (0305) for a Marine serving as female engagement team (FET) officer in charge (OIC). 0305s would be employed in the same way we employ drill instructors, as we do not need an enduring FET entity but an existing capability able to stand up based on operational requirements. Legitimizing a program that is already operational in the Corps would greatly benefit both the units utilizing FETs and the women who serve as FET OICs. Unfortunately, FET OICs today are not properly screened and trained for this mission. I propose that those being considered for FET OIC be prescreened and trained through a modified IOC with an appropriately adjusted physical expectation. FET OICs need to better understand the infantry culture and mindset and work with their 0302 brethren to incorporate FET assistance during specific phases of operations to properly prepare them to serve as the subject matter experts to a regimental- or battalion-level infantry commander. Through joint OIC training, both 0302s and FET OICs can start to learn how to integrate capabilities and accomplish their mission individually and collectively. This, in my mind, is a much more viable, cost-effective solution, with high reward for the Marine Corps and the Nation, and it will also directly improve the capabilities of FET OICs.
Finally, what are the Marine Corps standards, particularly physical fitness standards, based on—performance and capability or equality? We abide by numerous discriminators, such as height and weight standards. As multiple Marine Corps Gazette articles have highlighted, Marines who can run first-class physical fitness tests and who have superior MOS proficiency are separated from the Service if they do not meet the Marine Corps’ height and weight standards. Further, tall Marines are restricted from flying specific platforms, and color blind Marines are faced with similar restrictions. We recognize differences in mental capabilities of Marines when we administer the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery and use the results to eliminate/open specific fields. These standards are designed to ensure safety, quality, and the opportunity to be placed in a field in which one can sustain and succeed.
Which once again leads me, as a ground combat-experienced female Marine Corps officer, to ask, what are we trying to accomplish by attempting to fully integrate women into the infantry? For those who dictate policy, changing the current restrictions associated with women in the infantry may not seem significant to the way the Marine Corps operates. I vehemently disagree; this potential change will rock the foundation of our Corps for the worse and will weaken what has been since 1775 the world’s most lethal fighting force. In the end, for DACOWITS and any other individual or organization looking to increase opportunities for female Marines, I applaud your efforts and say thank you. However, for the long-term health of our female Marines, the Marine Corps, and U.S. national security, steer clear of the Marine infantry community when calling for more opportunities for females. Let’s embrace our differences to further hone in on the Corps’ success instead of dismantling who we are to achieve a political agenda. Regardless of the outcome, we will be “Semper Fidelis” and remain focused on our mission to protect and defend the United States of America."
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Tienanmen Square Veteran on Second Amendment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miEmIfhfxuc
Hat tip to a humble person who wrote a comment at the bottom of an article from The Blaze.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/01/22/listen-to-this-veterans-epic-defense-of-the-second-amendment-at-chicago-anti-gun-forum-i-went-to-war-for-my-country/
When the People's Liberation Army of the People's Republic of China turned Tienanmen Square into a rifle range with live targets, we saw what can happen to an unarmed people at the hands of a government that is based on controlling the people.
The beginning of the video misses the name of the person whom the speaker (A proud naturalized American) quotes as saying that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. The words are those of Chairman Mao.
The video is less than seven minutes. Please watch the video on the top link. This guy knows what he is talking about. He was there at Tienanmen Square. He and his colleagues were utterly helpless. He is a gun owner who truly understands why the people must not allow themselves to be disarmed or have their rights severely restricted.
He describes a rifle as an instrument of freedom, that owning one makes one free of coercion, indicates that he has free will, and that he is a free man.
The media quickly dropped significant coverage of the slaughter of unarmed citizens by its own army. President H.W.Bush, a former ambassador to the People's Republic, quickly sent over a delegation, apparently to tell his old buddies that, although we may make some noise for a couple of weeks, everything will be OK between us.
This was in 1989, and to my knowledge, since then we have tried and convicted Serbs and others from the Balkans, but no Chinese officials or military officers. The UN did nothing, and the rest of the world too sat on its collective hands. I don't recall even a token trade restriction being imposed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989
Those who escape the slaughter but were later convicted of whatever treason-type charges exist in China were executed by firing squad, and yes, the families were billed for the cost of the ammunition.
Hat tip to a humble person who wrote a comment at the bottom of an article from The Blaze.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/01/22/listen-to-this-veterans-epic-defense-of-the-second-amendment-at-chicago-anti-gun-forum-i-went-to-war-for-my-country/
When the People's Liberation Army of the People's Republic of China turned Tienanmen Square into a rifle range with live targets, we saw what can happen to an unarmed people at the hands of a government that is based on controlling the people.
The beginning of the video misses the name of the person whom the speaker (A proud naturalized American) quotes as saying that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. The words are those of Chairman Mao.
The video is less than seven minutes. Please watch the video on the top link. This guy knows what he is talking about. He was there at Tienanmen Square. He and his colleagues were utterly helpless. He is a gun owner who truly understands why the people must not allow themselves to be disarmed or have their rights severely restricted.
He describes a rifle as an instrument of freedom, that owning one makes one free of coercion, indicates that he has free will, and that he is a free man.
The media quickly dropped significant coverage of the slaughter of unarmed citizens by its own army. President H.W.Bush, a former ambassador to the People's Republic, quickly sent over a delegation, apparently to tell his old buddies that, although we may make some noise for a couple of weeks, everything will be OK between us.
This was in 1989, and to my knowledge, since then we have tried and convicted Serbs and others from the Balkans, but no Chinese officials or military officers. The UN did nothing, and the rest of the world too sat on its collective hands. I don't recall even a token trade restriction being imposed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989
Those who escape the slaughter but were later convicted of whatever treason-type charges exist in China were executed by firing squad, and yes, the families were billed for the cost of the ammunition.
Monday, January 21, 2013
Shock Story - Boy Wields Knife To Protect Rape Victim
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/01/21/14-year-old-boy-protects-mich-rape-victim-with-hunting-knife-as-alleged-assailant-batters-the-door-and-then-sets-the-house-on-fire/
Hat tip to The Blaze.
A college student is abducted and raped. She later manages to escape by leaping from the rapist's moving vehicle. With nowhere else to go, she pounds on the door of a house in which a 14 year-old boy is home watching his younger sister.
No doubt under strict orders from his parents to keep the door locked and to open it only for family members or emergency service personnel, the young man, after hearing the fear-ridden pleas of the victim, goes with his gut and lets her in.
She could easily have been a criminal herself, but his instinct to help others in need overrode his fear for his own and his sister's life.
What he saw would turn the stomach of even the most hardened sex crimes detective:
"The woman was an alarming sight. She had clear packing tape wrapped around her body. There were bruises on her face. She was cradling one of her arms, which she said was broken after she leaped from the vehicle as Ramsey was driving down South Mission."
Sure enough, the piece of garbage was close behind in his car.
"It was at that moment that the terrified father pulled up, throwing himself on the flames, attempting to extinguish what he could before it got out of control. Knowing it was a losing battle, James Persyn Jr. tried to get in the house, realizing too late that the doors were locked and he didn’t have his keys.
As fate would have it, that’s when the police came, mistaking the father for the criminal.
“I’m the dad! I’m the dad!” he yelled as a police officer ran at him, gun drawn."
-Excerpt from end of the article:
".......The other day, the president and the vice president announced their plans to curb gun violence in the wake of the shooting in Newtown, Conn. I agree with all of their measures. But I believe they should be bolder and stop walking on eggshells about what to do with people like me and those not even close to being like me but still labeled with the crazy term “mentally ill.” The executive actions the president signed to increase access and treatment are all good, although the experts will struggle with confidentiality and privacy issues.
But since most people like me are more likely to harm ourselves than to turn into mass-murdering monsters, our leaders should do more to keep us safe from ourselves.
Please take away my Second Amendment right. Do more to help us protect ourselves because what’s most likely to wake me in the early hours isn’t a man’s body slamming at my door but depression, that raven, tapping, rapping, banging for relief.
I have a better chance of surviving if I never have the option of being able to pull the trigger."
Hat tip to The Blaze.
A college student is abducted and raped. She later manages to escape by leaping from the rapist's moving vehicle. With nowhere else to go, she pounds on the door of a house in which a 14 year-old boy is home watching his younger sister.
No doubt under strict orders from his parents to keep the door locked and to open it only for family members or emergency service personnel, the young man, after hearing the fear-ridden pleas of the victim, goes with his gut and lets her in.
She could easily have been a criminal herself, but his instinct to help others in need overrode his fear for his own and his sister's life.
What he saw would turn the stomach of even the most hardened sex crimes detective:
"The woman was an alarming sight. She had clear packing tape wrapped around her body. There were bruises on her face. She was cradling one of her arms, which she said was broken after she leaped from the vehicle as Ramsey was driving down South Mission."
Sure enough, the piece of garbage was close behind in his car.
"James locked the front door and ran to the side door to lock it, too. He herded everyone into the bathroom to hide. The injured woman got in the bathtub and cowered. [His siblings] Acelin and Angus joined her.
James went to his bedroom and grabbed the one weapon he has — a hunting knife. He pulled his Labrador retriever by the collar into the bathroom and closed the door, which has no lock. James turned the lights off, so if Ramsey got inside, he might pass by the bathroom and look for them in another room first.
“Let me in or I’ll kill you,” Ramsey kept shouting.
There they were — a rape victim, a dog too friendly to offer much protection and three frightened children, hiding in the dark, convinced they were about to die at the hands of the man trying to get inside. And the only thing that stood between them and him was a 5-foot-8, 142-pound 14-year-old boy holding a small knife."
Unwilling to let the terror he had to have felt get the best of him, he refused to open the door. The victim called 911 and the brave young man called his father.
The father arrived to find that gasoline had been poured around the house and lit on fire. Fortunately, the rapist had driven away by the time Dad got to the house.
James went to his bedroom and grabbed the one weapon he has — a hunting knife. He pulled his Labrador retriever by the collar into the bathroom and closed the door, which has no lock. James turned the lights off, so if Ramsey got inside, he might pass by the bathroom and look for them in another room first.
“Let me in or I’ll kill you,” Ramsey kept shouting.
There they were — a rape victim, a dog too friendly to offer much protection and three frightened children, hiding in the dark, convinced they were about to die at the hands of the man trying to get inside. And the only thing that stood between them and him was a 5-foot-8, 142-pound 14-year-old boy holding a small knife."
Unwilling to let the terror he had to have felt get the best of him, he refused to open the door. The victim called 911 and the brave young man called his father.
The father arrived to find that gasoline had been poured around the house and lit on fire. Fortunately, the rapist had driven away by the time Dad got to the house.
"It was at that moment that the terrified father pulled up, throwing himself on the flames, attempting to extinguish what he could before it got out of control. Knowing it was a losing battle, James Persyn Jr. tried to get in the house, realizing too late that the doors were locked and he didn’t have his keys.
As fate would have it, that’s when the police came, mistaking the father for the criminal.
“I’m the dad! I’m the dad!” he yelled as a police officer ran at him, gun drawn."
After being located later by the cops, ramming a patrol car, and then taking the time to use social media to let everyone know he was going to get shot, the rapist was killed by police gunfire.
This is like something out of a movie. I can't find words to describe the courage and fortitude demonstrated by the young man. An account of a courageous act by military member in combat that is reported for a medal recommendation often includes language such as "in compete disregard of his own safety". This is the only thing that comes to mind.
This is exactly why my son knows how to use a firearm, has been told that at any moment a nice day may turn into a fight for one's (Or that of another) life, and that we have no option than to risk our own lives for those who are in need. That kid is old enough to grab a knife and he is old enough to be trained in how to use a firearm.
To use Obama's words against him - "If we can take steps to save even one life, then we have no choice but to take those necessary actions".
To add irony to this report, I came across this article this morning in the New York Times. After recounting an event (Apparently to make us think that most possible intruders are actually OK guys) in which a possible intruder turned out to be drunk, she writes about her depression and how owning a firearm may make her more likely to kill herself. What I determined from reading her piece was not that she recommends stricter controls on restricting people with conditions as severe as hers, but that she wants lots of people to be controlled to the degree that she wants for herself:
".......The other day, the president and the vice president announced their plans to curb gun violence in the wake of the shooting in Newtown, Conn. I agree with all of their measures. But I believe they should be bolder and stop walking on eggshells about what to do with people like me and those not even close to being like me but still labeled with the crazy term “mentally ill.” The executive actions the president signed to increase access and treatment are all good, although the experts will struggle with confidentiality and privacy issues.
But since most people like me are more likely to harm ourselves than to turn into mass-murdering monsters, our leaders should do more to keep us safe from ourselves.
Please take away my Second Amendment right. Do more to help us protect ourselves because what’s most likely to wake me in the early hours isn’t a man’s body slamming at my door but depression, that raven, tapping, rapping, banging for relief.
I have a better chance of surviving if I never have the option of being able to pull the trigger."
To the Left, the threat is not the criminal who raped and attempted to murderer, it's you to yourself. To her, it is more important that the State step in to control you. If the rape victim later became a murder victim (And probably the young man and his sister as well), that is less of a tragedy than if the writer was able to own or access a firearm while suffering from depression.
So I gather that her life (Which if she took it would involve only one person - herself) is more valuable than that of a rape victim and two kids at home who are faced with a vicious fiend trying to gain entry.
This is the opposition, clear as day. There is no room for negotiations with these types. The political fight must be unyielding, and if ultimately unsuccessful then the people must considered restructuring the Republic into two separately governed bodies. If we lose, let them have their gun-free country, and we will have ours the way we want it.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
British Muslim Rape Gang Mutilated Victim
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2263924/Oxford-sex-gang-victim-aged-11-branded-initial-abuser.html
Hat tip to Answering Muslims.
The horrific incidents of gang rapes of indigenous British girls, which frequently consists of months and years of criminal acts, continue to surface. In one of the cases, a girl whose victimization began when she was 11 was also branded with an "M' for Mohammed to ensure that she was aware of he to whom she belonged.
"A girl of 11 was sold to a child trafficker who branded her with his initial, a court heard yesterday.
Mohammed Karrar, 38, also loaned her to abusers around the country for £600 an hour, it was alleged.
Over five years she was repeatedly raped by large groups of men in what she described as ‘torture sex’, the jury was told.
Seven men of Pakistani origin and two from North Africa are accused of 79 offences against six vulnerable white British girls. The charges include child rape, sexual trafficking and child prostitution.
Noel Lucas QC, prosecuting, said Karrar – known as Egyptian Mo – bought the youngest victim from an unnamed man just after her 11th birthday.
He befriended her with gifts of perfume and hard drugs but then began to beat her up and raped her, the Old Bailey was told.
He branded her with one of her hair pins, which he had twisted into the shape of an ‘M’ and heated with a cigarette lighter. It left a scar on her left buttock.
‘He regarded her as his property,’ Mr Lucas said. ‘He showed her no regard. If she had the temerity to resist, he beat her.
‘He branded her to make her his property and to ensure others knew about it.’ At the age of 12 she was introduced to Karrar’s brother Bassam, 33, who is also accused of raping her.
The girl ‘describes the Karrars as sick sex monsters’, Mr Lucas said. ‘They were always talking about sex and spoke about women in a vile manner.
‘Mohammed Karrar liked her to dress up and act out role play. Both brothers used to beat her.’
From the age of 12 the girl was sold to groups of Asian men who violently raped her in private homes and guesthouses around Oxford and elsewhere. Sometimes she was injected with heroin or given date drugs to ensure she complied with the gang’s sick demands, it was alleged.
Mr Lucas added: ‘It became routine for her to be taken to various locations, houses and hotels by the Karrar brothers so she could treat their guests. She would be made to dress up, wear very short skirts and a bikini top, do her hair and put on lots of make-up.
By the end of the evening she would have been sexually used and abused by all the men. She would be so drugged up as to be unable to feel the pain.’
Just after her 12th birthday the girl told Karrar she was carrying his child. He allegedly beat her up and then took her to a house in Reading where she was given a ‘backroom abortion’ using a crochet hook................"
"The political pressure to remain politically correct is tremendous; Western men are to refrain from acting manly enough to cause invaders to think twice before attacking native women, the police are to avoid appearing as if they are unfairly targeting Muslims for prosecutions, British groups who desire to protect their native identity (in the face of unchecked Islamic immigration) are labeled as Fascists, and the same label goes to those who express concern about flagrant and terribly expensive abuses of the British welfare system. In addition to the above, the authority of Western parents (That of Muslim fathers is OK as far as the Left in concerned) has been undermined to the point that they have difficulty exercising any control over their children, thus leading to instances in which young girls wind up hanging out with men who turn out to be violent criminals. These come together to create a climate in which aggressive, criminal, and very violent individuals from a faith that encourages abusive behavior feel as if the have free reign over the place. It’s a party as far as these guys are concerned, and they don't want to miss out on the fun.
As I have noted in previous posts, too many Muslims in Europe appear to have taken to treating their new host nations as battlefields in which the Muslim tradition of three days of pillage can be extended until their religion/socioeconomic system is firmly established as the dominant political power. This three-day period of being cut loose to steal, rape, enslave, etc, is normally intended for the successful end of a siege. The current state of Europe, though, where a substantial subset of Muslim community leaders/organizers have proclaimed their intent to establish full control of Europe by Democratic means (Once there are enough of them in any nation they can call for a new Constitution and make this occur), seems to be the perfect breeding ground for an extended state of pillage while the electoral siege is ongoing."
Hat tip to Answering Muslims.
The horrific incidents of gang rapes of indigenous British girls, which frequently consists of months and years of criminal acts, continue to surface. In one of the cases, a girl whose victimization began when she was 11 was also branded with an "M' for Mohammed to ensure that she was aware of he to whom she belonged.
"A girl of 11 was sold to a child trafficker who branded her with his initial, a court heard yesterday.
Mohammed Karrar, 38, also loaned her to abusers around the country for £600 an hour, it was alleged.
Over five years she was repeatedly raped by large groups of men in what she described as ‘torture sex’, the jury was told.
Seven men of Pakistani origin and two from North Africa are accused of 79 offences against six vulnerable white British girls. The charges include child rape, sexual trafficking and child prostitution.
Noel Lucas QC, prosecuting, said Karrar – known as Egyptian Mo – bought the youngest victim from an unnamed man just after her 11th birthday.
He befriended her with gifts of perfume and hard drugs but then began to beat her up and raped her, the Old Bailey was told.
He branded her with one of her hair pins, which he had twisted into the shape of an ‘M’ and heated with a cigarette lighter. It left a scar on her left buttock.
‘He regarded her as his property,’ Mr Lucas said. ‘He showed her no regard. If she had the temerity to resist, he beat her.
‘He branded her to make her his property and to ensure others knew about it.’ At the age of 12 she was introduced to Karrar’s brother Bassam, 33, who is also accused of raping her.
The girl ‘describes the Karrars as sick sex monsters’, Mr Lucas said. ‘They were always talking about sex and spoke about women in a vile manner.
‘Mohammed Karrar liked her to dress up and act out role play. Both brothers used to beat her.’
From the age of 12 the girl was sold to groups of Asian men who violently raped her in private homes and guesthouses around Oxford and elsewhere. Sometimes she was injected with heroin or given date drugs to ensure she complied with the gang’s sick demands, it was alleged.
Mr Lucas added: ‘It became routine for her to be taken to various locations, houses and hotels by the Karrar brothers so she could treat their guests. She would be made to dress up, wear very short skirts and a bikini top, do her hair and put on lots of make-up.
By the end of the evening she would have been sexually used and abused by all the men. She would be so drugged up as to be unable to feel the pain.’
Just after her 12th birthday the girl told Karrar she was carrying his child. He allegedly beat her up and then took her to a house in Reading where she was given a ‘backroom abortion’ using a crochet hook................"
-The entire article can be read on the link at top.
The British government can only be described as complicit in these ongoing attacks. The police and child services employees have been pressured to refrain from poking their noses into the affairs of Muslims men in the UK. While they avoided hurting the sensibilities of the men who we are told just wanted a new home, the latter took to engaging in an extended version of the traditional three days of pillage of a conquered people:
-From previous post:
As I have noted in previous posts, too many Muslims in Europe appear to have taken to treating their new host nations as battlefields in which the Muslim tradition of three days of pillage can be extended until their religion/socioeconomic system is firmly established as the dominant political power. This three-day period of being cut loose to steal, rape, enslave, etc, is normally intended for the successful end of a siege. The current state of Europe, though, where a substantial subset of Muslim community leaders/organizers have proclaimed their intent to establish full control of Europe by Democratic means (Once there are enough of them in any nation they can call for a new Constitution and make this occur), seems to be the perfect breeding ground for an extended state of pillage while the electoral siege is ongoing."
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Gun Appreciation Day a Success
Despite the facts that this event was not given a lot of publicity by the media (Shocking), and that many people who would have supported it had they received information about it ahead of time, Gun Appreciation Day appears to have been a success. I must note that, at least here in New Jersey, it does not look like the word was put out very well. I did not get one heads-up about this event and thus only found out about it this evening.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/01/19/americans-rally-nationwide-against-stricter-gun-control-measures-here-are-the-pictures/
I found the website for the event. There is a petition that can be electronically signed and a space at the bottom where one can sign up for email alerts for any possible future dates.
http://gunappreciationday.com/index
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/01/19/americans-rally-nationwide-against-stricter-gun-control-measures-here-are-the-pictures/
I found the website for the event. There is a petition that can be electronically signed and a space at the bottom where one can sign up for email alerts for any possible future dates.
http://gunappreciationday.com/index
Friday, January 18, 2013
New York Gun Map Aids Criminals
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/01/17/thieves-steal-guns-after-breaking-into-another-home-listed-on-ny-newspapers-gun-map/
The Left was waiting for a slaughter like that of Sandy Hook like a kid waits for Christmas morning.
-and they were more prepared to go into action than a Navy Seal team.
One of their most base moves was to publish the infamous "gun maps" that marked privately owned homes in which residents who owned firearms lived.
Their stated reasons were patently dishonest but the motives were clear:
-That people have a right and need to know if their neighbors own firearms.
-That owning firearms is aberrational and thus should be reported.
-That privately owned firearms pose a safety risk to the public.
Their strategy was effective considering that most Americans have devolved into simpletons. They have been raised to believe that the possession of arms should be restricted to the police and the military - this despite the fact that only the tiniest and barely noticeable fraction of people who actually work in these fields believe that to be the case.
Two things were guaranteed to result after the gun maps were published:
Homes that were marked as being owned by gun owners will be targeted for burglaries when no one appears to be home so that the guns could be stolen. This puts them in the waiting hands of criminals, which is exactly what the Left wants. One of their main complaints is that legally owned guns can be acquired by criminals. As this does not occur often enough to suit their tastes, they took steps to ensure that it would happen more often. The Left gains both ways; they now have proof that criminals get hold of previously legal guns, and those guns are in turn used against defenseless citizens, who will then call for gun confiscation.
Homes that are marked (By not being marked) as gun-free will be targeted when residents are at home for home invasions and for other crimes such as rape. We have no reports of this yet, but rest assured it is going to happen. One of the main reasons that so many Americans can watch TV and go to bed while feeling relatively confident that no one will burst into their home or crawl through a window is that criminals know fully well that over a third* of the households in the US contain at least one firearm. When one is contemplating illegally entering a house, having odds of less than 2/3 in your favor is not a good bet. The gun map alters these odds considerably for the piece of garbage who wants to terrorize innocents. He just picks out homes that are not 'flagged' by the map. Once these begin to happen I hope that the criminals are honest about why they targeted the gun-free homes so that the victims can sue the newspaper and all those who were involved in the reports.
* http://www.gallup.com/poll/14509/americans-guns-danger-defense.aspx
Our nation is split into two camps, and these are as diametrically opposed to each other as the North and South were at the advent of the Civil War. There is a good side and a bad side bent on enslaving a defenseless people. The main problem is that, unlike the mid-19th century, our bad guys are interspersed throughout the country rather than confined to a specific region. The good news is that there are enough regions/states in which these types are a small enough minority that they can be made politically impotent. This can happen if actual Americans continue to pack up and move from states such as (My) New Jersey** and go to one of the many states in which the strong majority of people support American government and culture. Only by doing so can we poll our political resources and take steps to restore and protect what as bequeathed to us.
** I expect to be able to leave NJ in less than two years.
We will take back our schools, rights to property, and the right to be free of a lifetime enslavement of paying for those who won't (Not can't - any one of us could find ourselves in that boat) work. We can also ensure that public displays that recognize our Judeo-Christian heritage are not prohibited and that our debt will no longer increase to the detriment of our grandchildren.
And we will remain free to defend ourselves.
The Left was waiting for a slaughter like that of Sandy Hook like a kid waits for Christmas morning.
-and they were more prepared to go into action than a Navy Seal team.
One of their most base moves was to publish the infamous "gun maps" that marked privately owned homes in which residents who owned firearms lived.
Their stated reasons were patently dishonest but the motives were clear:
-That people have a right and need to know if their neighbors own firearms.
-That owning firearms is aberrational and thus should be reported.
-That privately owned firearms pose a safety risk to the public.
Their strategy was effective considering that most Americans have devolved into simpletons. They have been raised to believe that the possession of arms should be restricted to the police and the military - this despite the fact that only the tiniest and barely noticeable fraction of people who actually work in these fields believe that to be the case.
Two things were guaranteed to result after the gun maps were published:
Homes that were marked as being owned by gun owners will be targeted for burglaries when no one appears to be home so that the guns could be stolen. This puts them in the waiting hands of criminals, which is exactly what the Left wants. One of their main complaints is that legally owned guns can be acquired by criminals. As this does not occur often enough to suit their tastes, they took steps to ensure that it would happen more often. The Left gains both ways; they now have proof that criminals get hold of previously legal guns, and those guns are in turn used against defenseless citizens, who will then call for gun confiscation.
Homes that are marked (By not being marked) as gun-free will be targeted when residents are at home for home invasions and for other crimes such as rape. We have no reports of this yet, but rest assured it is going to happen. One of the main reasons that so many Americans can watch TV and go to bed while feeling relatively confident that no one will burst into their home or crawl through a window is that criminals know fully well that over a third* of the households in the US contain at least one firearm. When one is contemplating illegally entering a house, having odds of less than 2/3 in your favor is not a good bet. The gun map alters these odds considerably for the piece of garbage who wants to terrorize innocents. He just picks out homes that are not 'flagged' by the map. Once these begin to happen I hope that the criminals are honest about why they targeted the gun-free homes so that the victims can sue the newspaper and all those who were involved in the reports.
* http://www.gallup.com/poll/14509/americans-guns-danger-defense.aspx
Our nation is split into two camps, and these are as diametrically opposed to each other as the North and South were at the advent of the Civil War. There is a good side and a bad side bent on enslaving a defenseless people. The main problem is that, unlike the mid-19th century, our bad guys are interspersed throughout the country rather than confined to a specific region. The good news is that there are enough regions/states in which these types are a small enough minority that they can be made politically impotent. This can happen if actual Americans continue to pack up and move from states such as (My) New Jersey** and go to one of the many states in which the strong majority of people support American government and culture. Only by doing so can we poll our political resources and take steps to restore and protect what as bequeathed to us.
** I expect to be able to leave NJ in less than two years.
We will take back our schools, rights to property, and the right to be free of a lifetime enslavement of paying for those who won't (Not can't - any one of us could find ourselves in that boat) work. We can also ensure that public displays that recognize our Judeo-Christian heritage are not prohibited and that our debt will no longer increase to the detriment of our grandchildren.
And we will remain free to defend ourselves.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Backwards Thinking on Privately Owned Firearms
-Long ago, I became convinced that I am a magnet for people who process information in reverse.
I can't turn around without running into an angry atheist, Leftist, anti-Catholic Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christian, environmentalist, feminist, supporter of fake same-gender marriages, or a person who seeks to render all citizens powerless to protect themselves from criminals or a potentially (And all can become so) totalitarian government.
And each and every one will seek me out to argue his point
Mind you, I don't walk around with signs, speak out among friends and coworkers unless I know that they think along my lines, nor do I have any bumper stickers on my car. In short, I do everything possible to avoid having to even hear them dump their drivel.
Yet, nevertheless, they find me, and they never want to discuss the topic privately but only in front of dorkily-smiling onlookers who are too cowardly to take a stand on any subject.
At my son's high school wrestling meet two nights ago, the only thing that I was spared was the goofy-faced crowd; and that was only due to the fact that we were high up in the stands and could not be heard above the voices of the rest of the fans.
Sitting with a friend and father of one of my son's teammates I mentioned the typical Southern Italian*-styled knee-jerk, control-focused anti-gun move by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Another teammate's mother, who is from China and cannot express herself as quickly as a native speaker of English, thought that I was in support of Cuomo's move and asked "why did they have to wait for a shooting to do something?"......
* My Italian-Sicilian father was as stereotypical an example of this type as could be. Although he was exceptionally intelligent at mechanical and spatial thought, nothing that required abstract, theoretical, or common-sense thinking was dealt with by anything but mindless autocratic orders delivered in an operatic tone (Yes, he actually sang his decrees) which Cuomo almost approached in his State of the State Address in which he kicked off step one of his plan to disarm the people of New York. For many who hail from this culture, the desire for absolute control of even the minutiae of people's lives and tasks is the overriding motivation in most decisions. Cuomo's almost hysterical gun control speech and the resulting legislation is a classic example of this mindset.
......being that she is of course a lady and does not have a huge English vocabulary, we (This time I had an ally) gently tried for a half an hour to get her to see why people should in fact, not only be allowed, but obligated to own and be proficient with arms. She was from an Eastern culture** and was mired in that mindset that assumes that the people should be helpless against crime and solely reliant on the military and police.
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** - On the differences between Eastern and Western cultures on armed citizens (Main portion of text at bottom)
http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2012/01/18-year-old-mom-kills-armed-intruder.html
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We ran the gamut of:
"Why do you need a gun?". - No need must be asserted as it is a right.
(Speaking to us of her coworker) "Why don't you trust the government?" - Any government can become all-powerful if the people are not allowed to defend their rights.
"If everyone had a gun, then the others will bring machine guns." -Extremely rare even in the US, Finland, and Switzerland, all of which have liberal firearms laws.
When questioned about the atrocities committed by the Japanese in China (I cited Nanking), she continued to refuse to accept where logic was taking us. Assuming that we were not aware of Sun-Tzu he tried to cite the Art of War and stated that the Chinese Nationalists and Communists only could resist by staying away from the invader. I explained that I read that book and avoiding a battle was only a tiny part of that strategist's thinking. (He never declared that a force should be unable to fight, only that battle should be given when the odds are in your favor and that it is better to maneuver the enemy by all means available into a position/situation that forces them to leave or surrender.) The Chinese forces did not refrain from engaging the Japanese, they only did so when they had to in order to avoid being destroyed -standard tactics for a weaker force.
When I brought up Mao's vicious Cultural Revolution, she again remained obstinate and asserted that firearms would not have helped the people. (Recall that she could not see why her worker did not trust the government)
Towards the end, I brought up her son, noting that she carried him for nine months, fed and protected him, and apparently would, when he is an adult, prefer that he be made unable to protect the very life that she (His own mother) protected when he was small. At this she smiled and gave no answer.
The part that came after the Mao subject was the most perplexing and by far the most illustrative of how backwards the thinking is of those who oppose private gun ownership. I have long noted that those who detest privately-owned guns should consider moving to a nation that bans them, I have also proposed the hypothetical idea of creating gun-free and gun-allowing states with no transporting of guns from the latter to the former in any case. (The idea of this is to illustrate that the Left would say, "No,..... we don't want you to have them either", thus proving how much control they demand of you.) The bizarre part is that she asked me why I don't move to a country that allows guns. After a few speechless seconds, I noted that this is exactly the question that I needed to pose to her, but in reverse. I continued that the US was founded with gun ownership as a core principle, that is is a crucial part of our freedoms, and that, of the nations of the world, only three (The US, Finland, and Switzerland) have truly liberal firearm laws. I asked her why I would have to move if I already live in one of those three (A pathetically small number) countries. At this she had no answer.
I honestly declare that the very fact that she actually believed (Most Progressives know that they don't believe what they advocate -they just want the control that results) in the validity of her above-noted question/suggestion was by far the most disturbing part of our discussion. To follow her logic, if Spain was close to banning bullfighting, Spaniards who desired to continue to see the corrida de toros should be told to go to a nation that allows it. That also leaves terribly few options.
** Excerpt from the linked post-
I can't turn around without running into an angry atheist, Leftist, anti-Catholic Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christian, environmentalist, feminist, supporter of fake same-gender marriages, or a person who seeks to render all citizens powerless to protect themselves from criminals or a potentially (And all can become so) totalitarian government.
And each and every one will seek me out to argue his point
Mind you, I don't walk around with signs, speak out among friends and coworkers unless I know that they think along my lines, nor do I have any bumper stickers on my car. In short, I do everything possible to avoid having to even hear them dump their drivel.
Yet, nevertheless, they find me, and they never want to discuss the topic privately but only in front of dorkily-smiling onlookers who are too cowardly to take a stand on any subject.
At my son's high school wrestling meet two nights ago, the only thing that I was spared was the goofy-faced crowd; and that was only due to the fact that we were high up in the stands and could not be heard above the voices of the rest of the fans.
Sitting with a friend and father of one of my son's teammates I mentioned the typical Southern Italian*-styled knee-jerk, control-focused anti-gun move by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Another teammate's mother, who is from China and cannot express herself as quickly as a native speaker of English, thought that I was in support of Cuomo's move and asked "why did they have to wait for a shooting to do something?"......
* My Italian-Sicilian father was as stereotypical an example of this type as could be. Although he was exceptionally intelligent at mechanical and spatial thought, nothing that required abstract, theoretical, or common-sense thinking was dealt with by anything but mindless autocratic orders delivered in an operatic tone (Yes, he actually sang his decrees) which Cuomo almost approached in his State of the State Address in which he kicked off step one of his plan to disarm the people of New York. For many who hail from this culture, the desire for absolute control of even the minutiae of people's lives and tasks is the overriding motivation in most decisions. Cuomo's almost hysterical gun control speech and the resulting legislation is a classic example of this mindset.
......being that she is of course a lady and does not have a huge English vocabulary, we (This time I had an ally) gently tried for a half an hour to get her to see why people should in fact, not only be allowed, but obligated to own and be proficient with arms. She was from an Eastern culture** and was mired in that mindset that assumes that the people should be helpless against crime and solely reliant on the military and police.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
** - On the differences between Eastern and Western cultures on armed citizens (Main portion of text at bottom)
http://thehotgates480bc.blogspot.com/2012/01/18-year-old-mom-kills-armed-intruder.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We ran the gamut of:
"Why do you need a gun?". - No need must be asserted as it is a right.
(Speaking to us of her coworker) "Why don't you trust the government?" - Any government can become all-powerful if the people are not allowed to defend their rights.
"If everyone had a gun, then the others will bring machine guns." -Extremely rare even in the US, Finland, and Switzerland, all of which have liberal firearms laws.
When questioned about the atrocities committed by the Japanese in China (I cited Nanking), she continued to refuse to accept where logic was taking us. Assuming that we were not aware of Sun-Tzu he tried to cite the Art of War and stated that the Chinese Nationalists and Communists only could resist by staying away from the invader. I explained that I read that book and avoiding a battle was only a tiny part of that strategist's thinking. (He never declared that a force should be unable to fight, only that battle should be given when the odds are in your favor and that it is better to maneuver the enemy by all means available into a position/situation that forces them to leave or surrender.) The Chinese forces did not refrain from engaging the Japanese, they only did so when they had to in order to avoid being destroyed -standard tactics for a weaker force.
When I brought up Mao's vicious Cultural Revolution, she again remained obstinate and asserted that firearms would not have helped the people. (Recall that she could not see why her worker did not trust the government)
Towards the end, I brought up her son, noting that she carried him for nine months, fed and protected him, and apparently would, when he is an adult, prefer that he be made unable to protect the very life that she (His own mother) protected when he was small. At this she smiled and gave no answer.
The part that came after the Mao subject was the most perplexing and by far the most illustrative of how backwards the thinking is of those who oppose private gun ownership. I have long noted that those who detest privately-owned guns should consider moving to a nation that bans them, I have also proposed the hypothetical idea of creating gun-free and gun-allowing states with no transporting of guns from the latter to the former in any case. (The idea of this is to illustrate that the Left would say, "No,..... we don't want you to have them either", thus proving how much control they demand of you.) The bizarre part is that she asked me why I don't move to a country that allows guns. After a few speechless seconds, I noted that this is exactly the question that I needed to pose to her, but in reverse. I continued that the US was founded with gun ownership as a core principle, that is is a crucial part of our freedoms, and that, of the nations of the world, only three (The US, Finland, and Switzerland) have truly liberal firearm laws. I asked her why I would have to move if I already live in one of those three (A pathetically small number) countries. At this she had no answer.
I honestly declare that the very fact that she actually believed (Most Progressives know that they don't believe what they advocate -they just want the control that results) in the validity of her above-noted question/suggestion was by far the most disturbing part of our discussion. To follow her logic, if Spain was close to banning bullfighting, Spaniards who desired to continue to see the corrida de toros should be told to go to a nation that allows it. That also leaves terribly few options.
The Left feeds on people such as this nice woman who will accept that everything will always be OK and that no one should be able to have any means of defense. These are the people who will provide the political voting power to give the Left*** what it wants - an American people who have been rendered helpless.
*** The Left is fond of quoting Ronald Reagan's support of banning certain guns. Let's remember that, when he signed that letter along with Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, he was doing so on the same year in which he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Even barring that, one Conservative does not prove that the overwhelming amount of people who are strongly in favor of banning firearms are associated with the Left.
** Excerpt from the linked post-
"The Left is all-too-aware that individual ownership of arms one of the hallmarks and universal characteristics of Western societies. Unlike the types of societies admired by Leftists, such as medieval China, where the individual was to do as he was told (Even a code of ethics like Confucianism rams this home) and was required to leave the defense of their family, property, and village to the local warlord or emperor, the individual in the West has always been an owner of arms.
Where Eastern societies prohibited one from taking part in defense and thus left his safety to the whim or ability of the ruling despot, Western societies required the individual to own arms. Where the Eastern potentates could pretty much do as they pleased with the people who lived in their domains, their counterparts in the West had to tread cautiously.
For a person who desires to find out more about the crucial place of arms ownership in the Western world and its consequences on the societies that evolved from it, the easiest and quickest way would be to research the Roman, Greek, and early Germanic societies.
The Greeks required the individual, especially if he owned any property, to equip himself at this own expense with a minimum of arms and armor and to take an active part in the defense of his city-state. This was quite an expense as both the materials and work/craftsmanship that went in to making these items were costly. For anyone who has not seen what a Greek Hoplite wore, it consisted of a helmet, shield, armor for the torso and legs, a sword and spear. This was a right and an obligation that was not optional. Later they allowed for more lightly-armored Peltasts. The individual was also required to train exhaustively, to learn how to fight in a hoplite formation and also needed to drill/practice on a regular basis with those of his community. In times of threats to the city-state, the Hoplite, like the others noted below, did not have the option of remaining home with his family.
The Romans also required those who possessed property to equip themselves at their own expense and to train and appear with their equipment in times of crisis. Unlike the Greeks, they created early on several classes where the amount of equipment one as required to purchase was based on the amount of property they owned with the exact specifications enumerated. Those with the most property had to be the most heavily equipped, those with less assessed property would have to purchase less.
The Germanic society was the most egalitarian as far as armed individuals go. All free men could be called up at anytime. There of course were differences as to what arms certain individuals could afford to posses, but the system, which went by the label of Fyrd among the Saxons, existed throughout Germanic societies by different names and technically continued as an obligation throughout the middle ages. Interestingly, the emergence of professional troops of the nobility and the resultant lack of reliance on the Fyrd-type bodies has a direct correlation with the subjugation and suppression of the common people. The concept was employed in the defense preparations of Elizabethan England when threatened by the Spanish Armada. The decline of the nobility and relative absence of one in daughter nations such as the US brought the practice back into common use. Colonial men were required to periodically report for drill and inspections of their equipment. These militias formed the basis of the first contingents to oppose what they believed to be British tyranny."
Where Eastern societies prohibited one from taking part in defense and thus left his safety to the whim or ability of the ruling despot, Western societies required the individual to own arms. Where the Eastern potentates could pretty much do as they pleased with the people who lived in their domains, their counterparts in the West had to tread cautiously.
For a person who desires to find out more about the crucial place of arms ownership in the Western world and its consequences on the societies that evolved from it, the easiest and quickest way would be to research the Roman, Greek, and early Germanic societies.
The Greeks required the individual, especially if he owned any property, to equip himself at this own expense with a minimum of arms and armor and to take an active part in the defense of his city-state. This was quite an expense as both the materials and work/craftsmanship that went in to making these items were costly. For anyone who has not seen what a Greek Hoplite wore, it consisted of a helmet, shield, armor for the torso and legs, a sword and spear. This was a right and an obligation that was not optional. Later they allowed for more lightly-armored Peltasts. The individual was also required to train exhaustively, to learn how to fight in a hoplite formation and also needed to drill/practice on a regular basis with those of his community. In times of threats to the city-state, the Hoplite, like the others noted below, did not have the option of remaining home with his family.
The Romans also required those who possessed property to equip themselves at their own expense and to train and appear with their equipment in times of crisis. Unlike the Greeks, they created early on several classes where the amount of equipment one as required to purchase was based on the amount of property they owned with the exact specifications enumerated. Those with the most property had to be the most heavily equipped, those with less assessed property would have to purchase less.
The Germanic society was the most egalitarian as far as armed individuals go. All free men could be called up at anytime. There of course were differences as to what arms certain individuals could afford to posses, but the system, which went by the label of Fyrd among the Saxons, existed throughout Germanic societies by different names and technically continued as an obligation throughout the middle ages. Interestingly, the emergence of professional troops of the nobility and the resultant lack of reliance on the Fyrd-type bodies has a direct correlation with the subjugation and suppression of the common people. The concept was employed in the defense preparations of Elizabethan England when threatened by the Spanish Armada. The decline of the nobility and relative absence of one in daughter nations such as the US brought the practice back into common use. Colonial men were required to periodically report for drill and inspections of their equipment. These militias formed the basis of the first contingents to oppose what they believed to be British tyranny."
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