Categories
Thought

Herbert Spencer

Instead of civilization being artificial, it is a part of nature; all of a piece with the development of the embryo or the unfolding of a flower. The modifications mankind have undergone, and are still undergoing, result from a law underlying the whole organic creation; and provided the human race continues, and the constitution of things remains the same, those modifications must end in completeness.

Herbert Spencer, Social Statics: or, The Conditions essential to Happiness specified, and the First of them Developed (London: John Chapman, 1851), Chapter 1, § 4.

Categories
government transparency

Why We Still Live

The year was 1983. One man, trusting his instincts and his knowledge of how technology can fail, averted catastrophe by not “pushing the button” to launch Soviet missiles at the United States.

It was September 26, and we celebrate it here, at Common Sense with Paul Jacob, as Petrov Day, after the day’s hero — indeed, the world’s hero — Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov. Though tensions were running high in the early Eighties, Petrov suspected a false alarm. Events proved him right.

Petrov is not alone on this specific heroes’ list. There’s also Vasily Alexandrovich Arkhipov, who averted disaster during the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

But the oddest list candidates might not be human.

A week ago or so, when I reported that a former head of the Israel space programs, Professor Haim Eshed, had talked, in an interview, about Israeli and American diplomatic relations with a “Galactic Federation” — yes, of extra-terrestrial aliens — I failed to mention that he had also claimed aliens had averted nuclear war.

Is he crazy? Lying?

Well, ufology lore and de-classifed military documents tell of repeated — and unnerving — UFO incursions into the operations of both Russian and American military nuclear missile installations. We could easily dismiss these claims when the U.S. military was denying any mysterious UFO reality out there — after all, people like to tell tall tales — but that’s not the case now, when the Pentagon has confessed that something very real and really weird is indeed going on in our oceans and atmosphere.* 

But the Pentagon is not admitting to treaties with alien civilizations. The “official position” of the U.S. military, despite increasing numbers of disclosures, is that the UFO phenomenon “appears to remain a mystery,” as Tim McMillan concludes his recent extensive survey of official congressional briefings for The Debrief. 

Still, the official, accepted reason we have not experienced massive thermonuclear war is merely game-theoretic: no winners being possible, as we learned in a popular movie a few months before Stanislav Petrov had to make his big decision, rational players wouldn’t start one.

Yet, Mutually Assured Destruction is initialized MAD, and those with limited faith in human reasonableness not unreasonably consider, at least, other explanations for our continued survival. 

So, hail Petrov; honor Arkihipov; and . . . consider . . . aliens?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


 * As we have learned in the reporting, “Flying Saucers” aren’t the only form seemingly inexplicable UFOs take. The latest is “triangle.”

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Thought

Robert A. Heinlein

censorship, n,

The whole principle is wrong. It’s like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can’t have steak.

Robert A. Heinlein, The Man Who Sold the Moon (1951), p. 188.

This quotation is reminiscent of one often misattributed to Mark Twain:

Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.

(Unknown)
Categories
Today

Thanksgiving in December

On December 18, 1777, the United States celebrated its first official Thanksgiving, marking the then-recent October victory by the Americans over General John Burgoyne in the Battle of Saratoga.

Categories
insider corruption Voting

Democrats’ Shadow Play

There is more than one way to rig an election.

Sometimes all you need is a monkey wrench. A little chaos might help you get your way.

Last February 3, Democrats voted in the Iowa caucuses, placing Bernie Sanders in the lead. But a major “foul-up” occurred. “The state party was unable to report a winner on caucus night,” explains Tyler Pager at Politico, “the mobile app to report results failed to work for many precinct chairs, the back-up telephone systems were jammed and some precincts had initial reporting errors.”

The chaos certainly did not help winner Bernie Sanders, disabled from making publicity hay while the sun shined. There was enough darkness for democracy to die in.

The Iowa Democratic Party commissioned an audit to throw some belated light on the brouhaha, and the results are in: the Democratic National Committee is mostly to blame. 

“According to the report, the DNC demanded the technology company, Shadow, build a conversion tool just weeks before the caucuses to allow the DNC to have real-time access to the raw numbers because the national party feared the app would miscalculate results.” But the DNC and Shadow used incompatible database formats, spawning chaos. 

In a generous mood? Call it sheer incompetence. 

But the mess sure . . . smells . . . suspicious.

“The caucuses are a cherished tradition for Iowans,” reports Reid J. Epstein at The New York Times, “but an increasing number of national Democrats say they are outdated and undemocratic.”

Well, they are when you make them so.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Today

Official Recognition

On December 17, 1777, France formally recognized the United States of America.

The 17th of December, 1819, was the day Simon Bolivar declared the independence of the Republic of Gran Colombia in Angostura.

Categories
Thought

Viktor Frankl

Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.

Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (1956), p. 209-210.
Categories
media and media people partisanship

Mainstream Disinformation

“A historic crime and disgrace.” 

That is how left-leaning journalist Glenn Greenwald characterizes U.S. media coverage of the 2020 presidential race.

Back in October, he resigned from The Intercept, a publication he co-founded with the aim of providing “fearless, adversarial journalism that holds the powerful accountable.” Its editors, you see, refused to publish his writing unless he removed “all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.”

When the New York Post, the nation’s fourth largest newspaper, reported on emails from a laptop belonging to his son, Hunter Biden, Facebook and Twitter quickly blocked folks from sharing the news. Arguing the story was “hacked,” Twitter shut down the Post’s account for the critical final weeks of the campaign.*

“We will not waste our time,” declared National Public Radio, on “stories that are just pure distractions.” Now, with Hunter acknowledging the FBI criminal investigation of the family business, the state-media outlet’s Distraction Meter appears out of whack.

But there’s more. “[A]s soon as these [Hunter Biden] documents became known,” Greenwald told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, “the operatives in the intelligence community, the CIA, [former CIA Director] John Brennan, [former Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper, [former NSA Director] Michael Hayden — all of the standard professional liars — issued a letter claiming that this material was the hallmark of Russian disinformation, even though they had no basis for thinking that.”**

This, he points out, “gave the media permission to lie to the public continuously” by enthusiastically repeating the baseless claim. 

Most ominously, there was again “domestic interference on the part of intelligence agencies in order to manipulate the outcome of our election,” Greenwald explains.

The election is over. Our national nightmare is not. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* There were two huge problems with Twitter’s excuse: (a) the Post’s revelations were not from a hack, and (b) stories are continually written from information hacked and unlawfully leaked to the media — and then shared widely on Facebook and Twitter without any impediment.

** Greenwald is best known for breaking the story of Edward Snowden’s leak of classified information showing unconstitutional NSA spying on Americans, while working for the UK Guardian. Mr. Snowden claimed his “breaking point” in deciding to release the information “was seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress.”

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Today

The Convention Parliament

On December 16, 1689, England’s Convention Parliament began, not only transferring power from one king to another, but establishing procedures and rights into the British Constitution, both of which were copied in the United States of America a century later, with the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

Categories
Thought

T.H. White

Yes, that is the equality of man. Slaughter anybody who is better than you are, and then we shall be equal soon enough. All equally dead

T.H. White, The Book of Merlyn (1977).