.

NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams

Saturday, November 30, 2013

"Wings in the Night" by Robert E. Howard



Robert E. Howard
1906 – 1936


Here is something a little different for a holiday weekend.

I just hated studying most of the so-called 'Great Literature" in school.  My teachers lectured me that I must study authors like Hemingway, Steinbeck and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Well screw that!  These guys were and are fucking boring

Sorry, but I could not have cared less if Tom Joad ever made it to fucking California or if that old man out in the sea ever caught another fucking fish for the rest of his life.

To me great literature was turn of the 19th - 20th century action, sci-fi authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. P. Lovecraft, Talbot Mundy, and Arthur Conan Doyle.

But for some strange reason my snob teachers did not consider these authors worthy of their attention and looked down on me for even speaking of their existence.

In any case, my favorite author then and now is the very late, but still very great, Robert E. Howard.

Howard is best known to the general public as the author of the Conan stories.  But his published works covered a wide number of genres such as westerns, boxing, sci-fi, poetry, horror and historical fiction.

For those who might like to explore Howard's work, here is one of his best, the short story - "Wings in the Night".  The story features the 16th century Puritan adventurer Solomon Kane hiking through the wilds of Africa and meeting bloodthirsty supernatural horrors along the way.

Enjoy.

Wings in the Night
By Robert E. Howard
Published 1932


Chapter I.  The Horror on the Stake

Solomon Kane leaned on his strangely carved staff and gazed in
scowling perplexity at the mystery which spread silently before him.
Many a deserted village Kane had seen in the months that had passed
since he turned his face east from the Slave Coast and lost himself in
the mazes of jungle and river, but never one like this.

It was not famine that had driven away the inhabitants, for yonder the
wild rice still grew rank and unkempt in the untilled fields. There
were no Arab slave-raiders in this nameless land--it must have been a
tribal war that devastated the village, Kane decided, as he gazed
sombrely at the scattered bones and grinning skulls that littered the
space among the rank weeds and grasses. These bones were shattered and
splintered, and Kane saw jackals and a hyena furtively slinking among
the ruined huts. But why had the slayers left the spoils? There lay
war spears, their shafts crumbling before the attacks of the white
ants. There lay shields, mouldering in the rains and sun. There lay
the cooking pots, and about the neck-bones of a shattered skeleton
glistened a necklace of gaudily painted pebbles and shells--surely
rare loot for any savage conqueror.
 
He gazed at the huts, wondering why the thatch roofs of so many were
torn and rent, as if by taloned things seeking entrance. Then
something made his cold eyes narrow in startled unbelief. Just outside
the mouldering mound that was once the village wall towered a gigantic
baobab tree, branchless for sixty feet, its mighty bole too large to
be gripped and scaled. Yet in the topmost branches dangled a skeleton,
apparently impaled on a broken limb.

Illustration from "Wings in the Night"

The cold hand of mystery touched the shoulder of Solomon Kane. How
came those pitiful remains in that tree? Had some monstrous ogre's
inhuman hand flung them there?

Kane shrugged his broad shoulders and his hand unconsciously touched
the black butts of his heavy pistols, the hilt of his long rapier, and
the dirk in his belt. Kane felt no fear as an ordinary man would feel,
confronted with the Unknown and Nameless. Years of wandering in
strange lands and warring with strange creatures had melted away from
brain, soul, and body all that was not steel and whalebone. He was
tall and spare, almost gaunt, built with the savage economy of the
wolf. Broad-shouldered, long-armed, with nerves of ice and thews of
spring steel, he was no less the natural killer than the born
swordsman.

The brambles and thorns of the jungle had dealt hardly with him; his
garments hung in tatters, his featherless slouch hat was torn and his
boots of Cordovan leather were scratched and worn. The sun had baked
his chest and limbs to a deep bronze, but his ascetically lean face
was impervious to its rays. His complexion was still of that strange,
dark pallor which gave him an almost corpse-like appearance, belied
only by his cold, light eyes.

And now Kane, sweeping the village once more with his searching gaze,
pulled his belt into a more comfortable position, shifted to his left
hand the cat-headed stave N'Longa had given him, and took up his way
again.

To the west lay a strip of thin forest, sloping downward to a broad
belt of savannas, a waving sea of grass waist-deep and deeper. Beyond
that rose another narrow strip of woodlands, deepening rapidly into
dense jungle. Out of that jungle Kane had fled like a hunted wolf with
pointed-toothed men hot on his trail. Even now a vagrant breeze
brought faintly the throb of a savage drum which whispered its obscene
tale of hate and blood-hunger and belly-lust across miles of jungle
and grassland.

The memory of his flight and narrow escape was vivid in Kane's mind,
for only the day before had he realized too late that he was in
cannibal country, and all that afternoon in the reeking stench of the
thick jungle, he had crept and run and hidden and doubled and twisted
on his track with the fierce hunters ever close behind him, until
night fell and he gained and crossed the grasslands under cover of
darkness.

Now in the late morning he had seen nothing, heard nothing of his
pursuers, yet he had no reason to believe that they had abandoned the
chase. They had been close on his heels when he took to the savannas.

Illustration from "Wings in the Night"

So Kane surveyed the land in front of him. To the east, curving from
north to south ran a straggling range of hills, for the most part dry
and barren, rising in the south to a jagged black skyline that
reminded Kane of the black hills of Negari. Between him and these
hills stretched a broad expanse of gently rolling country, thickly
treed, but nowhere approaching the density of a jungle. Kane got the
impression of a vast upland plateau, bounded by the curving hills to
the east and by the savannas to the west.

Kane set out for the hills with his long, swinging, tireless stride.
Surely somewhere behind him the savage demons were stealing after him,
and he had no desire to be driven to bay. A shot might send them
flying in sudden terror, but on the other hand, so low they were in
the scale of humanity, it might transmit no supernatural fear to their
dull brains. And not even Solomon Kane, whom Sir Francis Drake had
called Devon's king of swords, could win in a pitched battle with a
whole tribe.

The silent village with its burden of death and mystery faded out
behind him. Utter silence reigned among these mysterious uplands where
no birds sang and only a silent macaw flitted among the great trees.
The only sounds were Kane's cat-like tread, and the whisper of the
drum-haunted breeze.

And then Kane caught a glimpse among the trees that made his heart
leap with a sudden, nameless horror, and a few moments later he stood
before Horror itself, stark and grisly. In a wide clearing, on a
rather bold incline stood a grim stake, and to this stake was bound a
thing that had once been a man. Kane had rowed, chained to the bench
of a Turkish galley, and he had toiled in Barbary vineyards; he had
battled red Indians in the New Lands and had languished in the dungeons
of Spain's Inquisition. He knew much of the fiendishness of man's
inhumanity, but now he shuddered and grew sick. Yet it was not so much
the ghastliness of the mutilations, horrible as they were, that shook
Kane's soul, but the knowledge that the wretch still lived.

For as he drew near, the gory head that lolled on the butchered breast
lifted and tossed from side to side, spattering blood from the stumps
of ears, while a bestial, rattling whimper drooled from the shredded
lips.

Kane spoke to the ghastly thing and it screamed unbearably, writhing
in incredible contortions, while its head jerked up and down with the
jerking of mangled nerves, and the empty, gaping eye-sockets seemed
striving to see from their emptiness. And moaning low and
brain-shatteringly it huddled its outraged self against the stake where it
was bound and lifted its head in a grisly attitude of listening, as if
it expected something out of the skies.

"Listen," said Kane, in the dialect of the river tribes. "Do not fear
me--I will not harm you and nothing else shall harm you any more. I am
going to loose you."

Even as he spoke Kane was bitterly aware of the emptiness of his
words. But his voice had filtered dimly into the crumbling, agony-shot
brain of the man before him. From between splintered teeth fell words,
faltering and uncertain, mixed and mingled with the slavering
droolings of imbecility. He spoke a language akin to the dialects Kane
had learned from friendly river folk on his wanderings, and Kane
gathered that he had been bound to the stake for a long time--many
moons, he whimpered in the delirium of approaching death; and all this
time, inhuman, evil things had worked their monstrous will upon him.
These things he mentioned by name, but Kane could make nothing of it
for he used an unfamiliar term that sounded like akaana. But these
things had not bound him to the stake, for the torn wretch slavered
the name of Goru, who was a priest and who had drawn a cord too tight
about his legs--and Kane wondered that the memory of this small pain
should linger through the red mazes of agony that the dying man should
whimper over it.

And to Kane's horror, the man spoke of his brother who had aided in
the binding of him, and he wept with infantile sobs. Moisture formed
in the empty sockets and made tears of blood. And he muttered of a
spear broken long ago in some dim hunt, and while he muttered in his
delirium, Kane gently cut his bonds and eased his broken body to the
grass. But even at the Englishman's careful touch, the poor wretch
writhed and howled like a dying dog, while blood started anew from a
score of ghastly gashes, which, Kane noted, were more like the wounds
made by fang and talon than by knife or spear. But at last it was done
and the bloody, torn thing lay on the soft grass with Kane's old
slouch hat beneath its death's-head, breathing in great, rattling
gasps.

Kane poured water from his canteen between the mangled lips, and
bending close, said: "Tell me more of these devils, for by the God of
my people, this deed shall not go unavenged, though Satan himself bar
my way."

It is doubtful if the dying man heard. But he heard something else.
The macaw, with the curiosity of its breed, swept from a near-by grove
and passed so close its great wings fanned Kane's hair. And at the
sound of those wings, the butchered man heaved upright and screamed in
a voice that haunted Kane's dreams to the day of his death: '"The
wings! the wings! They come again! Ahhh, mercy, the wings!"

And the blood burst in a torrent from his lips and so he died.


Kane rose and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. The upland
forest shimmered in the noonday heat. Silence lay over the land like
an enchantment of dreams. Kane's brooding eyes ranged to the black,
malevolent hills crouching in the distance and back to the far-away
savannas. An ancient curse lay over that mysterious land and the
shadow of it fell across the soul of Solomon Kane.

Tenderly he lifted the red ruin that had once pulsed with life and
youth and vitality, and carried it to the edge of the glade, where
arranging the cold limbs as best he might, and shuddering once again
at the unnameable mutilations, he piled stones above it till even a
prowling jackal would find it hard to get at the flesh below.

And he had scarcely finished when something jerked him back out of his
sombre broodings to a realization of his own position. A slight
sound--or his own wolf-like instinct--made him whirl.

On the other side of the glade he caught a movement among the tall
grasses--the glimpse of a hideous face, with an ivory ring in the flat
nose, thick lips parted to reveal teeth whose filed points were
apparent even at that distance, beady eyes and a low slanting forehead
topped by a mop of frizzly hair. Even as the face faded from view Kane
leaped back into the shelter of the ring of trees which circled the
glade, and ran like a deer-hound, flitting from tree to tree and
expecting at each moment to hear the exultant clamour of the warriors
and to see them break cover at his back.

But soon he decided that they were content to hunt him down as certain
beasts track their prey, slowly and inevitably. He hastened through
the up- land forest, taking advantage of every bit of cover, and he
saw no more of his pursuers; yet he knew, as a hunted wolf knows, that
they hovered close behind him, waiting their moment to strike him down
without risk to their own hides.

Kane smiled bleakly and without mirth. If it was to be a test of
endurance, he would see how savage thews compared with his own spring-
steel resilience. Let night come and he might yet give them the slip.
If not--Kane knew in his heart that the savage essence of his very
being which chafed at his flight, would make him soon turn at bay,
though his pursuers outnumbered him a hundred to one.

The sun sank westward. Kane was hungry, for he had not eaten since
early morning when he wolfed down the last of his dried meat. An
occasional spring had given him water, and once he thought he glimpsed
the roof of a large hut far away through the trees. But he gave it a
wide berth. It was hard to believe that this silent plateau was
inhabited, but if it were, the natives were doubtless as ferocious as
those hunting him.

Ahead of him the land grew rougher, with broken boulders and steep
slopes as he neared the lower reaches of the brooding hills. And still
no sight of his hunters except for faint glimpses caught by wary
backward glances--a drifting shadow, the bending of the grass, the
sudden straightening of a trodden twig, a rustle of leaves. Why should
they be so cautious? Why did they not close in and have it over?

Night fell and Kane reached the first long slopes which led upward to
the foot of the hills which now brooded black and menacing above him.
They were his goal, where he hoped to shake off his persistent foes at
last, yet a nameless aversion warned him away from them. They were
pregnant with hidden evil, repellent as the coil of a great sleeping
serpent, glimpsed in the tall grass.

Darkness fell heavily. The stars winked redly in the thick heat of the
tropic night. And Kane, halting for a moment in an unusually dense
grove, beyond which the trees thinned out on the slopes, heard a
stealthy movement that was not the night wind--for no breath of air
stirred the heavy leaves. And even as he turned, there was a rush in
the dark, under the trees.

A shadow that merged with the shadows flung itself on Kane with a
bestial mouthing and a rattle of iron, and the Englishman, parrying by
the gleam of the stars on the weapon, felt his assailant duck into
close quarters and meet him chest to chest. Lean wiry arms locked
about him, pointed teeth gnashed at him as Kane returned the fierce
grapple. His tattered shirt ripped beneath a jagged edge, and by blind
chance Kane found and pinioned the hand that held the iron knife, and
drew his own dirk, flesh crawling in anticipation of a spear in the
back.

But even as the Englishman wondered why the others did not come to
their comrade's aid, he threw all of his iron muscles into the single
combat. Close-clinched they swayed and writhed in the darkness, each
striving to drive his blade into the other's flesh, and as the
superior strength of the Puritan began to assert itself, the cannibal
howled like a rabid dog, tore and bit.

A convulsive spin-wheel of effort pivoted them out into the starlit
glade where Kane saw the ivory nose-ring and the pointed teeth that
snapped beast-like at his throat. And simultaneously he forced back
and down the hand that gripped his knife-wrist, and drove the dirk
deep into the savage wrists. The warrior screamed, and the raw acrid
scent of blood flooded the night air. And in that instant Kane was
stunned by a sudden savage rush and beat of mighty wings that dashed
him to earth, and the cannibal was torn from his grip and vanished
with a scream of mortal agony. Kane leaped to his feet, shaken to his
foundation. The dwindling scream of the wretched savage sounded
faintly and from above him.

Straining his eyes into the skies he thought he caught a glimpse of a
shapeless and horrific Thing crossing the dim stars--in which the
writhing limbs of a human mingled namelessly with great wings and a
shadowy shape--but so quickly it was gone, he could not be sure.

And now he wondered if it were not all a nightmare. But groping in the
grove he found the ju-ju stave with which he had parried the short
stabbing spear that lay beside it. And here, if more proof was needed,
was his long dirk, still stained with blood.

Solomon Kane

Wings! Wings in the night! The skeleton in the village of torn roofs--
the mutilated warrior whose wounds were not made with knife or spear
and who died shrieking of wings. Surely those hills were the haunt of
gigantic birds who made humanity their prey. Yet if birds, why had
they not wholly devoured the torn man on the stake? And Kane knew in
his heart that no true bird ever cast such a shadow as he had seen
flit across the stars.

He shrugged his shoulders, bewildered. The night was silent. Where
were the rest of the cannibals who had followed him from their distant
jungle? Had the fate of their comrade frightened them into flight?
Kane looked to his pistols. Cannibals or no, he went not up into those
dark hills that night.

Now he must sleep, if all the devils of the Elder World were on his
track. A deep roaring to the westward warned him that beasts of prey
were aroam, and he walked rapidly down the rolling slopes until he
came to a dense grove some distance from that in which he had fought
the cannibal. He climbed high among the great branches until he found
a thick crotch that would accommodate even his tall frame. The
branches above would guard him from a sudden swoop of any winged
thing, and if savages were lurking near, their clamber into the tree
would warn him, for he slept lightly as a cat. As for serpents and
leopards, they were chances he had taken a thousand times.

Solomon Kane slept and his dreams were vague, chaotic, haunted with a
suggestion of pre-human evil and which at last merged into a vision
vivid as a scene in waking life. Solomon dreamed he woke with a start,
drawing a pistol--for so long had his life been that of the wolf, that
reaching for a weapon was his natural reaction upon waking suddenly.

His dream was that a strange, shadowy thing had perched upon a great
branch close by and gazed at him with greedy, luminous yellow eyes
that seared into his brain. The dream-thing was tall and lean and
strangely misshapen, so blended with the shadows that it seemed a
shadow itself, tangible only in the narrow yellow eyes. And Kane
dreamed he waited, spellbound, while uncertainty came into those eyes
and then the creature walked out on the limb as a man would walk,
raised great shadowy wings, sprang into space and vanished.

Kane jerked upright, the mists of sleep fading. In the dim starlight,
under the arching Gothic-like branches, the tree was empty save for
himself. Then it had been a dream, after all--yet it had been so
vivid, so fraught with inhuman foulness--even now a faint scent like
that exuded by birds of prey seemed to linger in the air. Kane
strained his ears. He heard the sighing of the night wind, the whisper
of the leaves, the far-away roaring of a lion, but naught else. Again
Solomon slept--while high above him a shadow wheeled against the
stars, circling again and again as a vulture circles a dying wolf.


For the other chapters of this story go to:   Gutenberg.net.au



Although he had his faults as a writer, Howard was a natural storyteller, whose narratives are unmatched for vivid, gripping, headlong action... In fiction, the difference between a writer who is a natural storyteller and one who is not is like the difference between a boat that will float and one that will not. If the writer has this quality, we can forgive many other faults; if not, no other virtue can make up for the lack, any more than gleaming paint and sparkling brass on a boat make up for the fact that it will not float.
L. Sprague de Camp, Conan of the Isles, "Introduction", 1968

Solomon Kane is a character created by the pulp-era writer Robert E. Howard.

A late 16th/early 17th century Puritan, Solomon Kane is a somber-looking man who wanders the world with no apparent goal other than to vanquish evil in all its forms. His adventures, published mostly in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, often take him from Europe to the jungles of Africa and back. 
.
Howard described Kane as a sombre and gloomy man of pale face and cold eyes, all of it shadowed by a slouch hat. He is dressed entirely in black and his weaponry usually consists of a rapier, a dirk, and a brace of flintlock pistols. During one of his latter adventures his friend N'Longa, an African shaman, gave him a juju staff that served as a protection against evil, but could easily be wielded as an effective weapon. It is revealed in another story, "The Footfalls Within", that this is the mythical Staff of Solomon, a talisman older than the Earth and unimaginably powerful.


The great James Purefoy starred as Solomon Kane in a 2009 European
made film not widely distributed.

A Terminator for the Marine Corps


DARPA Battlefield Terminators

Bullshit Alert!
The military claims with a straight face that their
new "Terminator" will be a pack mule for the Marines.


What the Fuck?  -  America rushes toward the Skynet of Terminator.  Yes, we are ruled over by idiots.

The generals claim that they are spending countless millions to develop a "pack mule" terminator to carry stuff for front line troops.  Pure 100% Bullshit.  If the military needed a mule then just buy a mule.  No, the mule is a cover story to put a human face on the development of battlefield Terminators that will be fully armed and (if we are lucky) be operating independently of human commanders with an Artificial Intelligence chip.

The Marines are testing the Legged Squad Support System. DARPA built the LS3 to act as an autonomous pack horse that "can carry 400 lbs of a squad’s load, follow squad members through rugged terrain and interact with troops in a natural way, similar to a trained animal and its handler."
Battlefield Terminators
We are ruled over by fucking morons who are
building killing machines.


"The experimentation phase is in full swing right now," said Brigadier General Kevin Killea with all the emotion of a building manager introducing new trash chutes.
.
"And we'll come back and we'll look at all the data and we'll get the feedback from all the Marines about how they feel it can support them best," reports Defense One.

"It's a great idea. I'm glad they're coming out," said Corporal Mitchell Arnold Anderson (as if he was talking about the latest Android operating system).

"It just shows the Marine Corps is changing and times are changing. In 15 or 20 years, stuff like this should be everywhere in the military."

Just what DARPA calls "the culmination of a decade of research in perception and autonomy with programs like DARPA’s Unmanned Ground Combat Vehicle-Perception for Off-Road Robotics Integration (UPI) program, mobility work with DARPA’s 'Big Dog' and significant advances in natural human-robot interface such as voice recognition."

The Marines and DARPA are working through a two-year refinement and testing period, which will come to an end in summer of 2014.


Rise of the Machines
Marines Test Load-Bearing Robotic Mule for First Time.  It is just a matter
of time until this Terminator is weaponized.




And the Winner is?
The Terminator vs. the Muslim Jihad Warrior Goat.
Technology triumphs every time.

A Jihad against "Gay-Loving" Shiah Muslims



Oh Bugger!
Top Malaysian Islamic Authority Calls For
Jihad Against Shia Sodomites


Malaysia’s Sunni Muslims were today told that the Shiah school of Islam permitted sodomy and were called to stop its teachings from spreading as part of their “jihad”, the Arabic word for “holy struggle”.

In its weekly Friday sermon, Malaysia’s foremost Islamic authority issued a reminder that the world’s second-largest school of Islam had no historical links in the Southeast Asian country.
,
The Malaysian Islamic Development Department (JAKIM) warned its faithful here that departing from Sunni teachings would cause disunity and fighting among Muslims, which would destroy the bonds of the ummah and end in adherents being conquered by the “enemies of Islam”, reports The Malay Mail Online.

“Remember that any efforts towards halting these teachings is in a sense included in the ‘jihad’ because it counts as defending the sanctity of the religious teachings inherited from our Prophet Muhammad,” JAKIM said in its sermon, which is issued to mosques nationwide.

“Meanwhile, any efforts to breathe life to slander by spreading the Syiah teachings is among the practices which are not only misguided, but also misguiding.”

Shiah is often spelled as Syiah in Malaysia; its followers have been grouped with lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders (LGBT) whom JAKIM has previously branded religious deviants and a threat to orthodox Islam here.


Obama-Claus comes early to Iran



The Obama-Kerry Insanity


My wife used to tell me that when I Blog I use the words "idiots" and "morons" too often in describing the Ruling Elites of the US.

I say used to because after the Obamacare roll out, Syria and the Iran nuke agreement she has gone ballistic and is suggesting foul adjectives about Obama that have rarely passed human lips.  


Charles Krauthammer on the Iran deal:
“It’s really hard to watch the president and secretary of state and not think how they cannot be embarrassed by this deal. Think about this, for half a dozen times, the Security Council has passed resolutions which said Iran has to stop all enrichment. Otherwise, there will be no change in the sanctions. No relief. Which means six times China and Russia, not exactly hardliners on Iran, have signed onto this. And what is the result of this agreement? Iran retains the right to enrich. It continues to enrich during the six months. It is promised a final deal in which we’re going to work out the details of its enrichment. And remember, enrichment is the dam against all proliferation. Once a country anywhere can start to enrich, there is no containing its nuclear capacity. So it undermines the entire idea of non-proliferation and it grants Iran a right it’s been lusting for, for a decade. That’s why there was so much jubilation in Tehran over this.”
We’ve

Friday, November 29, 2013

China, Japan, South Korea & US all flying warplanes in China's "air defense zone"



A Re-Birth of Imperial Japan?
  • China has become very aggressive with their neighbors in all directions and claimed as their own huge sections of open ocean.
  • In response Japan is starting to build a more powerful navy.


China has sent warplanes to its newly declared air defense zone in the East China Sea, state media reports.

Japan, South Korea and the US have all since flown military aircraft through the area.

China's state news agency Xinhua quoted air force spokesman Col. Shen Jinke as saying several fighter jets and an early warning aircraft had been deployed to carry out routine patrols as "a defensive measure and in line with international common practices" reports BBC News.

He said the country's air force would remain on high alert and would take measures to deal with all air threats to protect national security.

In Xinhua's Chinese language version of the article, the colonel said the aircraft would "strengthen the monitoring of targets in the air defense zone and do their duty".

The Chinese are Coming

Testing China’s response, Japanese military aircraft flew through a new air defense zone that Beijing has declared over disputed islands, a Japanese government spokesman said Thursday. He said there was no response to the flights by the Chinese side.

The announcement of the flights came after American B-52 heavy bombers flew through the same airspace in defiance of China, which last weekend announced it had the right to police a vast area over much of the East China Sea. Beijing later said that it had monitored the American bombers but had chosen not to take action.
      
On Thursday, the top Japanese government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, said that Japan had followed suit by sending an unspecified number of patrol planes into the airspace, though he did not specify exactly when they had flown. The aircraft patrolled the airspace on routine reconnaissance flights without incident, and China did not scramble its fighter jets to intercept them, Suga said reports the New York Times.
      
Suga said that the aircraft had flown without informing China, defying Beijing’s demands that all traffic entering the so-called air defense identification zone file flight plans with China first. Japan and the United States have both refused to recognize the air zone, which covers the disputed islands, known as the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in Chinese. The islands are administered by Japan, but also claimed by China.
      
The South Korean government also said that it had flown surveillance aircraft through the zone on Wednesday without alerting Beijing, a flight that Chinese officials said that they had monitored. Like Japan, South Korea claims sovereignty over territory in the zone, but enjoys warmer ties with Beijing than Japan does.
      
When China declared the air zone on Saturday, it said that it would police the airspace with military aircraft, a move that raised the specter of Japanese and Chinese fighter jets intercepting each other. The move drew immediate criticism from both Japan and from the United States, which is obligated by treaty to defend Japan from attack.
      
China’s failure so far to enforce the zone appears to support the view of some Japanese officials, who say that the zone is just part of a broader, long-term strategy to try to pry the islands out of Japan’s grip. China has been doing this by sending coast guard ships around the islands, dispatching patrol aircraft and now claiming the airspace above — all steps, Japanese officials say, aimed at proving that China has just as much legal basis as Japan to claim that it administers the islands.
 

No one gives a damn about fish
Fish???  Screw that.  But the East China Sea has gas and oil deposits so
suddenly China "remembers" that the area belongs to them.

What's Yours is now Mine
China is now claiming almost all of the South China Sea (blue line) and by
magic there are oil and gas fields in the area.

Japan's launches their largest warship
In August, 2013 Japan unveiled the biggest warship since World War II, sparking concerns about the country's military buildup as observers said the vessel is actually an aircraft carrier.
.
Analysts believed that the upgraded warships in Japan and the Philippines are efforts to gain an upper hand in maritime disputes with China, as well as a catalyst igniting an arms race that would escalate regional tensions.
.
The Japanese-built carrier has a displacement of around 20,000 tons. It can accommodate 14 helicopters and will play a major role in disaster and rescue missions, as well as defend sea passages and Japanese territory, according to Japan's defense ministry.
.
But it is much larger than many countries' aircraft carriers in terms of displacement and deck length, and it can be easily and swiftly refitted to support F35-B fighters.
.
The vessel was named Izumo, the same name as the flagship of the Japanese fleet that invaded China in the 1930s.  Tokyo likely intentionally chose the date of the vessel's debut — the 68th anniversary of the US dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima — to woo public support for the government's military ambitions by taking advantage of sentiments about the attack.
.
See more at GB Times.

Obama's IRS audits cancer patient who spoke out against Obamacare


 
Welcome to Fascism in America
IRS audits both a cancer patient and his insurance agent for daring to use Freedom of Speech and oppose Obamacare Socialism.


Police State  -  Bill Elliot was a cancer patient who lost his insurance due to Obamacare and couldn’t pay the expensive new premiums. He was talking about paying the Obamacare fine, going without health insurance and “letting nature take its course.”

He went on FOX News where his story was picked up by C. Steven Tucker, a health insurance broker who helped him keep his insurance.

Now suddenly Bill Elliot is being audited for 2009 with an interview only scheduled in April 2014. Assuming he lives that long. That might be a coincidence, but Tucker is being audited back to 2003.

That’s a rather strange coincidence reports Frontpage Mag.


Would the IRS actually go after a cancer patient, who had voted for Obama initially, just for appearing on FOX and now being sharply critical of Obama and suggesting that he resign for his health plan lie?

Under the current insane state of affairs, where the IRS was used to silence the opposition, it’s unfortunately entirely possible. The fact that we are even having this discussion shows how badly Obama has undermined confidence in government institutions and the rule of law.

Americans always hated the IRS, but it’s been a while since they believed that the IRS was targeting them for their political views.

The United States desperately needs to restore the rule of law and confidence in its institutions otherwise we are facing a serious crisis in which Americans begin viewing government agencies as tools of political repression.


Cancer patient forced to make life or death decision






Army equipping soldiers with a fleet of bird drones



"The Birds" Are Here
While not quite what Alfred Hitchcock envisioned, the
US military is turning "birds" into weapons of war.


An urgent request made by United States soldiers in combat has prompted the Pentagon to place an order for three-dozen, state-of-the-art micro-drones that resemble birds and can be launched by hand.

Prioria Robotics of Florida announced earlier this month that the US Army Rapid Equipping Force, or REF, awarded them $4.5 million in federal contracts to deliver to the Department of Defense 36 models of the company’s Maveric unmanned aerial vehicle by December.

Each Maveric can soar through the sky at speeds up to 55 knots and has the ability to offer soldiers an array of advantageous features, but perhaps most interesting about the tiny drone is its size and shape: each aircraft weighs roughly two-and-a-half pounds, and according to the Army News Service, the Maveric’s flexible wings help enable the UAV to blend into its surroundings reports RT News.


REF project manager Tami Johnson told Army News Service that the Pentagon’s request “called for a small, subtle capability that could be employed by a single soldier,” the likes of which are expected to come courtesy of a fleet of Maverics expected to soon by ready to soar.

Allen McDuffee at Wired’s Danger Room noted this week that the units that compose the Army’s current arsenal of drones are easy to spot, and ergo easy to target. The solution, it would seem, is to abandon the more militaristic look associated with UAVs and, well, “make them look like birds,” McDuffee wrote.

There was a Special Operations requirement for a plane that had a natural, biological look — it wasn’t supposed to look DoD-ish,” Derek Lyons, the vice president of sales and business development at Prioria, recently explained to Flightglobal.

Danger Room’s McDuffee described the Army’s newest acquisition as resembling a raptor in flight,” but unlike its prehistoric predecessor, the Maveric at this time isn’t expected to do any physical damage to the enemies it may encounter in battle.

In a statement from Prioria, the Gainesville, Florida company said its product was approved by the Army because it is “usable in the most rugged conditions and equipped with the largest number of payload options of any hand-launched” unmanned aerial systems, including the ability to capture images in a variety of environments. The Maveric also will be able to carry other custom payloads for its operating team, but specifics with regards to what have not been released.


An image grab taken from YouTube video

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Happy Thanksgiving









 




Fatwa - A woman who swims is an “Adulteress,” Touching Bananas is against Allah



Allah Says: 
"Be careful what you put in your mouth."


There is nothing more entertaining than crazy-ass religious loons still living in the 7th century.

As the full ramification of the Muslim Brotherhood’s year in power continues to be exposed, a new study by Al Azhar’s Fatwa Committee dedicated to exploring the fatwas, or Islamic decrees, issued by the Brotherhood and Salafis — the Islamists — was recently published.

Al Azhar, in Cairo, is considered by many to be one of the oldest and most prestigious Islamic universities in the world. The study, written by Al Azhar’s Dr. Sayed Zayed, and entitled (in translation), “The Misguided Fatwas of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis,” reveals a great deal about how Islamists view women.

The Egyptian newspaper Al Masry Al Youm summarized some of the Al Azhar study’s main findings and assertions on November 15 in a article entitled (in translation), “Muslim Brotherhood fatwas: A woman swimming is an ‘adulteress’ and touching bananas is ‘forbidden,’” reports the Gatestone Institute.


Bananas are un-Islamic
Fatwas also forbade women from eating certain vegetables or even
touching cucumbers or bananas due to their phallic imagery.


According to the report, “fatwas issued by both groups [Brotherhood and Salafis] regard women as strange creatures created solely for sex. They considered the voices of women, their looks and presence outside the walls of their homes an ‘offence.’ Some went as far as to consider women as a whole ‘offensive.’”

The study addressed 51 fatwas issued during the rule of ousted president Mohamed Morsi. Among them, the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis “permitted wives to lie to their husbands concerning politics,” if the husband forbids her from being supportive of the Islamists or their agenda; she may then, through taqiyya [dissimulation] — a Muslim doctrine that permits deceit to empower Islam — still be supportive of the Islamists while pretending to be against them.

The study similarly revealed that some of these fatwas decreed that women who swim in the sea are committing "adultery" -- even if they wear a hijab: "The reason behind this particular fatwa, from their point of view, is that the sea is masculine [as with many other languages, Arabic nouns are gender specific, and "sea" is masculine], and when the water touches the woman's private parts she becomes an 'adulteress' and should be punished."

Moreover, "Some of these fatwas also forbade women from eating certain vegetables or even touching cucumbers or bananas," due to their phallic imagery, which may tempt women to deviate.

Other fatwas decreed that "it is unacceptable for women to turn the air conditioning on at home during the absence of their husbands as this could be used as a sign to indicate to neighbors that the woman is at home alone and any of them could commit adultery with her."

One fatwa suggested that marriage to ten-year-old girls should be allowed to prevent girls "from deviating from the right path," while another prohibited girls from going to schools located 25 kilometers away from their homes.

Another stated that a marriage is annulled if the husband and wife copulate with no clothes on.

Islamic Sinners
Women who swim in the sea are committing "adultery".  The Fatwa says when water touches the woman's private parts she becomes an 'adulteress' and should be punished.

Facebook Listens to Your Phone Calls - Welcome to 1984



Facebook is listening to you
App requires users agree to be monitored by microphone
at any time without their permission


What the Fuck!  -  The world has gone mad.  Now we have Facebook recording your private conversations and then storing that data for "later use" by the 1984 Thought Police.

Cellphone users who attempt to install the Facebook Messenger app are asked to agree to terms of service that allow the social networking giant to use the microphone on their device to record audio at any time without their permission.

As the screenshot below illustrates (click for enlargement), users are made to accept an agreement that allows Facebook to “record audio with the microphone….at any time without your confirmation.”

The TOS also authorizes Facebook to take videos and pictures using the phone’s camera at any time without permission, as well as directly calling numbers, again without permission, that could incur charges reports Infowars News.
 
But wait, there’s more! Facebook can also “read your phone’s call log” and “read data about contacts stored on your phone, including the frequency with which you’ve called, emailed or communicated in other ways with specific individuals.”
 
Although most apps on Android and Apple devices include similar terms to those pictured above, this is easily the most privacy-busting set of mandates we’ve seen so far.
 
Since the vast majority of people will agree to these terms without even reading them, cellphone users are agreeing to let Facebook monitor them 24/7, green lighting the kind of open ended wiretap that would make even the NSA jealous.

As was covered in a previous article, embedded microphones in everything from Xbox Kinect consoles to high-tech street lights that can record private conversations in real time represent the final nail in the coffin of privacy as the ‘Internet of things’ becomes a part of our daily lives.


Mark Zuckerberg is Listening
As the screenshot above illustrates (click for enlargement), users are made to accept an agreement that allows Facebook to “record audio with the microphone….at any time without your confirmation.”

No Bill of Rights Needed
Facebook has no real interest in recording your conversations.  But in some back room deal with the Feds, Facebook is effectively acting as an agent for the 1984 Surveillance Police State in gathering all your information for the government to use at will.  Private businesses are working closely with the government to get around the 4th Amendment.