Category: Access

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Remembering Russia by James Patrick

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  Text and Talk, 11 May 2019 It is difficult to forget Russia, given the proclivity of the state, real and imagined, to meddle in America elections and to violate egregiously the Monroe Doctrine by sponsoring illiberal client states such as Cuba and Venezuela that are organized on a socialist model.  From 1946 to 1991 Russia was an existential threat to Western Europe.  Its nuclear arsenal is now larger than that of the United States and it has the only other strategic air force in the world.   Its manner in politics is bullying, and its leaders still consider the...

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Wednesday’s Child: Worse on Friday

Put simply, over the last twenty years the story of civil liberties in Russia has run in parallel with Solomon Grundy’s.  That arrest there has now become virtually synonymous with prosecution, and prosecution with conviction, is evidence stark enough for any man of good will, but periodically a legal case comes to light for which the starkness is merely a charming background. This week it is the case of one Egor Zhukov, a 21-year-old university student who was arrested in July during the street demonstrations in Moscow.  As evidence the judge was shown a police videotape of a young man...

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GI Jane Jive–Women in Combat

Of all the areas of our lives negatively effected by this absurd doctrine [equality], perhaps few could be construed to be as dangerous as the move to institutionalize women in combat. Tennesseean Mark Atkins explores this in the recent release from Shotwell Publishing, Women In Combat: Feminism Goes to War. Hollywood continuously produces films showcasing nature-defying feats of diminutive women who have the ability to grapple in one-on-one combat with men two or three times their size and emerge successful. But these fanciful characterizations are as real as Santa Claus. As Atkins explains at length, aside from unusual exceptions, the God of nature has not endowed women to be combat warriors. 

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Wednesday’s Child: Letter from London

Apart from mudslinging at Prince Andrew for his alleged peccadillos, first sexual and now financial, British newspapers are occupied with exposing the “anti-Semitism” of Jeremy Corbyn.  “What will become of Jews and Judaism in Britain if the Labour Party forms the next government?” asked Britain’s Chief Rabbi in what the Times of Israel has described as “an unprecedented intervention into partisan politics.” As in the case of Prince Andrew, discussed in this space last week, I’m not an admirer of Corbyn.  In fact, I would go as far as to say that should Labour win the general election next Thursday...

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More Birthdays: Podcast

An 18 minute podcast on Bat Masterson, Joe Di Maggio, Emperor Komnenos, John Bunyan, William Blake, Berry Gordy, Jimi Hendrix, Merle Travis, Voltaire, C.S. Lewis, Gregory of Tours, Jonathan Swift, Theodor Momsen,

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VOA Propagandizing Americans on Ukraine

The Voice of America is part of the U.S. government’s Ministry of Truth. The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 prohibited it from directly broadcasting to the American people. It did some good during the Cold War, with programs aimed at those behind the Iron Curtain and elsewhere. With the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the rise of the Web c. 1994, it should have been abolished. But as Milton Friedman said, there’s nothing so permanent as a temporary government agency. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 gave the VOA the OK to broadcast directly to Americans, supposedly...

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Climate Change, Face Book, and Other Nonsense

On the basis of what authority are you entitled to declare all criticism of manmade climate change to be rightwing ideology? I know several people who never got beyond 9th grade general science but are forever sounding off on FB on the idiocy of “conservatives”–by which I think they mean supporters of global capitalism–who deny what all right-thinking men are supposed to know. Of course all right-thinking men once upon a time believed in Phlogiston, spontaneous generation, phrenology, and the possibility of a successful Marxist economy. It is true that we all have opinions, most of them unsubstantiated by any stronger proof than an editorial in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or perhaps it was something we misunderstood once back in Music Appreciation 101. That is what ideologies do to the brain, and it scarcely matters if it is the ideology of Al Gore or Alfred Rosenburg. If Mr Henman, so absolutely certain he is on the right side of history (or should I say the left side), thinks he is an expert on climatology, how did he come by his expertise?