Month: January 2020

Now through Thursday (Pacific Time because that’s what Amazon is using), the first story in the Elara of the Elves series, Oruk Means Hard Work, will be available free, free, free.

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Elara, at eight years of age the heir apparent to the throne of the elves of Talen, had just finished reciting the names of the trees of the Greenwood when the alarm bell began to clamor. She jumped from the bench and began to look around.

Dorian put a hand on her shoulder, “Patience, Princess. Let us see what the trouble is first.”

The door to the garden burst open and Corinbar dashed in. “Dorian, they need you on the wall. Princess, come with me.”

“Trouble then?” Dorian picked up his sword and buckled it about his waist.

“Orc war party. They hit several farmsteads and are heading this way.”

Dorian nodded. “Taking the Princess to the keep?”

“That was her father’s charge to me.”

“Then I’ll accompany you as far as the wall,” Dorian said.

“I have told the King,” Corinbar snapped as he scooped Elara up to his hip, something only one of her bodyguards would dare, “that this garden needs to be inside the walls but he insisted on keeping it out in the forest…tradition.”

Once through the garden gate and out of the garden’s walls, Elara saw people streaming up the road toward the keep.

“This way!” Corinbar turned away from the road to dash through the woods.

“Where are we going?” Elara asked, her head pressed against Coninbar’s shoulder.

“The main gate’s too crowded and I need to get you inside now,” Corinbar said. “They’ll open a sally port for us.”

“I smell smoke,” Dorian said from behind them. “Elm, Ash, and Oak!  They have fired the forest.”

“They are close then,” Corinbar said as he sped up, far faster than Elara’s young legs could have propelled her.

Elara buried her face in Corinbar’s neck. Why did the orcs have to attack now, while her father was away?  Why did they…she suppressed a shout as Corinbar stumbled, then stumbled again. She looked up to see his face twisted in agony.

“Forgive me…Princess,” he said as he sank to his knees. “Dorian!” His arms went slack and Elara tumbled to the ground.

“Come, Princess,” Dorian grasped her arm roughly in his left hand and hauled her to her feet. In his right, he held his drawn sword, which blazed with the elf-light.

Elara stared at Corinbar as he fell forward onto his face. Two ugly black arrows protruded from his back.

Before Elara could begin to run with Dorian, a dozen orcs appeared from the trees. Two, armed with bows, let fly at Dorian. Dorian’s sword flicked out and both arrows fell broken to the Earth. In that moment, the other orcs were upon them. They piled on Dorian while one of their number fell on Elara. For a time she could see only hair and muscle, and then the orc climbed off of her and pulled her roughly to her feet.

The fight was over. Dorian lay bleeding on the ground, as did several of the orcs. The remaining orcs bound her; tight ropes cut into her wrists, then a bag covered her head and she was roughly lifted across an orc shoulder.

“Why?” She cried softly to herself. “Why are they doing this?”

#

And endless time of running later, the orc dumped Elara on the ground. Someone pulled the bag off her head. She struggled to a sitting position.

She saw that they were in a narrow ravine. Her woods-trained eyes spotted orcs at the top of the ravine, peering outward. Guards, she supposed. Another orc dug a small pit while others gathered wood, inspecting each piece before selecting or rejecting it.

Still other orcs stretched ropes between trees and pulled. They removed cloths from their packs and staked them over the ropes, forming low, wide tents.

While one of the orcs started a smokeless fire in the pit, the others spread forest litter over the low tents. Elara drew a surprised breath. From the ridges above, those tents would be invisible against the forest floor.

One of the orcs squatting at the fire stood and turned toward her. As he waddled in her direction, Elara could not take her gaze from the knife and bowl in his hands.

The orc squatted next to her as Elara sat, eyes transfixed on the knife. The orc raised the knife point first between them, then twisted it, giving Elara a clear view of the gleaming brightness of its tip from all sides.

The orc turned the knifepoint downward and stabbed into the bowl, coming up a moment later with a chunk of meat. He held the meat out to Elara. “Kurok.”

Although she was very hungry, Elara turned her face away.

“Kurok!” the orc repeated.

Elara shook her head ‘no’.

The orc set the bowl on the ground, then his hand darted toward Elara’s face and grasped her by the nose, pinching off her breath. Elara struggled for a moment, but the orc would not relinquish its hold. It drew her in closer and shoved the meat toward her mouth.

Elara kept her mouth closed as long as she could but with her nose pinched closed, she soon had to open it to breathe. The moment she did, the orc shoved the meat into her mouth and released the hold on her nose.

She spat the meat out at him.

Pain exploded against her right cheek as the orc slapped her. He dipped another piece of meat out of the bowl and held it out to her. “Kurok. Kurok olf.”

She ate. The meat was dry and tasteless, but filling. When she had eaten all the meat in the bowl, the orc poured water from a skin into the bowl and held it out to her. She drank.

Once Elara had finished with the crude meal, the orc rapidly undid the knots binding her legs and pulled her to her feet. The rope that had bound her legs was converted to a tether. A slip loop in the end went around her neck and the rope ran down her back and under her tied wrists, before leading back to the orc. The one time she tried to struggle, the orc gave a quick jerk on the rope caused it to close painfully around her throat, then release. She did not repeat the attempt.

The orc half circled Elara. The rope he held ran from his hand, around her waist and to her back. A slight tug showed that even from this direction, the rope could cut off her air if she resisted. The orc started to walk and Elara, having no choice, followed him out of the camp, down the valley of the ravine. Once out of sight of the camp, the orc stopped. Elara looked up at him but he just waited.

With a start Elara realized what he was waiting for. She couldn’t, not in front of an orc. But if she didn’t, she would soon foul her clothes.

After a short inward struggle, she did what was necessary. It seemed to take a long time.

#

That night they put her in one of the tents, still tied, where she drifted between fitful sleep and groggy waking. In the morning they fed her again, more meat and some kind of spongy bread, took her out to relieve herself and left her under the guard of one of the shorter orcs while they struck the camp.

Finally, they packed the tents and ropes away and extinguished the last coals of the fire.

“Azg!” the orc guarding Elara said.

“Azg, yourself,” she said, looking up at the orc.

The orc grasped her shoulder and pushed. “Azg.” He pulled at rope that poked from his pack. “Azg shek tak gorug shet.”

“I don’t understand you!  I don’t speak orc!”

The orc stared at her for a moment, then walked a few steps. “Azg.” He pointed at her. “Azg.”

Tears welled up in Elara’s eyes. “I don’t want to ‘azg.’ I want to go home. Can’t you let me go home?”

The orc waited while she cried, terrible in his patience, then pointed at her once more. “Azg.”

Sniffling, the last of her hope dying within her, Elara walked.

For three days they walked, each night’s stop being a repeat of the first one. On the fourth day, before the sun had reached its zenith, they reached a narrow sinkhole. At the rim of the sinkhole, iron spikes protruded from the rock. To these the orcs tied ropes, the free ends of which they dropped into the dark.

Elara barely had time to scream as one of the orcs wrapped a hairy arm her around her waist, grabbed one of the ropes, and leapt into the darkness. Her breath caught in her throat as they fell, stifling her scream. The rope hissed and smoked as it slipped through the orc’s hand. She kept expecting him to let go of the rope and the two of them to plunge to their deaths but, instead, their descent slowed. By the light of the dwindling circle of sky above them, Elara could see the other orcs descending other ropes.

A yelp burst from Elara’s throat when the orc carrying her hit bottom with a painful thump. He released her and she sat on the damp stone floor and moaned. It was dark. The only light came from the sinkhole far above them. She could see that they were in a cavern, but its size was lost in the murk.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “Are you going to kill me?”

The orc bared his teeth and pointed. “Azg.”

Tears running down her cheeks, Elara got up and tried to walk in the direction the orc had indicated. She had not gone three steps before her foot caught on a rock unseen in the gloom and she fell, bruising her cheek painfully since her hands were still tied.

The orc grunted and grabbed her arm with a calloused hand, a hand still hot from the descent down the rope, and pulled her to her feet. She could then feel his hands working at her wrists. Shortly, the ropes around them fell free. The orc stood back and pointed again, “Azg.”

Untied now, Elara could possibly run, but where could she go?  “Azg,” she said and walked in the direction the orc had pointed.

#

A tunnel led from the large entrance cavern. Elara stumbled along in the dark, guided by the orc’s hand on her shoulder.

As she walked, she began to see deeper shadows in the gloom, then more detail. There was light in the cave, not much, but enough to see. Streaks of soft light glowed from the walls and ceiling of the cave.

The orc removed his hand and simply pointed the way. When the cave branched, the orc said nothing, simply grunted and pointed. Mutely, Elara followed his directions.

A brighter light marked an opening ahead of them. As they approached, Elara could see that the light came from fires in a larger cavern. Many small tents dotted the cavern floor, each with a small fire before it.

The orc directed Elara to the center of the cavern where a smooth area formed the floor. A larger fire burned in a pit in the center of the cavern.

When they reached the fire, the orc took Elara’s wrist and lifted her hand high over her head. “Arnak te gimbtul!” he shouted.

Other orcs, tending cooking fires and other tasks looked up at that.

“Arnak te gimbtul!”

The other orcs started to gather around the fire. “Arnak te gimbtul.”

From somewhere, several orcs produced drums and began to beat a complicated rhythm.

Numb with fear, Elara followed as the orc led her to the fire. She screamed when the orc drew a long dagger from his belt and held it, point up, in front of her face.

“Arnak te gimbtul” he said then, in a quick stroke, drew the point of the dagger across her palm. Her hand burned as the dagger carved a bloody furrow across it.

Still holding her firmly by the wrist, the orc pulled her hand and held it over the fire so that blood from her hand dripped onto the burning wood. He held her there for a few seconds, then released her hand.

Elara stared at her hand, transfixed. Blood continued to well from the cut and ran down her arm. Her hand hurt. It throbbed. But she was still alive. They had not killed her, not yet.

The orc knelt in front of her. He reached out with one finger and almost gently tapped her in the chest. “Bak te gimtul gem.” He said more then, but Elara scarcely heard him. She did not understand anything that had happened since being taken from her home. She stared numbly at her captor as another orc placed a folded piece of wet cloth against her hand — a cloth that burned as it touched the cut — and bound it in place with a leather strap.

The orc led her from the fire to one of the larger tents and pointed at a thin blanket and a small pillow. Nodding, she rolled herself in the blanket. Lying there, she cried herself to sleep.

Read more.

 

And no foreign entanglements.  In another forum in response to my “The Draft” post of the other day someone made the argument regarding the point about needing training cadre and they would have to be drawn from other uses if we brought them home we wouldn’t need so large an army.  Another respondent then went on about the dangers of a standing army and how the Founding Fathers warned about it.

First off, yes, some of the Founding Fathers objected to having a standing army, believing the citizen militia (all adult males capable of bearing arms) could handle the defensive needs of the country.  There are just two problems with that argument:  one was that even if it were true (which I’ll get to in a moment) that was then, when the ocean on one side and the wilderness on the there were mighty fortifications provided by Mother Nature herself.  The second problem with that argument is that, it was far from a universal view.  The anti-Federalists who held that view lost in the debates at the Constitutional Convention.  Madison, in The Federalist Papers (written to “sell” the Constitution that was being proposed–and, yes, the Anti-Federalists had their own objections to it, but it was the Constitution that ended up being adopted), pointed out that there were needs that could not be well, served by only a citizen militia.  The example he gave was manning forts in the frontier.

None of this eliminates the dangers they foresaw of a standing army, but the goal was to limit that danger and provide safeguards against it.  By restricting military appropriations for an army (the Navy was separate) to two years and requiring appropriations to start in the House (with its two-year terms being more “beholden” to the people) the army could be kept on a short leash as it were.  The other edge of the sword was that citizen militia.  Madison pointed out that there was a limit on how large a standing army a society could maintain (as a function of population about three times the size of our own) and if it were used to override State and Individual rights it would be met by a citizen militia several times its size, thus the necessity for a militia to secure a free state.

Indeed, strong anti-Federalists like Jefferson soon found that they did need a military with “power projection” overseas.  Granted, he used the Navy, Marine Corps, and hired mercenaries rather than the army but the same principle still applies. Previously, Washington and Hamilton argued for an army for the quasi-war with France but they were Federalists (although Washington never accepted the label, his positions were pretty strongly Federalist).  On the other hand, Adams, another Federalist, was less inclined to wanting that army.

The problem is, if we interact at all with people outside our borders, then we will run into people willing to use force of arms to interfere with that interaction.  We might like to be allowed to engage in peaceable trade around the globe but what to do when others are unwilling?  When others are willing to use force of arms to interfere with that trade (as did the Barbary Pirates)?

One approach would be to simply tell those seeking to engage in trade that they were on their own.  If they end up getting captured by pirates, sold into slavery, robbed (foreign government or private sector), the US government will do nothing for them.  Oh, the government might “negotiate” for them, but without the willingness to use force (requiring a military once again), all they can do is say “pretty please, with cream and sugar on top.”

Maybe folk are willing to do accept that for private businesses (and accept the havoc that would play on our economy–higher prices, fewer goods and services available, and basically a poorer country), but how about our diplomatic people?  Do we bring them home too?  Go full isolationist where we don’t even talk to other nations?  Or do we accept that things like the Iran Hostage Crisis of 79-80 will be perfectly acceptable, without even a failed attempt at rescue (let alone sending in a force of Marines to secure the embassy when it comes under attack)?

Now maybe we’re doing too much with our military, things that we could afford to reduce it in scope.  I can even agree with that.  However, the idea that many have that if we just brought our troops home all would be sweetness and light is patently ridiculous.  There are people, people with power in various nations as well as in “non-state actors”, who mean us (by “us” I mean the United States of American and her people) harm.  They’re willing to suffer harm themselves so long as they can hurt us.  Some will claim that this is “blowback” from our own actions in the past.  Maybe so, but we can’t change the past and have to deal with the situation as it is now.  And, frankly, it’s foolish in the extreme to think that the hostility to America is only due to “blowback.” We encountered hostile powers when the only thing we were doing was trying sail through the area to engage in peaceful trade (those Barbary Pirates).

So long as there are people out there hostile to the United States and her people, we need to deal with that reality.  And no longer can we rely on the oceans as a barrier.  It was little enough of one before–as the War of 1812 and the Mexican War demonstrated–but it’s far less of one now, particularly when it comes to asymmetric warfare and terrorism.  Too a large extent, an armed populace is a useful deterrent but there are some things where it’s just not that useful.  Being armed is little defense against suicide bombers or the guys who drive trucks through crowds.

So the question becomes how to deal with those hostile interests.  We can retreat before them.  We can listen to our modern day Neville Chamberlain’s and give them what they want in exchange for “peace.” We can pay the modern version of the Danegeld.  After all, even Jefferson and Adams paid tribute to the Barbary States to get them to leave our shipping alone–at that time we did not have a navy and so lacked the “power projection” to do anything else.

That is the equivalent of attempting to turn a tiger into a vegetarian by feeding it steaks.  See how well that works.  Adams and Jefferson, at least, only agreed to buy time to build up the force necessary to fight back–as Jefferson did when he was President.

In the end, sooner or later, when it comes to powers inimical to the United States, we have to say “no” and back that up with force.  Even if we play “pay the Danegeld” the demands will just increase.  And sooner or later it will become more than we as a people are willing to pay.  And when that happens we’ll end up in an armed confrontation.  They won’t back down.  Why should they?  Past history will have shown them that we would.  So we’ll need to actually fight it out.

The thing is, the longer we keep appeasing in the interest of “preserving peace” the more violent and bloody the eventual confrontation will be because of the certainty the other side will have that we will give in if they just remain strong.

So if there’s going to be a confrontation, then sooner is better than later.  And, to be honest, I’d rather fight it over there than over here.

The trick is in knowing when the confrontation is inevitable, in knowing when you can ignore the yapping dog (yapping safely from the security of a fenced yard) as harmless, and knowing when the yapping indicates an actual threat which must be dealt with.  It’s in knowing when the other side is negotiating in good faith for a fair exchange or when they’re demanding “tribute” in exchange for “peace.”

I admit that I am far from qualified to make that judgment in most cases.  I simply do not have the information necessary, or the understanding of the various cultures involved.

So, are we involved in more military adventures than are truly necessary?  Probably.  Is the US “meddling” in more places than it should?  Almost certainly.  Which places?  Um, that I do not know.

The thing is, though, if we want to continue to have a strong, growing, vibrant economy.  If we want our people to be able to have the benefits of free society.  And if we don’t want to be the target of every tin-pot dictator seeking to make a name for himself by poking the lion, we must be involved in world affairs.

And that requires an army maybe not quite as big as we have now, but big enough.

Yesterday I dismissed the idea that there would be a draft.  Today, let’s talk about the fighting by and with Iran is going to lead to World War III.

So let’s review the bidding:

1. Iran orchestrates an attack on the US Embassy in Baghdad, with their terrorist-in-chief Qassem Soleimani in charge based in an airport in Iraq (where, by UN resolution, he’s not supposed to be).
2. US launches a strike at the field command post (in Iraq, this cannot be emphasized enough–we did not attack into Iran) killing Soleimani.
3. Iran threatens dire consequences. “Death to America” (which they’ve been chanting since 1979, so in reality no change there).
4. US and Western media goes nuts, bemoans death of Iran’s terrorist-in-chief.
5. Iran launches missile attack against military base in Iraq where US personnel are stationed. (Hey, at least this is an actual military target.  So….progress, I guess.)
6. US launches mass fighter test of the new F35 fighter in Utah.  “Coincidence” of timing with missile attack against US forces in Iraq.

Based on this we’re supposed to be facing imminent World War III?

Have any of the people claiming that actually cracked open a history book? (Or perhaps they know better and are being deliberately disingenuous in order to score some kind of political points.)

Some might think that a singular random act, the Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, sparked World War I (“The Great War” and “The War to End War” as it was fatuously known at the time) however that required a specific set of circumstances to become an actual global war rather than a modest regional conflict.  Having major powers of the time backing opposite sides in the local conflict and then their allies feeling the need to support them.  In particular, Germany (allied with the Empire of Austria-Hungary) felt compelled to take down France (allied with Russia–who supported the opposite side of the Balkan states from Austria-Hungary) before going to Austria-Hugary’s aid.  But in so doing they went through supposedly neutral Belgium, which brought in the English and the navy most capable of bottling up the German High Seas fleet and denying it the high seas, which led to the extended use of submarine warfare by the Germans which already put the US on edge and then when they tried to get Mexico to attack the US, well that brought the US in and, behold, global conflict.

In World War II we had the first the Japanese invading Mancuria, then Reichstag Fire used by the Germans as an excuse to attack Poland.  This brought in the UK and France (allied with Poland).  Japanese atrocities in Asia and the Pacific led to a US embargo on trade with them, which led to the Pearl Harbor attack bringing the US in against the Japanese.  Then the Germans in support of their nominal ally, Japan, declared war on the US, bringing us in to the European theater as well.  And then Germany had to go an attack Russia and…

None of that complicated system of alliances exists.  While there might be some public breast beating and lots of speeches, nobody’s going to send an army to support Iran.  Nobody’s going to make an overt military attack against the US.  There isn’t the set of interlocking obligations that national leaders will actually follow drawing more and more nations into the conflict.  They will no more go to war on Iran’s side then they did on Iraq’s in 2003.

So, no, this isn’t the beginning of World War III.  The idea is laughable.

So stop saying it is.

Anytime the military is used overseas, at least when a Republican is sitting in the White House, cries go up that there is going to be a draft.  We, they say, are going to get into a big war and are going to have to conscript millions of young people in order to fight it.

It’s nonsense.  It’s nothing more than a scare tactic used to engender opposition to the sitting President and his party.

First off, creating a draft would require Congress to pass a law authorizing it.  Yes, we have selective service registration (all young men must register for Selective Service within 30 days of their 18th birthday).  However, having the registration is not the same as having a draft.  To go the next step, using that registration to select folk for an actual draft would require a separate law, passed by Congress (with both House and Senate agreeing on final wording and each voting for the agreed on version) and signed into law by the President.

In the current Congress, one could not be passed unless at least some Democrats in the House agreed to it.  That’s not going to happen.

Second, a draft would simply not be useful.  American warfighting is not based on sending large numbers of poorly trained conscripts to soak up enemy fire and hope to overwhelm the other side by sheer force of numbers.  It is a professional force, generally highly trained and skilled.  Conscripts would be an active detriment to military operations.

But suppose that changed.  Suppose there was a complete loss of sanity among the makers of military doctrine and they decided that human wave attacks were the way to go, that throwing huge numbers at an enemy in the hope that you had more bodies than they had bullets would be a successful strategy.  And suppose Congress passed such a law.  And suppose the President signed it.

The selective service board would then have six months to deliver the first inductees to the military however the truth is, the military would not be ready for them by then.  The military has neither the facilities nor the personnel in place to receive and train them.

Since the elimination of the draft in 1973 many bases have been closed.  Others have been downsized, to fit the model of a smaller, professional military.  We would need to build and expand bases to house the new conscripts and facilities to train them.  Current facilities might be adequate to our current force (although some argue that we need more even for that) but would be wholly inadequate to a large conscript military.  And building the new facilities would take time.

Likewise, managing and training the new conscripts would require a much larger cadre of personnel to manage and train them.  That cadre would have to come from somewhere.  And the only “somewhere” available is in current active duty and reserve forces.  This means taking folk from where they are currently serving and pulling them back to train the new conscripts.  So one has to choose between how much you want to reduce current military capability (people pulled out of actual operations to be trainers) vs how many new people you can train who will, in the future, be added to your capability.

If you have a crisis critical enough to make you seriously consider a draft, then how much can you draw down current force to instead train inductees.  It does no good to have troops coming on line later (how much later, I’ll get to in a moment) if you lose now because your soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines are busy training those troops.

But, let’s say you’ve got your facilities.  You’ve got your trainers.  You’ve got those conscripts entering training.  You still have months yet before the conscripts are ready to enter the field.  Twenty-two weeks for an infantry soldier.  Just over five months.  And that’s what it takes with volunteers entering of their own free will to not be too much of a hindrance when they finally reach the field.  My own specialty field, when I served in the Air Force, involve nearly eighteen months of combined basic and technical training.  And then, it took the next three to four months at my duty station to actually learn how to do the job. (Classroom vs. field are too different worlds.) And I was not slow.  In fact, the person in charge of my OJT (On the Job Training) was quite complimentary on how quickly I picked up the “real world” aspects of the job.

Do you think conscripts are going to be quicker at it?

So, we’re talking a year from the time a law implementing conscription goes into effect and the first marginally useful conscripts start appearing in the field.  There are simply no foreseeable threats where that is useful.

So, no, there isn’t going to be a draft.  Talking about it is nothing more than fear-mongering.

Don’t fall for it.

Had a kind of neat event yesterday, up here at the local rink. The new round of classes was starting and one of the coaches mentioned that they had like 26 kids in the “Snowplow Sam” class (that’s the class for children 5 and under). They’re always shorthanded on coaches so I offered to help if they needed it. “I’m not exactly an instructor but I’m an extra pair of hands and an extra pair of eyes.”

They grabbed onto that really quickly. So I ended up out on the ice during the first session (my own class is in the second) helping to give young kids their very first ice skating lesson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4PJjOkDbIU

From a different series than I usually use for examples–one more appropriate to the kiddos.

After the classes were over–both the one I helped with and my own (got my two foot turn pretty good and actually started working backward edges on the circle–just had time for one attempt, about a second, at the very end of class) I told the coach I had spoken to before that if they ever needed a hand I’d be more than willing. She said “We always need a hand.”

Oh, that backward edge on ice?  That looks something like this (although much better than I did):

So I guess I’m now involved in volunteer teaching of the kids right alongside my daughter. 😉

And that, my friends, is cool.

Back when I was younger.  A lot younger. (No, younger than that.) My musical tastes was pretty much limited to the softest of rock, love songs and ballads, and, well, things like this:

The “Donny and Marie” show was on the air and, yep, I was a big fan.  Which should tell you pretty much all you need to know about my musical tastes back then.

About the time I was going into the Air Force, MTV (yes, they used to play music) was founded.  Now, most of the places I was stationed I didn’t have cable.  But at some point I encountered this video–best guess is it was while I was stationed in England:

The “story” in the video is what roped me in but it got me to listen, actually listen, to a different style of music than I had paid attention to before.  I started listening to more “Rock and Roll” in addition to the softer love songs and ballads–which I still enjoyed and still do.

So this was the first break in the wall, the first glimmer of light passing through my eyelids in the course of waking up.

More years passed and I ended up in a place that actually had cable both MTV and VH1.  And I encountered this one:

Okay, it was the babe with the sword that drew much of my attention here but still, my musical horizons expanded still more.  I had previously been rather dismissive of The Artist Formerly Known as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince.  The reasons don’t really matter but here, once again, I actually paid attention.

More years passed.  I encounter work by John Ringo.  if you don’t know who he is, no he isn’t a musician.  He’s a writer.  My first encounter with his work was in his “Posleen Trilogy” (which turned into four books then expanded into a series including other co-authors and so forth). Music played a roll in that by reference–a gimmick was that certain styles of music “fit” as a movement cadence for…well, the details don’t matter.  And here I got this one:

Later, I picked up another of his books, Ghost. Look, I’ll warn you, this book is not for everybody.  It’s violent.  It contains explicit fetish sex, including non-consensual.  The main character is not a nice man. (It also won a romance award, but that’s another story.) But what it, and the series that spawned from it, did do was introduce me to several artists and music genres that I had not encountered before and I was just…wow.

There was this piece by the Dark Wave group The Cruxshadow. (It was called “Goth” in the book and marks when I started thinking of myself as “goth” and breaking out of the bad advice I had received many years before.)

In addition to the dark wave, that same series introduce me to power metal:

And Symphonic metal:

And with those as starting points I started some explorations of my own:

Evanescence:

Hammerfall:

And, continuing my Goth exploration, I tried Bauhaus:

However, I didn’t much care for Bauhaus.  An interesting change of pace, but not something I’d listen to much.  Thought I’d have to turn in my Goth card (while still being allowed to keep my Metalhead card).  But then I discovered some others.

The Sisters of Mercy:

The 69 Eyes:

Type O Negative:

And that’s where I am now.  So maybe I get to keep my goth card after all.

So, the other day, a group of terrorists launched an attack against our embassy in Baghdad.  In response, Donald Trump ordered immediate military support of the embassy, Osprey tiltrotors loaded with 100 marines plus their gear, with many more “on deck” if needed.

In addition, he attacked a site where terrorist leaders were clustered and from which the attack was being commanded.  At this site was located Qassem Soleimani, a major general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (a “regime protection” force–similar in role to the NKVD in the former Soviet Union or the Geheime Staatzpolizei in Germany under the National Socialist German Workers Party) and the head of Quds–basically, their state-sponsored terrorism force.

In short, he was Iran’s head terrorist and chief of terror operations.

People went nuts.

We had the following:

And she went on to say:

This, this right here, is why you really can’t expect much from people who play pretend for a living. (In case you don’t know, McGowan is an actress, most notably as Shannon Daugherty’s replacement on the TV Series “Charmed”.

Let’s review the situation.  An attack was launched against our embassy.  That right there is an act of war.  It was an act of war when Iran attacked the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979.  And it was still an act of war when Soleimani orchestrated the attack against our Baghdad embassy the other day.

Soleimani wasn’t back in Iran setting policy.  No, he was out in the field, in Iraq (when, as it happens there is a UN resolution calling for him not to leave Iran–a resolution in which he was in violation).  Basically, he had set up a field command post in Baghdad (and in case you missed it, Baghdad is in Iraq, not Iran) from which to conduct an attack against the US embassy.

Whatever his official rank he was acting as a field commander operating from a forward base being used to launch an attack against the United States.  You don’t get a more legitimate military target than that.  If Donald Trump were to shake off his protection detail, use his authority as Commander in Chief to take command of a company of Marines and personally command an attack on a foreign power in the field, that field command would not suddenly stop being a legitimate target because a person of that rank made the foolish decision to take actual tactical command in the field.

But, folk say, this attack will make Iran angry leading to them retaliating.

Please note, that the attack itself was a retaliation.  They attacked us.  They didn’t even attack a military target but a diplomatic one–an embassy, not a military installation.  And they’ve been doing it for decades.

• Embassy takeover and hostages 1979-1981
• Lebanon suicide bombing 1983
• Mining the Persian Gulf 1988
• Truck bombing in Saudi Arabia 1996
• Shiite militia attacks in Iraq 2003-2011
• Attempt to assassinate Saudi ambassador in the US 2011
• Bomb plots against American business interests in Nigeria 2011-2013
• Attack plots in the US by Iranian backed Hezbollah agents, 2017
• More attack plots against the US in 2018
• And now we have this attack against the US embassy.

All the stuff that people are wringing their hands over?  Iran has already been doing.  To our good fortune, they’ve generally been rather inept at it.  Unfortunately, if you throw enough fanatics at an issue you’ll occasionally have a big success.

And, frankly, they are lucky that we haven’t decided to play by their rules.  McGowan’s egregious nonsense about “terrorist nations” aside, if we did play by their rules, Iran and anyone supporting them would be a smoking ruin in short order.  We don’t play by their rules because we are better than that.  But a lot of people are getting a lot angrier about the continued terrorism.  And sooner or later we’ll get angry enough to throw the rulebook of “civilized” war aside.

So you want to play?  Let’s play.  I’m your Huckleberry.

 

Another late one.  I need to rebuild my buffer.

Was traveling a bit last week, visiting a photographer friend down in Nashville. (The incomparable Oleg Volk.) While we were there we took the opportunity to visit one of the local (more or less) ice rinks:  Ford Ice Pavilion Bellevue.  The justification was for Oleg to get pictures of me and my daughter skating.  Unfortunately, he didn’t get any good pictures of my daughter (she had issues that day not directly related to skating) but there is this one:

THat’s e at the far left in black.  The scowl is my “concentrating face”.  I was actually having a good time.  Technically, my hands should have been up at shoulder level, gracefully extended to the sides, but as crowded as the rink was, I didn’t want to take up that much space.  My daughter is in the frame.  She’s the one at far right in the image, with the bleached tips in her hair and the pink laces on her hockey skates.

My daughter skates rings around me.  I take lessons.  She teaches (up to pre-free-skate at least).  Volunteer teaching since she’s only fifteen, but there’s talk of actually hiring her once she turns 16 later this year.

Instructors kind of trade around from class to class depending on who’s there both among the instructors and among the students.  As a result there was one session where my daughter was my instructor.  She’s good, both as a skater and as a teacher.

So, the visit to the Belleview rink was the 31st.  Today, I was back at the local rink and it, too was packed.  I heard someone mention “last hurrah before school starts again.” Whether true or not, it was crowded.

I try to push some limit whenever I get on the ice.  When possible that “limit” is whatever new (or newish) technique I’m learning.  But when the ice is as crowded as it was tonight and in Belleview that’s just not safe.  In that case I try to push endurance–conditioning.  I try to do that anyway even when I’m working techniques.  I’ll work new techniques when I’m still fresh, then spend the rest of available time skating to build my condition.

Now one thing that’s been particularly frustrating is that I continue to occasionally stumble while doing one foot glides.  I expect to stumble and even fall when I’m doing something new–backwards one foot glides, two-foot turns, crossovers (although those are coming along nicely)–but it’s frustrating when, for no apparent reason, I catch a toe pick and either have to take some running steps to recover or end up on hands and knees on the ice.  It’s not even the pushing foot that’s catching, but the gliding foot which means I’m getting my weight too far forward (or letting my foot lag behind center of gravity which is a different perspective for looking at the same thing).  More rarely, my issue will be off the back of the blade in which case I end up flat on my back.

Recently, I’ve taken to wearing elbow pads, well, strictly speaking they’re knee pads in size “M” but they fit snugly around my elbows so that’s what I use them for.  I have found that when I do fall, particularly backward, I have a really bad tendency to crack an elbow against the ice leading to a swollen lump that turns into a large purple bruise that takes several weeks to heal, something like this:

I’m hoping the habit of wearing elbow pads will prevent that in the future.  However, for the trip to Nashville, we were looking for pictures so I didn’t want to wear them.  Fortunately, aside from a couple of stumbles, only one of which took me to hands and knees, I didn’t have any problems.

But those continued stumbles are frustrating.  I’d really like to figure out how to get to a point where I’m not doing them any more.  Yeah, I know.  Top level competitive skaters still fall, but not generally when simply doing a one-foot glide.

I was travelling and didn’t have posts set up in advance so I missed a few days.  Sorry about that.  Home now, and to get things started here’s a blast from the past:

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I keep hearing from people telling me “if you don’t like it, why don’t you just move?”

There’s just one problem with that.  For those of us who prefer limited government on Constitutional principles (as written according to the understanding of those who wrote it, and as properly amended not just redefined away), where could we go?  Short of building new colonies on Earthlike planets around other stars there is no place to go.

As Ronald Reagan put it in a 1964 speech:

The enemy he was referring to then, of course, was the Soviet Union.  That enemy collapsed 27 years after Reagan gave that speech.  Now it’s a new enemy or enemies, the rise of militant Islam is one threat.  The apologists who object to treating it like an enemy, much like those who did the same regarding the old Soviet Union, serve to heighten and extend that threat.

But in many ways we face a more insidious threat.  Many of the ideas the Soviet Union tried to spread to the US in its effort to achieve suzerainty still live on in the US.  They are propagated in the entertainment media, spread in schools and universities, often by people who are not even aware that they are Marxist ideas.  Ideas like class warfare, the idea that someone who is financially successful is the enemy.  Ideas like zero sum economics so that the only way someone can have more is by depriving someone else.  The idea that those who seek wealth are “greedy” and unworthy, but those who seek power (so long as they are opposed to those who seek wealth) are somehow virtuous and good.

Got news for you, to paraphrase an ancient proverb:  Wealth might not always get you power, but power can always get you wealth.

And the folk fomenting that, those who want to turn the US into a carbon copy of Europe, say “if you don’t like it, go somewhere else.”

We did go somewhere else.  We came here.  Unless somebody develops true space travel there’s no place left to go.  In Reagan’s words, this is the last stand on Earth.

This, of course, is the point where someone suggests “If you hate government so much, then move to Somalia.”

Look.  A failed state broken into warring factions led by local warlords who are essentially absolute (until violently deposed) in their local authority is a far cry from a Constitutional government of limited powers with the rights of the people (actual rights not “whatever I want I have a right to and someone else has to pay for it” type “rights”) held sacrosanct.  Indeed, it’s at least as far from that as the US is today.

Now, perhaps Somalia could be used as a starting point to make such a society, but the local warlords will not give up their petty fiefdoms willingly.  So such a transformation would not be bloodless.  And, not being bloodless, the international community would with near certainty take it upon itself to intervene and prevent the transformation.

So no, “going to Somalia” is not an option for those who actually desire a free society.

The same is not true for those who want European style socialism/social welfare.  Europe, after all, is right there.  It’sexactly what they say they want.  No transformation necessary.  If you’d be more happy in that system it’s there.  You can go there.  I would not deny you.

But you would rather stay here and deny me the kind of government that would make me happy.  Not just me, but a lot of other people like me.

It’s not that you want to live under the social, political, and economic system that pleases you that bothers me.  It’s that you want to force me to live under that system.  I can wave my arm indicating all the choices you have for your desired system.  You, and others like you, have worked hard through long years and decades to make sure there is no other choice for folk like me.

And that is why I will never stop fighting to leave at least one place in the world where Constitutional principles and individual liberty are given more than lip service.

And if you wish to deny that to me, if you oppose me in that and work to undermine the freedoms that are enshrined and protected by the Constitution then I will oppose you with every breath in my body.

Because if you will do that, then you. are. the. enemy.