B-29 Crew Submarine Rescue At Sea

"An entire crew of a B-29 (12 aviators) was rescued by a US submarine after their plane was shot down in 1944/5 70 miles off the coast of Japan. The entire rescue was filmed in color video but then sat in a guy's closet until now. This is a story from a Denver TV station of one of those rescued aviators to whom the video was delivered. It also shows their transfer to another submarine that is likely headed back to port before the one that accomplished the rescue."

Via Billy

Obama’s Asia Tour A ‘Disaster’

The most bitter disappointment, however, was Obama’s failure to conclude the widely anticipated Free Trade Agreement with South Korea. Philip Levy, a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, writing in Foreign Policy, called it nothing short of a “disaster.”

Freedoms Already Lost in 1882

Interviewed by Professor E.L. Youman’s in the Fall of 1882, Englishman Herbert Spencer waxed frankly on his “estimate of American tendencies.” The New York Tribune described his words as “one of the profoundest studies of American life ever made,” though no one here seemed to learn anything from it.

Bernhard Thuersam, Director

Cape Fear Historical Institute

www.cfhi.net

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Puppeteers of a Sovereign People:

“After pondering over what I have seen of [America’s] vast manufacturing and trading establishments, the rush of traffic in your streetcars and elevated railways, your gigantic hotels and Fifth Avenue palaces, I was suddenly reminded of the Italian republics of the Middle Ages; and recalled the fact that while there was growing up in them great commercial activity, a development of the arts, which made them the envy of Europe, and a building of princely mansions, which continue to be the admiration of travelers, their people were gradually losing their freedom.”

“Do you mean this as a suggestion that we are doing the like?”

“It seems that you are. You retain the forms of freedom; but so far as I can gather, there has been a considerable loss of the substance. It is true that those who rule you do not do it be means of retainers armed with swords; but they do it through regiments of men armed with voting papers who obey the word of command as loyally as did the dependents of feudal nobles, and who thus enable their leaders to override the general will and make the community submit to their exactions as effectually as their prototypes of old.

It is doubtless true that that each of your citizens votes for the candidate he chooses for this or that office, from President downwards; but his hand is guided by an agency behind which leaves him scarcely any choice. “Use your political power as we tell you, or else throw it away,” is the alternative offered to the citizen. The political machinery as it is now worked has little resemblance to that contemplated at the outset of your political life. Manifestly, those who framed your Constitution never dreamed that twenty thousand citizens would go to the poll led by a “boss.” America exemplifies at the other end of the social scale a change analogous to that which has taken place under sundry despotisms.

You know that in Japan, before the recent revolution, the divine rule, the Mikado, nominally supreme, was practically a puppet in the hands of his chief minister, the Shogun. Here it seems to me that “the sovereign people” is fast becoming a puppet which moves and speaks as wire-pullers determine.”

(Herbert Spencer, An Interview with Dr. Youmans, America Through British Eyes, Allan Nevins, editor, Oxford University Press, 1948, pp. 350-351)

Guns And Suicide

Oleg Volk
"Let's examine the idea that removing guns from individual ownership would do anything to reduce suicide rates. We already know that substitution effect happens and people in countries like China and Japan simply find other means to kill themselves. However, US gun-banners maintain that gun suicide is somehow worse than other kinds, so let's consider what kind of weapon is required for a successful suicide.

Generally, only one shot is fired. Any firearm down to a 14th century matchlock would suffice for that. A matchlock can be made with a simple pipe with one end closed with a cap or even left open. In the latter case, more powder or other propellant such as aerosol would be needed but the effect would be much the same.

The projectile has to penetrate very little. If the gun is aimed at the person's eye or ear, there's not even skull bone in the way. Moreover, shots that fail to penetrate the skull would still likely kill by spalling on the inside. So any projectile , from a bullet down to batched stone or even a blank would kill a person who has the gun in contact with the head.

Moreover, the gun doesn't have to be a firearm. A pneumatic nail gun would work as well, as would a bangstick. A crossbow would work just as well. So restricting firearms -- including the obsolete matchlock, flintlock and percussion types would do nothing to reduce the effectiveness of suicides by those who decide to use projectiles to check out.


In other word, anti-gun people think nothing of endangering the lives of millions who want to use firearms for defense under the pretext of reducing the number of suicided -- and they are lying about that excuse, too."

China’s Young Officers & The 1930s Syndrome

"The young officers are taking control of strategy and it is like young officers in Japan in the 1930s. They are thinking what they can do, not what they should do. This is very dangerous."

Through Western Rifle Shooter's Association