Sun, Oct 4

2017—America learns the hard way it has 800 troops in Niger: four Green Berets are killed in an ambush. 2004—SpaceShipOne, Burt Rutan’s tourist rocket, makes it to space a second time, winning the Ansari X Prize. 2002—Knight-Ridder: “The White House and the Pentagon…are pressuring intelligence analysts to highlight information that supports Bush’s Iraq policy.” One paper runs the story. 2001—George W.[MD] Bush orders the NSA to spy on Americans without getting warrants, i.e., illegally. 1986—Dan Rather is attacked on the streets of New York by two men yelling, “What’s the frequency, Ken?” 1971—Pres. Nguyen Van Thieu, unopposed, is reelected. He says it’s “an achievement for …

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Ewing’s Still Spewing

To the Editor: The Democrat Party has a long anti-democratic history; now it’s fielding Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) candidates who want to replace the American Constitution that protects our rights, and implement policies that will make American life more dangerous, less free, and much poorer. Democrats use government to violate our rights or allow them to be violated. E.g., FDR refused to criminalize lynchings (Trump did in 2018), Democrats established poll taxes and tests to prevent blacks from voting, the KKK went unchecked, Democrat gun laws prevented blacks from being able to defend themselves, and Biden opened our border letting about 15 million illegal …

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The Hydrocarbon Doctrine

War is Hell, Energy is Business by Richard M. Balzano Venezuela, Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza appear to be separate crises, each with its own history and its own official Washington explanation. Viewed against the global energy economy, however, they begin to look considerably less distinct, as oil fields, gas reserves, pipelines, refineries, shipping lanes, sanctions, and competition for customers repeatedly intersect with American foreign policy. The countries and circumstances vary, but control over hydrocarbons and the markets through which they flow remains remarkably constant. Study the global energy economy if you want to understand American foreign policy. After murdering fishermen accused of smuggling drugs in …

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Jack Gets His Day in Kangaroo Court

This has been, we regret to report, the most maddening decade in American history. Trust us, we have seen it all. Typically our hard times have given us something: independence, the end of chattel slavery, an improved standard of living, and so forth. All we have gotten over the past ten years, though, has been the constant degradation of… just about everything. The only exceptions seem to have been the laws of physics, but you can bet your bippy that otherwise unemployable asshats at some lavishly-funded think tank are conjuring up a scheme for doubling the speed of light and cutting gravity in half. This …

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Volume 271, No. 2

Every other Friday we realize with a shock that we are still un-incarcerated, after all these issues… Thanks in large part to our small team of volunteers, thousands of copies of our conveniently-sized paper—small enough to pocket and pass on to another reader—are now available, for free, here in Portsmouth and environs. If you click here, the whole thing, in digital form, will appear more or less miraculously on the glassy screen of your gadget of choice.