Neos?

 When I was knee-high to a grasshopper, we had Conservatives and Liberals.

The Conservatives wanted to keep things just as they were. After the Liberals forced through a change, the Conservatives wanted to keep things, with the change, just as they were. Conservatives were Isolationists: the US didn't need any other country, didn't want any other country, and wanted barriers to keep out furreners and their products.

Liberals wanted change, more opportunities for the Working Class, and peaceful international cooperation. More taxes (to pay for those opportunities for the Working Class), and laws that gave the Working Class more opportunities. Eventually, the Liberals wanted equal rights for minorities.

When I was a boy, the US South had separate schools for Anglos and African-Americans. We were told 'separate but equal'. And we liked it that way. Anglo teachers for Anglos, African-American teachers for African-Americans.

But the African-American schools had few books, the School Board didn't want to squander book money on African-American schools, all the money went for books for the Anglo schools. So the education in African-American schools was much less effective than the education for Anglo students. And still, many of the Anglo students didn't learn anything (I didn't even learn anything in sex ed class, it was so Bowdlerised).

But for Hispanics, many were told they could not attend either Anglo nor African-American schools, since they were neither, so they grew up illiterate, mono-lingual Spanish speakers.

For the East Asians, they also could not attend the public schools, but East Asians (mostly) paid for schools for their children who grew up speaking only a Chinese dialect and only literate in Chinese.

Times change. All US children are now supposed to go to school, so the Hispanics and Chinese now speak English. In the case of the Asians, better English than most Anglos. (Need to do something about those Asians.)

***

Today, those Conservatives and Liberals are long gone. Instead, we have neo-Conservatives (neocons) and neo-Liberals (neolibs).

The neo-Conservatives want all the world under the US thumb, following the 'rule-based order' where the US make all the rules and give all the orders.

The neo-liberals also want all the world under the US thumb, so the entire world must do what is in the best interest of the US, PLUS the neo-liberals insist that everyone must be 'woke'.

The neo-cons do not believe in isolationism, they want the entire world a US neo-colony.

The neo-libs also do not believe in peaceful internationalism. Any nation that do not do what the US expect and demand must be destroyed and then forced to follow a woke agenda.

***

See what an improvement the neos are over the traditional Conservatives and Liberals!

The Times They Are a Changing???

 When I was a boy, the TV had constant ads for Hungary, being oppressed by the USSR, fighting for freedom. Hungary, once part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, was a part of the Warsaw Pact, and the USSR demanded strict obedience.

Today, Hungary are part of NATO and aren't sure they like it. They are supposed to support LGBTQRSWXYZ rights and they don't like that. They are looking at the Warsaw Pact and the USSR and Russia and seem to be confused. Religious, they still hate the USSR, but, being religious, they like Russia. oops. Russia were the USSR. But now Russia are rabidly religious. The Russians don't like transgender, they don't allow surgery to make little boys into little girls or little girls into little boys, and Hungary are looking and like what they see. As opposed to Europe where religion is denigrated and everyone must support turning little boys into surgically transgendered girls and little girls into surgically transgendered little boys. Or else.

But more is happening.

The PRC were strongly supported by the USSR. Had they not been, the PRC would not exist today. But that was in 1951. Then, in 1969, the PRC and the USSR had a war over one tiny island in the Amur River. And the PRC decided to align with the US of A, and let the US of A build lots of factories with cheap PRC labour that moved high-paying US jobs to low-paying PRC jobs and made $billions for the US oligarchs and cost ordinary Americans their employment.

In 1949, most consumer goods went to Americans:

https://youtu.be/j-6YQQ779YM

 Americans bought about half of all the cars produced in the world, more than 90% of all refrigerators.

That was then. Now, those consumer goods are more evenly distributed.

But what is worse, the PRC now sells more of their production to Asia and Africa than to the US and Europe. They are not nearly as dependent on the West for a market for their production. Which means they can live without the West. Which means they can do whatever they darn well please, and don't have to kowtow to the West. (Kowtow is from a Chinese word for subservience, and subservience from the PRC the West ain't gonna see no mo', no mo', they ain't gonna see no mo' .)

In 2012, Graham Allison wrote "The Thucydides Trap," that hegemons, faced with rising powers, go to war about 75% of the time. With the collapse of the USSR, the US became Global Hegemon, and the PRC are a rising power, so there is a 75% chance of war.

Higher, actually, because Russia became a problem that needed to be eradicated before the PRC, and now the effort to break up Russia into 20 or so independent, unarmed nations with all Russian energy going to US oligarchs as war reparations isn't going all that well. Actually, it is going that well in the Western narrative, reiterated by all the Western media, but not so well in real life. And when Tucker Carlson tried to say this, he was fired, even though he was so popular that his firing cost his former employer $1 billion in lost stock value. But well worth it to keep up the official Western narrative.

So where do we go from here?

There is an old adage: prediction is very difficult if one tries it with respect to the future.

So I always stick to predicting the past, and I generally get it right.

As to the future with regards to whether NATO can defeat Russia in the Ukraine, the answer depends on the West. If the US figure it is better to have no world at all than for the US to lose their position as Global Hegemon, then we will have no world at all.

If the leaders of the West do not trust their Fallout Shelters as safe places to shelter during a nuclear holocaust, maybe they won't destroy the world, and they will allow the US to forfeit their role as World Hegemon.

I hope we are allowed to see what the West choose. Because I fear we won't be allowed to see anything after the US make the official choice for the West.

Is something leaking?

 When Nixon was president, some Republicans working for his re-election broke into the Watergate Hotel office of the Democrat National Committee (DNC). Nixon ordered everything about this classified and said he'd have anyone publishing anything arrested. The Washington Post published anyway, and this was repeated in other newspapers. Nixon tried, but the courts refused to indict or hear lawsuits, and Nixon resigned. That was a long time ago.

When Airman Teixeira leaked some classified documents to a locked chatroom, and one of the other chatters put them in plain view, the New York Times and the Washington Post had their staffs find Teixeira and hand him over to the police. He revealed secrets about the proxy war in the Ukraine that neither the US government nor the New York Times nor the Washington Post wanted anyone to know. The US government classifies just about everything. In World War II, the US government broke the Japanese code. This was, of course, Top Secret, as such information always is.

Now, the government classifies anything and everything, and, as far as I know, does not have the Russian or PRC or DPRK secret code that tells them what's going on, so none of that classified stuff is classified for military reasons, but just to make sure it can never embarrass the government.

So the US wants to gaol Assange for 175 years for revealing classified information, and the UK agrees that's a very lenient sentence for his heinous crime of telling Western voters the truth about what the US and UK are doing. The crown judge agreed he belongs in gaol for Life without Parole, but said UK law does not permit the UK to send anyone to serve in a US gaol since US gaols do not meet UK minimum standards for humane imprisonment. The High Court ruled that, for the heinous crime of telling the truth, Life in a posh, country-club UK prison was much too lenient a sentence, and Assange must be sent to serve his time in a US prison where they know far better than the UK how to use the methods developed by that great teacher of prison science, Torquemada, so Assange must be extradited to the US ASAP. For some reason, Assange is still in the posh, UK country-club prison Belmarsh awaiting that extradition, but probably not for too much longer.

The documents leaked by Teixeira are quite the mixture. The page published by the New York Times and Washington Post says that the Ukraine have a total of 100,000 killed and wounded (mostly wounded with minor wounds), while the Russians have more than 300,000 dead, so Putin's entire military invasion force have been lost; however, the Ukraine are running out of ammunition, so, if the West do not immediately send many more $billions, an easy victory could degenerate into a stalemate.

But there's a page the New York Times and Washington Post know is a heinous crime to publish: it says that Russia are winning, the Ukrainians have lost 7 times as many men and 7 times as much materiel as the Russians and are losing the war, and there does not seem to be anything NATO can do to stop them. Tucker Carlson, the most popular newscaster on the US news, reported on this page, and was fired and blocked from broadcast and print.

 The rest of the media dutifully reiterate that the Ukraine are very close to the complete defeat of Russia, regime change in Russia, and all Russian energy will be awarded to Western oligarchs as war reparations. This, and only this, may legally be printed or broadcast in the West. One reads this in the US, UK, and European newspapers, and sees it broadcast on CNN, BBC, France24, DW, etc. etc.

John Galt Electric Cars

The US left want to mandate electric cars. Most US electricity comes from fossil fuels, but producing electricity, transmitting it, charging a battery, and then using the battery to run an engine that can drive a car is, according to the same people who promote the CoViD-19 vaccines as 110% safe and effective, produces no CO₂. All that is needed is to circumvent the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

I mentioned the novel Atlas Shrugged in my previous post. Shortly after leaving home, it came highly recommended by one new acquaintance. So I went to the library and found it more than 1,000 pages, so I asked for a second opinion and was told never to read it. That was 50 years ago.

It came recommended a couple of years ago, and, having more time, I read it. The author, Ayn Rand, says that university professors lie when they say no one, no matter how clever, can violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics: a clever engineer can figure out a way. So she strongly recommended John Galt electric cars. One only needs to charge the car battery once. The battery provides the electricity to run an electric motor, and the motor turns a generator that recharges the battery as one drives the car.

That annoying Second Law means electric cars running on electricity produced from fossil fuels use more fossil fuels than diesel cars.

But John Galt cars eliminate the need for fossil fuels.

***

I'm glad I did not read Atlas Shrugged 50 years ago, and also glad I read it a couple of years ago. Back 50 years ago, I could not have appreciated the book, but I certainly did when I finally read it, and saw how many people are willing to bet their lives on having a John Galt Electric Car available by 2030.

Books

 When I finished high school, I met people who said I had to read Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.

I went to the library, Atlas Shrugged was about 1200 pages, so I asked, 'Why should I read Atlas Shrugged when it is 1200 pages?' All the people I asked said, 'Atlas Shrugged is terrible. Never read it.' So I didn't.

Lord of the Rings was in three volumes, and Volume I wasn't that long, so I tried to read it. Unreadable. I told the person who told me never to read Atlas Shrugged, and she said, 'You have to read The Hobbit first.'

So I read The Hobbit. And then I had to read Lord of the Rings. And it was GREAT. I even read all the appendices and other supplements.

Lord of the Rings starts with a lot of stuff explaining The Hobbit, stuff that is incomprehensible if one has never read The Hobbit. After one has read The Hobbit, it's all stuff one wants to understand. The Guardian film reviewer said he tried to read Lord of the Rings, found it unreadable (as I did before The Hobbit) and found the movie not very good. So the Guardian, once a great newspaper, has fallen.

I found the Lord of the Rings so enthralling, I read the appendix on calendars. A subject on which Tolkien was not very familiar. All his calendars were variations on the Roman calendar, which, before Julius, had 12 months of 30 days each. Not enough for a year, so every December, they'd add a few days. The goal was to have March 21 the Vernal Equinox. But they usually got it wrong. So they tried to correct the next December.

Not a good calendar. But Tolkien liked it, and had all the calendars in Middle Earth based on it.

***

Julius made the months 28, 29, 30, or 31 days, with February 28 days in years not divisible by 4, and 29 days in years divisible by 4. Not quite in sync with the solar year, but close. Gregory fixed the small error. And now most of the world uses the Gregorian calendar.

***

But Roman solar years are unusual. Most cultures use the moon as the month (and the words tell us that the English did before the Romans came).

But the lunar month is about 29.5 days, so 12 lunar months are not a solar year. 

Since most religions have a planting festival and a harvest festival, the dates for those festivals must be be in spring and fall. But with a 12 lunar month year, that won't happen. Not a big problem. One uses leap months to make sure some date fits a solar marker, a solstice or an equinox. If 12 lunar months aren't enough, one has a leap month.

The Chinese use the Winter Solstice. Their New Year must be after the Solstice, so, if the New Year would be before the Solstice, they have a leap month.

The Hebrews use the Vernal Equinox. So if the full moon in the month of Nisan (Nisan 14) is before the Vernal Equinox, the year has 13 months. If Nisan 14 is after the Vernal Equinox with 12 months, the year has 12 lunar months.

Why didn't Tolkien know the traditional English calendar was lunar???

***

And, of course, Mohammed said that planting festivals and harvest festivals are prohibited for Muslims (since Arabs don't have planting or harvesting, their diet is based on goats), so he prohibited the 13th month. Which means the Islamic year moves year after year, Ramadan comes a few weeks earlier year after year. As does Islamic New Year.

***

So most calendars are lunar calendars that are somehow tied to the year, except for the Roman calendars and the Islamic calendars.

And Easter is always just after Passover (unless you are Orthodox, when Easter is at least two weeks after Passover), but every year the newspapers are shocked that the two festivals are so close together.