Field Guide to Flying Death: Dumb Bombs, Russia and Syria

US Army Air Corps B-17 Flying Fortress dropping "dumb" bombs 

on Germany in World War II

 During World War II and for decades after, "dumb" or unguided bombs were the only way to put explosives on target from the air.  Beginning in the Gulf War, America and other nations started using "smart" or guided bombs.  

In 1999 when American B-2s bombed Belgrade, Pentagon spokespersons said they could not only hit a specific building, but put a bomb in a specific doorway of a building. 

Beginning in September 2015, Russian strategic bombers flew from Ossetia near the Republic of Georgia in Southern Russia and bombed targets in Syria.  They claimed to be fighting ISIS, but hit civilian targets, causing thousands of casualties. The Russian bombers dropped "dumb" bombs.  Various news outlets at the time speculated that the Russians used dumb bombs because these bombs are much cheaper than guided weapons. Up to 100 times cheaper.  The Miami Herald wrote this.

From top: Tu-95, Tu-160 and Tu-22 Strategic Bombers

In his book The Road to Unfreedom Timothy Snyder said Russia began bombing Syria three weeks after Germany announced it would take in a half million refugees. 

"Russian aircraft dropped non-precision ("dumb") bombs from high altitudes. ... Russia was not targeting ISIS bases. Human rights organizations reported the Russian bombing of mosques, clinics, hospitals, refugee camps, water treatment plants and cities in general." (pages 198-199)

Dumb bombs made the refugee crisis worse. Putin's goal, according to Snyder, was to destabilize Europe. By making the refugee crisis worse in Europe, the Russian bombing campaign played to the xenophobia of the fastest-rising candidate in the American Presidential election. That candidate would eventually take the side of Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies.

The dumb bombs were dropped by a man with a smart plan.  

Field Guide to Domestic Terrorists: Boogaloo Boys

The Boogaloo Boys--terrorists in floral prints.

For my second terrorist group, I picked the Boogaloo Boys.  They are the newest terrorist group with a large following in America.  They are gun-loving fools who think they can tear down America and still have 5G phone service, toilet paper and dinners with mom.  

Their newness shows just how successful the last four years have been in promoting anarchy.  Every right-wing terrorist group has flourished under trump. they are his people.  

From the Anti-Defmation League:  The boogaloo movement is a developing anti-government extremist movement that arose in 2019 and features a loose anti-government and anti-police ideology. The participation of boogaloo adherents in 2020’s anti-lockdown and Black Lives Matter protests has focused significant attention on the movement, as have the criminal and violent acts committed by some of its adherents.

Before there was a boogaloo movement, there was the concept of “the boogaloo” itself: a slang phrase used as a shorthand reference for a future civil war that became popular in various fringe circles in late 2018. By 2019, people ranging from gun rights activists to libertarians and anarchocapitalists freely used the term “boogaloo,” urging people to be “boogaloo ready” or even to “bring on the boogaloo.”  The term itself didn’t specify a type of civil conflict, allowing different types of extremists to insert their own particular fantasies as the concept spread on numerous discussion forums and social media sites.

The term itself derives from a longstanding joke referencing the 1984 film Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, in which the first part of the film’s title is replaced by something else to suggest some sort of sequel.  When George W. Bush followed in his father’s footsteps to the U.S. presidency, for example, some people jokingly referred to it as “Bush 2: Electric Boogaloo.”

More ADL info here.

Key Points:

• The boogaloo movement is an anti-government extremist movement that formed in 2019. In 2020, boogalooers increasingly engaged in real world activities as well as online activities, showing up at protests and rallies around gun rights, pandemic restrictions and police-related killings.
• The term “boogaloo” is a slang reference to a future civil war, a concept boogalooers anticipate and even embrace.
• The ideology of the boogaloo movement is still developing but is primarily anti-government, anti-authority and anti-police in nature.
• Most boogalooers are not white supremacists, though one can find white supremacists within the movement.
• The boogalooers’ anti-police beliefs prompted them to participate widely in the Black Lives Matters protests following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May 2020.
• Boogalooers rely on memes and in-jokes, as well as gear and apparel, to create a sense of community and share their ideology.
• Boogalooers have been arrested for crimes up to and including murder and terrorist plots.

The Atlantic magazine recently wrote about the Civil War dreams of the Boogaloo Boys.

Last time I wrote about the 3 Percenters

Books of 2020 -- The Complete List

 

My favorite book of 2020

The following are the books I read in 2020.  They are grouped in categories.  There are links to the comments of those I already wrote about. 

Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War by Viet Thanh Nguyen -- My favorite book of 2020. Essay here.

Fiction

I wrote a separate post about books of fiction here. I added more about Decameron and The Great Divorce. The rest of the list is below.

Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio -- This year was my second reading of Decameron, but my first reading during a pandemic! It was more vivid this time, reading about a group of young men and women escaping the plague at its epicenter to feast and tell stories.  The plague was so bad in Florence it was referred to as the Florentine Plague at the height of the Black Death in Europe. Seven of ten Florentines died in the middle of the 14th Century.  

The book itself was more intriguing this time. I have read and re-read the 100 Cantos of the Divine Comedy but until this year was in thrall to Dante and not so interested in Boccaccio. But this year as I read the Decameron I thought how the 100-story form could be re-created in our own time of plague.  The New York Times magazine devoted an issue to Decameron stories from many writers.  One Hundred stories while under various forms of quarantine seems like a wonderful idea.

The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis:  The book has nothing to do with marriage ending happily. This short book begins at a bus stop in Hell where many residents catch a bus for a day trip to the edge of Heaven. The journey follows Dante's Divine Comedy both in the route from Hell to Heaven and in the book's focus on the people the Pilgrim (narrator) meets along the way.

One huge difference is the geography of Hell. Dante climbs down from the surface of the Earth through the center of our planet and up to the other side and Mount Purgatory. Dante's trip is vertical.

The journey in Lewis' book is flat. Hell is a flat, ever-expanding disk in which people build houses, fight and move further and further apart. The smoky wraiths from Hell seem to be rising on the bus tour, but are actually expanding to allow them to tour the edge of Heaven.

The book ends by underlining the underlying point of the Divine Comedy: Free Will. Lewis makes a good attempt at talking about how we can perceive predestination and free will and how both can be true though the lens of Time.

Both books are brilliant. The Great Divorce is something of a tribute. Lewis loved the Divine Comedy. 

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

The Head of Professor Dowell by Alexander Belyaev

Memoir from an Antroof Case by Mark Helprin

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman 

A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire, #1 and 

A Clash of Kings, #2 by George R.R. Martin

21: Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey 

Blue at the Mizzen 

The Commodore

The Hundred Days

The Nutmeg of Consolation

The Thirteen-Gun Salute

The Truelove

The Wine Dark Sea

The Yellow Admiral by Patrick O'Brian 

Il Etait une Fois by Francoise Savigny--every year I re-read this French children's book just to practice reading French aloud without hesitating. 

History, Philosophy, Psychology, Politics, Memoir

Bookshelf by Lydia Pyne -- one of several books interesting books in The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series.  The book is a 100-page history of bookshelves from the Ancient world to what to call a "shelf" of ebooks. I have read several.  Another I read this year is Silence by John Biguenet. It is a history of who has the privilege of silence and the place of silence in our world and past worlds: from First-Class Lounges in airports to monastic life.

My favorite so far in the series is Free Will by Mark Balaguer -- I re-read the book this year with my ESL Book Group. I love the way the book presents the issues around Free Will.  

I am currently reading Paradox and Irony and Sarcasm. The series includes more than 30 books on Food, Artificial Intelligence, fMRI, Recycling, and Science Fiction to name a few. Check them out here.

Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning and On Tyranny by Timothy -- I re-read both this year while waiting for the coup d'etat that ultimately failed because the former President is a coward.  Here is what I wrote about these books four years ago.

Ally by Michael B. Oren -- This memoir by the Israeli Ambassador to the US during the first term of President Obama made me wish Romney had won in 2012.  It would have made Trump impossible. I wrote about the book here.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu or Master Sun -- My first reading of this classic book of advice to warriors.  It was fun. The second book we read for the World Conquest Book Club.

The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen -- Written in 1899, this book describes so much about the actual problems of living in a culture obsessed with money and power and with how to show off how successful and powerful we are.  

Why Arendt Matters by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl -- I have read most of Hannah Arendt's major works, but had not read a book about her. This year I read an overview of her works before participating in the Virtual Reading Group at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College.  We finished The Promise of Politics in January 2021 and this week start on my favorite of Arendt's works The Human Condition.

The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols --  I loved the book. We read it for the ESL Book Discussion Group. The title explains premise of the book, but it is entertaining and sad.  Here is part of my reaction to it:  I am delighted reading The Death of Expertise. Chapter 3 is about the changes in higher education in the last half century and how these changes led to many people getting degrees that merely indicate sustained breathing with inflated grades. Chapter 4 is a detailed examination of how the internet makes us stupid. Tom Nichols says that accumulating random facts you don't understand on the internet and thinking you have done research is like saying you can swim when you simply get wet. In the same chapter, Nichols talks about the actress Gwyneth Paltrow recommending her legions of fans get their vaginas steamed instead of seeing a gynecologist. A gynecologist replied in a long, delightful rant that is in Chapter 4. It's worth the price of the book.

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli -- When I re-read The Prince this summer for the first meeting of the World Conquest Book Club, it was my 11th reading since 1980. I read a new translation and loved the discussion. I wrote about my 10th reading here. 

White Fragility by Robin Diangelo -- My responses were "Amen!" and "Guilty!" 

The Virus in the Age of Madness by Bernard Henri-Levy -- I have read several of Levy's books. In the faith section at the top is my favorite. This one is short and a timely of how crazy the world gets when the richest people are in danger.  

Fascism and Democracy by George Orwell -- An Orwell essay published with a few other essays as a book. I picked it up in Paris. It was a good reminder of how bad things can get by a brilliant pessimist.

(((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump by Jonathan Weisman -- Trump unleashed a host of flying monkeys with his candidacy and election. Weisman lived through how bad it could get for a journalist. 

Talking to Strangers by Malcom Gladwell -- We had a delightful discussion about the premise of the book and the critics of the book.  ESL Book Discussion Group.  

Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom by Ariel Burger -- I read this book for the Writers in Residences series at F&M College.  It was interesting to see Wiesel through the eyes of one of his students.

Tell Me Another One by Judith Newman -- This book was just fun. I wrote about it here.

Science

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. this year was my third reading of this wonderful book. 

Sex At Dawn by Allyson Johns and Jonathan Davis -- Two species are closest to humans on a genetic and evolutionary basis:  Bonobos and Chimpanzees.  Bonobos are cooperative and have many ways of organizing their communities, but tend to matriarchies.  Chimps are hierarchical, patriarchal and murderous.  Linking this book to Sapiens, our species had a chance to be follow either and before agriculture we did.  After wheat tamed us, not so much.  

Universal Constants in Physics by Gilles Cohen-Tannougji -- This short book is about G, c, h, and k.  It could be Sesame Street. But it is about the four constants in physics that are the limits of what we can comprehend on the grandest and smallest of scales.  

G, the gravitational constant, allowed Newton to give physics a rational basis for describing the universe.  

c, the speed of light, is the absolute number--the speed limit of the universe--that allowed Einstein to define Special Relativity.  General Relativity considered G and c simultaneously.

k, Boltzman's constant, is the fundamental unit relating energy to temperature. It is the basis of thermodynamics and it predicts the existence of a quantum of information.

h, Planck's constant, marks the lower limit of what we can know at the atomic level. With k, h defines the limits of certainty.  

I read this book every few years to remind me how beautiful science is. 

Books on Faith

Evangelicals at the Crossroads: Will we pass the Trump test? by Michael Brown--The Worst book of 2020.

Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader's Guide to a More Tranquil Mind by Alan  Jacobs--a lovely meditation on what we can learn by reading authors no longer living.  Jacobs ranges over three millennia of those departed.  I loved the book.  

Beyond the Binaries by Thomas L. Horrocks. This book advocates people talking together about abortion and not being absolutists in either direction. Horrocks is an Evangelical who seems to think Jesus meant all that stuff about caring for widows and orphans and detesting power and money.  The book was an interesting tilt at one of America's biggest political windmills.  I admire Horrocks.  In the theocracy that most Evangelicals wish for, Franklin Graham would burn Horrocks as a heretic on the DC Mall.

The Genius of Judaism by Bernard-Henri Levy. -- When I began my Jewish journey after Charlottesville, Levy was one of the first writers to show me I really am a Jew.  Jews themselves fight over who is a Jew. Gentiles, less so. Every white supremacist and Nazi in America hates me even if my mother is not Jewish.  Levy showed me what an amazing tribe I am a part of.  

I wrote this about my first reading of the book in 2018:  The book explicitly on faith that moved me the most was The Genius of Judaism by Bernard-Henri Levy. This book looks at the history of the Jewish people and Israel through the lens of the Book of Jonah.  Levy shows us Judaism and his view of the Jewish world by his interactions with “Nineveh” in the form of modern-day enemies of Jews and Israel.  One modern Nineveh he visits is Lviv, Ukraine.  I knew my trip last summer was to visit Holocaust sites would center on Auschwitz, but this book led me to pair Lviv with Auschwitz as two sad extremes of the Holocaust.  Auschwitz is the most industrial site of slaughter, Lviv is the most personal.  At Auschwitz, the Nazis built a place of extermination. In Lviv they simply allowed the local population to act out their own anti-Semitism.  Lviv was the most personal of the sites of Holocaust slaughter.  Neighbors killed neighbors and dumped their bodies in ditches.  Levy went to Lviv to make peace with this site of unbridled hate.  He seems to have succeeded.  I did not.  Ukraine tried to kill my grandparents. Ukraine remains a cauldron of anti-Semitism. 

Overall, the book left me wondering about my identity as a Jew. The book helped me to decide that I could reconnect with the Jewish part of me in a positive and growing way, a process that began last spring and is still going on as the New Year begins. 

The Question of God by Armond Nicholi, Jr. -- A book about a course at Harvard comparing the lives and beliefs of C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud. Lewis comes off looking a lot better than Freud. Since I knew nothing of Freud, I learned a lot from that part of the book. I have read a dozen biographies of Lewis and all of his books, so that part of the book was familiar, but good.

Field Guide to Domestic Terrorists: 3 Percenters

3 Percenter Logo: A symbol of domestic terrorism.

Several years ago, I wrote a series of posts with the collective title FGFD: A Field Guide to Flying Death. I wrote a half-dozen posts in the series. I have plans to write a half-dozen more.  One post was on ICBMs, InterContinental Ballistic Missiles, the kind would destroy cities and countries. If terrorists ever get weapons like these, the world is in deep and imminent danger. 

On January 6, the U.S. Capitol was attacked by terrorists who murdered a police office and hurt and maimed others.  The former President incited the riot, but various domestic terrorist groups attacked the Capitol at his direction.  

I wanted to know more about the groups that attack their own government inspired by the Liar-in-Chief.

I will begin with Three Percenters.  The Anti-Defamation League, ADL, has called them a terrorist group for a while which means they love Trump and Trump loves them.  

Here are some key points from the ADL:

• Three Percenters are part of the militia movement, which supports the idea of a small number of dedicated “patriots” protecting Americans from government tyranny, just as the patriots of the American Revolution protected early Americans from British tyranny. 
• The Three Percenter concept, created in 2008, is based on an inaccurate historical claim that only three percent of Americans fought in the Revolutionary War against the British. 
• Three Percenters may join or form traditional militia groups but often form non-paramilitary groups or online networks. Many are not associated with any particular groups. 
• The Three Percenter concept both contributed to and benefited from the resurgence of the militia movement that began in 2008. Because many adherents to the militia movement strongly support President Trump, in recent years, Three Percenters have not been as active in opposing the federal government, directing their ire at other perceived foes, including leftists/antifa, Muslims and immigrants. 
• Three Percenters have been active in 2019-2020 in reaction to a range of issues, including attempts to pass state level gun control measures, state-imposed restrictions and lockdowns to prevent spread of the coronavirus, and the protests that have taken place around the country over the May 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. 
• Three Percenters have a track record of criminal activity ranging from weapons violations to terrorist plots and attacks.

Their ideology according to Wikipedia:

The group's website states it is "not a militia" and "not anti-government".^[15][6] Three Percenters believe that ordinary citizens must take a stand against perceived abuses by the U.S. federal government, which they characterize as overstepping its Constitutional limits.^[1] Its stated goals include protecting the right to keep and bear arms, and to "push back against tyranny".^[7] The group opposes federal involvement in what they consider local affairs, and states in its bylaws that county sheriffs are "the supreme law of the land".^[15]

Like other American militia movements, Three Percenters believe in the ability of citizen volunteers with ordinary weapons to successfully resist the United States military. They support this belief by claiming that only around 3% of American colonists fought the British during the American Revolution, a claim which underestimates the number of people who resisted British rule,^[8] and which does not take into account the concentration of British forces in coastal cities, the similarity of weapons used by American and British forces, and French support for the colonists.^[8]

Racist, Right-Wing, Republican Fools with a lot of guns is one way to look at them.  They first organized in opposition to a Black President.  They should be treated as terrorists.  No definition of patriot describes what they do or believe.

The Worst President, Then One of the Greatest Presidents, Then Civil War

 

James Buchanan, worst President, until 2020

James Buchanan was widely regarded as the worst President in American history until January 6, 2020.  Buchanan presided over the slide to Civil War.  The last month of the Buchanan administration saw the rebellious states prepare for war.  On February 8, 1861, the first seven of the traitorous states formed the Confederate States of America.  Buchanan was President until Abraham Lincoln's inauguration on March 4. 

The war did not begin until the attack on Fort Sumter on April 12. For 39 days, President Lincoln, one of the greatest Presidents who ever lived, tried to re-unite the country and then defend the United States.  

In the 157-day period between election day November 6, 1860, and April 12, 1861, many families split, many friendships ended, many comrades took opposite sides in the coming war.  

The terrorist attack on the Capitol on January 6 began with an hour of incitement by Trump based on his endless lies about the election.  After the attack that left five dead, 139 members of Congress and 8 senators voted not to accept the election results: AFTER the Capitol was attacked.  They are still seated in Congress.  They should not be. 

Eight of those traitorous Republicans are Pennsylvania representatives including my former commander in Iraq, Scott Perry. President Joe Biden has been sworn into office, but Perry and the rest of the insurrection caucus stand by Trump's lies.  They have broken their oath to uphold the Constitution.  

Every day since January 6, I have wondered if this is what it felt like to live in 1861 and watch the country fall apart. For the first time in 240 years, the United States of America did not have a peaceful transfer of power. The President told his followers to attack the Capitol, then he refused to attend the inauguration of the new President.  

Buchanan went to Lincoln's inauguration. 

What Will We Do With the Sedition Caucus?

 

Helsinki 2018, selling out America to her enemies

Now that the President who sided with Vladimir Putin against our government is out of office, America will have to deal with the liars and traitors left who still hold office in our government.

Congressman Lloyd Smucker voted against me and everyone else in his district who cast legal votes in the election.  Smucker along with seven other Pennsylvania congressman voted not to certify the election in Pa. AFTER the a mob of white supremacist terrorists invaded the Capital.  

Another member of the Pennsylvania Sedition Caucus is Scott Perry. My commander in Iraq in 2009-10 repeated all of Trump's lies about the election and voted with the murderers who invaded the U.S. Capital.  

They joined more than 100 other seditious Republican members of congress and eight senators--led by Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz.  

None of the Republicans who voted for Trump's lies and against America should hold office, but they do. Now that the Traitor-in-Chief has returned to his Dacha (Дача) in Florida, I can focus on fighting the sedition caucus here in Pennsylvania.  Before his traitorous vote on January 6, I would not have believed Smucker could be defeated, but he can.  He will always be defined by his vile vote.

The same is true of Scott Perry. He won by several percentage points in 2020, but his unwavering support of Trump's unending lies will be his undoing.  

Despite Trump, Smucker and Perry, America is still a democracy.  One down, two to go in 2022.

  

Are We in 1861 America or in 1991 Yugoslavia?

 

Insurgent mob declares war on America at the direction of 

the President on January 6, 2021.

When the MAGA mob stormed the Capitol, were we watching the first battle of second American Civil War? Or were we watching an inevitable slide into tyranny?

In 1861, the second worst President in American history, James Buchanan, sent America into Civil War. But that war had a clear definition and boundaries, which meant the war could be fought and won and had an ending.  

In Yugoslavia the war is contained, for now. In Iraq or Yemen or Syria or Lybia the war is either intermittent or permanent, but essentially never ending.  One of the problem is borders.

In America, the borders of slave states formed the rebel nation.  Slaves were in these states. Slaves were not in the other states. (There were border states, but the rebel government had defined area.) So war could be fought and won or lost.  We utterly fucked up the peace, but the war itself and the rebel government ended.  

You could say the war ended in Yugoslavia, but the multi-ethnic society held together by Marshall Tito is gone and won't return. Hundreds of thousands were killed. Hundreds of thousands were displaced. Normal life has returned, but in ethnic enclaves with real borders.  

America is a complicated mess.  There are red states and blue states, but a half dozen states are more or less evenly split.  What side are they on?  And what about Austin, Texas, a hip enclave in amid millions of red state rednecks? Or Madison, Wisconsin? Or Denver and Boulder in Colorado? 

My own state of Pennsylvania can still be described as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in the middle.  I live in the city of Lancaster, a small, largely Democratic city in the middle of a county that is 80% Republican. Is Pennsylvania red or blue? It has a split congressional delegation--nine congress members from each party, one senator from each party. 

If America falls apart, the split can't happen along defined physical borders.  We are mixed thoroughly. We have to find a way to live with each other or face an ugly future.