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When Israel And Iran Teamed Up Against Saddam

Saturday, April 18th, 2026

The Islamic Republic of Iran is notorious for its pathological hatred of Israel. However, this hatred didn’t prevent the two countries from cooperating against a mutual enemy: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

  • “In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Israel actively collaborated with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and in fact described that country as its most valuable ally, even above the United States, which will undoubtedly shock some people watching this video. But of course, they both feared Iraq, an enemy to both of their nations, and particularly were worried about Saddam Hussein acquiring nuclear weapons.”
  • “The problem dated back to the 1960s, when Iraq began to establish a nuclear energy program for civilian use [“Civilian use.” Sure it was. -LP] and by the mid 1970s was looking to purchase a reactor.”
  • “Most countries wouldn’t touch such a deal with a barge pole. Except the French, who made a deal with Iraq in 1974 to75 to sell them an Osiris class research reactor plus 72 kg of 93% enriched uranium and of course provide the training for Iraqi personnel to run such a facility.”
  • “The deal would net the French $300 million at today’s prices about $1.7 billion.”
  • “Israel’s Mossad Intelligence Organization began immediate efforts to sabotage the program before all of the equipment and scientists were in place in Iraq. On the 6th of April 1979, Mossad agents damaged the Ozerak reactor while it was awaiting shipment from France.”
  • “Then the Mossad went further and assassinated Egyptian nuclear scientist Professor Yahya El Mashad, who would head the Iraqi nuclear program, killing him in his room at the Meridian Hotel in Paris.”
  • “However, Iraq did receive in July 1980 12kg of highly enriched uranium fuel for the reactor, the first of six phase deliveries from France.”
  • “Israel first tried diplomatic pressure via France and the United States, but the French government was unmoved.”
  • “The longer Israel waited, so the Israelis thought, the larger the chance that Saddam Hussein would begin building a nuclear bomb.”
  • “The Mossad also poisoned two Iraqi engineers involved with the project in Switzerland and France, respectively, and sent threatening letters to French personnel involved in the deal, frightening some of them off.”
  • “In 1979, the US allied Shah of Iran was deposed in the Islamic Revolution and a new government formed under Ayatollah Khomeini. He was no friend of Israel or the Jews, but Israel nonetheless urged Iran to bomb the Iraqi reactor.”
  • “Iran actually didn’t require much persuasion. The new hardline Islamic regime in Tehran hated Iraq and saw it as a greater threat than Israel.”
  • “The Iran-Iraq War broke out shortly afterwards when Saddam’s army invaded Iran. And it appeared that getting rid of any possible nuclear weapons that he might develop was in the interests of both Iran and Israel.”
  • Problem: The U.S. embargoed spare parts to Iran due to that pesky hostage crisis. “Incredibly, the Israelis secretly shipped US-made aircraft spares to Tehran so that the Iranian air force could put together a viable strike force.”
  • “The Ozerak reactor site was defended by a single battery of Soviet SA6 missiles, plus three batteries of French Roland 2 missiles and some Soviet 23 and 57 mm radar guided anti-aircraft guns.”
  • “Due to the state of the Iranian Air Force, its F-4 Phantom fighter bombers could only jam the SA6s and not the Rolands. So the pilots would have to fly very low and fast and depart equally quickly, requiring great skill. Israel and Syria also provided the Iranians with some up-to-date intelligence on the reactor site.”
  • “Operation Scorch Sword, the Iranian attack, commenced on the 30th of September, 1980 with four F4 Phantoms flying to the Iraqi border and being refueled by an Iranian Boeing 707 tanker escorted by two F-14 Tomcats. Each Phantom carried six Mark 82 general purpose bombs, two AI7 Sparrow air-to-air missiles, also had an integral M61A1 Vulcan 20mm cannon.”
  • “The Phantoms then raced into Iraq at very low level, then climbed to allow the Iraqi radars to briefly paint them in an effort to confuse the Iraqis as to the direction the Iranian aircraft were traveling and then drop low again and turn towards the reactor site. One pair would bomb the reactor. The other pair would attack its associated power station.”
  • “The pair approached the Tamuz reactor at low level, pulled up about 2 and 1/2 km from their target, and then released 12 bombs.”
  • “At the same time, the other two Phantoms, bombed the power station at Tammuz, knocking out electricity to Baghdad for 2 days. Two bombs hit the Tammuz One reactor, while others started a huge fire, destroyed all sorts of equipment, laboratories, and other support buildings. No shots were fired at the Iranian planes.”
  • “Damage to the reactor was listed by the Iraqis as ‘minor.'”
  • So time for the Israelis to take a whack. “The Israeli operation was code-named Opera, and had to wait until Israel received their brand-spanking-new F-16s from the U.S.
  • “Reconnaissance missions found a blind spot in Iraq’s radars on the border with Saudi Arabia, and it was decided that the Israelis would enter via this gap.”
  • “The Israeli attack force comprised eight F-16As, each armed with two unguided Mark 84 2,000lb delay action bombs. Cover was to be provided by a further flight of six F-15As.”
  • Random fact: “The attacking pilots included Ilan Ramon, who would later die aboard the space shuttle Colombia in 2003, where he was a payload specialist.”
  • “On the 7th of June 1981, the Israeli attack force departed, passing through Jordanian and Saudi airspace and when challenged, telling air traffic control over Jordan that they were Saudi patrol that had gone off course, and over Saudi Arabia that they were a Jordanian patrol that had likewise become lost.
  • “The F-16s climbed to 6,900 ft 12 mi from the reactor, then dived at 680 mph, releasing bombs at 3,600 ft. Eight out of 16 bombs hit the reactor containment dome. Iraqi anti-aircraft fire opened up, but the F-16s climbed away unharmed.”
  • “Though Saddam determined to rebuild the reactor with French assistance, the ongoing war with Iran and payment problems killed this off. And in 1991, during the first Gulf War, the US bombed the facility out of existence permanently.”

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    Posted in Military | 1 Comment »

    Library Additions: Caro, Rand, Yamane Firsts (Two Signed)

    Sunday, January 4th, 2026

    Two of these were picked up at Half Price Books locations in DFW and the greater Houston area, the other was a gift.

  • Caro, Robert. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate. Knopf, 2002. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine- dust jacket folded just slightly off-center, with a tiny bit of pull to top of flaps and a trace of edgewear, signed by Caro. The third in Caro’s monumental LBJ series. According to Caro, Johnson is the first Majority Leader to ever actually make the senate work. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Replaces an unsigned copy. Bought for $29.49 at the Half Price Books in Humble. I now have three of the four published volumes signed by Caro (the first two signed on his book tour for Working, which obviously I also have signed). (Previously.)

  • Rand, Ayn (edited by Michael S. Berliner). Letters of Ayn Rand. Dutton, 1995 First edition hardback (“First Printing, June, 1995/1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2”), a Fine- copy with a trace of bend at head in a Fine- dust jacket with small crease to rear top flap tip and a trace of haze rubbing. 682 page collection of Rand letters. Bought for $9.99 from a Half Price Books in Garland.

  • Yamane, David. Gun Curious: A Liberal Professor’s Surprising Journey Inside American’s Gun Culture. Exposit, 2024. First edition trade paperback original, a Fine copy, inscribed by the author: “To Lawrence-/Always/be/curious!” Given to me as a gift by Dwight.

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    Posted in Democrats, Guns | 2 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for August 29, 2025

    Friday, August 29th, 2025

    The Trump Administration guts two lefty slop buckets of graft, Israel lights up the Houthis big time, crazy tranny shooter might have been in satanic cult too crazy for the Church of Satan, Ukraine bombs the snot out of Russia’s oil infrastructure (again), Scotland and Germany continue to favor unassimilated Muslim immigrants over their own citizens, a secret Spinal Tap concert, and the full weight of Plano ISD comes down on a nefarious…a choir booster club?

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Another court win for Trump47. “Supreme Court Rules 5-4 That Trump Can Slash $783 Million In DEI Research Funding.”

    The Trump administration is free to eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars worth of research funding on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) following last week’s ruling by the United States Supreme Court.

    In a 5-4 vote, the justices lifted an order from a federal court judge in Boston that blocked $783 million in cuts made by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on health research grants that were being used to advance DEI efforts as well as “gender ideology extremism.”

    The Supreme Court was split on the 5-4 decision which marks another win for President Trump and clears the way for his administration to move forward with canceling hundreds of grants after U.S. District Judge William Young ordered the health-related grants restored in June.

    Chief Justice John Roberts was among the dissenters in the high court’s decision and Justice Amy Coney Barrett voted with conservative majority to let the administration stop the grant funding.

    Roberts and Barrett did land on the side of the dissent and allowed to stand a portion of the lower judge’s order that voided a number of NIH policies that targeted DEI programs at the direction of the White House.

  • Speaking of self-dealing garbage corrupt Biden Administration toadies were cutting themselves in for, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick voided ‘illegal’ $7.4B payment to Biden ally-staffed nonprofit for semiconductor research.

    Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick canceled an Biden administration agreement Monday to distribute billions of dollars for semiconductor research through a nonprofit set up and staffed by former political appointees, according to a letter obtained by The Post.

    The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act provided for $11 billion in semiconductor research and development funding to be given out by the Commerce Department’s National Semiconductor Technology Center.

    “Rather than establishing these operations within the Department, however, Biden Administration officials spent significant time, effort, and resources creating an unaccountable, outside entity–Natcast–to administer taxpayer funds,” Lutnick wrote Natcast CEO Deirdre Hanford.

    Four days before Biden left office on Jan. 20, Lutnick noted, the Commerce Department agreed to set aside $7.4 billion in “advance payments” to Natcast after spending nearly two years setting it up and tapping administration officials, advisers and allies to fill out positions.

    That arrangement both effectively removed the incoming Trump administration from being involved in the process and provided “virtually all” of Natcast’s funding — prompting incoming Departments of Justice and Commerce officials to take another look at the Sunnyvale, Calif., nonprofit.

    “These actions do not just give the appearance of impropriety; they flout federal law,” Lutnick told Hanford, pointing out that no provisions in the CHIPS Act authorized an outside entity like Natcast to distribute semiconductor research funds.

    “The GCCA [Government Corporation Control Act] plainly prohibits agencies from establishing a corporation to act as an agency without specific authorization, and the January 16, 2025, agreement does nothing other than set forth the terms of the Biden Administration’s attempt to do just that.”

    Natcast’s selection committee included Biden White House alums like Jason Matheny, former deputy director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and Kendra Wilkerson, the CEO of a nonprofit that “promotes greater equality for women and nonbinary professionals in technology fields,” according to the Biden Commerce Department.

    Donna Dubinsky, another Natcast executive, worked as senior counselor to former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and signed off on the nonprofit’s 501(c)(3) status.

    Susan Feindt, the Biden Commerce Department’s vice chair of its CHIPS Act advisory committee, is now the senior vice president of ecosystem development at Natcast.

    Jeremy Licht, the former chief counsel on semiconductor incentives at the Biden Commerce Department, is now the general counsel at Natcast.

    They weren’t robbing Peter to pay Paul, they were robbing you to line their own pockets. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Try to contain your shock, but D.C.’s Democrat government was lying about crime statistics.

    White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller told reporters Monday that the Trump administration has uncovered a “massive scandal” in Washington D.C. involving the doctoring of crime statistics.

    He said the alleged corruption is currently under investigation and said details of the corruption will soon be brought to light.

    “The results will stun you,” he said.

    Miller made the remarks in the Oval Office after President Trump signed a slew of new executive orders to end cashless bail throughout the United States and in the District of Columbia, prosecute the burning of the American flag, and additional measures to address crime in Washington D.C.

    Miller said D.C. already had the worst crime statistics in the United States when “honestly measured,” but those stats “dramatically understated how bad it was.”

    The White House advisor told reporters that murders and homicides were allegedly being reported as accidents instead of murders.

    “This is how severe the manipulation of the crime data has been in the city and it will all be uncovered and it will all be brought to light,” he said.

    For the past two weeks—since the D.C. crime crackdown began—the city has not seen a single murder or homicide.

    “No police officer working in the city can remember a time in their lives when there has been no murders,” Miller asserted.

    He said police officers have told him that members of the public have been thanking them for making D.C safe again.

    “For the first time in their lives, they can use the parks, they can walk on the streets, you have people who can walk freely at night without worrying about being ribbed or mugged,” he said. “They’re wearing their watch again, they’re wearing jewelry again, they’re carrying purses again.”

    Miller explained that D.C. residents had been forced to “change their who lives for fear of being murdered, mugged or carjacked.”

    He added that Trump had freed the 700,000 residents of the city from “the rule of criminals and thugs.”

    Miller credited Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Terrance C. Cole with discovering that street criminals in Washington D.C. have been “doing business directly with the transnational criminal cartels,” which are foreign terrorist organizations.

    “So not only was the city being run by these criminal thugs, but they were working with some of the most dangerous terrorist organizations on the planet to traffic weapons and drugs into this city,” he explained.

  • Israel gets tired of the Houthis tugging on their cape.

    Israel’s military conducted airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital, Sanaa, on Sunday, targeting high-profile sites in a significant escalation of hostilities.

    The strikes hit areas near the presidential palace, the Asar and Hizaz power plants, and Houthi facilities suspected of housing artillery, including ballistic missiles, according to regional reports.

    The operation was a direct response to recent Houthi attacks on Israel, including projectile launches on Friday, a military source told the Jerusalem Post. While Israel has previously targeted Houthi infrastructure, its strikes have largely focused on the strategic port city of Hodeida, a critical economic and military hub. The shift to Sanaa signals a broader and more aggressive approach to the conflict.

    At least two people were killed and five others injured, Al Masirah, a Houthi-affiliated media outlet reported, according to Al Jazeera.

    “The attacks were carried out in response to repeated attacks by the Houthi terrorist regime against the state of Israel and its citizens, including the launch of surface-to-surface missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles towards the country’s territory,” the Israeli military said in a statement.

  • There’s video:

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Crazy trans-cult member Robert Paul Westman, who hated Donald Trump and Jews, murdered children at a Minneapolis church this week.
  • Weirdly, the crazy murderous tranny’s manifesto name-checked Brandon Herrera. He is not pleased. (And there is a previous parallel.)
  • “Westman’s videos, posted hours before the shootings, may only suggest he used ‘very similar to the symbolism used by violent global satanic cults called Order of 9 Angles and 764.'” I reached out to a “left-hand path” guy I knew from science fiction for background, and he offered the following:

    Many years ago Dr. Anton LaVey asked Micheal Aquino to write two “Lovecraftain Pieces” for the _Satanic Rituals — “Th Cermony of the Nine Angles”and “The Call to Cthulhu”.

    Then back in the 1990s a weirdo (named Myall back in the day) claimed that family knew the REAL SECRET of the nine angles. It was mainly Neo_Nazy stuff — “Kill a Jew for Satan” The guy claimed 100s of followers and had several Orders he was running –my favorite was the “lesbian: Order of the Sapphic Satanists. He tried to join Islam and run an atisemetic Islamic Runic brotherhood that worshipped Azathoth. It did not go well. The ONA shows occasionally with anti-Jewish slogans.

    According to this piece last year, 764 is a global Satanic child predator network.

  • Zohran Mamdani’s advisors are just as filled with lunacy as him.

    The likely next mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, is, as President Donald Trump put it, a “100% Communist lunatic,” and so you won’t exactly be dumbfounded to learn that his advisors are a rogue’s gallery of political hacks and psychopaths the likes of which have not been seen since Chairman Mao sat down for a tete-a-tete with his fellow cultural revolutionaries. It’s clear that one way or another, once this clown moves into Gracie Mansion, New York City is in for it: skyrocketing crime, an inundation of illegal migrants, bankruptcy, the destruction of the city’s economic base — all that and more is on the table.

    Fox News reported Thursday Mamdani’s “growing circle of influence is littered with activists who have espoused anti-Israel views and socialist principles as he attempts to dispel the narrative that he is too ‘radical’ to run the nation’s largest city.” Yeah, these advisors show that he is indeed far too radical to be mayor of New York, but that’s not likely to keep him from being elected.

    Among those advisors is Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), which advocates ending “state support for detention, deportation, and mass incarceration.” Awawdeh insists that illegal migrants “deserve” healthcare, presumably at the expense of the American taxpayer. He has also ranted: “NO LISTEN… SEEKING ASYLUM AT THE BORDER IS A LEGAL RIGHT. ASYLUM SEEKERS ARE FLEEING FOR THEIR LIVES FROM VIOLENCE, PERSECUTION, & IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE. THE U.S. HAS A LEGAL OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE REFUGE. #WelcomeWithDignity”

    A legal obligation to provide refuge for anyone fleeing any kind of difficulty? Do tell. Anyway, NYIC has “taken in $175,000 from the sprawling George Soros nonprofit network,” and if that connection of Soros to Mamdani is too tenuous for you, there is plenty more. Fox News reported on Aug. 14 that “A former top executive for liberal billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) between 2017 and 2020 is back in the spotlight amid reports highlighting his involvement with Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign and connecting Obama world to the campaign.”

    The Soros exec in question is Patrick Gaspard, an old political hand on the left; the first campaign he worked on was Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential run. Gaspard “has served in several high-profile political positions, including advising former President Barack Obama’s historic 2008 campaign, serving as the Democratic National Committee’s executive director, and being tapped as the Center for American Progress (CAP) president in 2021.”

  • Another Trump Administration victory over crime.

    Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, is set to face the rest of his life behind bars as the Trump administration ramps up its efforts to dismantle cartels.

    Zambada, 75, confessed in a Brooklyn, New York, courtroom Monday that he had coordinated with Mexican officials to smuggle drugs into the U.S. for decades — and ultimately pleaded guilty to serving as principal leader of a continuing criminal enterprise and racketeering conspiracy.

    The Trump administration has pledged to take down the cartels — and experts predict Zambada’s guilty plea paves the way for the Justice Department to launch more indictments against high-profile cartel members moving forward and exerts additional pressure on Mexico to comply with U.S. requests.

  • Russia may not have an oil industry at all when this war is over. Ukraine just hit two more oil refineries, Kuybyshevskiy in Samara and Afipsky in Krasnodar. “Multiple swarms hit this refinery, which makes Russia’s air defense look even more incompetent than usual.” It was also 1,000km away.
  • They also hit the Ust-Luga gas processing terminal near St. Petersburg with ten drones. “This terminal is responsible for processing stable gas condenscent in naphtha jet fuel fuel oil and distillates.” The location makes me wonder if a goodly portion was intended for the export market.
  • They also hit Syzran oil refinery again.

    The map of Russian refineries reveals a key strategic problem. The main processing capabilities are in the European part of the country, whilst fuel consumption is rising in the far east. Fuel logistic chains for eastern regions span thousands of kilometers, creating additional costs and risks. Kilometer-long queues in cities are a direct result of the imbalance between western production and eastern consumption.

  • And they hit another fuel train, this one in in Dzhankoi, Crimea.
  • Russia tries to war crime a Ukrainian civilian with a drone, but it gets taken out by another civilian.
  • New problems require…very old solutions? “Ukrainians hunt Russian drones dangling out of prop planes with shotguns.”
  • “Chinese National Charged With Stealing Sensitive Data from UT-MD Anderson.”

    Harris County’s District Attorney Sean Teare has charged Yunhai Li, a 35-year-old former MD Anderson Cancer Center researcher, with attempting to steal and take proprietary cancer-related research back to China. This comes after multiple warnings about research security in Texas higher education.

  • Texas House votes to the Attorney General’s power to prosecute election fraud.
  • “Trump Administration to Retake Control of D.C.’s Union Station amid Crime Crackdown.”

    While the Department of Transportation has owned the historic station since the 1980s, it has allowed a nonprofit, the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation, more control over the station year after year.

    Now, the Department of Transportation says it plans to use a new deal with Amtrak and USRC to fund improvements to elevators, lighting, security and other repairs to the roof and several major systems.

  • “Scottish Girl Arrested For Using Knife And Axe To Ward Off Migrant Stalker.” She was defending her 12-year old sister from unassimilated would-be Muslim statutory rapists, so of course the police had to arrest her…
  • “How can you tell the difference between a police raid and a home invasion?”

    Last week, a Houston resident foiled a home invasion attempt by a couple criminals trying to impersonate the police. According to the news article:

    “Police said the men told the homeowner they were serving a warrant. They were wearing bullet-proof vests, had badges around their necks and were wearing ski masks.”

    The homeowner ended up shooting and killing both offenders.

    There are many more tips in the article, but police don’t wear ski masks while serving a warrant…

  • “Texas Teacher Arrested on Federal Child Porn Charge…Robert Jerome Custer, 56, was arrested on a federal charge of accessing child sexual abuse material, commonly called child pornography. Custer previously worked as an educator and counselor in Palestine, Barksdale, Kingsville, and Abilene, according to a statement from the Texas Department of Public Safety.”
  • “Welfare state is not sustainable, says German chancellor.”

    The German welfare state is no longer financially sustainable, Friedrich Merz said on Saturday.

    The chancellor argued for a fundamental reassessment of the benefits system as spending continues to soar past last year’s record of €47bn (£40bn).

    In a state-level party conference meeting on Saturday, Mr Merz said: “The welfare state as we have it today can no longer be financed with what we can economically afford.”

    Once the export champion of Europe, Germany’s economy has slowed dramatically since 2017, with GDP growing by only 1.6 per cent since then versus 9.5 per cent for the rest of the eurozone.

    Germany’s economy shrank by 0.2 per cent last year following a 0.3 per cent dip in 2023 – the first time since the early 2000s the economy has retreated two years in a row.

    Industrial production fell under the Left-leaning “traffic light” coalition of Olaf Scholz and continues to slide under the new government, with GDP declining by 0.3 per cent in the second quarter of 2025.

    Meanwhile, spending on social welfare has exploded, and is set to increase further this year as Germany’s population ages and unemployment rises. Although the majority of benefit recipients are German, large numbers are non-German citizens.

    German elites will do anything to support its welfare state…except stop importing unassimilated Muslim immigrants. Just like all the rest of Europe’s elites. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • “Paxton Seeks End to Federal Decree Mandating Release of Harris County Misdemeanor Suspects. The O’Donnell federal consent decree has governed county bail practices since 2019.”
  • A decade after the radical left first started shoving tranny bathrooms down the public’s throat without debate, Texas is finally limiting bathrooms to biological sex.
  • “Mark Teixeira, Longtime Major League Baseball Player, Launches Texas Congressional Bid.” He’s running as a Republican for the 21st Texas Congressional District, where incumbent Chip Roy is running for Attorney General.
  • Having a meth habit is going to be disqualifying for a lot of jobs. Like District Attorney for Mariposa County. Thus it’s no surprise that DA Mike McAfee resigned…
  • Another electric bus company goes bankrupt. “Quebec-based Lion Electric, which the Biden administration awarded $159 million ‘to manufacture 435 school buses between 2022 and 2024,’ has fallen into bankruptcy.” (Previously.)
  • LA police can’t catch fleeing suspect…even after he stopped to fill up on gas.  
  • This is a weird story. “Moms Arrested for Running North Texas Choir Booster Club. Cleared of charges, moms still lost choir booster club money to the school district.”

    Local authorities in Collin County, including a school district, have harassed three moms in a quest to control a school booster club and its funds, even going so far as to arrest them.

    Plano Independent School District targeted the Jasper High School Choir Booster Club for control of its bank account after the mothers charged with running the independent organization insisted that the district pay for Jasper High School’s stage—as was the district’s responsibility.

    The district had the Plano police arrest the booster club’s founders—Laura Cervantes, Krisinda Lingenfelter, and Maria Luisa King. Yet, after a Collin County grand jury failed to find enough evidence to prosecute these moms, a Plano municipal judge recently awarded the club’s bank funds to Plano ISD.

    Also this: “Oral arguments were held on May 30 before Judge Paul McNulty, chief judge for the Municipal Court of Plano. Texas Scorecard was in attendance. Recording devices were banned from the trial and the booster club was denied its request to bring a court reporter.” Also, another judge involved in the case, Lisa Bronchetti, evidently wrote a bad check to the club but still failed to excuse herself.

    Like I said, weird…

  • Newark Airport sucks. Objectively. One major culprit? God.
  • Roanoke’s famous lost colony was never lost.
  • Spinal Tap did a secret concert at Stonehenge.

  • Ryan George tackles the difficulties of reading online news sites.
  • “Dear Stupid Bitch, I’m sorry to hear that your cat is a Communist.”
  • “Nation That Once Charged Into Certain Death For Freedom Now Letting Their Daughters Handle The Rape Gangs.”
  • “Travis Kelce Finally Acquires Ring Without Help Of Referees.”
  • Hap, hap, happy dog.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Military, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 10 Comments »

    Surviving World War II Fighters And Bombers

    Sunday, November 12th, 2023

    I didn’t intend to make this an All Mark Felton Weekend, but these came up in my feed, and I have friends as interested in aircraft as I am in tanks. So here are the number of surviving World War II fighters and bomber, and how many are still airworthy.

    When we watched Twelve O’Clock High (which I highly recommend), we marveled that there were still enough B-17s around when they made the movie that you could crash some just to get it on film. Alas, that’s no longer the case…

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    Posted in Military, video | 8 Comments »

    The Palestine Myth

    Saturday, October 28th, 2023

    With Israel’s full-blown ground incursion into Gaza still looming, it’s time to go over The Palestine Myth again, i.e. just about everything your left-wing types spew about how Israel “dismembered Palestine” is wrong.

    This is a map of the territory now known as the State of Israel, and many use it to support their argument that modern Israel has ‘stolen’ the lands of Palestinian Arabs.

    But there was never a country called ‘Palestine’ to begin with. That name is for a territory, not an actual country.

    So, the whole “Israel took land from a country” idea?

    It’s not the full picture.

    Let’s skip the ancient empires and zoom in on more recent history.

    Specifically, to the Ottoman Empire that governed the territory in question for four centuries, from 1516 to 1917.

    This is an essential context because, during their rule, the area we now refer to as Israel and Palestine was part of a much larger imperial jurisdiction, and not a sovereign state called ‘Palestine.’

    The area had a relatively sparse population. Throughout their rule, the Ottomans encouraged Muslim migration to Palestine, primarily from Egypt and Sudan. This is, in fact, the origin of many of today’s Palestinians, as indicated by the surnames of major clans.

    After WWI, starting in 1917, Britain took over the territory. They quickly issued the Balfour Declaration, which was the first nod to creating a Jewish homeland in Israel.

    Pro-tip: If a lefty wants to debate you on the Middle East, bring up The Balfour Declaration. If they don’t know what that is, point out that they’re simply too ignorant of the most basic facts of the region to have an informed conversation and disengage. (There I go again, winning friends and influencing people…)

    On Nov 29, 1947, the UN passed a partition plan dividing the territory of British Mandate Palestine between Jews and Arabs. It recognized both sides’ rights to establish a nation-state within agreed-upon borders, a move voted on and approved by UN member states.

    The Jewish community fully embraced the UN’s partition plan, but the Arab population flatly rejected it.

    Armed conflict against Jewish settlements started almost immediately, dubbed the War of Independence, even as British rule persisted.

    On the last day of the British Mandate, May 14, 1948, a Jewish state was declared. The very next day, armies from Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt, with smaller forces from Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, invaded the territory, initiating the 2nd phase of the War of Independence.

    After nearly a year of fighting, the young State of Israel successfully repelled invading foreign armies and internal Arab forces, capturing additional territories in the process.

    The armistice lines of 1949 established that the West Bank would be under Jordanian control, and the Gaza Strip under Egyptian control. The remaining territories were incorporated into Israel. These borders held until the 1967 Six-Day War.

    Which is when Israel captured the Sinai, the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights.

    In 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited Israel, marking the beginning of a peace process between the two countries. As part of this, Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. Egypt, however, declined to retake control of the Gaza Strip, leaving it in Israeli hands.

    The 1993 Oslo Accords led to a phased transfer of most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to Palestinian control.

    Fast forward to 2005, Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza Strip, evacuating all its settlements.

    Since 2005, there’s been no Israeli presence—civilian or military—in Gaza. Since then, Hamas, a terror organization, effectively controlled the territory.

    The last is not strictly true, since Operation Cast Lead (i.e., Israel reacting to the last time Hamas tried this bullshit) resulted in a short military presence in Gaza while the IDF thoroughly kicked Hamas’ ass.

    His conclusion:

    1. There has never been a sovereign state called Palestine. In fact, as of today, the territories belonging to the Palestinian Authority are the largest ever held by an entity defined as Palestinian.
    2. The majority of Palestinians originated from migration from countries like Sudan and Egypt during the Ottoman Empire, with no proven historical connection to Israel.
    3. Arabs residing in Israel before 1948 were offered the chance to establish their own nation-state but chose to go to war instead. They can’t blame anyone but themselves for the outcomes.
    4. Regardless of history, millions of Palestinians currently live in Gaza and the West Bank, and a viable solution must be found for their peaceful coexistence.
    5. It seems that Palestinians have been the ones sabotaging solutions so far.

    And how.

    (Some Twitterisms like hashtags stripped.)

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | 14 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for December 23, 2022

    Friday, December 23rd, 2022

    Greetings, and welcome to a Christmas Eve Eve LinkSwarm! It got down to 14°F yesterday, and only up to a balmy 30°F or so today. In addition to trying to stay warm, I’ve been working finishing up my latest Lame Excuse Books catalog, which went out earlier this evening. (Drop me a line if you want a copy.) Due to that, I think I’m going to break this LinkSwarm into two parts.

  • House passes pork-filled omnibus spending bill that 18 Republican senators let escape the senate. The amount of bad stuff in here will probably require multiple links tomorrow…
  • The real cause of homelessness in California.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom, newly inaugurated Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and legislative leaders are pledging decisive action on California’s homelessness crisis, which raises a pithy question: Why did it erupt during a period of strong economic growth?

    The reasons often offered include a moderate climate, the availability of generous welfare benefits, mental health and drug abuse. However, a lengthy and meticulously sourced article in the current issue of Atlantic magazine demolishes all of those supposed causes.

    Rather, the article argues persuasively, California and other left-leaning states tend to have the nation’s most egregious levels of homelessness because they have made it extraordinarily difficult to build enough housing to meet demands.

    Author Jerusalem Demsas contends that the progressive politics of California and other states are “largely to blame for the homelessness crisis: A contradiction at the core of liberal ideology has precluded Democratic politicians, who run most of the cities where homelessness is most acute, from addressing the issue.

    “Liberals have stated preferences that housing should be affordable, particularly for marginalized groups … But local politicians seeking to protect the interests of incumbent homeowners spawned a web of regulations, laws, and norms that has made blocking the development of new housing pitifully simple.”

    Demsas singles out Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area as examples of how environmentalists, architectural preservationists, homeowner groups and left-leaning organizations joined hands to enact a thicket of difficult procedural hurdles that became “veto points” to thwart efforts to build the new housing needed in prosperous “superstar cities.”

    While thriving economies drew workers to these regions, their lack of housing manifested itself in soaring rents and home prices that drove those on the lower rungs of the economy into homelessness.

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Benjamin Netanyahu manages to form new government in Israel. It only took two months since the election!
  • Mayor Adler’s legacy in Austin:

  • Members of Houston rap group The Sauce arrested for making sauce. And by “sauce” I mean “meth.”

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Barnes and Noble to closes 30 stores in 2023…wait, they’re opening 30 stores??? Did I suddenly wake up in 1999?
  • Not news: Buying a used Blazer in El Paso. News: an ex-Cartel Blazer.
  • Lawsuit frees the Eleanors.
  • History matters talks about why the Soviet Union agreed to share control of Berlin with the allies after World War II. Pretty much all the History Matters videos are worth watching, but this one is particularly amusing.
  • “Journalists Warn Of Frightening Trend Where Rules Apply To Them.”
  • Awww:

    I want to know what song is playing on that TV…
    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    • Pressed for time, so more links tomorrow…

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    Posted in Budget, Crime, Democrats, Republicans, Supreme Court, Texas | 1 Comment »

    Five Things About The Battle of the Bulge

    Sunday, December 26th, 2021

    77 year ago today, General George S. Patton’s 4th armored division relieved the siege of Bastogne.

    Everyone who knows anything about The Battle of the Bulge knows about Bastogne, but here Nicholas Moran offers up five lesser known facts about the battle.

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    Posted in Military, video | 1 Comment »

    A Short Video History Of The Holodomor

    Saturday, September 4th, 2021

    I’ve written about the Holodomor, the Ukrainian terror of 1930-33, before, as part of coverage of just how many people communism killed. If you don’t have time to read Robert Conquest’s The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine, then this short animated video provides a handy overview:

    A few quibbles:

  • Kulaks were “wealthy” only relative to the very poorest other farmers. For example, owning a single cow could get you labeled a Kulak and shipped off to a camp.
  • One reason the terror famine affected the south so strongly was that was where restive non-Russian ethnic minorities (Ukrainians. Tartars, Volga Germans, Kazakhs, etc.) lived, and the terror famine was used as a policy tool to crush the will to resist communism among those minorities.
  • Conquest’s estimates of the death toll for the Holodomor and related repression was 5 million in the Ukraine, and 14.5 million for the entire collectivization/dekulakization period (The Harvest of Sorrow, page 306).

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    Posted in Communism, video | 3 Comments »

    Thomas Sowell on Uncomfortable Truths About the Slave Trade

    Saturday, August 14th, 2021

    Social Justice/Critical Race Theory exists in perpetual Year Zero in which no history exists except that of America as a great oppressor. In fact, slavery existed long before there was a transatlantic slave trade, and despite Roots, the people who captured slaves were other black tribes, not Europeans, who then sold them on the coasts.

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    Posted in Social Justice Warriors, video | 1 Comment »

    Memorial Day: Remembering William James Bordelon

    Saturday, May 29th, 2021

    This Memorial Day weekend we celebrate Medal of Honor winner, Texan, Marine Staff Sergeant and combat engineer William James Bordelon, who lost his life securing a beachhead during the invasion of Tarawa. His official citation reads:

    For valorous and gallant conduct above and beyond the call of duty as a member of an assault engineer platoon of the 1st Battalion, 18th Marines, tactically attached to the 2d Marine Division, in action against the Japanese-held atoll of Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands, 20 November 1943. Landing in the assault waves under withering enemy fire which killed all but four of the men in his tractor, SSgt. Bordelon hurriedly made demolition charges and personally put two pillboxes out of action. Hit by enemy machine-gun fire just as a charge exploded in his hand while assaulting a third position, he courageously remained in action and, although out of demolition, provided himself with a rifle and furnished fire coverage for a group of men scaling the seawall. Disregarding his own serious condition, he unhesitatingly went to the aid of one of his demolition men, wounded and calling for help in the water, rescuing this man and another who had been hit by enemy fire while attempting to make the rescue. Still refusing first aid for himself, he again made up demolition charges and singlehandedly assaulted a fourth Japanese machine-gun position, but was instantly killed when caught in a final burst of fire from the enemy. SSgt. Bordelon’s great personal valor during a critical phase of securing the limited beachhead was a contributing factor in the ultimate occupation of the island, and his heroic determination throughout three days of violent battle reflects the highest credit upon the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

    Tarawa was the first amphibious landing of the island hopping campaign where American troops met serious resistance at the beach, with Imperial Japanese troops fighting down to almost the last man, resulting in over 1,000 American dead and 2,000 wounded in 76 hours of combat.

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    Posted in Military, Texas | 1 Comment »

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