This is an insight into the current forces at work in the USA.
It is not encouraging … in fact, it is terrifying!
But I believe it is realistic, and that it is voiced by someone with the academic and practical skills needed to arrive at what he has concluded.
If you do not think, as he does that we are facing a fundamental crisis, perhaps one that will threaten the survival of our nation in its present form, then as a patriotic American don’t you need to read his short treatise and digest what he has to say, if for no other reason than to be able to refute it and return to a state of easy contentment?

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He is a professor in the Strategy and Policy Department of the United States Naval War College and has previously taught at Carnegie Mellon, Williams College and Harvard University . Kaiser’s latest book, The Road to Dallas, about the Kennedy assassination, was just published by Harvard University Press.

Dr. David Kaiser
History Unfolding

I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books on history that have been published in six languages, and I have studied history all my life. I have come to think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is simply a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.

Something of historic proportions is happening.. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it.. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten to fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.

We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can never pay back? Why?

We learned just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has “loaned” two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine.. And that is three times the $700 billion we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of “we the people,” who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.

We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why?

We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?

We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it simply wants marriage to remain defined as between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?) We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?

Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, social security is nearly bankrupt, as is medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and I know precisely what I am talking about) – the list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth.. It is potentially 1929 x  ten… And we are at war with an enemy we cannot even name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who, in turn, cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.

And finally, we have elected a man that no one really knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska . All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more important.)

Mr. Obama’s winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change. Why?

I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now.

This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life.. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.

And that is only the beginning..

As a serious student of history,  I thought I would never come to experience what the ordinary, moral German must have felt in the mid-1930s. In those times, the “savior” was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they should have known was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory. Conservative “losers” read it right now.

And there were the promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and frowned and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his “brown shirts” would bully and beat them into submission. Which they did – regularly. And then, he was duly elected to office, while a full-throttled economic crisis bloomed at hand – the Great Depression. Slowly, but surely he seized the controls of government power, person by person, department by department, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The children of German citizens were at first, encouraged to join a Youth Movement in his name where they were taught exactly what to think. Later, they were required to do so. No Jews of course,

How did he get people on his side? He did it by promising jobs to the jobless, money to the money-less, and rewards for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe , and across the world. He did it with a compliant media – did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and …… .. .. change. And the people surely got what they voted for

If you think I am exaggerating, look it up. It’s all there in the history books..

So read your history books. Many people of conscience objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and ridiculed. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though. And the world came to regret that he was not listened to.

Do not forget that Germany was the most educated, the most cultured country in Europe . It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And yet, in less than six years (a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency) it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors.. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.

As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing my eyes, having another latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me..

I choose to believe the evidence. No doubt some people will scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. To some degree, perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe-and why I believe it.

I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am. Perhaps the only hope is our vote in the next elections.

David Kaiser

Jamestown , Rhode Island
United States

Hello:
Skylab’s reentry was fortuitously “safe” even though a portion of it
impacted in Australia.
But NASA had absolutely no control over its final entry, not even
approximately when nor where it entered.
Reentry is a mass/drag ratio problem, in which a safe re-entry
requires both parameters to be controlled.
This is easily illustrated by wadding up a sheet of paper and
throwing it across the room.
The tighter it is wadded, the greater its mass drag ratio, and the
farther it will go.
In the case of Skylab, NASA had absolutely no way to control how the
lab would shed its parts as it encountered
the atmosphere, and therefore had no idea when and where the bulk of
its mass would wind up.
It was sheer good luck that it wound up where it did instead of
impacting say, a major city or even an unfortunate village.
I was the Martin Marietta Manager of Crew Systems for the Skylab
Program, and in that capacity I proposed a method for
controlled re-entry of Skylab early during its development and long
before its launch.
I was told to just shut up.
Now we have the International Space Station; a far larger and
therefore more threatening object in orbit.
What’s more, instead of threatening the Earth’s surface from 23.5
degrees north and south as the Skylab orbit did, the ISS
orbits between about 51 degrees latitude north and south.
That includes almost all of our great cities and perhaps 90% of
Earth’s population.
NASA has issued a report titled : “Final Tier Two Environmental
Impact Statement For International Space Station”,
NASA TM 111720, May 1996.
I had to employ the “Freedom of Information Act ” process to get a
copy of that report from NASA, but it was worth it.
The report states on pg. v of the Executive Summary:
“The currently proposed method for decommissioning ISS when its
useful life is over would entail a controlled targeted
reentry with surviving debris falling into a remote ocean area.”
On pg. vi the following appears:
“It is also possible that ISS or some of its components could
reenter the atmosphere following an unplanned event
occurring either during assembly or operation, or during
decommissioning action. It is expected that, as with a controlled
reentry,
the space station components would break up, with most of the debris
burning up upon reentry. Surviving debris, however, could
impact over land. Based upon the analysis outlined in Section 4.1.1.6,
assuming a random inadvertent reentry, the number of
injuries within the population located in the +/- 51.6 latitude band
would range from 0.0966 to 0.030, with a risk to a given individual
ranging from 1.28x 10 to the minus 11th (1 in 78 billion) to 3.999 x
10 to the minus 12th (1 in 250 billion). ….. In terms of property
damage,
the number of structures potentially hit within the +/- 51.6 deg
latitude band, including the U.S., was estimated to range up to 2
structures,
with an estimated value, assuming full loss of each structure hit, of
approximately $50,000.”
To appreciate how absolutely ridiculous this “Report” is, note that
on pg. 2-23 of the main report, the following appears:
“The total expected aggregate debris surface area has been estimated
as 2,790 sq m (30,000 sq ft)…”
Note that “30,000 sq ft” is an area, for example, of say, 300 ft in
length by 100 ft. in width.
We are asked to believe that a space station with a final mass
exceeding a million lbs will produce debris that will
impact in an area of less than a football field!
This when the debris field of the far smaller Columbia Orbiter
stretched from Arizona to Texas.
Consider now the task NASA would face in attempting a controlled
reentry of the ISS.
The ISS structure is made up of a series of structurally independent
pressurized modules and attached hardware, such as the
solar panels and the beams that carry them. It is not a compact mass,
but a widely distributed structure not designed to remain intact
when subjected to the kinds of forces encountered during entry into
the atmosphere at orbital speed.
Casual examination supports the premise that the less massive
elements will indeed, decelerate rapidly in the upper fringes of the
atmosphere and probably largely burn up.
But no such fate can be anticipated for the massive elements.
They will certainly survive reentry as perhaps somewhat reduced but
still massive red hot metal meteorites threatening death and destruction
to most of the Earth beneath the ISS orbital paths.
The referenced NASA report actually states on pg. 4-18: “The nominal
area or “footprint” within which the debris fragments would be expected
to land is estimated to have an average width of about 41 km(22
n.m.)and a length of about 1,049 km (565 n.m.).
How the two widely divergent “estimates” are to be reconciled is not
discussed.
There is, however, a far less dangerous and far more rational
solution to this potential disaster: salvage the ISS components by
boosting
them to a much higher orbit; one that will assure that the structural
hardware and installed equipment will never enter the atmosphere and
threaten
Earth’s denizens.
This can be done by adding ion drives to the abandoned ISS and using
its solar panels to power ion engines that will slowly but surely
raise its
orbit to an altitude that no longer threatens the earth’s population.
The hardware represents billions of dollars invested in placing it in
space, and even if stripped of all interior installed equipment that
will surely
be obsolete within a decade or two, still offers opportunities for
refurbishing the basic structures into upgraded elements of new
facilities; perhaps
even space tourist hotel support elements, or way stations along a
routine travel route to the lunar facilities that will surely appear
later in this century
and in the next.
But if “space debris” is the concern of this meeting, then the ISS
surely belongs on the list of concerns to be discussed.
Sincerely,
William E. Haynes

I was directed to support an ARVN force pinned down by a mortar attack on a road in Saigon. The mortar was emplaced in a roofless building that the FAC directed me to.

I rolled in and carefully placed a 20 mm burst into the building, being careful to aim away from the nearby Saigon River and the closely packed buildings  there.

Later I was told that the ARVN troops found the mortar abandoned and with a 20 mm hole through it.

No sign of the mortar operator.

In summary , I accuse you of having fallen for the forty year old propaganda and distortions that caused us to draw defeat from the jaws of victory back then.

The real tragedy is that I can not in all good conscience accuse you of treason.

I see you as having been carried away by your enthusiasm for Sun Tzu and the enticement to attribute his wisdom to those wily North Vietnamese Communists… even though you had to use procrustean logic to make it fit.

That does not, in my mind excuse the fact that you have further contributed to the gross distortions first surfaced during that war and now firmly imbedded into our national consciousness.

May God and the American People forgive you your ignorance and irresponsibility.

Very sincerely,

William E Haynes

Lt Col USAF (Ret)

PS: Of course, you can surely see the modern, more polished example of the same media treason in the majority  of reporting on our current wars.