Monday, May 29, 2017

Our country: its possible future and its present crisis





 
REVIEW
“IN 'OUR COUNTRY’ published by the American Home Missionary Society,
Rev. Josiah Strong has given us a book whose
value lies in its facts and in the rare ability with which the
author has gathered and verified them. In successive chapters
he has sketched the spirit of the times, the National resources
and Western supremacy. He has depicted the perils from im-
migration, from Romanism, Mormonism, intemperance, social-
ism and wealth; the dangers from urban population and the
exhaustion of the public lands. His final chapter on ' Money
and the Kingdom ' reveals the purpose of the book, which is to
point Christians of this country to the present time as a critical
period in Christ's Kingdom, and to urge upon them the conse-
cration of their wealth to the cause of the Redeemer. The
book ought to be in the hands of every patriot in the land as a
thesaurus of important material facts and as an incentive to
stand on higher grounds of civic and religious duty."
The  Advance.

OUR COUNTRY:  ITS POSSIBLE FUTURE AND ITS PRESENT CRISIS.
BY  REV. JOSIAH STRONG, D. D.,
GENEBAL SECRETARY OF THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE
FOR THE UNITED STATES, NEW YORK.
 
With an Introduction, by
PROF. AUSTIN PHELPS, D. D.


THIS Volume was prepared for the American Home
Missionary Society by REV. JOSIAH STRONG, D.D., then its
representative for the work of Home Missions in Ohio,.
As will be seen at a glance, its main purpose is to lay
before the intelligent Christian people of our country
facts and arguments showing the imperative need of
Home Missionary work for the evangelization of the
land, the encouragements to such effort, and the danger
of neglecting it.

Copies for perusal and distribution can be obtained
from the publishers, The Baker & Taylor Co., No. 9
Bond Street, New York. Fifty cents in cloth binding
or Twenty-five cents in paper.

Copyrighted by the
AMERICAN HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY,
1885.
 
SIXTY years ago the American Home Missionary Society was
organized to assist congregations that are unable to support the
Gospel ministry and TO SEND THE GOSPEL AND THE MEANS
OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION TO THE DESTITUTE WITHIN THE UNITED
STATES.
 
It began its work near the commencement of that great
“world-movement" described in this volume. In 1826, when
Western New York was a frontier region, two -thirds of its
missionaries were found in this State.
 
Now they are laboring in nearly every State and Territory of
the Union. Over 1,000 are in States south and west of New
York. Who can estimate the influence they are exerting in
building up the new communities on Christian foundations?
 
Some idea of the magnitude and scope of the Society's work
may be gained from the following facts.
 
In sixty -one year’s its missionaries have organized 4,951
churches and brought 2,430 to self-support. They have gathered
into these churches 345, 973 members. Cash receipts, $11,586,-
692,20,
 
During the sixty -first year 1,571 missionaries ministered to
3,063 congregations and 129,350 Sunday-school scholars;
organizing 135 new churches and 323 new Sunday-schools
and receiving into the churches 10,031 members.
Cash receipts, $482,979,60.
 
Never before were the calls for Home Missionary work so
loud. Never were the doors so wide open in all parts of the
land. Never were our institutions in greater peril. Head in
this book of these perils and their remedy. Then let every
patriot and Christian ask if he is not responsible for applying
this remedy. The average cost to this Society for each of its
missionaries is $471 per year.
 
Are there not many who will each contribute enough to sup-
port at least one such Christian worker ?
 
SAVE AMERICA TO SAVE THE WORLD !






EXCERPTS

PREFACE
It is worthy of note that almost all the thinking which think-
ing men have given to the subject for the last fifty years has
been in the line of the leading idea which this volume enforces
the idea of crisis in the destiny of this country, and through
it in the destiny, of the world. The common sense of men
puts into homely phrase the great principles which underlie
great enterprises. One such phrase lies under the Christian
civilization of our land. It is " the nick of time." The pres-
ent hour is, and always has been, " the nick of time" in our
history. The principle which underlies all probationary ex-
perience comes to view in organized society with more stu-
pendous import than in individual destiny. This book puts
the evidence of that in a form of cumulative force which is
overwhelming.

Fifty years ago our watchful fathers discerned it in their
forecast of the future of the Republic. The wisest among
them even then began to doubt how long the original stock of
American society could bear the interfusion of elements alien
to our history and to the faith of our ancestry. The conviction
was then often expressed that the case was hopeless


Success in the work of the world's conversion has, with
rare exceptions, followed the lines of human growth and pro-
spective greatness. But a single exception occurs to one's
memory that of the Hawaiian Islands. Seldom has a nation
been converted to Christ, only to die. The general law has
been that Christianity should seat itself in the great metropoli-
tan centers of population and of civilized progress. It has
allied itself with the most virile races. It has taken possession
of the most vigorous and enterprising nations. The coloniz-
ing races and nations have been its favorites. It has aban-
doned the dying for the nascent languages. Its affinities have
always been for the youthful, the forceful, the progressive,
the aspiring in human character, and for that stock of mind
from which such character springs. By natural sequence, tne
localities where those elements of powerful manhood are, or
are to be, in most vigorous development, have been the strategic
points of which our religion has taken possession as by a
masterly military genius.

SOME OF THE TABLE OF CONTENTS (TOC)
CHAPTER V
PERILS. ROMANISM.
I. Conflict of Romanism with the fundamental principles of our
government ; liberty of conscience ; free speech, and a free press ;
free schools ; loyalty to the Constitution and loyalty to the Pope.
2. Attitude toward our free institutions. 3. Rapid growth of Roman-
ism in the United States, especially in the West. P. 46.

CHAPTER VI.
PERILS. MORMONISM.
Polygamy not an essential part of Mormonism; might be de-
stroyed without weakening the system. Strength lies in ecclesiastical
despotism. Mormon designs. The remedy. P. 59.

CHAPTER VII.
PERILS. INTEMPERANCE.
I. The progress of civilization renders men the easier victims of
intemperance. Civilization must destroy the liquor traffic, or be de-
stroyed by it. The problem serious enough in the East. What of
the West, where the relative power of the saloon is two-and-one-half
times greater?
II. The liquor power; wealth; organization; aims; methods.
Influence in Rocky Mountains and beyond. P. 68.

CHAPTER VIII.
PERILS. SOCIALISM.
The Socialistic Labor Party and the International Working-men's
Association. Teachings. Numbers. Conditions favorable to growth :
1. Immigration ; 2. Increasing Individualism;
3. Prevalence of skepticism ; 4. Development of classes
5. Growing discontent. Modern enginery of destruction.
Conditions at the West peculiarly favorable to the growth of Socialism. P. 85.

CHAPTER IX.
PERILS. WEALTH.
Comparative statement of wealth. Rate of increase. Advantages
over Europe. Dangers: 1. Mammonism; 2. Materialism;
3. Luxuriousness ; 4. Congestion of wealth. All these dangers
greater at the West than at the East. P. 1*2.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE ANGLO-SAXON AND THE WORLD'S FUTURE.
Reasons why the world's future is to be shaped by the Anglo-
Saxon. The United States to be the seat of his power. The most
marked characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon race are here being empha-
sized, and the race schooled for the competition with other races,
which will begin as soon as the pressure of population on the means
of support is felt in the United States. The result of that competi-
tion. The responsibility of this generation. P. 159.


EXCERPTS
CHAPTER XIV MONEY AND THE KINGDOM
Christianize the immigrant and he will be easily
Americanized. Christianity is the solvent of all race
antipathies. Give the Romanist a pure gospel and he
will cease to be a Romanist. It has already been shown
that Christian education will solve the Mormon prob-
lem. The temperance reform, like all others which de-
pend on popular agitation, must have money, and i*
being retarded by the lack of it. Concerning the rem-
edy for socialism, accept the opinion of an economist
who has made it a subject of special study. Says Prof.
Ely : " It is an undoubted fact that modern socialism
of the worst type is spreading to an alarming extent
among our laboring classes, both foreign and native. I
think the danger is of such a character as should arouse
the Christian people of this country to most earnest
efforts for the evangelization of the poorer classes,
particularly in large cities. What is needed is Chris-
tianity, and the Christian church can do far more than
political economists toward a reconciliation of social
classes. The church's remedy for social discontent and
dynamite bombs is Christianity as taught in the New
Testament. Now in all this you will find nothing new.
It is only significant in this regard : others have come
to these conclusions from the study of the Bible ; from
a totally different starting point, from the study of
Political economy, I have come to the same goal."*

But the acceptance of the Christian doctrine con-
cerning property would have a direct, as well as indi-
rect, influence on socialism. Let us, therefore, dwell
a moment on the subject.

In the popular ferment, a hundred years ago, which
culminated in the French ^Revolution, the demand was
for equal rights and the watchword was Liberty. There
is a popular ferment throughout Europe to-day which
is more universal and extends to the United States.
The popular demand now is equality of condition, and
the watchword is Property a cry the meaning of
which the dullest and most earthly can understand.
This movement, which is steadily gathering force, re-
sults from the two most striking facts of the Nineteenth
century : first, the general diffusion of knowledge
through the press, which has wonderfully multiplied
wants up and down the entire social scale ; and, sec-
ond, the creation of immense wealth by means of the
steam engine. But this wealth, which is necessary to
the satisfaction of these wants, has been massed. In a
word, the difficulty is knowledge multiplied and popu-
larized, and wealth multiplied and centralized.

The right distribution of property, which is the ker-
nel of the social question, is the great problem of our
civilization ; and it may well be doubted whether the
true solution will be found until the church accepts,
both in doctrine and practice, the teaching of God's
"Word touching possessions. For the church is re-
sponsible for public opinion on all moral questions, and
no great question of rights can be settled for the world
until Christian men come into right relations with it.

The inexorable law of our present industrial system
is that the cost of subsistence determines the rate of
wages. This makes no provision for the higher wants
of increasing intelligence, and therefore insures an in-
creasing popular discontent. It would seem that the
solution of the great difficulties between capital and
labor must be found in some form of co-operation by
which the workman will be admitted to a just share in
the profits of his labor. Professor Cairns, who is con-
sidered one of the greatest economists England has
produced, believes that co-operative production affords
the laboring classes " the sole means of escape from a
harsh and hopeless destiny" (" Leading Principles," p.
338). Referring to several thousand co-operative so-
cieties in England, having some millions of capital,
Thomas Hughes says : " I still look to this movement
as the best hope for England and other lands." The
eminent statistician, Carroll D. Wright, the head of
the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, re-
ferring to the duty of the rich manufacturer to regard
himself as " an instrument of God for the upbuilding
of the race," and the promotion of the highest welfare
of those in his employ, says : " This may sound like
sentiment. I am willing to call it sentiment ; but I
know it means the best material prosperity, and that
every employer who has been guided by such senti-
ments has been rewarded two-fold ; first, in witnessing
the wonderful improvement of his people, and, second,
in seeing his dividends increase, and the wages of ins
operatives increase with his dividends. The factory
system of the future will be run on this basis. The
instances of such are multiplying rapidly now." Man-
ifestly, the acceptance on the part of Christian capital-
ists of the scriptural doctrine of possessions would
greatly facilitate the introduction of co-operation or
any other plan which promised justice to the work-
man.

The Christian man who is not willing to make the
largest profits which an honest regard for the laws of
trade permits is a rare man. But the laws of trade
permit much that the laws of God do not permit.
Many transactions are commercially honest which ax>
not righteous. If, now, a man accepts the truth that
his possessions are a trust to be administered for God's
glory, he will not consent to increase them by any un-
righteous means. And since justice and righteousness,
like honesty, will prove to be the best policy, the ac-
ceptance on the part of Christian men of a thoroughly
righteous plan of co-operation between capital and la-
bor would eventually compel its general acceptance.
Let Christian men gain a correct conception of their
relations to their possessions, let them accept the duty
of Christian stewardship, and it would command their
getting as well as their spending. There would be no
motive to drive a sharp bargain. It would purify
trade. It would mediate between capital and labor.
It would destroy the foundation on which the rising
structure of socialism rests. It would cut one of the
principal roots of popular unbelief ; for extended in-
quiry in Cincinnati elicited the almost unanimous re-
sponse that the reason workingmen neglect the
churches is that there are on the church rolls the
names of employers who wrong their employes.

The acceptance of the true principle of Christian
giving is urged upon us by the fact that money is
power, which is needed everywhere for elevating and
saving men. It is further urged upon us by the fact
that only such a view of possessions will save us from
the great and imminent perils of wealth. God might
have sent his angels to sing his gospel through the
world, or he might have written it on the sky, and
made the clouds his messengers ; but we need to bear
the responsibility of publishing that gospel. He might
mak^ the safe of every benevolent society a gold mine
as unfailing as the widow's cruse of oil ; but we need
to give that gold. The tendency of human nature, in-
tensified by our commercial activity, is to make the life
a whirlpool a great maelstrom which draws every-
thing into itself. "What is needed to-day is a grand re-
versal of the movement, a transformation of the life
into a fountain. And in an exceptional degree is this
the need of Anglo-Saxons. Their strong love of lib-
erty, and their acquisitiveness, afford a powerful temp-
tation to offer some substitute for self-abnegation.
We would call no man master. We must take Christ
as master. We would possess all things ; we must
surrender all things.

One of the grave problems before us is how to make
great material prosperity conduce to individual 
advancement. The severest poverty is unfavorable to
morality. Up to a certain point increase of property
serves to elevate man morally and intellectually, while
it improves him physically. But, as nations grow rich,
they are prone to become self-indulgent, effeminate,
immoral. The physical nature becomes less robust,
the intellectual nature less vigorous, the moral less
pure. The pampered civilizations of old had to be re-
invigorated, from time to time, with fresh infusions of
barbaric blood a remedy no longer available. If we
cannot find in Christianity a remedy or preventive, our
Christian civilization and the world itself is a failure;
and our rapidly increasing wealth, like the 
"cankered heaps of strange-achieved gold," 
will curse us unto destruction.

AN OUTRODUCTION 

COMMENTARY BY EUGENE PLAWIUK    


I came across this interesting text by an American Evangelical Alliance, while presumably Baptist, it was non sectarian in support of American Protestant Sects,including the Mormons if they were reformed.        

America is a self realization of two forces, those of the liberal enlightenment, Freemasonry and its bourgeois values were perfectly crafted for both colonial and post colonial America. 
It represents both the left and the right, the anarchist artisan, and the libertarian self employed owner, the artisan and the self employed both could become at anytime, a boss or a worker, until the rise of industrialization immediately before, during and after the Civil War then the artisanal nature of America changed.

The Knights of St. Crispin are an excellent example of how the first Capitalist Industrial War, the American Civil War, changed the nature of shoe making. The Knights were founded in the 18th century as a craft guild association and proto union, for shoemakers. At that time in North America, and into the middle of the 19th century, shoe making like many crafts were labour intensive, and involved the whole family.  

The Knights were an East Coast phenomena in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts,Maine, into the Maritimes, such as New Brunswick and Quebec in Canada. 

The Knights originated in the UK and their rites and rituals were brought to North America through New Brunswick. Guild Associations are an ancient tradition among artisans and craftsmen. Like a union they determine the piece work wages that they will make as well as the price set for the sale of the finished product. In other words they controlled the means of production directly. 

In this they were no different then their predecessors in the weaving trades, who were being transformed into mass workers in factories in Europe. Not all trades suffered mass industrialization as early and as totally as the Weavers did. And so various guild associations carried on like the Knights of St. Crispin who originated in the late medieval period. 

Shoemaking then was a family affair, and in America a family would also be a land owner and a sharer in the commonwealth of the community , such as grazing lands, since land was so freely available more so than in Europe. This allowed the family to produce their own food and shelter, and to practice their craft and trade as well. This required people to be living in towns, villages and cities.

In shoemaking the father did the heavy work with the hard leather, and hammering of soles,
the mother cut and fashioned the shoe and the children sewed with their small hands, a practice still conducted today in developing countries that used child labour. The father also sewed, especially the heavy awl work of stitching.  All this was done to Knights standards,
if a shoemaker was found to have sold cheap or below standards, fines would be applied as has been the guild tradition for thousands of years.

There were weavers in America too at this time but they too like the shoemakers would become extinct crafts as industrialization created mass workers for the war effort. A decline in active members of the Knights of St. Crispin can be seen as steady for a decade prior to the Civil War, by the end of the Civil War the Knights only existed in Quebec and New Brunswick. In the United States they were replaced with mass production of shoes for the metropoles, and for the war. The workers were women and children in these factories, leaving the men to find a different trade, or work elsewhere, or farm. 

In the North the Civil War produced a manufacturing industry and a new capitalist class,
it also required masses of workers, these came from immigration even more so than from the freed slaves of the South. Chicago is a good example of the integration that mass production created, in the ghettos around the packing plants were German, Polish and Ukrainian immigrants who arrived at the same time as many of the Black families coming to join their relatives in Chicago where they heard there were jobs to be had.  After the Civil War the abattoirs of Chicago fed the nation and its commodities exchange ruled the farmers of America. 

Chicago was America's mass industrialized city, it has long been the home to the commodity exchange, especially in Cattle, and it was connect to Canada via Winnipeg which was an equivalent boom town of banks, railroads, grains and beef. Americas farmers were beholding to Chicago in many ways, those folks who earlier had been self employed now moved off the land and into the city. That land became privatized, parceled out and bought by farmers. The farmers traded their cattle in Chicago, they got feed, fertilizer and most importantly farm implements 

Chicago had a booming farm equipment manufacturing industry, employing those former 
shoemakers, and other small craftsmen, as well as immigrants. working in these farm equipment plants.  One of those plants would become the focus of the International Workingmen's Association, the Knights of Labour, and members of the Socialist Labour Party. It was the McCormick Works and a year after the publication of this pamphlet, and the year was 1886, the fight was for the eight hour day, and the resulting strike and protest lead the famous Haymarket Riot. 

It is in this time of rapid capitalist growth in America that the Evangelical movement sees 
the need for another Home Missionary Movement to combat Catholicism brought in by the Immigrants from Europe. Conversion for heathen and papist was the cry. As it had been in 1826.

At that time America faced its first anti masonic purge and Baptist Revivalism which ended up in the Know Nothing Party. The Baptist revival was an evangelical mass movement 
to confirm America as a Protestant Nation, the first ever 'pure Aryan' Protestant nation.
Unlike Europe where all nations were Catholic and then converted to Protestantism.

Despite their roots in European culture, what had been the Anabaptist religious movement changed when it arrived in America, it dropped Ana, and simply became Baptist. And it was 
generic at that, anyone could call themselves Baptist, even Presbyterians. The Anabaptists that remained were the collectivist cults, like Mennonites, Hutterites, Amish, Dukhbour.

America created modern Protestant Evangelicalism and modern Protestantism as well as allowing for all kinds of cults and sects Christian or otherwise.  Why cults, because they believed in the end times, the rapture, what is now mainstream for the 700 Club was then
cultic beliefs which meant persecution.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church is the largest of several Adventist groups which arose from the Millerite movement of the 1840s in upstate New York, a phase of the Second Great AwakeningWilliam Miller predicted on the basis of Daniel 8:14–16 and the "day-year principle" that Jesus Christ would return to Earth between the spring of 1843 and the spring of 1844. In the summer of 1844, Millerites came to believe that Jesus would return on October 22, 1844, understood to be the biblical Day of Atonement for that year. When this did not happen (an event known as the "Great Disappointment"), most of his followers disbanded and returned to their original churches.

New York State, was home to many of the early alternative sects, cults of Christianity and of Spiritualists and Soothsayers, Theosophists to Freemasons, Odd Fellows and other fraternal orders and to Nativist Sects.

The  communistic protestants the Shakers were there as was the town of Lilydale full of Spiritualist communing with dead It was in this spiritual milieu that Joseph Smith traveled in before his revelation and creation of the Mormon Church, with rites and rituals he 'borrowed' from Freemasonry.

One of the newest forms of Protestantism that caught in America more so than even in its native England, was Millenarism which has existed since the time of the Old Testament if not even earlier. But we can document these movements, and they occur as features of 
End Times, Apocalyptic cults believing in the end of the world. In America these cults became so called  Christian sects like the Seventh Day Adventists and the Jehovah Witness movement. While they originate in Protestantism, they are not Christian, they are cultic interpretations of the bible to prove their predictions. It is still with us today and it calls itself the Moral Majority.

Ironically the author of this propaganda pamphlet would be considered a socialist heretic to today's Moral Majority and other End Times types of Evangelists. They would not even recognize his Aryan Anglo Saxon as being the same as their Nativist White Nationalism.

There are similarities in this work with today's White Nationalism, it reference to Aryan and Anglo Saxonism as Aryan. Aryan as Christian, and that means White people. There are no Negros in this book and there are no Red Men, not even the white fraternity by that name. 

This is the empty frontier of America, of FJ Turner, no Indians, and of course no freed or runaway slaves. There is lots of land, minerals, lumber, all free for the taking. It is the West that our author wants to fill with evangelical Aryan Christians. No others need apply especially not immigrants 

So along with missing people of Afro American descent or First Nations, also the with the immigrant, they must be the right kind of White People, not Catholic, not socialist or union trouble makers, nor rampant capitalists.

Our author would be astonished to learn that today his American counterpart scoffs at the idea socialism in America. And yet here it is, of course like today's Aryan Nationalist Nativist it is not natural or homegrown, it is again blamed on the immigrant, whether from Canada or Europe, just like Catholicism, is not considered native to America, despite the founding of North America by the French and Jesuits. 

Again like populist politicians who decry the rich and powerful, like Trump or the Kingfisher, even Teddy Roosevelt, there belief is in Aryan idealism, just as the author equates as did Roosevelt, Aryanism with Americanism with Manliness, Strength, and Moral Purity. Of course such a being, a person or a nation then is entitled to rule over the world.

But, as nations grow rich,they are prone to become self-indulgent, effeminate,immoral. The physical nature becomes less robust, the intellectual nature less vigorous, the moral less pure. The pampered civilizations of old had to be re-invigorated, from time to time, with fresh infusions of barbaric blood a remedy no longer available. If we cannot find in Christianity a remedy or preventive, ourChristian civilization and the world itself is a failure;and our rapidly increasing wealth, like the "cankered heaps of strange-achieved gold," will curse us unto destruction.

Teddy Roosevelt could have said this so could Steve Bannon. In fact you probably have read the same statements in any number of right wing commentaries published by such intellectual light weight pundits as Bannon and ilk.

Finally lets discuss the most obvious statement, the idea of Crisis. What crisis, the author in the end attests it is one of Aryan or Christian civilization the two being equivalent. A multicultural America is the bugaboo of the assimilationist, scratch the surface and you find a nativist Aryan. 

The real crisis as it is today, is the changing nature of bourgeois capitalist society. As it was then it is today, society is going through major changes at all levels, including the transformation of the means of production into robotics, cybernetics and AI. It means capitalism itself is transforming through technological change, not just to a gig economy but eventually a return to artisanal production at home using new technologies like 3D printing.

As well the collapsing nature of capitalism as well as its positivist transformations, it remains in permanent crisis, why in order to sell weapons, oil, etc. Since the turn of last century the Barbarism of capitalism that we first saw in the American Civil War created the First and Second World Wars, interrupted by two revolutions the Russian and Spanish.

Since then there has been no real post war peace, war continued on the Korean Peninsula,
unresolved it was the beginning of many failed missions by American Imperialism to dominate the Asia Pacific as well as Europe and the Middle East. Today North Korea is 
convenient scapegoat that loves the role and attention it merits 

After Korea it was Vietnam, picking up from the French who abandoned the struggle against
post war nationalism and anti-colonialism, something you would have thought America would champion, but this was the era of the Red Scare and the Cold War.

Cuba was subject to American Imperialism as well as Santa Domingo, whose general strike was viciously put down by American Troops. many of them black being asked to shoot 
unarmed protestors. 

As Michael Kidron wrote post modern Capitalism and its State are what Eisenhower called the Military Industrial Complex and what Kidron calls  the Permanent Arms Economy, as famed Canadian economist Kenneth Galbraith also discussed in his book and TV series
that came out at the same time in Seventies.

Kidron has been proven right by the continuous sale of weapons world wide, and it is these weapons that are the source of other crimes, in particular drug running, in order to pay for them. America  is the worlds largest gun runner, if its not creating wars, invasions it is selling weapons to those in conflict.

Its most recent sale to a client state, was over $100 million dollars to Saudi Arabia, for them to also gun run and to use against the Shia whom they are conducting an ethnic cleansing war in Yemen.

Wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, all caused by the USA in its so called war on Terror, which is just another name for gun running.

Today we face once again the choice Socialism for survival and sustainability, vs Barbarism.
The Barbarians are Aryan Nationalist White Nationalists America, Brit, Russian, French,etc etc Nationalists. Nationalism is Fascism.




                                       

Tuesday, May 09, 2017

All That Is Solid ...: Commodities and Reification

All That Is Solid ...: Commodities and Reification: At the heart of Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness is the three part essay , 'Reification and the Consciousness of the Proleta...

Monday, May 08, 2017

The Cultural Reader: Hegel on Master-Slave Dialectic - Summary

The Cultural Reader: Hegel on Master-Slave Dialectic - Summary: One of the important and famous ideas introduced by Hegel in his The Phenomenology of Spirit is the idea of master-slave dialectic, relat...

Thursday, April 27, 2017

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: NORTH KOREA NUKE FREE White House: Military Prepa...

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: NORTH KOREA NUKE FREE 
White House: Military Prepa...
: NORTH KOREA NUKE FREE  White House: Military Preparations 'Underway' for North Korea  Which means TRUMP is bullying...
NORTH KOREA NUKE FREE 

White House: Military Preparations 'Underway' for North Korea 




Which means TRUMP is bullying HIS way again 
into a Masculine Show of Force for Poll Ratings 


ITS A GOOD THING THAT NORTH KOREA 
HAS NEITHER NUKES NOR EFFECTIVE MISSILES 



                              Do They Even Work? The Sad Saga of North Korea's 

                                  SERIOUSLY BECAUSE IF THE ATM'S DON'T WORK 

WHY WOULD YOU THINK THEIR NUKES OR MISSILES

                     
PYONGYANG, North Korea — No modern airport terminal is complete without an ATM, and Pyongyang's now has two. But they don't work — because of new Chinese sanctions, according to bank employees — and it's not clear when they will.
ATMs are an alien enough concept in North Korea that those in the capital's shiny new Sunan International Airport have a video screen near the top showing how they work and how to set up an account to use them. The explanatory video is in Korean, but the machines, which are meant primarily for Chinese businesspeople and tourists, don't give out cash in the North Korean currency.
ATMs are not entirely new to the North.
Years ago, the Ryugyong Commercial Bank installed one in a midrange tourist hotel in central Pyongyang frequented by Chinese. Another ATM was spotted at the airport last year, but it never appeared to be turned on.

Since North Korea set off its second alleged nuclear test over a decade ago I have asked a simple question, where is the radiation signature identifying it as a nuclear blast.  I first brought it up here , and have continued to post my thesis that North Korea is Nuke Free on my Facebook News page.

Simply put no nuclear test done by North Korea over the past decade and a half, 
has emitted any significant detectable radiation associated with a nuclear blast.
There is no detection of radiation immediately after the blast, nor for days nor weeks later. In fact only trace amounts have been found no more so than would occur after a volcanic eruption for instance. I GOOGLE it on a regular basis and still have found no significant report on radiation detected. YOU SHOULD GOOGLE IT TOO


When is an earthquake not an earthquake? How we'll find out when North Korea conducts its next nuclear test
 Nuclear weapons are so powerful that when North Korea has tested them previously, it initially produced what appeared to be an "earthquake" measuring around magnitude 5.0.In September last year, a 5.3 magnitude tremor was recorded not far from North Korea's testing facility in Punggye-ri, in the country's mountainous north-east.That "earthquake" was quickly deemed to have been the rogue state's fifth nuclear test, another step towards its stated goal of building a nuclear weapon that could reach the US.It followed an earlier test in January, of what North Korea claimed was a "miniature hydrogen bomb". That exercise triggered what initially appeared to be a 5.1 magnitude earthquake.
North Korea has conducted its recent nuclear tests by placing the nuclear device hundreds of metres below ground in a narrow hole and detonating it.
While most of the radiation generated stays below ground, some can escape or is deliberately released.
Two weeks after the September test, a monitoring station in Canada, more than 7000km downwind of North Korea's test site, detected elevated airborne levels of a radioactive isotope produced by nuclear fission.
A tell-tail sign it's a nuclear explosion and not a natural earthquake is by observing the depth of the, "shake". Natural quakes originate from far under the ground. The epicenter of a nuclear bomb's localized quake is right at the surface.
For comparison, a natural quake today near Fuji registered 5.8 magnitude at 285 miles deep. A September 9, 2016 nuclear bomb test in North Korea registered a 5.3 on the Richter scale at 0.0 km (0.0 miles) deep.

Making WavesBut whether there’s fury behind the sound is still in question. Whatever North Korea blew up, it did so underground. Which is why the specific characteristics of seismic energy are among the most important analytical factors in finding out exactly what made the earth move. “When you squeeze or stretch a rock, it propagates just like sound does,” says Terry Wallace, a Principal Associate Director for Global Security. Practically speaking, Wallace is a forensic seismologist, solving geopolitical mysteries by looking at signatures in the earth.Explosions, volcanic eruptions, and underground collapses predominantly compress rock, creating what’s called a P-wave. Earthquakes, which usually happen when two pieces of rock slip past each other, cause shearing and twisting that create S-waves. “Imagine you have a slinky. If you hit just one end of it, the slinky compresses, then releases in a wave from source to receiver,” says Wallace, describing a P-wave. “In an S-wave, you are actually going to shake the slinky from side to side.” Seismograph wiggles record shaking in three dimensions, which give telltale signs of what kind of waves come out.
North Korea conducted yet another nuclear test on Sept. 8, and it was seemingly the country's most powerful Registering some 10 kilotons, according to reports from South Korea, the blast was apparently twice as powerful as the last test in January. Both are significant increases in explosive power from the first North Korean test in October 2006, which U.S. intelligence officials estimated to be around 1 kiloton.

Again we have reports early on of peoples worries about radiation but none is reported 
Japan confirms North Korea carried out its fifth and largest nuclear test yet 
  N Korean nuclear test raises fallout fears on China’s border, emergency monitoring activated 

Even when radiation is claimed to be found indicating a potential use of nuclear material, 
these are inconclusive because the testing for underground blasts is difficult and the technology is still being worked on.

North Korea’s 2009 Nuclear Test: Containment, Monitoring, Implications Jonathan Medalia Specialist in Nuclear Weapons Policy November 24, 2010
There are several uncertainties regarding the use of argon-37 for long-range detection of nuclear explosions. First, what is the background level of that isotope from natural and human sources? While the background appears to be low, a definitive conclusion would require further study. Second, can an automated system for detecting this isotope be designed and fielded? While it can be detected in the laboratory, or in the field using manual equipment, an automated system would be needed if detectors are to be placed at remote locations, such as IMS radionuclide stations. Carrigan notes a third uncertainty: the detectability of argon-37 would depend on the rate at which it reaches the surface. If a nuclear test released a large quantity promptly, the isotope would be much easier to detect at long range than if it were released over days or weeks. Radioactive isotopes of xenon (“radioxenons”) are of great value for long-range detection, and the noble gas detection equipment deployed at some IMS radionuclide stations monitors only for them.51 They are produced by nuclear explosions and nuclear reactors. Nuclear explosions also generate iodine-133 (half-life, 20.8 hours) and iodine-135 (half-life, 6.6 hours), which decay into xenon-133 and xenon-135, respectively. Radioxenons can be detected in minute quantities at great distances, but such detection must be accomplished soon after a nuclear test because of short half-lives. The half-life of xenon-133, an isotope of particular value for identifying nuclear explosions, is 5.24 days, so long-range detection can only be done within about 3 weeks of a test.52 The other radioxenons of use for monitoring nuclear tests are xenon-135 (half-life, 9.14 hours), xenon-133m (half-life, 2.19 days), and xenon-131m (half-life, 11.84 days).53 53 Half-life data are from Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, “Exploring the Table of Isotopes: Isotopes of Xenon (Z=54),” http://ie.lbl.gov/education/parent/Xe_iso.htm. Xenon-131m is of limited value for detecting nuclear explosions because they generate very little of it, and because, given its longer half-life, it is often in the background, at least regionally, generated by nuclear reactors or medical isotope production reactors. Lars-Erik De Geer, “Radioxenon signatures from underground nuclear explosions,” poster for the International Scientific Studies Project, Vienna, Austria, June 10-12, 2009, http://www.ctbto.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ISS_2009/Poster/RN-22D%20%28Sweden%29%20-%20LarsErik_DeGeer.pdf. The “m” in xenon-131m and 
North Korea nuclear test: No radiation detected
14 February 2013
 South Korean experts say they have not detected any radioactive isotopes from North Korea's nuclear test, hampering efforts to assess the device.Eight samples had been analysed but nothing found, the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission said.
Finding certain isotopes - xenon gases in particular - would help experts determine whether a plutonium or uranium-based device was used.
But a well-contained test could yield no radioactive isotopes, experts say.

 
 And again we have a blast, this time claimed to be the much more powerful hydrogen bomb
and yet we have no proof.
North Korea later announced it had conducted its first successful test of a hydrogen bomb.H-bombs, also known as thermonuclear warheads, are massively more powerful than atomic bombs, using fusion - the merging of atoms - rather than fission to unleash enormous amounts of energy.
Though again it has never been confirmed,
a similar blast and quake reaction as a small kilo-tonne nuke.  So far all the tests have been of very small bombs, between .5 KT and 1 KT similar to the nuke tests before the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the Americans.



This kiloton blast can be produced using what is called Ultra High Explosives, and in fact these are as secret as nuclear weapons are in the international market place,
you in fact saw one go off in Afghanistan last week it was called the Mother of All Bombs MOAB or GBU-GB43  George Bush 43, and it was an Ultra High Explosive; GBU.







Such a bomb is what the North Koreans could be using to imitate a Nuclear blast, 
and why would they go to all the trouble to do that?




Well for one its far easier to sell undetected and North Korea is a major illegal arms dealer who sells missiles, and explosive ordinances for them. 

And two its all about face. Each generation of North Korean Great Leader, carries on the threat of Nuclear war against the West, encouraged as they were by General MacArthur who recommended using nukes against them during the Korean War. After that they knew
directly, so close after the bombing of civilians in Japan with US atomic bombs. the fear 
of the power of the idea of nuclear weapons and the resulting nuclear war.

Granddad and Dad worked on it during the Seventies, then Dad occasionally would
threaten the West, usually when they needed help for famines, which in true Stalinist fashion they spent inordinate amounts of time denying. 

Grandson Kim Jong Un becomes New Glorious Leader and Great Helmsman
and he discovers that under his dads rule the family dominated the regimes politics.
Then he discovered the horrible secret, they had no nukes it was all a fient, while
they tried to develop them and the delivery systems for them.

Outraged Un did what all Stalinist leaders do and he Purged and purged, and purged
all those inner circle family members responsible for the big Lie.

The use of Ultra High Explosive bomb underground blasts gave the impression of
Un rapidly trying to develop weapons of mass destruction to threaten the West with
to keep them at bay.

He increased the development and testing of missiles, and he tested out new forms of dry propellants and explosives on his family using anti aircraft guns to execute them.

It works for the Americans and their allies, because it gives them another enemy to
fight that is stand in for China and Russia.

This US policy North Korea Policy: Failure is the Only Option however, stems from several unique circumstances. By all indications, the North Koreans plan to keep their nuclear weapons and are not open to bargaining them away. Acquiring nuclear weapons was perhaps the only major accomplishment of the late “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il (father of current leader Kim Jong-un), under whom the country suffered severe economic austerity. Pyongyang seems to believe that entering the nuclear club will bring military security and transform relations with the United States. Pyongyang’s ability to defy the much more powerful United States is a consequence of the North Koreans holding Seoul hostage. The South Korean capital is within range of a massive collection of North Korean artillery and rocket batteries poised to rain down destruction in retaliation for any possible military action by the United States or South Korea. Finally, a rapprochement with North Korea may well be simply impossible no matter what America says or does, because Pyongyang sees peace as a mortal danger to the regime.
AnalysisAre we seeing the Madman Theory in action?
North Korea has drawn the ire of United Nations member states because it initially joined the Non-Proliferations Treaty but broke its obligations with nuclear weapons testing before withdrawing entirely in 2003.
Other nations believed to have nuclear weapons – including India, Pakistan and Israel – never accepted the treaty at all.
Prof Siracusa said much of what Kim Jong-un has done on the global stage, like his father and grandfather before him, has been to bolster their own position in North Korean society.
"I don't think Shakespeare would have any trouble with North Korea, because it is a hereditary communist rule," he said.
"One family has run the place since the late 1940s. They see these weapons as something that prevents other people from approaching them.
"In other words, these weapons are not only designed to hold off the larger powers but also to show their own people that there is some fear here.
"They have become an organising principle in North Korean politics."

Much Ado About Nothing: DPRK’s Latest Missile Test Reveals  No New Capabilities

How to Hack and Not Hack a Missile 
An attack on the manufacturing process will most likely result in defective components that fail even in ground testing. We would likely never know about this, except to wonder why the ground test phase is taking so long. Interestingly, North Korea’s KN-08 ICBM was first seen in mock-up form in 2012, but there was not a single successful ground test until last year. That may not be the result of a cyberattack, but it is at least what a cyberattack would look like. It would be preferable if the failures occurred in flight, and ideally late in flight, leaving the defective hardware out of reach of North Korean investigators. But this cannot be accomplished reliably—defects subtle enough to survive ground testing would cause some missiles to fail but leave others to complete their mission successfully. And, with properly realistic testing, some failures will still occur on the ground, leaving the North Korean engineers to connect the failed parts with the machines that built them. Such an attack can delay North Korea’s acquisition of advanced ballistic missiles, but will not prevent it in the long run.
This is literally rocket science. It is the epitome of a hard problem. And it becomes even harder when political pressure demands more than the hardware can yet deliver, then tries to wash away the embarrassment of failure by demanding an immediate retest without allowing time to investigate the original failure. We didn’t need cyberattacks to cause North Korea’s Musudan missile to fail in seven out of eight tests last year, and we don’t need cyberattacks for two conspicuous failures this year. Kim Jong Un will happily deliver those failures for us, just like we did for ourselves with Vanguard and Atlas and Titan, by imagining successful rocket tests can be conjured out of political dictates rather than tedious engineering. The young Kim’s father was generally more patient about this sort of thing.


A Paradigm Shift in North Korea’s Ballistic Missile Development?In Kim Jong Un’s 2017 New Year’s speech, he announced that North Korea is in the final stage of preparations to test launch an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM). Since then, North Korean media has repeatedly threatened that the launch will occur at a time and place of the North Korean leader’s choosing. On February 12, following multiple failures of the Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), North Korea conducted a test launch of a new type of IRBM, the “Pukguksong-2.” Although not quite a mobile ICBM, this test suggests that Pyongyang has made greater-than-expected progress toward the test launch of a solid-fuel ICBM. North Korea also unveiled what appears to be its new solid propellant ICBM, presumed to be the Pukguksong-3, enclosed in a canister in the massive military parade on April 15.

Limitations of the Musudan MissileThroughout 2016, North Korea test launched Musudan missiles employing high-energy liquid propellants eight times, with only one successful attempt. These tests used a lofted, high-angle trajectory, presumably to reduce the range of the missiles and avoid any escalated tensions that might occur from flying over Japan. However, from an operational perspective, a lofted launch can also make the reentry vehicle (RV) descend more quickly during the terminal phase, allowing missile defenses less time to intercept them. It seems that these consecutive test failures exposed the limitations of its engine, which was developed by reverse engineering the Russian R-27 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). The one successful flight test of the Musudan, conducted in June 2016, was likely aimed at simulating the velocity and environment of ICBM reentry by reaching a higher peak altitude of more than 1,400 km with a decreased range of 400 km.


North Korea’s Evolving Nuclear StrategyWhile North Korea’s nuclear capabilities and threats have grown, little attention has been paid to its emerging nuclear strategy for three reasons. First, there is a common caricature of North Korea as backward, unserious and incompetent that has led some to dismiss and downplay its nuclear efforts over the years. Only after its third nuclear test, in 2013, have many analysts begun to take North Korea’s nuclear capabilities seriously. Second, there is a tendency for nuclear scholars to bypass North Korea because, as one suggests, “almost nothing is known about North Korea’s nuclear arsenal or the doctrine by which those weapons might be employed.”5 North Korea and its nuclear program are far from transparent, but this is not a unique problem. US scholars struggled for two generations to understand nuclear thinking in the Soviet Union based on sketchy evidence. It would be a mistake now, just as it would have been then, to throw our hands into the air. Moreover, a surprising amount of evidence about North Korea’s nuclear program actually exists from its past nuclear and missile tests, policy pronouncements and military parades as well as from commercially available satellite imagery                     

The third reason North Korea’s nuclear strategy receives scant scholarly attention is that many analysts assume that non-military goals drive its nuclear decision making. Some argue that its program is primarily aimed at garnering international prestige or rallying domestic support around a leadership with few other claims of success.6 Others see financial motivations; a North Korea bent on trading its technologies to countries like Iran and Syria.7 Still others believe that its nuclear program is a bargaining chip or blackmailing tool to gain diplomatic concessions.8 Such motivations do not lend themselves easily to rational-actor-based strategic analyses that explore connections between means and ends.9 Yet, it would be a mistake to assume that North Korea’s nuclear program is not guided by strategic logic. Its leaders must certainly weigh the costs and benefits of its nuclear investments and actions over time, given their resource limitations and the security risks they run by driving up military tensions.

Its in everybody interests to play the game of saying North Korea has nukes, they say it for prestige, self defense, (the US never attacks a state with WMD) and to mobilize the masses as a militarized forces.

The US says it because it makes them a go to threat when world
crisis slow down. They claim Kim Jung Un is a madman like their other old go to threat Qaddafi, but he is gone now, like Idi Amin before him.
Currently there is no difference between the Madman in the White House and those he accuses of being mad men.

China uses North Korea as a southern bulwark against the US.
They know North Korea does not have nukes, and they play along
to keep the US and South Korea off balance and staying on their
side of the DMZ.

Japan suspects that North Korea has no nukes, but it is reachable by missiles assault using standard explosives or ultra high explosives like MOAB. So whenever the US saber rattles, its Japan that get the shakes.