You Can't Argue against Socialism's 100 Percent Record of Failure

From FEE.org:

Socialism is extremely in vogue. Opinion pieces which tell us to stop obsessing over socialism’s past failures, and start to get excited about its future potential, have almost become a genre in its own right.

For example, Bhaskhar Sunkara, the founder of Jacobin magazine, recently wrote a New York Times article, in which he claimed that the next attempt to build a socialist society will be completely different:

This time, people get to vote. Well, debate and deliberate and then vote—and have faith that people can organize together to chart new destinations for humanity. Stripped down to its essence, and returned to its roots, socialism is an ideology of radical democracy. […] [I]t seeks to empower civil society to allow participation in the decisions that affect our lives.

……………….

Flawed Arguments

First, as much as the authors insist that previous examples of socialism were not “really” socialist, none of them can tell us what exactly they would do differently. Rather than providing at least a rough outline of how “their” version of socialism would work in practice, the authors escape into abstraction, and talk about lofty aspirations rather than tangible institutional characteristics.

“Charting new destinations for humanity” and “democratizing the economy” are nice buzzphrases, but what does this mean, in practice? How would “the people” manage “their” economy jointly? Would we all gather in Hyde Park, and debate how many toothbrushes and how many screwdrivers we should produce? How would we decide who gets what? How would we decide who does what? What if it turns out that we don’t actually agree on very much?

……………………..

Secondly, the authors do not seem to realize that there is nothing remotely new about the lofty aspirations they talk about, and the buzzphrases they use. Giving “the people” democratic control over economic life has always been the aspiration, and the promise, of socialism. It is not that this has never occurred to the people who were involved in earlier socialist projects. On the contrary: that was always the idea. There was never a time when socialists started out with the express intention of creating stratified societies led by a technocratic elite. Socialism always turned out that way, but not because it was intended to be that way.

…………….

They are wrong. The Austro-British economist Friedrich Hayek already showed in 1944 why socialism must always lead to an extreme concentration of power in the hands of the state, and why the idea that this concentrated power could be democratically controlled was an illusion. Were Hayek to come back from the dead today, he would probably struggle a bit with the iPhone, Deliveroo and social media—but he would instantly grasp the situation in Venezuela.

Thirdly, contemporary socialists completely fail to address the deficiencies of socialism in the economic sphere. They talk a lot about how their version of socialism would be democratic, participatory, non-authoritarian, and nice and cuddly. Suppose they could prove Hayek wrong and magically make that work. What then?

Economics Matters

They would then be able to avoid the Gulags, the show trials and the secret police next time, which would obviously be an immeasurable improvement over the versions of socialism that existed in the past. But we would still be left with a dysfunctional economy.

Contemporary socialists seem to assume that a democratized version of socialism would not just be more humane, but also economically more productive and efficient: reform the political system, and the rest will somehow follow. There is no reason why it should. Democracy, civil liberties, and human rights are all desirable in their own right, but they do not, in and of themselves, make countries any richer.

……………….

Ultimately, the contemporary argument for socialism boils down to: “next time will be different because we say so.”

After more than two dozen failed attempts, that is just not good enough.  [read more]

Another article and videos about socialism:

• “France Shows What You Actually Get with Democratic Socialism.”
• One Venezuelan Student’s Heartbreaking Experience with Socialism [video]
• How's Socialism Doing in Venezuela? [video]
• How Socialism Ruined My Country  [video]
• Democratic Socialism is Still Socialism [video]
• Socialism Makes People Selfish [video]
• America's Socialist Origins [video]

WSJ: N. Korea Becoming 'World's Most Dangerous Hacking Machine'

From News Max.com (Apr. 19):

North Korea's cyber army has become a sophisticated and dangerous hacking machine — and "the whole world needs to take notice," The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

According to the Journal, the rogue nation's fingerprints have shown up in an increasing number of cyberattacks, the skill level of its hackers has vastly improved and their targets are more worrisome.

"The whole world needs to take notice," John Hultquist, director of intelligence analysis at cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc., told the Journal.

The firm now ranks North Korea among the world's mature hacking operations, the Journal reported — noting that as recently as March, suspected North Korean hackers appear to have infiltrated Turkish banks and invaded computer systems in the run-up to the Winter Olympics.

Experts tell the Journal that North Korea has been showing surprising levels of originality in its coding and techniques — and a willingness to go after targets such as central banks and point-of-sale systems. [read more]

Hopefully when the Korean summit happens this behavior will stop.

A future ultraminiature computer the size of a pinhead?

From Kurzweilai.net (Apr. 16):

University of New Hampshire researchers have discovered a combination of materials that they say would allow for smaller, safer magnetic random access memory (MRAM) storage — ultimately leading to ultraminiature computers.

Unlike conventional RAM (read-only memory) SRAM and DRAM chip technologies, with MRAM, data is stored by magnetic storage elements, instead of energy-expending electric charge or current flows. MRAM is also nonvolatile memory (the data is preserved when the power if turned off). The elements are formed from two ferromagnetic plates, each of which can hold a magnetization, separated by a thin insulating layer.

In their study, published March 30, 2018 in the open-access journal Science Advances, the researchers describe a new design* comprising ultrathin films, known as Fe (iron) monolayers, grown on a substrate made up of non-magnetic substances —  boron, gallium, aluminum, or indium nitride.

Ultrahigh storage density

The new design has an estimated 10-year data retention at room temperature. It can “ultimately lead to nanomagnetism and promote revolutionary ultrahigh storage density in the future,” said Jiadong Zang, an assistant professor of physics and senior author. “It opens the door to possibilities for much smaller computers for everything from basic data storage to traveling on space missions. Imagine launching a rocket with a computer the size of a pin head — it not only saves space but also a lot of fuel.”

MRAM is already challenging flash memory in a number of applications where persistent or nonvolatile memory (such as flash) is currently being used, and it’s also taking on RAM chips “in applications such as AI, IoT, 5G, and data centers,” according to a recent article in Electronic Design.**

Source: “A future ultraminiature computer the size of a pinhead?”

How Would We Know If Intelligent Life Existed on Earth Before Humans?

From Live Science.com (Apr. 18):

Reptilian menaces called Silurians evolved on Earth before humankind — at least in the "Doctor Who" rendition of the universe. But science fiction aside, how would we know if some advanced civilization existed on our home planet millions of years before brainy humans showed up?

This is a serious question, and serious scientists are speculating about what traces these potential predecessors might have left behind. And they're calling this possibility the Silurian hypothesis.

When it comes to the hunt for advanced extraterrestrial civilizations that might exist across the cosmos, one must reckon with the knowledge that the universe is about 13.8 billion years old. In contrast, complex life has existed on Earth's surface for only about 400 million years, and humans have only developed industrial civilizations in the last 300 years. This raises the possibility that industrial civilizations might have been around long before human ones ever existed — not just around other stars, but even on Earth itself.

"Now, I don't believe an industrial civilization existed on Earth before our own — I don't think there was a dinosaur civilization or a giant tree sloth civilization," said study co-author Adam Frank, an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester in New York. "But the question of what one would look like if it did [exist] is important. How do you know there hasn't been one? The whole point of science is to ask a question and see where it leads. That's the essence of what makes science so exciting." [read more]

Physicists Just Broke a Quantum Record, Taking Entanglement to a Spooky New Level

From Science Alert.com (Apr. 16):

If we want quantum computers, we're going to need a complex system of quantum entangled particles - particles that are intrinsically linked so that whatever happens to one instantaneously affects another.

That's a whole lot easier said than done, of course - but a team of physicists has just breached an exciting milestone by creating a 20-bit quantum register.

Quantum bits, or qubits, are the basic building blocks of quantum computing, just like bits are the building blocks of traditional computing.

But what's challenging about them is that they rely on subatomic particles' spooky ability to exist in more than one state at the same time.

Regular bits can exist in two states - 1 or 0. Qubits would also be based on the binary system, but thanks to entanglement they can exist in a superposition of both states, rather than one or the other, as bits must do.

This would allow for a computer that is vastly faster and more powerful than the computers we currently use.

But that's only if the qubits can be combined to create a register of well-characterised, entangled qubits.

………………….

Now, Blatt and a team of physicists and theorists have built a system of 20 qubits whose quantum states can be individually controlled.

In this experiment, 20 charged calcium atoms, or ions, arranged in a line served as the qubits, and they were entangled using a series of lasers. [read more]

This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

From FEE.org (Apr. 10):

It may not feel like spring yet, but regulatory agencies have turned their fancies to rulemaking, with 45 proposed and 70 final regulations ranging from the size of oranges to yellow lances.

On to the data:

• Last week, 70 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 63 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 24 minutes.
• Federal agencies have issued 825 final regulations in 2017. At that pace, there will be 3,079 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,281 regulations.
• Last week, 1,202 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 964 pages the previous week.
• The 2018 Federal Register totals 15,374 pages. It is on pace for 57,366 pages. The all-time record adjusted page count (which subtracts skips, jumps, and blank pages) is 96,994, set in 2016.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. One such rule has been published this year, none in the last week.
• The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations is $115 million.
• Agencies have published 24 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
• In 2018, 130 new rules affected small businesses; 7 of them are classified as significant.

[read more]

Way too many regulations.

4 Areas Where Democrats Once Backed Trump Immigration Agenda

From The Daily Signal.com (Apr. 9):

A politician stood on the U.S.-Mexican border in San Ysidro, California, declaring, “The day when America could be the welfare system for Mexico is gone.”

“Whether the space is a job, the space is a home, a place in a classroom, it’s becomes a competition for space. This is a country that’s based on immigration, and we all know that,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., continued during an August 1993 speech, adding, “We’ve got to, for the time being, enforce our borders.”

President Donald Trump in late January offered to grant amnesty to 1.8 million young illegal immigrants brought to the country as minors—more than twice the number protected under President Barack Obama’s 2012 executive action—in exchange for tougher immigration enforcement that included a border wall, adopting a merit-based immigration system, and cracking down on sanctuary cities—issues many Democrats had either voted for or voiced support for previously.

However, the Senate rejected four compromise bills in February, including one backed by the president, which got just 39 votes. A bill co-sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, garnered 54 votes, but was short of the 60 votes needed to pass.

Now, a deal on codifying Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the 2012 Obama policy, into law appears dead.

………………….

Here are four examples of prominent Democrats previously taking a harder line, more in keeping with Trump’s position now.

1. Comprehensive Reform Bills

In 2013, 52 Democrats voted for the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act. The bipartisan “Gang of Eight” bill backed by Obama included provisions to stop immigration based on family reunification immigration, also known as chain migration; to create merit-based visas; and to expand the border fence.

…………………

During debate over 2007 legislation, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., raised concerns about the economic impact of importing more immigrants.

“I think this Senate should be spending much more of its time making it easier to create decent-paying jobs for American workers, instead of allowing corporate America to drive down wages by importing more and more workers from overseas,” Sanders said.

2. Chain Migration

Chain migration is the existing system, which focuses on family reunification. It provides preference for legal entry to relatives, often distant relatives, of people already in the country legally.

Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairwoman Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., has called merit-based immigration a “poison pill,” while Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., rejected the term “chain migration,” insisting on calling it “family reunification.”

However, when advocating a 2007 version of the DREAM Act, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., expressed problems with chain migration, saying, “The DREAM Act would not lead to ‘chain migration.’ DREAM Act beneficiaries would have very limited ability to sponsor family members.”  [read more]

The Dems would say they are just “evolving” their opinions. I think the whole party is de-evolving, possibly going insane too.

The other two areas where the Dems agreed are: ‘Illegal’ vs. ‘undocumented” and sanctuary cities.

The Student Data-Mining Scandal Under Our Noses

From The Daily Signal.com (Apr. 11):

While congresscritters expressed outrage at Facebook’s intrusive data grabs during Capitol Hill hearings with Mark Zuckerberg this week, not a peep was heard about the Silicon Valley-Beltway theft ring purloining the personal information and browsing habits of millions of American schoolchildren.

It doesn’t take undercover investigative journalists to unmask the massive privacy invasion enabled by educational technology and federal mandates. The kiddie data heist is happening out in the open—with Washington politicians and bureaucrats as brazen co-conspirators.

Facebook is just one of the tech giants partnering with the Department of Education and schools nationwide in pursuit of student data for meddling and profit. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Pearson, Knewton, and many more are cashing in on the Big Data boondoggle.

State and federal educational databases provide countless opportunities for private companies exploiting public schoolchildren subjected to annual assessments, which exploded after adoption of the tech industry-supported Common Core “standards,” tests, and aligned texts and curricula.

The recently passed Every Student Succeeds Act further enshrined government collection of personally identifiable information—including data collected on attitudes, values, beliefs, and dispositions—and allows release of the data to third-party contractors thanks to Obama-era loopholes carved into the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.

And the so-called school-to-work pipeline creates endless avenues into taxpayer coffers for firms pitching data-gathering initiatives to “align” student learning with “skill sets” and “competencies” desired by corporations. [read more]

Communist China’s Take on Cosmology

   The words a proletarian dictatorship uses when it denounces a field of pure science:

Modern cosmology is "bourgeois cosmology.” It is “counterfeit cosmology” and “shows only the degree of depravity that is reached when the natural sciences fall into the hands of the rotten and depraved bourgeois class.”

The model of an expanding universe “seeks to establish that the capitalist system not only cannot be overcome but will continue indefinitely to expand.” 

The cosmos "has no mathematical or physical explanations, but it has a philosophical explanation"; "the proletariat has its own cosmic explanation"; "the proletariat will write its own new ‘On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies’ in new ‘Idea of a Universal History on a Cosmopolitical Plan.’'"

The author makes this observation about Mao-era socialism:

Mao-era state socialism rested on a "Holy Trinity" of despotism politics, a one-party dictatorship; in economics, a dictatorship of state planning: and in ideology, a dictatorship that resembled that of medieval church in Europe. Each of the three powers needed the other two. Marxist texts had the status of sacred religious texts. No challenge, however slight, of whatever kind, from whatever person, could be tolerated.

The author talks about how the medieval church in Europe adopted the geocentric version of cosmology even though this version was never in the Bible—it originated in ancient Greece. Once it was part of medieval Christian doctrine it became sacred and never to be questioned.

The author goes on:

So the ideological dictatorships of modern socialism and the medieval church had several things in common. They both saw themselves as authorities on cosmology; both adopted an outmoded cosmology as their unchallengeable model; and both used the tools of tyranny to block scientific progress. This helped me to understand that the problem with Communist rule over science was not just those tools of tyranny themselves but an ideology that in its very nature is opposed to the conditions science requires: free inquiry, a spirit of skepticism, and reliance on evidence.

Source: The Most Wanted Man in China. My Journey from Scientist to Enemy of the State (2016) by Fang Lizhi.

EPA’s Lack of Transparency Is a Breeding Ground for Junk Science

From FEE.org (Apr. 3):

In a recent New York Times op-ed, two former EPA officials criticize a Trump administration plan that would require the EPA to reveal the details of studies used to craft environmental regulations. In this piece, Obama’s EPA director Gina McCarthy and assistant director Janet McCabe, claim that:

• current EPA director Scott Pruitt and “some conservative members of Congress are setting up a nonexistent problem in order to prevent the EPA from using the best available science.”
• EPA’s studies “adhere to all professional standards and meet every expectation of the scientific community in terms of peer review and scientific integrity.”
• the process of “peer review ensures that the analytic methodologies underlying studies funded by the agency are sound.”

A broad array of scientific facts and literature proves all of those claims to be false. This has important ramifications, for as explained in book Molecular Biology and Biotechnology: A Guide for Teachers, “there are risks in misperceiving” environmental risks, because “the experiences or products you avoid because of faulty assumptions and misinformation affect the quality of your life and the lives of those around you.”

Transparency Is Essential to Science

Since at least 1994, various scientists, including those on the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, have asked the EPA to “make available the primary data” used in studies for “regulatory decisions” that “have multibillion dollar impacts on society” so that “others can validate the analyses.” The EPA has often resisted and refused these requests using the same arguments as McCarthy and McCabe.

Such arguments, however, are contradicted by numerous scholarly works about scientific integrity. In opposition to McCarthy and McCabe’s claim that EPA studies based on undisclosed data “adhere to all professional standards” for “scientific integrity”:

• The Handbook of Social Research Ethics states that:
  • “any hindrance to the collection, analysis, or publication of data, such as inaccessible findings from refusal to share data or not publishing a study, should also be corrected for science to fully function.”
  • “scientific theories must be testable and precise enough to be capable of falsification,” and “to be so, science, including social science, must be essentially a public endeavor, in which all findings should be published and exposed to scrutiny by the entire scientific community.”

• the Handbook of Data Analysis states that “the techniques of analysis should be sufficiently transparent that other researchers familiar with the area can recognize how the data are being collected and tested, and can replicate the outcomes of the analysis procedure. (Journals are now requesting that authors provide copies of their data files when a paper is published so that other researchers can easily reproduce the analysis and then build on or dispute the conclusions of the paper.)”
• the book Quantifying Research Integrity states that:

• “when data are not available, researchers must either trust past published results, or they must recreate the data as best they can based on descriptions in the published works, which often turn out to be too cryptic.”
• “descriptions are no substitute for the data itself.”

Transparency is especially important when it comes to matters that broadly impact the public and are a matter of dispute.

………………

Peer Review Doesn’t Ensure Sound Science

Perhaps the most hollow of McCarthy and McCabe’s claims is that “peer review ensures” EPA studies “are sound.” This naïve notion is belied by reams of facts about peer-reviewed publications and candid statements from people involved with them. In merely the past seven years:

• the journal Nature published a study that attempted to confirm the findings of 53 prominent peer-reviewed papers that present results of lab experiments related to cancer drugs. The scientists were unable to reproduce 94 percent of these results, despite the fact that “when findings could not be reproduced, an attempt was made to contact the original authors, discuss the discrepant findings, exchange reagents and repeat experiments under the authors’ direction, occasionally even in the laboratory of the original investigator.”

[read more]

I agree. Transparency is important in science.

Another article on the subject: EPA Chief Scott Pruitt Moves to End Reliance on ‘Secret Science’

Whatever the Left Touches, It Ruins

Commentary from Dennis Prager on The Daily Signal.com (Apr. 10):

The only way to save Western civilization is to convince more people that leftism—not liberalism—is a nihilistic force. Quite literally, whatever the left touches it ruins.

So, here is a partial listing of the damage done by the left and the Democratic Party:

The most obvious—and, therefore, the one more and Americans can resonate with—is the near destruction of most American universities as places of learning. In the words of Harvard professor Steven Pinker—an atheist and a liberal—outside of the natural sciences and a few other disciplines (such as mathematics and business), “universities are becoming laughing stocks of intolerance.”

If you send your children to a university, you are endangering both their mind and their character. There is a real chance they will be more intolerant and more foolish after college than they were when they entered college.

When you attend an American university, you are taught to have contempt for America and its founders, to prefer socialism to capitalism, to divide human beings by race and ethnicity. You are taught to shut down those who differ with you, to not debate them. And you are taught to place feelings over reason—which is a guaranteed route to eventual evil.

The left has ruined most of the arts. The following three examples are chosen because they are scatological, a favorite form of left-wing artistic expression. Before the left poisoned the arts, art was intended to elevate the viewer (or listener). But to the left, “elevate” is a meaningless term; it is far more at home depicting urine, fecal matter, and menstrual blood.

In 2011, a lifelike German sculpture depicting a policewoman squatting and urinating—even the puddle is sculpted—received an award from a prestigious German foundation, the Leinemann Foundation for Fine Art.

……………….

The left has poisoned mainstream religion. Mainstream Protestantism, non-Orthodox Judaism, and much of the Catholic Church—including and especially Pope Francis—are essentially left-wing advocacy groups with religious symbols.

The left is destroying the unique American commitment to free speech. Almost half of incoming college freshmen do not believe in free speech for what they deem “hate speech” (merely taking issue with a left-wing position is, in the left’s view, “hate speech”). They do not understand that the whole point of free speech is allowing the expression of opposing ideas, including what we consider “hate speech.”  [read more]

Other articles and videos about the Left:

• TIMELINE: Surprising historical facts the Democratic Party wouldn’t want you to know
• The Inconvenient Truth About the Democratic Party [video]
• High school history text: Trump deranged, all whites racist
• Hollywood Wants Your Money...and Your Mind [video]
• Why I Left the Left [video]

A New State of Quantum Matter Has Been Found in a Material Scientists Thought Was All Chaos

From Science Alert.com (Apr. 5):

Experiments carried out on a complex arrangement of magnetic particles have identified a completely new state of matter, and it can only be explained if scientists turn to quantum physics.

The messy structures behind the research show strange properties that could allow us to study the chaos of exotic particles - if researchers can find order in there, it could help us understand these particles in greater detail, opening up a whole new landscape for quantum technology.

Physicists from the US carried out their research on the geometrical arrangements of particles in a weird material known as spin ice.

Like common old water ice, the particles making up spin ice sort themselves into geometric patterns as the temperature drops.

There are a number of compounds that can be used to build this kind of material, but they all share the same kind of quantum property – their individual magnetic 'spin' sets up a bias in how the particles point to one another, creating complex structures.

So, unlike the predictable crystalline patterns in water ice, the nanoscale magnetic particles making up spin ice can look disordered and chaotic under certain conditions, flipping back and forth wildly.  [read more]

The Demands of Antifa and the Original Fascists Have a Lot in Common

From FEE.org (Mar. 29):

A ghastly phantom has descended upon America: the specter of anti-capitalism. Young people march behind the socialist bandwagon and some activists block free speech as members of a group called “Antifa”.

This “anti-fascist” movement engages in militant protests and does not shrink from using violence. As a part of the extreme left, the members of the “antifa-movement” are self-proclaimed “anti-capitalists” and declared “enemies of the right”. They call themselves “anti-fascist”, when, in fact, more than any other ideology, fascism characterizes their own movement.

Yet what is fascism and what is the content of this ideology?

The "Fascist Manifesto"

The Fascist Manifesto was proclaimed in 1919 by Alceste De Ambris and Filippo Tommaso Marienetti. In their pamphlet, the authors called for an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage; it demanded worker representation in industrial management and equal standing of trade unions, industrial executives, and public servants.

The authors of the Fascist Manifesto demanded progressive taxation, invalidity insurance, and other types of social benefits, along with reducing the retirement age. The Manifesto demanded the confiscation of the property of all religious institutions and to nationalize the armament industry.

The authors of the Fascist Manifesto called for establishing a corporatist system of ‘National Councils’ formed by experts to be elected by their professional organizations who should hold legislative power in their respective areas.

De Ambris and Marienetti demanded a strong progressive tax on capital to expropriate a portion of all wealth and the seizure of all the possessions of the religious congregations together with the nationalization of the arms industry.  

In 1922, the socialist Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy under the banner of fascism and put most of the fascist program into practice as it was proclaimed in the Manifesto some years earlier.

Compared with the Communist Manifesto

A comparison with the Manifesto of the Communist Party, written by Marx and Engels and published in 1848, reveals the kinship of fascism and Communism.

The Communist Manifesto of 170 years ago demanded:

• Strongly progressive taxes
• Centralization of credit in the hands of the state by a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly
• Centralization of the transport system in the hands of the state
• Unification of the farmlands of agriculture and industry with the aim of gradually eliminating the contrast between town and country
• Public free education of all children, elimination of factory work of children in its present form, union of education with material production.

Nazi Party Demands

Adolf Hitler himself was present when the 25 points of the program of the Nazi Party were announced on February 24, 1920. The name Nazism itself says it all: it is the abbreviation of NSDAP which stands for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party).

In 1925, The General Assembly of the NSDAP declared the program of 1920 as "immutable", and in 1941 Adolf Hitler determined that all future leaders of the Reich must be sworn in on the 25 points.

The Program of the Nazi Party includes demands such as:

• Socialization of monopoly companies
• Municipalization of large department stores
• Expropriation of land for charitable purposes
• Prevention of real estate speculation
• Expansion of the entire education system
• A comprehensive system of free public schools and generous study stipends and grants
• A clean environment along with promoting the health and the fitness of the people.

…………………

After the left has pocketed the concept of liberalism and turned the word into the opposite of its original meaning, the Antifa-movement uses a false terminology to hide its true agenda. While calling themselves “antifascist” and declaring fascism as the enemy, the Antifa itself is a foremost fascist movement.

The members of Antifa are not opponents to fascism but themselves its genuine representatives. Communism, Socialism, Fascism are united by the common band of anti-capitalism and anti-liberalism.

The Antifa movement is a fascist movement. The enemy of this movement is not fascism but liberty, peace, and prosperity. [read more]

An interesting and informative video to watch: Is Fascism Right or Left?

6 Reasons Gun Control Will Not Solve Mass Killings

From The Daily Signal.com (Mar. 16):

In the wake of the tragic murder of 17 innocent students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, students, educators, politicians, and activists are searching for solutions to prevent future school shootings.

As emotions morph from grief to anger to resolve, it is vitally important to supply facts so that policymakers and professionals can fashion solutions based on objective data rather than well-intended but misguided emotional fixes.

Are there ways to reduce gun violence and school shootings? Yes, but only after objectively assessing the facts and working collaboratively to fashion common-sense solutions.

Definitions

• “Mass shooting” typically refers to mass killings where the assailant used a firearm or firearms. In 2013, Congress defined “mass killing” as “3 or more killings in a single incident.”

• A prominent 2017 study defined “mass public shootings” as incidents that occur in the absence of other criminal activity (such as robberies, drug deals, and gang-related turf wars) in which a gun is used to kill four or more victims at a public location.

1. Mass killings are rare, and mass public shootings are even rarer.

• Mass killings are very rare, accounting for only 0.2 percent of homicides every year and approximately 1 percent of homicide victims.
• Only 12 percent of mass killings are mass public shootings. Most mass killings are familicides (murders of family members or intimate partners) and felony-related killings (such as robberies gone awry or gang-related “turf battles”).

……………

2. Many gun control measures are not likely to be helpful.

• Over 90 percent of public mass shootings take place in “gun-free zones” where civilians are not permitted to carry firearms.
• A complete ban on “assault weapons” will save very few lives: Six out of every 10 mass public shootings are carried out by handguns alone, while only one in 10 is committed with a rifle alone.
• The average age of mass public shooters is 34, which means that increasing the minimum age for purchasing firearms would not target the main perpetrators of mass public shootings.

……………..

3. Public mass shooters typically have histories of mental health issues.

• According to one study, 60 percent of mass public shooters had been diagnosed with a mental disorder or had demonstrated signs of serious mental illness prior to the attack.
• A large body of research shows a statistical link between mass public killings and serious untreated psychiatric illness. The most commonly diagnosed illnesses among mass public shooters are paranoid schizophrenia and severe depression.
• It is important to remember that the vast majority of people with mental disorders do not engage in violent behaviors, and there is no empirical means of effectively identifying potential mass murderers.  [read more]

I never understood why people think “gun free zones” will stop a mass shooter. That 90% makes perfect sense.

The other three reasons are:

1. The United States does not have an extraordinary problem with mass public shootings compared to other developed countries.
2. Mass killers often find ways to kill even without firearms.
3. Australia did not “eliminate mass public shootings” by banning assault weapons.

Number two above just proves that if someone wants you dead they are going to figure out a way to do it. Guns don’t kill people—evil or sometimes deranged people do. America doesn’t need gun control—it needs self-control. Guns were never the problem.

Other articles and videos on the topic:

• The Real Reason We Have Mass Shootings
• 4 Steps to Better School Security
• How Gun Control Made England The 'Most Violent Country In Europe’
• King George III Would Have Loved Today's Gun Control Movement
• YouTube Shooting Matters, but Not for the Reasons the Media Thinks
• Is Gun Ownership a Right? [video]
• Gun Rights Are Women's Rights [video]
• What Should We Do About Guns? [video]