A Visit to the Flight 93 Memorial

It's in coal country in the Allegheny Mountains, near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, 86 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. The drive there from the south is a switchbacked mountain stretch of the Lincoln Highway through towns dependent on the coal industry.  The beauty of the ride is interrupted by both the meaning of the destination and the conditions under which some of these mountain coal people live.  The memorial visitors are welcomed by the residents who see those who visit here as a possible meager replacement for their livelihoods which are currently under attack.

As we climbed the mountain, the mid-November snow started to appear in the grass and ditches - ice cycles oozed out of the black flat stones that were where most roads have shoulders.  We became aware of just how treacherous these roads must become in a few months as a train of black dusted dump trucks flew by ignoring the special speed limits posted for trucks, dusting up clouds of the early morning's dried road salt as they passed.

The crash site debris field is itself a beautifully reclaimed strip mine spanning over 70 peaceful acres.  A black angled wall silently forbids all visitors except family members and friends from entering the debris field that in no way could be completely cleaned.  A rock has been placed at the impact area as a gathering spot.

The target is widely believed to be the Capitol Building in Washington, DC.  At the time, Congress was in session.  All of Congress, the representatives' staff, the building administration, visitor staff, maintenance people, and tourists in the building and around the grounds would have numbered in the thousands.  There were 40 people on board Flight 93, not counting the three (from cell phone accounts from the passengers) savage barbarians, misnamed hijackers, who were piloting the bomb toward the innocents.

At this writing a visitors' center is under construction at the point where Flight 93 was flying inverted a few feet above the ground, just before impact.

A few days earlier we were at the National September 11 Memorial in Manhattan.  New York City has its own way of doing things.  The two fountains flowing into the ground in two stages made an impressive background for visitors to selfie themselves as Mideastern men aggressively hawked full color souvenir books for $5.00 to visitors straining their necks to look up the shiny new Freedom Center.

In spite of the New York speed and noise, the site did well in eliciting the solemn sadness for the thousands of innocent families, while igniting a belly-fire of hatred for the animals that did this.

The Les Paul atmosphere of New York City memorial, while appropriate for that fast walking culture, made this mountain top place in Martin country a place of contemplation.  The emotions here, along with the same sadness and hatred found in New York, go deeper with more dimensions.

American pride, suppressed and ridiculed by pop culture, the education factories, and the popular press, surrounds each individual plaque in the white marble Wall of Names that follows the flight path. The American fiction of the common man standing to become the reluctant hero when in dire circumstances becomes very real at this old mine site.

Remembering the pictures of Todd Beamer and the interviews with his dad, when I saw his stone, I became weak and wept in pride to be close to such an American.  I would like to think that I know what I would do in circumstances like those, but hopefully, I will never be sure.

Thirty-seven cell phone calls from 13 passengers confirmed the purpose of the takeover and the inevitable fate of the people on the plane.  The passengers and crew, by vote, decided to make an attempt to regain control of the flight.  In the process, control was lost and the plane crashed on a sparsely populated Allegheny mountaintop.

But what these 40 people, the flight crew and passengers on a airplane for all the same reasons you and I fly from place to place, deserve an honor like no other.  They became solders in a war that targets the innocent with a cloak of fire, blood and evil.  They fought in a manner with no less courage and honor than our best military special forces.

Consoled by the fact that even if their efforts to control the plane failed, the meanings of their deaths would be multiplied by the lives that would be saved, they acted.

A regiment of forty rows of forty oak and hard maple trees will grow to stand at silent respect for the passengers and crew of Flight 93.

Go there someday and show your gratitude; salute them on this peaceful mountaintop church and cemetery and thank God for the spirit of such people.

ISIS, Syria, and where Loyalties and Islam Factor in

ISIS is Sunni and they hate the Shiites
The Iraq government is mostly Shiite.
The government in Iran is Shiite.
The Assad government in Syria is fighting both ISIS and the Free Syrian Army.
ISIS is fighting the Free Syrian Army and Assad.
The Free Syrian Army is fighting Assad and ISIS.
The Free Syrian Army is not really an army, but hundreds of militias with varying loyalties and leaders, consisting of a myriad group of nationalists, radical Islamists, and some common Syrian folk with no other motivation than to live in freedom.
ISIS consists of the most ruthless of Islamic Sunni terrorists
The Shiites in Iraq would want us to kill ISIS because ISIS is Sunni.
The government in Iraq would want us to kill ISIS because it threatens the country's existence.
Many Sunnis in Iraq do not want us to kill ISIS, no matter how bad they are, because ISIS is also Sunni.
Assad, the bad-guy dictator in Iraq has no religion other than his own power.
Syria is about 75% Sunni so they would hate the Iraq government and Iran which would align them with ISIS, but ISIS is fighting Syria and the Free Syrian Army.
Governments, even Sunni governments see ISIS as a threat to their existence as ISIS wants to establish a caliphate, fundamental Islamic state from sovereign territories.

In the year 682 AD, Muhammad died and left no clear succession wishes.  In an argument over how leaders or caliphs, should be assigned, the Sunni and Shia split began.  This led to a series of tribal wars.  The Shia and the Sunni have been killing each other ever since with short periods of cooperation to work for Islam World domination.

If this seems too simple so far, the Shia and Sunni are subdivided into tribes which also fight each other over long forgotten and steel trapped remembered grievances.

It's a bloody fight over dogma.  In today's American culture, it would be similar to the Presbyterians having periods of wars with the Lutherans over cut bread or wafers, with short periods of cooperation for Christian World domination.

The Free Syrian Army and the rest of the rebels in Syria are no match in a fight with ISIS.  The rebels' mission is to take over the Syrian government and depose Assad and ISIS is an annoyance that is getting in the way of that mission.  The rebels are ill-equipped, lack training, funding and are not fighting for God.  The US has been training them and can get them all the equipment they need to win, but we cannot give them the united motivation that fighting for God can give ISIS.  Besides, they would rather somebody else take care of ISIS so they can get back to taking over the Syrian government.

Syrian rebels and Iraqi soldiers will fail as our air-supported cannon fodder, and ISIS will get a new batch of American ordnance and ammo.

You are a One Percenter - Income Equality and Wealth Redistribution Starts with you

If fairness in income and the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor is something that is important to you, don't think that those who are leading this effort have limited it to within the borders of the United States.  In their eyes, people are people and the lesser ones all across the globe need to be lifted and that can only be done by redistribution.

By some measures the top 1 percent looking earthward reveals an income of $34,000 or more per person per year.  With the global median income estimated to be between $10,000 and $18,000 in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) dollars per person per year, income equality worldwide, according to these folks, will have to come from the top one percent - those making $34,000 or more.

Purchasing Power Parity dollars are an equalizing calculation based upon the cost of living in different countries.   Since an American Dollar will buy more in Chad than it would in Luxembourg, to compare income from country to country parities have to be made.  Comparisons are made based upon what $1 will buy you in the USA.

The numbers and the parity calculations, which certainly could be questioned, have been compiled by the United Nations' International Labour Organization (ILO) and only wage earners in 72 countries were counted.  But the discrepancy between the top one percent and the lower 99 percent in earnings no matter how they are compiled and analyzed, and the average wage determined in this study in the US at $37,000, puts most Americans well above the top one percent.

The $37,000 average for Americans is twice that of the higher end of the estimated average, putting even those who are defined by the Federal Poverty Levels as poor well above the median for the world ($10,000 to $18,000 per person per year) make our poor, in a global sense, if not rich, upper middle class, indeed.

To think that the income equality people are limited to Americans, or that the Americans who advocate this kind of fairness will not expand their sense of fairness globally is, of course, shortsighted. If you are one of these, but do not think that it would be fair to share your income with the rest of the world, your hypocrisy may exceed the premise of my writings.

There are a number of initiatives underway to accomplish this equality, but they will take time.  The agents of change have learned that people will accept the most radical of changes if they are imposed gradually as small cultural steps under the guise of kindness.

1. Opening our borders, first to Mexico, Central, and South America, and eventually accepting the poor as refugees from Africa, the Middle East, and other depressed income regions.  
2. Create labor, regulation, trade, and tax policies that make it attractive for American corporations to leave the country to provide jobs and income in poorer nations.
3. Support and pass global regulation treaties and accords that favor leniency for lessor income nations and come down expensively hard on the US.
4. Divert the corporate welfare to off-shore corporations that transfers wealth from the US taxpayers to underdeveloped countries.

In the time that these factors have been in place, global income inequality has successfully fallen somewhat, but remembering the essential definition of equality, much more will need to be done.  At the same time these factors have increased income inequality within the US, an acceptable side affect for the egalitarians for the time being.  As the wealth is transferred from the American poor and middle class to the poor of other nations, the rich in the US will get richer, see here.

But, if you take the opposition's approach of wealth not being a zero sum calculation, there is hope only in the creation of additional wealth worldwide.  From a redistribution aspect, if there is more wealth worldwide, even in the hands of the rich, there is more wealth to redistribute.

IS ISIS ISIL - A Possible Threat

Take 100,000 fear-vacant warriors motivated by a irresistible desire to die for God.  Add 21st century weapons and military equipment captured from America and Russia, millions of rounds of ammo. RPGs, hand launchable anti-aircraft missiles, and high tech logistical and surveillance gadgets.  Throw in the purpose that this chosen group has been commissioned to complete God's mission to convert or eradicate every human on the planet.  Then fund this group with $2 billion in captured, extorted money and gold.  Give them a recurring income of $1 million a day for the foreseeable future.

Better yet, give them the motivation of hatred for all things that do not comply with their purpose and the command from God to kill all who do not comply with God's law.  Consider the fact the people who suicide-bombed the World Trade Center killing 3000 innocent people, filmed the grisly be-headings of Westerners, dragged murdered Westerners bodies through the streets, and have murdered and bombed thousands of innocents around the globe, fear that this group is too extreme in their cruelty.

Mix success in capturing the needed territory to form the caliphate that can succeed in accomplishing the mission of religious world dominance, becoming the catalyst to recruit thousands more death-centered "folks."

Now, rather than picturing a bunch of wild-eye bearded robe and turban-donned Arabs brandishing Kalashnikovs, dancing around a flaming American flag, picture a well-equipped computer paneled Command, Control, and Communication Center with the best purpose-driven terror-strategists in the world, reviewing completed missions, wrapping up current missions. coordinating ongoing battles, planning and staffing near-future missions, and working long-term on how to best rule the vast population and diversity of the planet.

"Here's your sign." - Bill Engvall

WalMart Cultural Escapade

The deterioration of decorum in public conversation since the filthy speech movement, when nine protesters in 1965 on the Berkeley California campus decided to ratchet up Mario Salvio's claim that political speech cannot be barred from campus, resembles Detroit.

The concept of the most vile of terms, the most assaulting of insults, just short of battery, words that can pierce through convention, decorum, decency, and expectation and wound a man's sense of honor, no longer exists.  Addressing these wounds would require a response, at the very least verbal, and quite often, physical, but with these words as a part of everyday atmosphere, their power has faded.

The local WalMart has a separate Liquor Store, at which you can get your booze, but also checkout your other stuff.

We were buying my weekly 1.75 liter bottle of Old Number 7, along with a few other WalMart staples in the little Liquor Store by the checkouts.  A fat lady in her 70's, melting over and around a store-provided scooter, was having trouble getting her credit card to go through.  Blaming the WalMart system, she gathered up her stuff and putted off to another register in the hopes that the WalMart system would be different, over there.

Looking for a Friendlier POS

That simple-minded freshman that wrote the F-Word on a piece of cardboard and sat down on the steps of the Student Union in 1965, embarrassing the original Free Speech Movement folks, started the demise of the power of cursing.  The blades began at this point to blunt, but nobody, especially this freshman, had any idea how common these words would become in public language.

Behind us in the checkout line was an overweight young white woman I put at about 30.  She resembled Calamity Jane in the Deadwood profanity-laden series from HBO. And we soon discovered that the vocabulary of the two shared certain aspects.   She could not speak without using a the F equivalent of muckin.'  The self proclaimed third generation welfare recipient was accompanied by a future fourth in the form of a young boy about three and a girl about four years old.  Also peeking from behind her was a quiet mixed race teenage girl.

Calamity Jane - HBO Series Deadwood

In a calm and everyday tone very similar to giving direction to the correct aisle to toilet paper, the young lady explained, "That muckin' lady told us to muckin' come over here to check the muck out. They said if we didn't have no muckin' produce, to try the muckin' <...> liquor store."  At the end of the last curse, a neutrino of light crossed a dormantly corroded synapse ignited by a dying ember of ancestral convention.  It created an instant of surprise in her eyes, but it was gone as soon as it appeared.  She, for an instant, looked a bit frightened as if a never experienced emotion took over her self control and it frightened her.

She was looking at us as that blip hit her face as though our presence elicited some sort of guilt to a long forgotten sin. Ours was not a look of judgement to her,  but we may have had our mouths open.

"I don't muckin' think they know what the muck they are muckin' doing," she stated with authority making it quite clear that her supervision at a managerial level would operate a much tighter ship.

Most of the students at Berkeley opposed having dirty words in public and supported the administration on this. Mario Savio considered this a distraction from the dignity of free speech, and the guy who wrote the word on a piece of cardboard and held it in front of his chest, becoming the most successful radical of his time, will hopefully be forgotten.