Female Spacecraft (American, Of Course) Commanders (American, Of Course) Make History

[Patriot Games]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,303802,00.html

Female Spacecraft Commanders Make History
Sunday, October 21, 2007

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A giant leap is about to be made for womankind.

When space shuttle Discovery blasts off Tuesday, a woman will be sitting in
the commander's seat. And up at the international space station, a female
skipper will be waiting to greet her.

It will be the first time in the 50-year history of spaceflight that two
women are in charge of two spacecraft at the same time.

This is no public relations gimmick cooked up by NASA. It's coincidence,
which pleases shuttle commander Pamela Melroy and station commander Peggy
Whitson.

"To me, that's one of the best parts about it," said Melroy, a retired Air
Force colonel who will be only the second woman to command a space shuttle
flight. "This is not something that was planned or orchestrated in any way."

Indeed, Melroy's two-week space station construction mission was originally
supposed to be done before Whitson's six-month expedition.

"This is a really special event for us," Melroy said. "... There are enough
women in the program that coincidentally this can happen, and that is a
wonderful thing. It says a lot about the first 50 years of spaceflight that
this is where we're at."

Whitson - the first woman to be in charge of a space station - arrived at
the orbital outpost on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on Oct. 12. She flew there
with two men, one a Russian cosmonaut who will spend the entire six months
with her.

Before the launch, an official presented her with a traditional Kazakh whip
to take with her. It's a symbol of power, Whitson explained, because of all
the horseback and camel riding in Kazakhstan.

Smiling, she said she took the gift as a compliment and added: "I did think
it was interesting though, that they talked a lot about the fact that they
don't typically let women have these."

At least it wasn't a mop. The whip stayed behind on Earth.

Eleven years ago, just before Shannon Lucid rocketed to the Russian space
station Mir, a Russian space official said during a live prime-time news
conference that he was pleased she was going up because "we know that women
love to clean."

"I really haven't heard very much like that at all from the Russian
perspective," Whitson said in an interview with The Associated Press last
week. "Russian cosmonauts are very professional and having worked and
trained with them for years before we get to this point, I think makes it
better because then it doesn't seem unusual to them either."

"So I think I'm luckier. Shannon was probably breaking more barriers in that
way than I have been," added Whitson, who spent six months aboard the space
station in 2002.

Melroy, 46, a former test pilot from Rochester, N.Y., and Whitson, 47, a
biochemist with a Ph.D. who grew up on a hog farm near Beaconsfield, Iowa,
are among 18 female astronauts at NASA. Seventy-three astronauts are men.

What's more, Melroy is the only female shuttle pilot left at NASA. Eileen
Collins, who in 1999 became the first woman to command a shuttle, quit NASA
last year. Susan Kilrain, who flew as a shuttle pilot but never as a
commander, resigned in 2002. Both have children.

Melroy and Whitson are married to scientists, and neither has children.

This will be Melroy's third shuttle flight; her first two were as co-pilot.
She became an astronaut in 1995, Whitson in 1996.

Their 1 1/2 weeks together in orbit will be extraordinarily busy and the
work exceedingly complex. The shuttle is hauling up a pressurized
compartment that will provide docking ports for the European and Japanese
laboratories that will be launched over the next few months.

The 10 space fliers, seven of them men, will attach the new compartment,
named Harmony, to the space station and move a girder and set of solar wings
from one spot to another. Five spacewalks will be conducted, including one
to test a repair technique on deliberately damaged shuttle thermal tiles.

Melroy and Whitson will oversee it all.

Their male crewmates offer plenty of praise. One of them - Daniel Tani -
will report to both. He'll fly up on Discovery and swap places with an
astronaut who has been living on the space station since June, and stay on
board until another shuttle comes up in December.

"The joke has been that my life recently is run by women," said Tani, who is
married with two young daughters. "I have two bosses at work. I've got three
bosses at home and as it was pointed out recently, much of the time when
we're running the robotic arm, I'm the assistant to Stephanie" Wilson, a
shuttle crew member.

"So far, I've survived all of it so we'll see if I can get through the next
couple months," he said with a laugh.

It's more of a novelty for Melroy's co-pilot, Marine Col. George Zamka. He
never served with or for a woman in any of his military flying units.

"I understand it's a wonderful thing for young women to see Pam flying, but
in terms of her, I look at her as an individual with some tremendous
skills," Zamka said.

Melroy and Whitson said they don't know of any men - American or Russian -
who would refuse to serve on their crews. It wasn't always that way at NASA,
which didn't accept women as astronauts until 1978.

 

[kT]

Patriot Games wrote:

The Ares I is a rocket with erectile dysfunction.

Analysis of these seven regimes reveals fourteen common threads that
link them in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of
power. These basic characteristics are more prevalent and intense in
some regimes than in others, but they all share at least some level of
similarity.

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism. From the
prominent displays of flags and bunting to the ubiquitous lapel pins,
the fervor to show patriotic nationalism, both on the part of the regime
itself and of citizens caught up in its frenzy, was always obvious.
Catchy slogans, pride in the military, and demands for unity were common
themes in expressing this nationalism. It was usually coupled with a
suspicion of things foreign that often bordered on xenophobia.

2. Disdain for the importance of human rights. The regimes themselves
viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the
objectives of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the
population was brought to accept these human rights abuses by
marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted. When abuse was
egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation.

3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause. The most
significant common thread among these regimes was the use of
scapegoating as a means to divert the people

 

[Topaz]

Who's to Blame for the Affirmative Action Fiasco?
By Hugh Murray

Searching for employment in the late 19th century, many Irish
immigrants in America encountered the sign, "NINA" (No Irish Need
Apply). Today, their descendants face much the same discrimination. Of
course, now, it is not limited to the Irish - for in America men are
routinely denied jobs, promotions, contracts and scholarships because
they are of Irish, Italian, English, German or general European
heritage. Worse, not only is this discrimination government sponsored,
it is performed in the name of "Equal Opportunity." How did this come
about? Why do the media prefer to ignore it? Who fostered this
discrimination against white men?

In high school a white boy may be denied entrance into special
programs because he is not a preferred minority; or, in some cases, he
may be denied because he is not a girl. There are scholarships
available, but many cannot be awarded to a white male (for example,
Bill Gates of Microsoft was recently lauded by the media for
establishing a billion-dollar scholarship program - one in which
recipients are restricted to blacks only.) When the teen applies to
university, the administration will admit "basically qualified"
minorities, but reject better-qualified whites. When applying for
jobs, the same discrimination occurs. If the teen finds employment,
special, on-the-job training for promotion may be denied him as it is
reserved for minorities, even if they are lesser qualified and have
been on the job a shorter period of time. Once hired, he may be
required to attend "diversity training" sessions, in which he is
supposed to confess his alleged guilt of racism and sexism.

How did this systematic discrimination arise?

What did it mean to forbid discrimination? From the early days of the
20th century through 1964, most liberals were clear as to what this
meant-show no bias against or preference for a person because of his
race, sex, religion etc. This was the dominant view. But in the debate
over the civil rights bill in 1964 some opponents declared that if
passed, it would lead to, among other things: racial quotas and racial
balance in the workplace, preferences for blacks over whites in
employment, promotion, bank loans etc.

But, in Congress, the debate went otherwise. No senator who favored
the civil rights bill spoke up for quotas, "positive integration,"
racial balance or preferences for minorities above whites. Quite the
contrary.

How then did a law which promised to end discrimination by outlawing
discrimination against any individual, a law that promised preferences
for no group, which agreed to retain testing to reject unqualified
applicants-how was this law subverted into its opposite? Here the role
of Alfred Blumrosen is crucial. Blumrosen was among the zealots
working for the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission who did not
want the agency to function as created.

Alfred Blumrosen was instrumental in this and other shifts. He was a
professor at Rutgers University who became the EEOC's liaison chief
for federal, state and local agencies, and he admitted that his
"creative" reading of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was "contrary to
the plain meaning." But why worry? By 1965 when the Bank of America
instituted quota hiring under a euphemism, "the standard refrain of
the EEO bureaucracies, [was that] affirmative action [AA] had nothing
to do with racial quotas. That was illegal." Unfortunately, that
deceptive refrain is still heard today.

The goal of Sonia Pressman, another ideologue in the EEOC, was "to
document large disparities in employment patterns, [so] that
discriminatory intent might legally be inferred." ...the EEOC sought
to impose quotas while not calling them such because quotas were
clearly illegal. The agency sought to break the law.

Blumrosen and Pressman pushed the EEOC to defy the Civil Rights Act of
1964 by imposing quotas, demanding racial balance in the workplace and
giving preferences to blacks over whites. Essential to the Blumrosen-
Pressman campaign was the collection of statistics to show "disparate
impact," how minorities were underutilized, employed in a smaller
proportion in various occupations to their numbers in the general
population.

Blumrosen was set upon "selectively enforcing" the civil rights act by
using disparate impact theory and proportional representation only
when it affected others. (More accurately, Blumrosen was "selectively
malenforcing" the civil rights law, imposing quotas for
underrepresented blacks, using quotas to curb whites; for women,
against men; but never for gentiles and against Jews.)

Of course, had the EEOC sought to restrict Jews as it has white men,
the storm of protest would have cast "disparate impact" theory into
the dustbin of history. Thus, the role of Blumrosen and his allies in
the media, academia etc., was to create a false target - the
"overrepresented," "privileged" and "oppressive" white male. According
to the EEOC, the statistics proved just that. However, the statistics
proved otherwise. The partial statistics used by Blumrosen were simply
the effort to deflect criticism to another group instead of the one
most overrepresented, privileged and oppressive - his own.

By not asking the religious question on the EEOC questionnaires, the
EEOC created a scapegoat of the white male. Once smeared as
"privileged" and "oppressive," the non-privileged, working-class and
poor whites began to pay the price for the "moral" system of
affirmative action by being legally discriminated against and denied
equal opportunity.

The proportional test, the liberals' test of all tests, when applied
to the religious clause of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, shows Jews to
be the most privileged and oppressive of people in America. The fav-
orite test of liberals reveals white men to be less privileged than
the Jews. Why does not The New York Times, the EEOC, NBC, CBS or ABC
report that statistic? The media remain silent on the issue of Jewish
privilege while simultaneously exposing every time white men are
somewhat overrepresented. Why the silence regarding Jews? A glance at
the ownership of the media just might have something to do with this
disparity in exposing "privilege." And if any individual in the media
dared to expose some Jewish privilege, there would be a thunderous
assault upon that individual's "bigotry." However, daily, reporters
write of white male privilege, but almost no one denounces this anti-
white bigotry.

Once smeared as privileged, the non-privileged middle-class, working-
class, and poor whites pay for the "moral" system of AA by being
legally discriminated against and denied equal opportunity. But then
the history of America since the 1960s is often the record of wealthy
liberals using the law to curb and oppress blue-collar whites, because
the blue-collar folk are deemed privileged, prejudiced and provincial.
Therefore, such blue-collar whites deserve to be passed over in
scholarships, jobs and promotions; the blue-collar crowd should be
shunted aside, and instead the "pets" of the elite should be elevated:
the children of illegal immigrants, of wealthy minorities and the
daughters of rich liberals. And this is done in the name of morality,
fairness, and justice.

In summary, the great hoax concocted by Blumrosen and his
collaborators in the media, academy, and government is "white male
privilege." Most white men are not privileged. Those who are, often
support AA because it is no loss to them - their children will not
require a scholarship, an entry-level job, a position as policeman or
fireman, or a promotion. It is the poor and middle-class whites who,
denied equal opportunity, must pay with thinning wallets and shrunken
dreams for the "morality of diversity" imposed by the wealthy, liberal
elite.

Even if every CEO in America were a white male, that would be no
reason to discriminate against a poor, white teenage boy seeking a
scholarship and give it to a lesser qualified girl or minority. "White
male privilege" is a social construct created by liberals. They have
used their power in government, media, and academia to deny equal
opportunity to white men, to undermine and stigmatize America's
working class, and to immobilize with guilt the white middle class.
America does not suffer from white male privilege and oppression; it
staggers beneath Jewish privilege and oppression.

Excerpted from article found at:
http://www.barnesreview.org/Nov__Dec_2001/Who_s_to_Blame_for_the_Affirma/wh
o_s_to_blame_for_the_affirma.html

http://www.ihr.org/ http://www.natvan.com

http://www.thebirdman.org http://www.nsm88.com/

http://wsi.matriots.com/jews.html