The brand new rocket, United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur, lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41d at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on January 8, 2024, for its maiden voyage, carrying Astrobotic’s Peregrine Lunar Lander. (CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP)Technicians said the planned touch down on the Moon would not be able to happen and the mission was aborted soon after. Peregrine is the first of eight planned missions in NASA’s commercial lunar payload services initiative. NASA hopes it can reduce the cost of future missions by sponsoring the private sector. The last time the U.S. launched a moon-landing mission was in December 1972.
Mao the great Chinese leader who is revered by some but to those of us who have run the numbers of the carnage in his wake – he may indeed have been the greatest mass murder in the history of the planet. Of course, we don’t have very good statistics on Genghis Kahn, and though Alexander was “Great”, I suspect there were many thousands who were laid to west in his wake to conquer most of the known world.
In the 20th Century, most folks would jump up and claim Hitler was our greatest mass murderer (certainly his name is bandied about a lot since Trump became President and is on the verge of recapturing the Oval office), see – 6 million Jews slaughtered, and perhaps another 3 million other non desirables in death camps. And if you blame him for all the deaths during WWII you’d have a good argument. But Stalin was no slouch when it came to murdering his own people to stay in power. Gulags. And of course, there’s the 5 plus million Ukrainians starved to death in the 1930s before the war when they wouldn’t privatize their farms. Stalin was right up there in the pantheon of mass murderers.
But the absolute winner in mass murder has to go to Mao Tse Tung: as many as 80 million Chinese were starved to death and murdered during his Great Leap Forward. After Mao fortunately left the poor Chinese for the hell he deserved, Westerners were able to go to China and get an estimate of the carnage – and whether the count is 50 million or the larger number some estimate – there is still a good case indeed for Mao being the greatest mass murderer in history.
So now we come to modern woke broke DEI America where the “D” stands for diversity, where merit is no longer the primary reason a person progresses in a career or acquires status. And “E”, equity, a word that to most in the business world has to do with assets, but not in this Brave New World of Obama and Biden America. Equity stands for simple Marxist redistribution. Since in this paradigm, the oppressors have to be punished, it is only fitting that the oppressed be given positions over the oppressed. As one articulate mixed raced Marxist stated: “Stand aside white privileged” and let the BiPocs have power. So, there you have it. Black, Indigenous people of color – whether trained, talented or not, they will get “equity” as long as Oppressor white colonialists stand aside. And finally, the “I” stands for Inclusion. That is, including BiPocs – but excluding white oppressors that is.
Today, we found out that the first attempt by the US to land on the moon since the last Apollo flight 50 years ago has failed. While, these things happen, I find it quite in line with the politics and dynamics of America in 2024. For decades, the schools at all levels have been pushing the DEI mantra – and as exemplified by the embarrassing but quite understandable Presidents of the top IVY league schools in America – and their inability to simply condemn the Oct 7 slaughter of Jews – speaks volumes for the way the propagandists of illiberal left and the anti-Semites of the Muslim world have turned even our best schools into a world that the insane Megalomaniac Mao would be proud of. Though they couldn’t use “race” to fire the incompetent black female president of Harvard – they did find out that she was quite an accomplished plagiarist. Yes, she was removed as President. But not to worry, she is kept on staff at her same pay rate and I hear her classes are the most popular on campus!
As he did to demonstrate power – the best and brightest were not rewarded in Mao’s Great Leap Forward – the oppressed were. If Mao did not like a doctor, he’d simply tell the doctor to change places with the janitor. Now the janitor became the doctor and doctor had to sweep and mop floors! Isn’t Diversity, Equity and Inclusion grand! And if you were the poor soul being operated on by the janitor, I have a feeling you would not feel so.
An iPhone is many times more powerful in computing power than the Apollo flight computers of 50 years ago – yet today they can’t even get this new shiny NASA toy to the moon. Must be the new math and woke scientists who got there by diversity rather than merit. Welcome to Mao’s world and the US’s great leap backward…