Nazi Carrier Pigeon Control - Precursor to Internet Control?

Just when you thought you knew everything there was to know about World War II, out comes a book to prove you a blithering ignoramus.

When pigeon ownership is outlawed
only outlaws will own pigeons

I'm talking about Ben Macintyre's intriguing new tome, Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies.

It reveals the heretofore classified info that British intelligence actually turned all of the spies that Hitler sent into England into British counter-spies.

They then sent a stream of false reports back to the German Abwehr intelligence bureau, convincing them that the actual D-Day landings at Normandy were just a minor feint for the "real invasion: that would take place later at Calais.

That tied up 2 major German armies who waited for a never-to-come attack and thereby saved thousands of allied lives on the Normandy beachhead.

But leave it to the Chicago Lampoon to espy the one bit in Macintyre's book of genuine significance to today's world.

Were talking here about pigeon control.

It seems that the National Socialist regime in Germany not only imposed rigid control on private ownership of firearms, but also of pigeons.

With regimes in China, Syria, Iran and even our very own Obama regime, imposing censorship or considering control of internet communications -- this is worthy of note.

On page 119, Macintyre wrote:

Ben Macintyre's superb new book

"Years of breeding made the carrier pigeon into a thoroughbred with a "magical ability" to find its way home over a range of up to 700 miles.

"These birds remained an important way of passing information across enemy lines: fast, reliable and virtually impossible to intercept.

"The Nazis incorporated pigeons into the very heart of the Reich: each of Germany's 57,000 pigeon fanciers had to have a certificate of political reliability from the Gestapo; Jews were banned from keeping pigeons (they were already banned from gun ownership) and the German Pigeon Federation was placed under the control of the SS."

Let's fast forward to 2013 and note that in July, Obama promulgated an executive order giving the US Department of Homeland Security power to restrict or shut down internet communications during a "national emergency."

And new schemes for restriction of the private ownership of firearms have become the new Obamaite cause de jour.

But strangely US pigeon ownership remains entirely unrestricted and unregulated.

Clearly, that's a glaring oversight the Obamaite "liberty loophole" pluggers like Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) had better get plugging --- pronto!

Neil Young: Illegal Alien, Shameless Huckster

Neil Young says that he never dropped acid. But after poring through the dizzy and convoluted maunderings in his new book, Waging Heavy Peace - A Hippie Dream, you sure could have fooled me.

Apparently in the 2 or 3 years he spent in high school before dropping out, no one ever introduced him to the concept of linear time.

This 497 page effort hops around in time so as to make it nearly incomprehensible.

We start with Neil today, with his Lionel train setup in his California ranch home and jump to when he first discovered Dylan and then to his first band and then to his troubled Canadian childhood and then to Crosby Stills and Nash days and then back to childhood. You get the picture?

He might as well have been tripping on some of Dr. Timothy Leary's best when he penned it.

Oh, and did I mention? He intersperses his stream of consciousness storytelling with a good bit of quite shameless plugola for his most recent start-up company investments: something called Puretone, which supposedly will provide studio quality sound on MP3s and a hybrid car scheme called Linc/volt (the prototype car caught on fire while charging and burnt down Young's warehouse - you'll definitely want to get in on the ground floor of this baby.)

He devotes whole chapters to sales hucksterism to try and drum up enthusiasm for these schemes.

But if you can figure out a way to get to the parts where he talks about the noteworthy things in his storied rock 'n roll career, you do learn some interesting things.

For instance, we learn that Neil Young was an illegal alien for a number of years. He entered the country from Canada by car and just stayed. He was subject to deportation during his Buffalo Springfield and CSN&Y days (when he was busy musically lecturing us Americanos on on the racist, warmongering nature of US society.)

But he eventually found a path to legal status in 1970 by shelling out $5,000 to a shady New York immigration lawyer who greased the skids for his green card.

His very own "dream act," you might say.

We also learn that he was briefly married to and had a kid by Park Ridge native and Maine East graduate, 70s movie starlet Carrie Snodgress (you may have known that but it was news to me.)

Young was briefly married to Park Ridge native
 70s movie starlet, Carrie Snodgress

We learn that the producers of the movie Woodstock omitted Young's name from the introduction to the Crosby Stills and Nash performance, because he bitched about the presence of their film crews on the stage.

We learn that his father, Scott Alexander Young, was a pretty significant Canadian journalist.

We learn that when he first performed "Oh Lonesome Me" at a New York coffee house, the audience began to laugh, thinking that any song that sappy had to be a comic satire.

And we also learn that, surprisingly, he didn't think that Ronald Reagan was all that bad a guy.

We really don't recommend running out and slapping down thirty bucks to buy Neil Young's Waging Heavy Peace - A Hippie Dream.

That is, unless a long, semi-coherent, rambling, desultory conversation with a stoned hippie is your idea of a wild time.

Impoverished Grayslake CCSD 46 Teachers Strike: 2011 Salaries Listed

The unionized teachers at the government elementary and middle schools in Grayslake Consolidated School District 46 went out on strike today for more dough.

The district serves parents students and taxpayers in Grayslake, Hainesville, Lake Villa, Round Lake, Round Lake Beach, Round Lake Park and Third Lake.

The schoolteachers, most of whom have only BA degrees, said they weren't pulling down enough cash for their seasonal jobs -- i.e. their 9 month teaching gigs.

The teachers average $57,000 a year for their 9 month gigs. The average per capita income in Grayslake is $36,031 a year.

The teachers have fat pension plans that guarantee them around 85% of the average of their 3 highest years earning (plus health care coverage) for the rest of their lives. Only 43% of all American workers have any kind of pension coverage -- only 15% of workers in the non-government sector.

Here are their latest available salaries as garnered from the Family Taxpayers Foundation's database:


Teacher Salary Database

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Grayslake CCSD 46 2011 - --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NAME SALARY
Abrahams, Lori $86,140
Akers, Elizabeth $44,691
Alghini, Julie $43,829
Allen, Mary $19,801
Ames, Megan $38,436
Analla, Mark $62,083
Antoni, Mary $47,465
Atlee, Breanna $38,436
Ayala, Susana $42,289
Barenbaum, Kelly $52,346
Barkley, Margaret $97,380