pl
RSS- Barbara Ann on The Great Taking
- William Eaton and The Battle of Derna
- The battle for Ocheretyne
- Supreme Court oral arguments to be heard on April 25 about presidential immunity for official acts
- Nasa’s Voyager-1 sends usable data from deep space
- The Wondrous Oak
- Three Seas Summit: Vilnius 2024
- Tit for tat until it all goes boom
- Deadly H5N1 avian influenza strain detected on mainland Antarctica
- “BYD is launching its next-gen Blade EV battery soon with more range and even lower cost”
What does the Committee think about the recent moves by Xi Jinping in the PRC ?
He doesn’t seem to be another Mao Zedong, but he’s certainly going against the warnings of Deng Xiaoping about one man rule.
Turkish press is reporting that ‘TurkStream’, the pipeline to bring natural gas from Russia to Turkey, is now 80% complete and to be in operation by later this year. It is expected to deliver close to 16 billion cubic meters per year from Gazprom to Turkish gas distribution networks. A second phase scheduled for next year will reportedly deliver an equal amount to Greece and other points in southern Europe.
https://www.dailysabah.com/energy/2018/03/21/turkstreams-first-phase-more-than-80-pct-complete
https://cdni.rt.com/files/2017.05/original/590fc970c4618849558b463c.jpg
This is in addition to the existing ‘BlueStream’ pipeline from Russia to Turkey, operational since 2005, that also has a 16 billion cubic meter per year throughput.
Why the Western concern about NordStream pipeline but none about TurkStream? Are there no sanction problems for the Swiss company working with GazProm? Plus I wonder if this is one of the reasons why Russia has lately become paranoid regarding US Navy FON operations in the Black Sea?
I was thinking and researching about China today as well.
In terms of income inequality the USA is worse than China by some measures.
US – 1% earn >20% of income vs. 12% for bottom 50%
China 1% earn 12% of income vs 13% for bottom 50%
The Chinese bottom 50% actually make more than the 1% in pretax income.
From 1978 to 2015;
In US bottom 50% income growth: -1%
China bottom 50% income growth: 400%
In US top 1% up from 7% to over 20%
China top 1% up from 6% to 12%.
The number of family in poverty is at the highest level since 1959 when the poverty level was first tracked and the US ranks last (or first depending on how you measure) amongst developed countries on income levels of the poor.
Trust in government in China: 76%, in US: 47%
The Chinese economy is now larger that the US in terms of purchasing power and expected to be larger than the US in all measurements by 2020.
How does that trust number affect the ability of the government to govern? How does it affect the government’s approach to government of it’s population?
One would think that when the #1 power is challenged its best strategy would be to ensure that the #2 and #3 powers don’t ally. This is what Nixon did with China, peeling them away from the Soviet Union. The Russians have a smaller population and an economy only 1/10th ours. China is the real challenger. Yet we are doing the opposite, going after the weaker power and forcing Russia and China together.
Economics:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/the-world-s-top-economy-the-us-vs-china-in-five-charts/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/usa-china-income-inequality-economic-research/
“Before accounting for taxes and transfers, the U.S. ranked 10th in income inequality; among the countries with more unequal income distributions were France, the U.K. and Ireland. But after taking taxes and transfers into account, the U.S. had the second-highest level of inequality, behind only Chile. ”
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/12/19/global-inequality-how-the-u-s-compares/
” The five countries with the worst income inequality — Chile, Mexico, Turkey, the United States, and Israel — also had the five highest poverty rates in the OECD. The relationship is not perfect, however. The United Kingdom fell just outside the five worst countries for income equality, but its poverty rate was 13th lowest among developed nations.”
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2015/05/29/countries-with-the-widest-gap-between-the-rich-and-the-poor/
Trust:
Suggest flipping to slide 13:
https://www.edelman.com/research/2017-trust-barometer-global-results
https://thediplomat.com/2013/06/government-for-the-people-in-china/
It is past time for Congress to turn their backs on the bomb lobby’s money make bombs to be made illegal for civilians – especially fully semi-automatic assault bombs. At least institute universal background checks for bomb material purchases.
David H,
A question came up that I was unsure about the answer in my HS class. Doing a small unit on the Russian Revolution. Lenin seizes control but needs to introduce the New Economic Policy. Peasants are now allowed to sell surplus goods to help production rates. However, if the government had seized all money previous where did people get the money to buy this “surplus”? My guess is if you had money it was a crime or the money came from the black market, which was also a crime. Did the government buy this “surplus” and reintroduce money into the system that way?
First time poster, apologies if this is too minor, just looking for help on the question.
Nate
My take on it is that many Chinese still remember the chaos of their cultural revolution and they want a strong level headed leader to keep the trains running on time; as it were. I think a similar situation exists in Russia with respect towards Putin and his stewardship. The western press may tar both with all sorts of silly labels, but both appear to be quite popular and respected at home for being good leaders.
Loch Ness type monster has been found:
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2018/03/21/loch-ness-monster-found-shocking-pictures-unidentified-sea-creature-surface.html
That one looks like an unfortunate baby that got beached to me.
Some day maybe a captured Big Foot? An intergalactic craft?
Thanks John for bringing this up about Xi.
He has methodically consolidated power during his first term purging his rivals using the cloak of “corruption”. And now is creating a cult of personality around him equating him to Mao & Deng.
These moves would imply a return to strongman rule in China. And quite possibly increasing risk of military conflict in the region.
james
Hard to know what to make of this Voltaire Net story. Intriguing. pl
Why did israel release info about this bombing?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/defense-minister-regrets-releasing-details-of-2007-syrian-nuclear-site-attack/
To scare Iran or they know that Iran will retaliate ?
A while back I objected when one of the authors here mentioned an article that linked Fusion One to “Silicon Valley billionaires.” My objection was that those folks have their own agenda, and that seeing them in the light of the usual binary liberal/conservative worldview was a mistake.
We’re seeing that play out today with the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica thing. I’ve commented here from time to time on what I believed to be the basic offering of Cambridge Analytica: an engine that allowed them to determine personality profiles on people using links. I became aware of this technology before the 2016 election and was interested in it because I think it has great potential in the context of medical care and addiction medicine. Cambridge Analytica told the world that they could build those profiles in a very efficient way, which was intriguing.
But that, of course, is not what happened. Instead, CA gained access to deep personal profile information of 50 million people, tied that to unique voter IDs, and used THAT in the context of the political campaign. This is actually a big deal.
Not to get in the weeds, but you can break consumer data down into two categories: opt-in and anonymized. Normally, when you sign on to something like Facebook, you opt in to share your data with Facebook. However, you also limit the amount you share. Also, every time you join a loyalty program or even make a purchase, you are to some degree sharing your data.
Marketers and political parties also use data collected by something called “data cooperatives.” These are companies that compile transaction history data which is shared by retailers and other organizations. Grocery store chains, online retailers, and even charities all share their data, giving these cooperatives insight into every single human being above the age of 18 in North America (we all shop).
There are five companies—Acxiom, Epsilon, etc.—that have all of your individual data on everything you’ve purchased in last five years, together with your name, address, phone number, credit cards, etc. But don’t worry. Unlike Facebook data, this data is anonymized and companies wishing to purchase it can never know exactly who you are. Indeed, the software is written so it’s impossible for the cooperative itself to pull up an individual record, which is one of the terms of the sharing agreement.
A marketing or political campaign uses a combination of opt-in and anonymized data. Typically, they do this by looking at their own opt-in data to find who their best customers or voters are. They then build profiles of them, known as “lookalike models.” They match these models to the cooperative data to find additional people they can target with ads. Because these people have similar purchasing patterns to existing customers, typically they are much more receptive. This is why when you shop at one sporting goods store, a magazine for another shows up on your doorstep. But while the data cooperative will send ads, emails, or whatever to these lists, the company sending them doesn’t know who the targets really are until they make a purchase.
Lookalike models work great in marketing, but aren’t ideal in politics. The weakness is that the RNC can only build Republican lookalike models, and the DNC can only build Democratic lookalike models. So they really can only target people who are likely to vote for them anyway. With 50 million voter profiles, CA could build any models it liked. It could target staunch Republicans, independents, Hillary-hating Democrats, or whatever. Now, we don’t know exactly what CA’s agenda was or who their real paymasters were, but they said they were putting their thumb on the scale for Trump, and if they did, they had a great toolset for doing so (I would think the biggest target of my campaign would be Democrats who disliked Hillary, not rabid Trump supporters).
How does this happen? In 2015, a professor writes an app that a bunch of people opt in to take a personality test. They share data, and through a known weakness in Facebook’s security (it’s actually not a weakness, but how Facebook is built), the professor is then able to harvest those peoples’ friends’ data, their friends’ data, and so on until he has extremely detailed information (i.e. everything you post to Facebook) on 50 million voters. Which he then sells to Cambridge Analytica. And let’s not stop at 50 million. You can also build lookalike profiles and go to a data cooperative and buy lists of the 100 million or so voters you’re missing. So basically, you have the keys to the kingdom.
Don’t worry about anything the RNC says about using CA or the noise about how psychographic profiling works. CA did not need to psychographically profile with the data it had. And it its own agenda, which may not be Trump’s, and it is perfectly capable of running a campaign without the RNC, on behalf of whoever would pay it. What they’re not capable of doing is hiding this from Facebook. In other words, there is little doubt Facebook knew exactly what CA was doing and looked the other way. It only suspended CA when it became impossible to hide it anymore.
But wait a minute, isn’t Facebook run by Silicon Valley liberals? Wouldn’t they put their thumb on the scale for Hillary not Trump? Why wouldn’t Twitter tamp down on all of the fake news and BS we know is running around? For that matter, why the hell don’t they write algorithms that can figure out if pictures of naked children are being shared? That’s pretty damn easy, for what it’s worth.
Because that’s not their agenda. Their agenda is Facebook. It’s Twitter. It has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with getting the broadest and most engaged audience they possibly can. They don’t want to stop entities like Cambridge Analytica. They don’t care about that. They don’t plug holes that enable people to get their hands on your data. They want to keep people online and engaged. It’s not that Facebook is encouraging CA specifically, but they’re making their platform as available and open as they can—to CA or whatever its left-leaning equivalent might be. That’s the agenda. And if someone like CA comes around and steals data, their first priority is to suppress the information, not stop the activity.
Forget the election. This has aided and abetted genocide in Myanmar, ISIS recruitment, and a lot of the Syrian mess. So that’s why I couldn’t really see Silicon Valley types getting behind Fusion One. It’s too small, too long shot, and too establishment, really. Just not their focal point.
@ James
It looks like they’ve communicated twice during these past 8 days according to this:
https://twitter.com/LucasFoxNews/status/976488862724841472
John Minnerath,
In addition to the common desire of some (or many) human beings to exercise authority over other groups of people, I think Xi Jinping and his supporters want to complete the large and complex economic and financial projects they have started. It is not just the road and railroad and other infrastructure projects tied to the regional trading structure China has been working on, but a financial structure independent of the existing banking and financial system that was put together by the U.S. and Britain.
It is my opinion that China, Russia, Iran, and probably additional countries decided to make a move after the brazen 2003 invasion of Iraq by the U.S. and others, and the massive financial fraud partly exposed in the U.S. and Britain in 2008 and afterwards, which fraud was not stopped and the perpetrators were bailed out and none were prosecuted.
China, Russia, et. al. realized that the debt-saturated U.S. was propped up by the fact that the U.S. “dollar” was the reserve banking and trading currency of the entire world and that the “Petrodollar” was one of the main pillars of it, and that this system was the main source of U.S. influence and power around the world and allowed the U.S. and friends to impose financial sanctions on other countries. They also saw that the U.S. was not using gold or silver as a type of support or backup for the financial system. Therefore, they developed their own computer servers to route orders between banks and financial companies that will operate outside of the SWIFT system dominated by the U.S. It is now operational and is called CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System)–
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2015-10/08/content_22127404.htm
https://sputniknews.com/business/201603091036035210-vtb-bank-payment/
In addition, they are moving to break the Petrodollar. In the early 1970’s, the U.S. made a non-treaty deal with Saudi Arabia that if they got the rest of OPEC to sell oil and gas to the whole world only in U.S. dollars and would plough some of the money back into U.S. government debt and into the stock market casino, the U.S. would protect the Saudi ruling family so it could run the entire country as its private business. This forced the whole world to get U.S. dollars in order to buy oil and gas, which further put the dollar in as banking reserves around the world, which further pushed the dollar into being used to settle much of the trade between countries.
However, now some contracts are being made to buy and sell oil and gas not in the U.S. dollar, but in other currencies, especially the Chinese renminbi (a/k/a yuan). Also, both China and Russia have been buying large amounts of gold for several years. To get around some of the U.S. sanctions prior to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran sold oil and gas in exchange for gold. Since gold is not a government created and ordered “fiat” money, it cannot be choked off by the SWIFT system or controlled through numbers on computer hard drives in banks.
Russia also remembers what happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union when the U.S. financial “experts” [sic] went there to set up a “wonderful” market-based economy, but what happened of course was the creation of a system to loot Mother Russia and establish a new oligarchy tied in with the U.S., Britain, and Israel.
In the early 1990’s when the Soviet Union pulled out of eastern Europe, the U.S. had a chance to help the world be a safer and more peaceful place. The methods of medical diagnosis and surgical technology developed in the U.S. could have been the basis of a new foreign policy that would have voluntarily opened doors across the world.
But it was not to be. The desire of some to be king of the world pushed the chance of improvement aside. Nevertheless, today even autocratic governments see that having financial and governmental options can be a beneficial thing.
And to our immediate south, a movement has been going on for a while in Mexico to establish a money based on silver, promoted by Hugo Salinas Price and others–
http://www.plata.com.mx/enUS/More/322?idioma=2
For obvious reasons, I am not optimistic about Mexico, the deterioration of which has been a sad thing to see. It needs a new and real revolution.
Xi’s move is not a unilateral thing. He had to have the support of the ruling committees in China. Keep your eye on the financial structure, gold, and silver.
All
David Habakkuk is researching and writing a comprehensive piece on the Skripal Affair for SST. pl
Could it be, because of elections?, diversity of opinions and the disunity that forms during elections is not recomended, or good during existential wars, specially major power wars, US/west have shown they use elections for color revolution regime changes. Was this a remedy to preempt predicting a possible war? And or a signal by China?
@ 8
Yesterday Murray put up a post about the attempts at gas lighting thrown his way by the upholders of the Evil Putin Did It narrative, as well as trying to shame him for his past candor about his bipolar disorder.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/03/on-being-a-dissenting-voice-in-2018/comment-page-6/
Thank you well put.
Replying to the comments relating to Chinese President Xi Jinping:
Here is a rather good article about Xi’s background and the very formative hard time he had as a young man during the cultural revolution.
http://www.unz.com/article/chinese-president-xi-jinping-who-is-he/?highlight=cultural+revolution
There is (at least) one connecting element between the “moderate Takfiris” in Syria and the Skripal incident (which certainly was not “Russian” and may not have been a nerve agent at all.)
Colonel (rtd) Hamish de Bretton-Gordon “is a former assistant director of Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance Land Forces with the Ministry of Defence. Before that de Bretton-Gordon was commanding officer of Britain’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Regiment and Nato’s Rapid Reaction CBRN Battalion.”
He is a Tory, anti-Russian and the British press quotes him every day. He is essentially building the story.
He was/is deeply involved in training the Takfiris in Syria in chemical warfare. Alleged evidence of Syrian chemical weapons was “smuggled out” with his help and he had it analyzed with the wished for result. He co-founded “Doctors Under Fire” which works along the White Helmets scam which was founded by another British military intelligence officer.
De Bretton-Gordon is also managing director CBRN of Avon Protection Systems, based in Melksham, Wiltshire and is making millions from selling CBRN equipment to the Pentagon and the British forces. (I bet that the gas masks the Takfiris have and the CBRN equipment the White Helmets show off come from this source.)
If there was coordination in staging a chemical attack in Salisbury (right next door to Porton Down to which de Bretton-Gordon surely still has the keys) and in Ghouta it will have been this man.
This increases, in my view, the plausibility of the Voltairnet story.
I have written quite a lot on the Skripal incident on my site. De Bretton-Gordon appears in today’s piece.
Because we all know the State Dept. is expert in hiring and directing jihadis to do dirty work. Thank heaven the CIA saved us!
…The whole thing smells like a dead fish.
The part about Porton Down getting creative with sarin samples’ chain of custody has been alleged before, and I suppose State could have asked Britain to use its mercs to pull off an event.
However, since Sy Hersh points out embedded people were explicitly warned about the Apr ’17 conventional attack ahead of time for their own safety (and the Syria plane cleared its mission with the Deconflict folks, and knew all along it was being tracked), the likelihood that a different group pulled the current sandbagging job must be considered.
So, fair question: Does State have its own intel / black operations team? Thought it was a consumer not producer.
Shepard
@14
“Russia did it” is a meme designed to scapegoat Russia to cover the Democrat’s Asses for losing the 2016 election, and to enable continuation of the Forever Wars since the fall of Raqqa.
Facebook user data was fed into the analytics system that enabled Cambridge Analytica and the Trump campaign to effectively target voters at a minimal budget. They won Donald Trump the swing states and the election.
It wasn’t the Russians, it was our own social media companies who sold user data to the Trump campaign which convinced liberals not to vote in swing states.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-21/it-wasnt-russia-it-was-obama-based-social-media-mining-beat-hillary
In my humble opinion Mr. Meyssan is a whackjob.
Terry
I’ve been thinking about this as well. I went looking for a graph of median income in China and the US over the last 20 years … and could not find one. What I would really like to see is a graph of median income increases over the last 20 years – I would argue this is more relevant than the easy to find graphs of GDP increases.
Median income in Russia increased something like 270% in inflation adjusted terms during the first 10 years that Putin was in power. The Economist claims this was solely due to the increase in oil prices. I went looking at countries that had comparable oil-production-per-person and found that Canada (whose oil production per person is essentially identical to Russia) saw its median income increase only 9% in the same period.
This isn’t to say that Putin’s leadership is necessarily good in the long term, but the western press are clearly ignoring important economic statistics regarding both China and Russia.
Might I ask about this sentence towards the end of your informative account:-
“This has aided and abetted genocide in Myanmar, ISIS recruitment, and a lot of the Syrian mess.”
Does this also refer to Dabiq? It looked professionally produced. Who managed that? Did whoever put it out use their intuition as to what would appeal to young men, or was there any data analysis in behind it?
Senate Votes to Kill Bill Challenging Legality of Yemen War
https://news.antiwar.com/2018/03/20/senate-votes-to-kill-bill-challenging-legality-of-yemen-war/
”SJ Res 54, the Senate’s War Powers Act challenge to the US military involvement in the Yemen War, was killed Tuesday by the Senate, meaning it will not get a direct floor vote. The bill noted that Congress never authorized the Yemen War, and would’ve compelled the US to withdraw its participation. The vote was 55-44.”
Scoop: Merkel warned Netanyahu collapse of Iran deal could lead to war
https://www.axios.com/merkel-warned-netanyahu-collapse-iran-deal-could-mean-war-9a446fe9-6c5f-425a-8625-58ddd87574a0.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic
”Merkel stressed that a U.S. withdrawal would divide the west. According to the German official, Merkel said to Netanyahu: “It will put us, the Brits and the French on the same side with Russia, China and Iran when the U.S. and Israel will be on the other side. Is this what you want?”
Merkel must know the answer to her question to Netanyahu…Israel will use the US as a battering ram against the entire world until it falls into splinters.
Why the Western concern about NordStream pipeline but none about TurkStream? Are there no sanction problems for the Swiss company working with GazProm? Plus I wonder if this is one of the reasons why Russia has lately become paranoid regarding US Navy FON operations in the Black Sea?
The main concern has the name Sabetta–it is the port and a hub to a largest Liquid Natural Gas operation, which also happened to be (in relative terms) next to Europe’s LNG ports. I usually don’t do this but I apologize, here is a link to my blog’s piece on that:
http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2018/02/a-rather-gassy-business.html
LNG is precisely a commodity which is counted by US as a major component in possibly (and most likely not very probable) US re-industrialization. For that, the US has to sell her LNG to Europe. This implies removing Russian LNG from the EU market which dwarfs that of Turkey and some South European nations. Germany, France, UK, Holland among others are the prize here. Russian LNG must be verboten, in US mind, or at least pushed back. As per FON–it has nothing to do with FON but has everything to do with:
1. Flag demonstration–that is presence and Fleet In Being.
2. Signals collection from Sevastopol, Novorossyisk and, in general, all Russia’s Southern Military District emitters.
All,
Some very interesting comments about what’s happening in China now.
In particular the link provided by divadab on Xi’s formative years.
I’ve long admired China and its different peoples. I was taken aback by what I saw as an undoing of the changes to their Constitution Deng had worked hard to get done.
Then I have to stop and remember that China’s culture is Chinese and my western ideas and upbringing make it impossible to really understand where they want to go and just what Xi wants to accomplish and how to go about it.
robt willmann,
“n addition to the common desire of some (or many) human beings to exercise authority over other groups of people, I think Xi Jinping and his supporters want to complete the large and complex economic and financial projects they have started. ….. The desire of some to be king of the world pushed the chance of improvement aside. Nevertheless, today even autocratic governments see that having financial and governmental options can be a beneficial thing.”
Substitute XI Jinping with Obama/Clinton and you describe the American Establishment, especially on the left. Mexico? Remind me again how the owner of the NYT and one of the richest men on Earth got that way and just what all the Presidents of Mexico do when they come to the USA to seek votes, and for whom they are seeking them?
I’ve been waiting to see what happens with the SDR (Special Drawing Right). The IMF (International Monetary Fund) added it to the SDR basket in October 2016 after a lot of foot dragging by the US. The AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) was setup largely as a Chinese alternative to the US dominated IMF and World Bank because they were not being given an appropriate “place at the table” in the IMF, which was founded as part of the Bretton Woods Agreement at the end of WWII. I see the global monetary reset currently underway as the slowly moving, but unstoppable, glacier that is forcing all other events.
Reading Lucian Truscott’s memoir, Command Decisions. The big spender I am, it was .99 cents on Kindle. With my admitted amateur status, I must say I like the man, both military and personal, that I am reading about.
From what I learned about this Skripal affair and what we’re expected to believe— i.e., the official U.K. government version— is ludicrous. Farcical. I’m talking Fargo and Burn After Reading kind of farcical. And is anyone a little alarmed that the same Monty Python-esque goofball is behind the attempted subversion of Trump’s election in collusion with U.S. Deep State with a ludicrous ‘Golden Showers’ dossier was also the U.K.’s weapon to subvert FIFA and Russia in the World Cup and was an associate of Skripal.
POISONED RUSSIAN SPY LINKED TO TRUMP-RUSSIA DOSSIER AUTHOR CHRISTOPHER STEELE THROUGH SECURITY CONSULTANT
http://www.newsweek.com/russia-poison-spy-steele-dossier-836768
BBC (1/13/2017): Ex-MI6 man Steele hired for England World Cup bid
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-38607456
with respect if you are citing PPP for China and USA then you should be consistent with respect to Russia, thus Russia is a little more than 1/5 of US [4 trillion vs 19.36 trillion for 2017
TTG should love this article. Only difference is that in the writer’s view the Trump campaign was far more effective than the Russian trolls.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-21/it-wasnt-russia-it-was-obama-based-social-media-mining-beat-hillary
Eric Newhill,
Reference your comment at #4
I know you’re being sarcastic, but you bring up a good point about the 2A question. In my opinion, the 2A’s idea of an armed citizenry as a defense against tyranny would be better served if we were all allowed to carry a fanny pack full of mini frags. Toss a few of those around and you won’t give away your location. Keep the mutha fukkas guessing. Our nation would be more secure if we each had a cache out back with a small supply of C4, det cord and blasting caps to supplement our small arms ammo. I could understand restrictions against such caches in apartment complexes, but what about the rest of us? Clearly there’s no advocacy group for “destructive devices” in this country. Such a group could teach neighborhood classes on constructing and employing improvised explosives and ensure that we remain free to exercise our full 2A rights.
Babelfush
I was the SSO in ALFSEE the NATO army group headquarters in Izmir, Turkey when General Ben Harrell was the commander. The job caused me to spend time alone with him every day. He had been Truscott’s G-3 staff chief (operations) at Anzio and for the rest of the war as Truscott moved higher and higher (army, etc.) I knew a lot about these battles and Harrell talked to me about Italy a lot and Truxcott’s command style. He admired Truscott a great deal as a commander and a man. I remember particularly what he told me of the importance of SIGINT products in planning the breakout from the Anzio beach head. pl
Russian meddling in our election? The evidence continues to point to the British…
“International deception and meddling is the name of the game for SCL. We finally have the most concrete evidence yet of shadowy actors using dirty tricks in order to rig elections. But these characters aren’t operating from Moscow intelligence bunkers.
Instead, they are British, Eton educated, headquartered in the city of London and have close ties to Her Majesty’s government.”
http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2018/03/20/scl-a-very-british-coup/
Sounds to me like an attempt to exonerate the CIA for the plot and put the blame on Tillerson who Trump wanted out anyway. I mean, the CIA was probably involved or at least knew about the false flag attack, then Pompeo gets asked to “investigate himself”, uses that to stab Tillerson in the back and take his job? Seriously? Sounds like typical office politics to me…
Assuming you can trust anything that comes out of Voltaire.net. Stuff I’ve read there in the past appears mostly speculative and poorly sourced.
Chemical Hamish.
Seems a bit much just to undermine the Russian World Cup and the Presidential election, perhaps it was meant to be part of something more.
Colonel, I had meet and heard personally the guy running this outlet. Frankly, it’s just some pebbles of “vraisemblance” in an ocean of fakes and fairies. A kind of “leftist-anti-imperialist” copycat of DEBKA, if you see what I mean…
TTG,
Yes!
Additionally, a home with a perimeter ringed with claymore mines is a home that has insured its 4th amendment rights won’t be readily violated. Tends to cut down on breaking and entries too. So it’s also in line with the spirit of the 2A per the Heller decision.
There are groups that offer instruction of constructing and employing improvised explosive devices – at least so I’m told. I understand it’s all on line. I just don’t want to verify because with my luck there’d be black helos over my house within an hour of me doing the search.
I did see an ad for a fully functioning black powder cannon. It’s a replica of a civil war model. I confess to being mightily tempted.
Of course my sarcastic point was that psycho killers gonna kill; guns or no guns. Who would have guessed that some kid with no military training would have been able to create so many effective bombs? Now watch it become the new trend.
Neocon military “analyst” Ralph Peters no longer loves Fox News.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5524841/Fox-military-analyst-says-network-makes-ashamed.html
Pat, thank you for that! One of the most interesting parts so far involves his meeting Cardinal Spellman just after Tunisia. The Cardinal tells the officers present he has been requested to broadcast a statement regarding the allied victory and to include the superiority of American equipment as a significant factor. General Truscott’s polite response was to disabuse the Cardinal regarding that notion, reciting the litany of equipment woes that were discovered during combat versus German formations.
Terry,
“by some measures” If you torture the data long inenough it confesses. So the US is one of the five worst in income inequality? Maybe those Chineese imigrants should all stay in China to enjoy their “percentages”. Of course they might first ask just what the 400% increase in Chineese income means. Oh, that’s right, the 400% increase from almost nothing to 4 times almost nothing. The negative 1% reduction in bottom 50% of income distribuiton in the US over that 4 decades resulted in:
“Median individual income for all earners in the workforce was $37,610.00, and the breakpoint to be a one-percenter (99th percentile) was $300,800.00.”
https://dqydj.com/united-states-income-brackets-percentiles/
So the 50% percentile in the US has a 37K icome. What is it for China, it certainly isn’t 37K. That’s right, acording to the link you provided it’s 14,600 USD. In China, with the official exchange rate.
James T,
“but the western press are clearly ignoring important economic statistics regarding both China and Russia.”
Yes indeed, they ignore the actual data and repeat out percentages with no idea of the underlying facts of how those percentages were created and not bothering to ask how they were calculated.
Rick,
It’s pointing to corporations in the US, like Facebook, as well. Then there is the ongoing indoctrination campaign being waged by America’s teachers to convince them to become the junior anti-second amendment police and shame their parents to vote for the correct party’s candidates. That’s an abuse of government power by local government school systems.
LondonBob
I think that in much of the world The World Cup is a bigger deal than the Olympics. I knew some atheletes here in Canada who had their athletic careers ended by our boycott of the 1980 olympics (after years and years of hard work). I’m surprised western intelligence agencies have not done more to undermine Russia’s world cup. They may yet.
That’s a very interesting theory.
Give the teachers bombs too!
Steve
The New CIA Director Nominee and the Massacre at My Lai
By Ann Wright
Protecting those who commit heinous crimes in the name of the U.S. government provides a dangerous precedent and could lead to the conclusion by many in the military and CIA that they can “get away with murder,” Ann Wright observes.
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/03/21/the-new-cia-director-nominee-and-the-massacre-at-my-lai/
Ralph Peters is no longer a Fox News contributor. That’s too bad. His torturous defense of Trotskyite ideals will be missed. He quit declaring,
If you want a good chuckle, the rest of his resignation letter can be read here at Buzzfeed.
Smoothie –
Thanks! I am not a fan of LNG. If I was a Euro there is no way I would allow LNG in, whether from Sabetta in Russia or from Sabine Pass in the US. But I thought that the NorthStream or Nord-Stream pipeline was NOT liquified, is that not correct?
FON Ops include showing the flag, nothing wrong with that. Every Navy does it. We don’t bar Russian ships from the Gulf of Mexico. The Black Sea is not a Russian lake, its littorals include several other nations.
And there is nothing inherently wrong with signals collection. I distinctly remember being shadowed while on float in the 60s and 70s by Soviet QUOTE-trawlers-or-hydrographic-research-ships-UNQUOTE that had more antennas than Fort Meade. We never freaked out. Signal collection efforts can be avoided or spoofed.
Outside of North America the World Cup is definitely a much bigger event than the Olympics. I already have my tickets for England v Panama in Nizhny Novgorod, as well as a second round match in Moscow. I don’t care much for the Olympics, although I do like the Winter Olympics. I just thought we would see the same nonsense we saw to undermine the Sochi Olympics, this just seems much more than just derogatory media coverage, or officials boycotting attending the event. I was interested to see Professor Richard Sakwa, his book on the Ukraine crisis is probably the best out there, interviewed on RT regarding this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcKQ-4Qqel0
I never stated that that it is wrong or otherwise, I merely stated a cold hard fact that behind PC term FON are intentions which have very little to do with FON per say. Obviously intelligence collection is a routine task. However:
We don’t bar Russian ships from the Gulf of Mexico. The Black Sea is not a Russian lake, its littorals include several other nations.
That is beyond the point, neither does Russia in terms of the Black Sea. But we live in a real world, not some university auditorium white board-driven virtual legal reality and it will be absolutely preposterous to ignore one of the Black Sea states in which the US, under different disguises, played a crucial role in bringing to power basically Russophobic neo-nazis. Your argument would be valid only under one condition: if Russia would violently remove Canadian government and install there viscerally anti-American regime. Then, we would have some even plane in discussing the issue.
I am not a fan of LNG. If I was a Euro there is no way I would allow LNG in, whether from Sabetta in Russia or from Sabine Pass in the US.
Being fan or no fan of specific type of energy hardly factors into economic reality of Europe and coercing it into buying American LNG. If Europe continues to buy Russian gas–that will be bad news for US. The US, however, may yet succeed in sabotaging Nord Stream II and thus, in a long run, kill European industrial competitiveness thus opening European market for US products. At least that is the plan. Here is a small taste of what is at stake.
http://www.unz.com/article/the-russo-chinese-alliance-revisited/
Since this article publication two major things happened:
1. China released White Paper on North Sea Route calling it a strategic interest of PRC;
2. Putin gave his March 1st speech.
Ralph Peters is Russia “analyst”? Then I am a Chinese cosmonaut. US Russia “analytical” field is, for the most part, a sewer, a pseudo-academic trash–Peters is an ultimate embodiment of that.
Nate, I am on vacation, and unable to access my resources. But if you are still interested, in the next open thread asked the question again, and by that time I’ll be home and I could more readily put my hands on citations that might provide answers for you. In the meantime if you’re interested in reading a book that might guide you in these questions you might consider reading : The Passing of an Illusion, by François Fucet. You will get lots of ‘answers’……Because all things are relative
b,
Re comment 22
On Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, there is a good deal of useful material on the page entitled ‘Talk: British involvement in Syria’, now renamed ‘Porton Down investigatives Syria, on the ‘A Closer Look On Syria’ site.
(See http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Porton_Down_investigates_Syria .)
The answer is that the Soviet government hadn’t seized *all* money, many people still had stashes of money, gold or other valuables that could be turned into money.
To make the story more plausible.
“We destroyed super top secret Syrian WMD factory that nobody else even ever heard about! Oopsies! I guess I wasn’t supposed to talk about that….”
Fred
If you torture the data long enough it confesses.
I love it; Disraeli + EIT
Or perhaps Beria for the 21st century: ‘show me the data and I’ll find you the crime’.
#54 I’m no expert on natural gas transmission but from what I understand LNG can only be moved short distances via special cryogenic pipelines.
So no, Nordstream or any other existing long haul pipeline would not be used to move LNG.
The Untold Story of John Bolton’s Campaign for War With Iran
Everyone knows Bolton is a hawk. Less understood is how he labored in secret to drive Washington and Tehran apart.
By Gareth Porter • March 22, 2018
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/why-a-john-bolton-appointment-is-scarier-than-you-think-mcmaster-trump/
The Anglo deep state in plain view?
Swearing allegiance to a foreign hereditary monarch rather than their own country.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CfS9Ewjczk NZ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDqvWbA11OM Australia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT1l5kesjKA&feature=youtu.be Canada
It was somewhat disturbing watching the three videos together the other day.
Today Craig Murray has a short piece up titled ‘Deep state breaks surface’.
He links to this piece on Strategic Communication Laboratories
http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2018/03/20/scl-a-very-british-coup/
There is a group called ‘est2west news’ that supply original photographs of the required Russians for many UK and Ukraine anti Russia articles. The photographs they supply can be found by using the search terms ‘credit east2westnews’ or picture ‘east2west news’
They also supply pictures of Ukrainians for tabloid articles.
They are the group that supplied the picture of the two Skripals together in the restaurant.
I can find no information on this entity called east2west news.
There is a company called ‘east2west media group’ located in the US but I doubt they are the ones supplying the pictures.
SCL, having an operation in Ukraine as well as other ex soviet states seems a likely candidate as supplier of the photos for anti Russia pieces under the alias of east2west news.
Mr. Meyssan has a well-recognized name. He has been working on clearing the poisonous fog created by the presstituting MSM. His articles are well informed. And who is “mikee?” – Where is your data? Where is your research?
Yesterday local elections in the Netherlands and the second ever (and last) citizen-initiated referendum on the new Intelligence and Security (services) Law. The outcome is:
* local elections: traditional (centre) political parties lost again with a huge swing to local parties.
* a very small majority against the new Intelligence and Security law which gives extra capabilities (the main problem is unwarranted collection of internet information)
The same trend that brought Trump, Brexit and all other elections in OECD countries. People vote against their politicians while the politicians and MSM are surprised every time.
The new law will be implemented ‘as is’ with a pro-forma evaluation in the (prime)minister cabinet meeting, which is as technocratic as things get and makes a farce of democracy. The first referendum was an overwhelming ‘No’ against Ukraine in the EU.
The social-liberal coalition-partner (which for decades was principally the initiator of the citizen-initiated public referendum) sold its principals out in order to govern. They were the largest losers in the local elections. Again, people see what politicians are: unreliable frauds.
Interesting also is that local chapters of centre parties are changing their names because they don’t want to be associated with the national parties.
Although individual humans are often very superficial and not very smart, the wisdom of crowds keeps sending messages. They want something else.
IMO unless politicians start listening to the crowds, democracy will disappear. Either right-wing populists will be elected, and they will grow into authoritarian despots (Trump seems like a candidate) or the federations and nation-states will shatter in smaller parts. Neither will be nice.
For example my country, the Netherlands. Most national law is superseded by EU-law. The national politicians are increasingly passing the hot potatoes to lower, local governments who have to solve a lot from poverty, health-care to radicalization and unemployment.
What is the value added by our so-called national politicians?
Most of the important functions are severely restricted by the EU (especially economic and monetary) and major societal problems have to be solved by lower governments. For the population they are talking heads that don’t represent them.
smoothiex12
He is a total lightweight fraud who was not well though of in the Army. pl
“IMO unless politicians start listening to the crowds, democracy will disappear. Either right-wing populists will be elected, and they will grow into authoritarian despots (Trump seems like a candidate) or the federations and nation-states will shatter in smaller parts. Neither will be nice.”
Or a third way, people will get so fed up they will start participating by running for office and putting the grifters, freeloaders and other assorted pathological freaks into the unemployment line. After which they will actually do the tasks set out for them by the electorate while the usual culprits will whine to the highest heavens that the deplorable peasants fail to understand (ignorant fools can’t you see WE are the Superior Beings) that the vanguard are here to guide them to the perfect world.
There was a commentator called Andy a few years ago, who, in response to a comment about submarines having to surface in order to pass through the Straits of Hormuz, as some claimed, stated, in essence, “Make me do it.”
It’s not about “income”, rather purchasing power. I personally know people making less in 2017 than in 1990 working in the same plant – and with reduced benefits like medical deductions changing from $500 to $3000 – but also costs of goods has increased.
I have also personally seen pricing and how the same product gets priced differently in different areas, usually by 2X or 3X.
Has the bottom 50% in the USA seen a real decline in their quality of life – absolutely. Has the bottom 50% in China seen an increase. I suspect so.
Scott Ritter reviews the arms race since Bush’s 2002 renunciation of ABM Treaty.
“The intellectual stasis displayed by both Mattis and Pompeo is disturbing. These are not so-called “experts” drummed up by the New York Times to further the anti-Putin narrative that has become the centerpiece of the Times’s coverage over the years, but rather serious professionals who hold the security of the United States in their hands. Putin’s pronouncements during his State of the Nation address weren’t a spur-of-the-moment articulation of fantasy, but rather, as he made quite clear, the byproduct of more than a decade of focused intent to counter the threat posed to Russian national security by America’s ballistic missile defense programs. Not only had Russia not masked its intentions in this regard, it had gone out of its way to make sure that the United States was aware of what it was doing and why. In 2007, Russia purposely leaked details about the RS-28 “Sarmat” heavy missile that featured prominently in Putin’s 2018 State of the Nation address to the CIA in a futile effort to get the United States to seriously engage in arms control negotiations.
Ritter concludes:
“Contrary to Secretary Mattis’s dismissive commentary, the RS-28 does, in fact, fundamentally alter the strategic balance between Russia and the United States. Moreover, Mike Pompeo knows full well that the Russians are not bluffing. Both Mattis and Pompeo had been laboring under the false impression that Russia could not afford to field a follow-on to the R-36 missile, especially considering that that missile had been built in the Ukraine during Soviet times, and as such those capabilities were lost to Russian defense industry. The RS-28, however, is a reality—the Russians simply reconfigured their own indigenous missile production capability and will have at least 50 of the new missiles operational by 2020. It’s a reality that America’s leadership might want to factor into any future policy toward Moscow.”
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/no-putin-isnt-bluffing-on-nukes/
Terry,
You left out causation as well as the make up of that 50% of the population. For China how much is immigration based change? For the US where did the immigrants come from, what was their education level and English language proficiency when they arrived, and how did that affect wages? The World Bank and the IMF don’t mention either.
Oh, So the Pentagon WAS struck by a missile on 9/11 as Meyssan wrote about in ‘La Pentagate’ and not American Airlines Flight 77
mikee
Friends of mine watched from the windows of the Naval Annex on the hill overlooking to Pentagon as the plane flew by with the passengers still in their seats. pl
Your problem in US is not immigrants, it is yourselves. Yes, the roads in Southeadt Michigan are awful because of so many ill educated immigrants with a complexion off beige.
Thank you colonel
John Bolton…Dear Merciful God.
I do not doubt it. The conspiracy theorists are despicable. Any historian knows that what is unimaginable can often be completely true.
Amaq still operating, still hosted by US company Cloudflare.
https://war-news-agency.eu/ (Amaq site)
Whois search…
% WHOIS war-news-agency.eu
Domain: war-news-agency.eu
Registrant:
NOT DISCLOSED!
Visit http://www.eurid.eu for webbased whois.
Technical:
Name: Domain Manager
Organisation: PublicDomainRegistry.com
Language: en
Phone: +1.2013775952
Fax: +1.3202105146
Email: domain.manager@publicdomainregistry.com
Registrar:
Name: PDR Ltd.
Website: https://www.publicdomainregistry.com
Name servers:
dom.ns.cloudflare.com
lia.ns.cloudflare.com
Please visit http://www.eurid.eu for more info.
I hope you’re right. It would be a better alternative, but I don’t see people do it. When a new party or movement starts they either play the game by the old rules or cave in to pressure. Look at Greece.
Another problem is that they tend to focus on their own interests instead of focusing on the society as a whole. IMO that’s needed when you want to beat the Borg on both sides of the pond.
François Furet, not Fucet. “Le Passé d’une Illusion”. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Pass%C3%A9_d%27une_illusion
AC-130 Gunship Mysteriously Flew Hours Worth Of Laps Over Seattle on Tuesday (Updated)
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/19497/ac-130-gunship-mysteriously-flew-hours-worth-of-laps-over-seattle-on-tuesday
Colonel,
I can make neither head nor tail of this – links between Cambridge Analytica and other organisations. (via MOA). Perhaps your London correspondents might make sense of it. Is this the fringes of English think tank land?
http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2018/03/20/scl-a-very-british-coup/
With this, + the freak show I see from time to time in the Commons, I’m slowly beginning to form the view that it might be better if our Old Etonians stuck to rowing.
outthere,
Trump’s domestic policy is excellent – even inevitable given the pervasive anti-American derangement of the liberals.
However, with the appointment of Bolton, Trump has demonstrated that Col Lang has been correct all along; Trump lacks the depth of intelligence and character to manage foreign policy. Worse, he is seduced by a faux tough guy mentality. As a Trump supporter I am extremely disappointed.
That said, it’s not like any of the other viable candidates – right or left – would have done differently. Even Obama had Libya and the support and encouragement of head choppers to go after Assad. I would like to see a step by step breakdown of how the FP hawks get their clutches into just about everyone who sits in the WH. I imagine they have the entire FP apparatus so tightly sowed up that no other can even start to make inroads. This has probably developed over many decades.
Maybe bring Bolton on board gets some of the Mueller, etc heat lifted from Trump. Still no excuse in my book (if that is even the case).
#56 “If Europe continues to buy Russian gas–that will be bad news for US.”
Bad news for some, but good news for US consumers and manufacturers. There are many in the oil/gas industry who want us to believe that these resources are infinite. I’m opposed to the export of energy resources from our country. There should be high tariffs on energy exports.
By the way, 2017 was a record year for Gazprom in European gas sales.
A close friend of mine – before and after 9/11 – was working for the DoD at the time and was heading to the Pentagon when the attack occurred. He also saw the airplane.
J,
So the poor reporter needs some click-bait for his new magazine. What are the non-mysterious flight patterns of four engine AF aircraft flying in the state of Washington? Oh, they did it a year ago too with a different plane. My my. Let me know when he has another breathless article but focussed on Amazon’s drones flying over my house ready to drop parcels with thier pattented airbag style inflators instead of parachutes.
https://dronedj.com/2018/03/15/amazon-patent-drone-drop-packages/
“Chinahand”–or, Peter Lee–has been an extremely reliable and accurate commentator on CCP politics for something close to as long as this blog has been a reliable reporter of NATO military activity.
He has pointedly indicated that, first, in the Chinese constitution there is no established law about term-limits or any kind of limits of any sort, regarding the CCP. Second, he has explained that the “rule” of “67/8” was essentially promulgated by Jiang Zemin as a ploy to eliminate several of his party rivals, who each were 68 years or older–while everyone he wanted to appoint was well below that cutoff date.
So this idea that Xi Jinping wants to establish himself as a “New Mao”–which is what the NATO press seeks to inculcate with all this nonsense about “President for Life”–is just, as we say in Texas: “SOOOOOO much bullshit.”
Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign is delivering extremely valuable results at the LOCAL levels. The Chengguan are being challenged. Americans like to think of the Chengguan as a sort of “local police,” but in China what the Chengguan actually are is a localized military force that has been–until Xi’s reforms–solely and entirely under the judicial and legislative control of localized, provincial “Bigshots.”
Those “Bigshots” might or might not be under the full control of the CCP; to some extent, all “Bigshots” have a “relationship” with the CCP. But the idea that each and every province, and–each-and-every county within those provinces–are all locked down by political groups who are loyal and deferent to the CCP is pure fiction.
But it is that kind of fiction that the NATO/US vision of China rests.
Did your friends observe the plane impact the Pentagon?
Adrestia,
Honestly, I hope am right too, because the alternatives will come after much bloodshed.
There are many honorable and decent people to step up but won’t do it because of the current climate or are frozen out by the Borgians and their masters. With the crop of “Western” leaders losing their credibility, respect, and people’s fear of their institutions daily, their last refuge to maintain power will be to terrorize their own population with state force, which is going to be hard to do since the presumed enforcers are treated with the same arrogant contempt.
One way or another massive change, for good or ill, is coming this year. What it looks like on Jan 1, 2019 we will have to wait and see.
Fred:
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/restoring-americas-economic-mobility/
Don’t blame the poor immigrant.
reply to #8
Some interesting stuff there. I thought this was a good point:
“Just as diplomats, British and otherwise, are the most ardent upholders of the principle of diplomatic immunity, so security service personnel everywhere are the least likely to wish to destroy a system which can be a key aspect of their own personal security; quite literally spy swaps are their “Get Out of Jail Free” card. You don’t undermine that system – probably terminally – without very good reason.”
jpb,
No. He did not actually see the impact. Only the aftermath.
jpb
My friends in the naval annex watched the plane hit the building. Other people I know well saw the embedded fuselage within the building. pl
If you think immigration from Latin America is responsible for the decrease in quality of life and spending power in the middle class, then you are unqualifiedly delusional.
Illegal immigrants make up 3% of the US population–and their numbers are declining.
From MIT:
“The basic family budget for a two-parent, two-child family ranges from $49,114 (Morristown, Tenn.) to $106,493 (Washington, D.C.). In the median family budget area for this family type, Des Moines, Iowa, a two-parent, two-child family needs $63,741 to secure an adequate but modest living standard. This is well above the 2014 poverty threshold of $24,008 for this family type.”
The “Basic Family Budget” referred to, here, is what would have been called “minimum family income for the middle class,” in past years. Notably, this level indicates that some 60% of the US is currently classified as what would have been defined as “lower class,” in the 70s and 80s–or what would have been defined as “poverty” in the 50s and 60s.
If you think those changes have happened because of the 3% of the population who are in the US illegally, then you’re flat-out delusional.
Or maybe you’re relying on US Census and Bureau of Labor data, which has been (going back at least to the times of Nixon) notably jerry-rigged to disguise the actual economic facts of what’s going on in the country.
http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/only-20-are-middle-class-most-dont-come-close-5679
Babak, was registered on March 8 with the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs”
Spare me. There are more than 5,000 colleges and univiersties in the US. Why haven’t they been able to teach the skills all those H1B visa applicants possess? Why haven’t employers raised wages to employ US citizens in those jobs “no American will take” at that low wage rate? Why has the US sat on it’s fat ass regarding the destruction of Mexico while spending trillions engaging in wars in the Middle East? Well, lets not ask professor Buckley as he hasn’t figured out that the marxists have moved on to cutlure and the proletariat and bourgeois are now just the victims and the opporssors, until the ideologues destroy another society, when they’ll change terminolgy like a 5 year old changes dirty clothes.
This weekend you’ll see the victims of oppression marching at the behest of unionized government employees and the sponsors of the “March for Our Lives Action Fund, a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofit organization,
http://freebeacon.com/issues/march-lives-now-operating-dark-money-nonprofit-advocacy-group/
Televised by ABC/NBC/CBS/Fox/BBC/everyone else. If you thought there was a propaganda campaign in the run up to the war in Iraq, that was nothing compared to the coming war on the constitution; the propagand is just getting going. The kids are gonna “
free the slaves, end the war in VIetnammake schools safe from the NRA.” Demanding the firing of the incompetent sherif of Broward Country Florida, punishing the FBI employees who couldn’t follow up a phone call, the deputy who refused to Baker Act the eventual killer or the multiple teachers who also refused to Baker Act the man, well that’s just not the on media,501(c)(4) corporation’s agenda.J,
re: Gunship search pattern.
And they STILL haven’t found me!
Seriously though, strange as it may seem to the uninitiated the most un-occupied bit of airspace around a major hub airport is the area directly above the runways, above small plane pattern altitude extending up to about 5-6,000AGL. There is no reason for normal traffic to be directed there. If they wished to try out their surveillance gear on an urban environment that would be the place where it creates the least conflict with air traffic.
And pray, tell me, were immigrants responsible for this litany of misdeeds?
Did they destroy Detroit? Or invade Iraq? Or shred the social contract in US?
The EU is undemocratic. After the Catalan referendum an ‘official’ election was done and again the people voted in favour of an independent Catalonia.
Again. Unless the politicians start listening to the voters, the situation will escalate untill it cannot be stopped. IMO more controlled changed will be preferable to rapid, uncontrolled change.
PA,
I said no such thing. I used the word “immigration, as in from all sources. You use the word “immigration” then in the next line switch to “illegal imigration” than quote some data on “a two-parent, two-child family”. That’s first rate sophistry. A+ comrade.
Babak,
Not good immigrants like you. You have completely assimilated. However you have failed to address my points about wage pressure and skills taught at US colleges. Feel free to address those with something besides ad hominem commentary.
I think your points are irrelevant to my rebuttal of your assertions in regards to immigrants. Go to Hamtramck and see the Benglai Muslim immigrants revitalizing that place while Euro-American led entities shipping jobs abroad.
Babak,
I made no assertion about immigrants in Hammtramack; neither the German ones who founded the city, the Poles who came in the early 1900s nor the Bengali ones there now. I said immigration affects wage pressure. Feel free to tell me what impact immigration has on wages.
“Euro-American led entities shipping jobs abroad”. Which entities are those and how did you conclude they are Euro-American led? I won’t bother to ask how many of those jobs wound up in Iran.
I will let you have the last word on this.
Babak,
Why thank you. In that case I’ll take it. Consider, Benglai Muslim immigrants chose to come to the USA, not Iran. I wonder why.
pl, in looking into ‘SCL Group’ I see how much various interests converge and diverge (individuals and groups) in the US.
TTG, rather than peering out the windows looking for Russians, take a look behind you and check out the Eaton and Cambridge boys.
Sir,
I’m an infantry lieutenant in the Canadian Army and also an INFP. In your experience working with and watching similar types, what blind spots might I tend to have? Professionally or otherwise.
Henry
Assuming you really are what you say, I would advise you to guard against excessive trust in people you do not know extremely well. IOW guard against gullibility stemming from your empathetic nature. In re the troops, be careful. Young lieutenants are favorite targets for exploitation. pl
THANK YOU, Tyler!!!!
rjj
Not sure what you are referring to. Any sign of spring up there yet? pl
Sir,
Thanks for your insight. I do admit that’s a pattern I fall into if I don’t stay self-aware.
With both troops and superiors, I find it difficult to balance not taking myself too seriously while also signalling that I won’t tolerate being taken advantage of.