There’s plenty going on in the world. Let’s see what interests youse guys.
TTG
RSS- It is time to throw away the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale and give the public better information
- “Hurricane Milton is forecast to become a Category 5 and is taking aim at Florida”
- The recent loss of Vuhledar
- Tom Cooper on Iran’s latest missile strike on Israel
- Iran Launches About 200 Ballistic Missiles at Israel
- “Hezbollah’s tunnels and flexible command weather Israel’s deadly blows”
- Nasrallah killed?
- “The flight to Mars is canceled — human kidneys can’t handle it.”
- Newspapers say that NY City Mayor Eric Adams is charged in a sealed federal criminal indictment
- “Without immigrants, America’s job growth would have stalled”
We just lost one of the greatest First Ladies and she certainly was a model for them all. As is her husband, who may soon follow her. My wife met both a few times, since Jimmy was a classmate of her late husband. They certainly showed that there is a second act after leaving the White House.
Both Carters have shown all of us how to age well and keep contributing.
Jimmy Carter was a failed president. Not just failed, but one of the least accomplished presidents of the United States ever. Ever. Even today, “Carter Presidency” is an analogy of opprobrium against any sitting president. Even Trump, for all his faults, isn’t accused of being “Carteresque”.
Carter’s wife was first lady. Although she may have been great – IMO, great in FLs should be measured by mass, but whatever – she didn’t help Jimmy move up into the ranks of mediocrity. But she sure talked well.
Well she’s dead. The grace of God is abundant, and with God’s grace perhaps she will be able intercede for the souls in purgatory.
Just because you do not get re-elected, it does not mean that you failed as president. I think Jimmy Carter is as under estimated as Ronald Reagan is over estimated. Now, if you want to consider a failed president, you should consider Donald Trump, who did not accomplish much other than disorder and discontent.
Casey, acting for Reagan, is known to have sandbagged Carter’s reelection by interfering via delaying the release of hostages in Iran.
A curse on Casey’s grave for the additional misery the hostages endured to serve the election of Reagan.
Al –
Nixon did the same thing in 68, sabotaging the Paris Peace Talks. Caused thousands more American KIA & tens of thousands more WIA.
I would appreciate more on the T-65-70-85 progression of rebel fighters.
Sorry, this was meant to be a snarky original post, not a reply to Lars.
Thanks for the opportunity to “escape” the current socio-political-civilizational mess.
However… what is brewing out of view from the hoi-polloi is not any better, rather even deeper into the dark side.
There seem to be a frantic attempt to sell “advanced” transhumanist ideas to the techno-scientific elites.
The goal being to emulate, not only intelligence but life itself with artificial contraptions and even hybrid natural-artificial gizmos, all of this of course for good causes like regenerative medicine, making the blinds to see, the paralytics to walk and everyone reaching genius level with a few neural implants.
In other words unbounded HUBRIS!!!
I spotted three authors involved in this psy-op who have, since 2021, co-authored many dozens of publications to the same tune:
Michael Levin, Karl Friston, Chris Fields.
To give you the flavor of these see:
Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds.
This is certainly objectionable to many religious people and even to me as an atheist leaning toward Taoïst philosophy.
And it does match the insane plans of world domination by corrupt elites.
The article seems to dressing up animism in high falutin’ scientific jargon. And this is from someone who still retains some of those ancient animistic beliefs.
@TTG
Yes, this is an important part of their argument.
If the caterpillar is “intelligent” and purposely turns into a butterfly so can we. 🙂
Hard luck, living things astounding performances and resilience does not come from any kind of “design”, intelligent, divine or otherwise but from bare statistical artifacts over an enormous time span and number of trials.
Degeneracy and complexity in biological systems
Input ➡️ Output
It’s the age of AI. (Promounced Aye Aye?)
F&L’s first canvases.
An Ocean Liner visits me at the corner Diner for Breakfast.
https://tinyurl.com/4cbc42vr
A large dog teaches President Ulysses Grant how to make coffee.
https://tinyurl.com/2mb8dvdb
F&L
here some more funny Aye Aye for you…
https://t.me/SrbijaRusija/39567
Have you seen the video which claims to be of the abduction of an Israeli cargo ship by the Houthis? It looks to me to be a fake AI video creation of some variety. There’s a post of the video on the Telegram милитарист channel I saw yesterday.
F&L,
I agree that those big new Ro-Ro’s look odd and I wonder what would happen to one of them in a hurricane. But it’s the Galaxy Leader, which could probably carry about four thousand cars, though the ship was empty at the time, as the Houthi video reveals. (Those car decks are enormous.) The Houthis flew over the ship from the stern to a point amidship where one of two helos touched down briefly and dropped off seven commandos. They now have some twenty-five crew members as hostages, none of them Israeli, and the ship is believed to be held at Salif port, which is a very good protected anchorage about twenty miles northerly/westerly of the main Yemen port of Hodeida. Salif is tucked in behind Kamaran Island, a flat, barren island that was once used as a quarantine station where pilgrims going up to Mecca were put into barracks and checked for a number of highly communicable diseases such as TB, and probably given fumigation for crab lice etc. and a soapy cleansing which would include such clothing as was worn. In 1953 the Saudis claimed this lucrative business and put the quarantine at Jeddah. (Seems like a great idea for Americans to consider making a study of.)
The company that owns Galaxy Leader –and also some 65 other Ro-Ro’s (?)– is Ray Car Carriers, registered on the Isle of Man, while the ship itself is registered in the Bahamas. The maritime group running this vehicle delivery business is British and Japanese, but the owner of Ray Car Carriers is ‘Rami’ Ungar, based in Israel. The Houthis say that they have made a study of illegal Israeli-owned businesses and state that their national policy is to confiscate any Israeli ships that attempt to pass through Yemeni waters. They noted that the Galaxy Leader had turned off all identification devices…
What I think this means is that all ships connected in any way to Israel will have to go the long and expensive way around Africa to get to the Indian Ocean and the East.
And it also looks to me like the Houthis are trying to suck the Israelis–including the Israeli navy– into another trademark, derring-do Entebbe-style raid, possibly involving Kamaran Island. Knowing that they have something for them.
This whole thing could get real big and bad, couldn’t it?
Tidewater:
“HOUTHI rebels have reportedly hijacked Bahamas-flagged Galaxy Leader (IMO: 9237307), a car carrier owned by Israeli shipowner Ray Shipping, as it transited the Red Sea on Saturday.”
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/so-red-sea-pirates-it-is
I’m curious as to where it dropped off a cargo of a few thousand vehicles.
Fred,
The ship was enroute from Turkey to India. It was chartered by NYK so my guess is that it was headed to Japan to pick up a load or cars.
Tidewater,
It sure could. Attempting rescue could be as foolish a venture as President Carter’s disastrous enterprise to free the Iranian held hostages in 1980. But the priority will be very low if no Israelis are held. It has to be written off and maybe they can manufacture some Bitcoins to pay the ransom.
The bottom line is exactly as you say. China and the US have naval assets in the area and I think, listening to Ian Bremmer earlier today that they are liable to work in unison on issues like ocean going trade from west to east and vice versa. There was a crazy incident over a year ago where the Suez canal was effectively shut down due to a cargo ships getting sideways. The Panama canal is reporting reduced traffic due to low water related to drought. The ingredients for a nasty reduction in trade are almost there but I would be surprised if someone pushed it ruinously. Talking behind the scenes is critical. You can’t have one party’s naval forces gathering somewhere in a way that is liable to be misunderstood. As crazy as our leadership is in public on political posturing they are basically twirps who listen to the big interests on trade.
When Biden met Xi and what’s going on with the US and China. Ian Bremmer interview. Today Nov 21.
https://youtu.be/fojPLOE150c
Robert E Lee and Ulysses Grant meet Miss America at Appomattox.
https://tinyurl.com/3f6nsvwn
https://tinyurl.com/2udh7kyb
https://tinyurl.com/yft8cumz
——
Who made me the genius I am today, the mathematician that others all quote?
Aaaaaand .. ever since I meet that man my life is not the same, and Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name!
Tom Lehrer – Lobachevsky.
https://youtu.be/gXlfXirQF3A
F&L,
My younger son has been playing around with this stuff, but without taking your flights of fancy whether drug or alcohol induced or just the product of a brilliantly warped mind. In the early ’90s I played with a early piece of software that would come up with new ideas from patent depositories. It was a Polish-Russian invention called the Inventive Machine.
Tom Leher – the man was (is) a prolific genius. He put his entire body of work into the public domain so our chidrens’ children can enjoy it.
Such a brave and fair player you are TTG. You can insult me but I can’t return the favor due to your censorship power. So A La Mode of you. You have a bright future behind you.
Enjoy my latest composition which is titled:
TTG and Eric Newhill Discover the Limits of the Vanishing Ghosts of Division By Zero.
https://tinyurl.com/6rdt9pbf
The future of AI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM3NJ8AqdcE
It’s not everyday of the week that the highly secretive organization that I secretly control from my offices 43 floors beneath the empire state building shares with the US Defense Intelligence Agency the results of our investigations into the reliability of Artificial Intelligence. But here are some inputs and outputs — and I invite you to draw your own conclusions.
https://tinyurl.com/3r54wdte
https://tinyurl.com/7w2cfjk2
https://tinyurl.com/y7t54n24
https://tinyurl.com/y6vjd77u
https://tinyurl.com/3d5c5xv7
https://tinyurl.com/5fx88brr
https://tinyurl.com/2s4tabdk
https://tinyurl.com/3tjy7m4w
https://tinyurl.com/24xps3ey
That Fine November Day in DASSLA.
https://tinyurl.com/bd9wmk73
Yes, that’s the title of my latest masterpiece, which I am finally allowed, by the organization I manage, to reveal to the world just 3 days before the upcoming 60th anniversary. As you can see, there were doubles. And the name of the city is at last spelled exactly as the Fuehrer Adolf Hitler ordered it to be spelled during a secret phone conversation with Allen Dulles in 1944, which tape we will release on an upcoming episode of “Is it Real, or Another Deep Fake: Audio Division.”
Benjamin Netanyahu, ft. Merle Haggard’s, “Fighting Side of Me”
https://tinyurl.com/muwn82fs
Vladamir Putin, ft. Buffalo Springfield’s, “For What It’s Worth”
https://tinyurl.com/54r4vhkk
Barack Obama, ft. Bruce Springsteen’s, “Born in the USA”
https://tinyurl.com/2rm5u22c
Donald Trump, ft Johnny Cash, “God’s Gonna Cut You Down”
https://tinyurl.com/bdwzmcdb
Joe Biden, ft Eric Clapton’s, “Cocaine”
https://tinyurl.com/497kdhta
Condottiere,
Is this AI’s take on anthems for these guys?
No this is me having fun 🙂
Saddam Hussein ft. Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”
https://tinyurl.com/56fyn2ut
Did you hear about Tom Hanks being chosen to play the role of Netanyahu in Stephen Spielberg’s upcoming biopic documentary?
It’s scarier as a concept to me than “Godzilla Flies Bruce Willis to the Asteroid to Free Fay Wray From Gay King Kong During the Two Hour Ice Age Apocalypse.”
Your tunes are quite nicely done. You’ve given me ideas, but I know zero about combining medias.
Kamala Harris ft. Garbage “Only Happy When it Rains”
https://tinyurl.com/vm56xnkj
Bill Clinton ft. ZZ Top “Pearl Necklace”
https://tinyurl.com/bcf5s45s
George W. Bush ft. Van Halen “Hot for Teacher”
https://tinyurl.com/2p97x88n
Muammar Gaddafi ft Geto Boys “Damn it Feels Good to Be a Gangsta”
https://tinyurl.com/4r45z93b
I’m Done! 🙂
What this blog is needing is the sage voice of Colonel Lang these days. I miss the straight shooting of the Colonel on this issue. His comments on one of the many previous massacres in Gaza. Surprise, surprise for all who seem to think that what is happening is new, or life in Gaza would be wonderful if not for “Khummas”.
“This is a revision of an article I published years ago on the subject of the Israeli Army. In the present circumstance of a US president who pledges America’s unending and unlimited future support of the Zionist state this article is particularly timely. We should examine what it is that we are wedded to. IMO the IDF ground forces are nothing like what the average American assumes them to be. They are in fact an army that has been very lucky in the enemies that they have faced. Their present employment in the massacre of Palestinians at Gaza is the kind of thing that they are now good at. The fabled hard assed kibbutzniks of long ago who won against Arab armies are gone, replaced by the Gucci generation. Israel should be wary of committing these people to combat against serious fighters. The Israeli Air Force is the real center of gravity of the country’s armed forces. pl ”
https://turcopolier.com/httpwwwunzcomplangisraels-juvenile-ground-army/
He wrote about the scenario Israel faces right now:
https://turcopolier.com/gaza-and-the-next-lebanon-war/
Yes, basically it would be a war where international norms, laws, LOAC will be tossed out the window, just like in Gaza. They know they have Uncle Sam running cover for them and will never be held to account the way that almost any other nation would be.
I have been reading and commenting on this blog since 2005. I think we will find many future events will have been predicted by Colonel Lang.
Hamas exterminated Fatah when they were voted into power by the Gazans. None of the color revolutionaries from the Arab Spring now back in the streets on command gave a damn. Tell us again about international norms.
“Hamas exterminated Fatah when they were voted into power by the Gazans”
Rather revisionist of you, Fred.
Hamas were not “voted into power by the Gazans”, they were voted into power by the PALESTINIANS.
The 2006 Election was a general election i.e. it was an election for the Palestinian Authority in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and Hamas handily won that election.
They only assumed power in the Gaza Strip because both the USA and Israel would not allow the vote to stand and pushed Fatah into attempting a coup.
But it is simply untrue to say that Hamas was voted into power only in the Gaza Strip.
No, sorry, they were voted into power everywhere.
Yeah Right,
Then, based on what you say, the war being waged on Gaza is justified. The Palestinian civilians bear responsibility and are paying the price they owe.
You don’t get to vote for hater killers of civilians and then cry foul when your own civilians are killed in return. I mean, sure, you can go ahead and try and of lot of mush brained westerners who flit from one social media cause to the next will buy your BS for a while, but don’t be surprised when then serious adults do not. Which is why the moron Palestinians of Gaza are going to be hung out to dry, even by other Arabs, and Col Lang’ predictions will never be realized
None of the color revolutionaries from the Arab Spring now back in the streets on command gave a damn.
Yes, sometimes you seemed twin brothers on the larger topic.* Especially concerning the homegrown communist/socialist threat you will be facing again during the second reign of the Cherry Blossom King?
* on other topics, occasionally not so much?
“Then, based on what you say, the war being waged on Gaza is justified. The Palestinian civilians bear responsibility and are paying the price they owe.”
To say that I disagree with that argument is an understatement.
Indeed, I am offended by your argument.
This is an article of faith to me: during an armed conflict the belligerent powers are REQUIRED BY LAW to make a distinction between “combatants” (who you can shoot at) and “protected persons” (who you can not shoot at).
The distinction between the two is crystal-clear: anyone who takes up arms against you is a “combatant”, and those who do not are “protected persons”.
International Humanitarian Law can not be clearer on that point.
It is UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT if a Palestinian voted for Hamas in the 2006 election,
It is UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT if a Palestinian runs around waving a Hamas flag in 2023.
Neither of those acts amounts to taking up arms against the IDF, and so neither of those acts can nor should strip anyone of their status as a “protected person”.
It only requires a person to reverse the situation to realize how indefensible your argument is.
As in: if a person attending that rave party on 7th October happened to have voted for Netanyahu in the last election does that mean they were a legitimate target for a Hamas bullet?
I’d say “No, no, it does not”.
What would you say? And why?
Because I look at YOUR argument and think to myself, well, Eric would have to conclude that they were asking for it.
Prove me wrong, Eric.
Yeah, Right,
Thanks for the sophistry lesson. Diversity is their strength. What’s the diversity of Gaza? 100% Palestinian or maybe some other voters live there?
“during an armed conflict the belligerent powers are REQUIRED BY LAW to make a distinction between “combatants” (who you can shoot at) and “protected persons” (who you can not shoot at).”
Who is going to enforce that? Who amongst all the millions of Palestinians are stopping the terrorists?
“100% Palestinian or maybe some other voters live there?”
Hamas didn’t just get elected “in Gaza”. They won the ENTIRE election that was held in the ENTIRETY of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
That is a fact, and that fact should be acknowledged rather than being dismissed as “sophistry”
I’m (slightly) curious: did you even know that when you posted your original comment?
Be honest, Fred.
“Who is going to enforce that?”
The eternal question relating to every war crime ever committed.
The correct answer is supposed to be “Israel”, but that ain’t going to be the case.
So the next step down from that is going to be “whoever defeats Israel”.
Failing that, the next step again would be the ICC.
Not all criminals get caught, fewer still get punished, but that doesn’t mean a crime wasn’t committed.
“Who amongst all the millions of Palestinians are stopping the terrorists?”
The same question can be posed to all the millions of Jews who are doing nothing to stop the war crimes of the IDF.
Your argument cuts both ways, Fred. Which you’d understand if you weren’t so one-eyed.
“IMO the IDF ground forces are nothing like what the average American assumes them to be. They are in fact an army that has been very lucky in the enemies that they have faced.”
Israel continues to face the same third rate, disorganized, back stabbing, flunky Arabs. Nothing has changed.
Col Lang did indeed enjoy waxing romantic about Israel falling, via hubris, at the hands of ascendent Arabs. It was one of the old man’s few irrational indulgences.
His prediction of Muslim nations joining together to wipe out Israel over Al Aqsa, wounded pride, or whatever, have not proven true and never will. It was merely the good Colonel’s fantasy. Muslims have never been able to unite; not even the Arabs amongst themselves. They are too given to treachery against each other – and they are too cowardly to face the wrath of the US.
Btw, if you are offended by how Israel conducts war, then you should be paralyzed by disgust at how the Arabs do. ISIS was not an historical aberration.
Eric,
Did you happen to tell the Colonel about his flights of fancy and just how wrong he was when he was alive? Or have you saved your braiding down of him for when he was dead and could no longer defend himself?
As for his view of Arabs. He lived for years in the Middle East, spoke Arabic and taught the subject at West Point. I am wondering what your experience and educational background is to make us think you have a better grasp of the situation than he did?
His comments and posts on the subject how a wide range of knowledge and experience. Your comments on the subject sound like the latest AIPAC dispatch garbled with classic Islamophobia.
Why yes, I have been consistent on my views for years and I expressed them openly and honestly to Col Lang here, on Facebook (we were friends) and elsewhere.
Col Lang said my views were ignorant and skewed by my background and I told him I saw his views being equally influenced by background and by romanticism. I like to think that we *respectfully* agreed to disagree. I held Col Lang in the highest esteem and he always challenged me to think. I never expressed an opposing view without much careful consideration and fact checking. He was a truly great man, but still a man all the same.
Happily, we agreed on many things, like the impending invasion of Iraq – which we both saw as inevitable given the rhetoric in the year or so prior to the invasion – was a huge mistake. The neocons behind it were twisted, incompetent freaks that should minimally be purged from government. Nation building in Afghanistan was a mistake. Syria should be left alone as it is a wonderful – and rare – example of a functioning multi-confessional state in the MENA. The Arabs (KSA/Gulfies) are corrupt and clever by half. Many other topics.
We disagreed over the destruction of Gaddafi’s government in Libya. I said it was a mistake. I think I have been proven correct on that one. He was for it. At the end, we disagreed strongly concerning Ukraine/Russia. My position was that we should stay out and let Russia have Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Not our fight – and the risks of a wider (perhaps nuclear) war too great.
You have these bogey men in your head, hillbillies with “islamophobia”, AIPAC – and you have this hyper inflated ego that tells you that anyone who disagrees with you must be stupid, ignorant and maybe evil because the only correct way to see things is the way you do. It would serve you well to take the opposing sides’ outlook and explore it. You might find out that the world is not so black and white and you might lose some of that certainty that you like to toss around.
Btw, curious – why no outrage over what the Turks and their kin in Azerbaijan are doing to Armenians? Want to see some recent videos of Azerbaijanis beheading Armenians? How about some historic genocide pics?
You still have failed to explain why your opinion is more informed on the Middle East than Colonel Lang’s. Have you traveled widely in the area? Speak the language? Taken the subject in school? A long history of interaction with peoples from the area?
It isnt about ego. When someone has nothing that would indicate they have an informed and educated opinion on something and literally quotes, verbatim, special interest talking points on the subject, yes, I pretty much think they have no idea what they are talking about.
As for the Turks, TBH I really do not know much about the situation and the history. I have no issue admitting when I do not know enough about a particular subject to put forward an opinion on it. I covered a lot of history on the Turks at university, it just never really interested me except as an interesting place to travel.
I understand where your pro Israel and reflexively anti Arab and Muslim opinions come from. I was raised the same way, in a family of very pro Israel very anti Muslim and Arab parents. The difference is I was able to move beyond that. But it does help me to understand both sides of that particular issue.
As to Ukraine and Russia, although having a very limited Ukrainian background, I am of the opinion that we shouldnt GIVE anything to anyone, rather we allow them to sort it out for themselves, one way or the other. I followed the situation pre 2014, it wasnt something we (the US) should have been involved with in the first place.
I too, held the Colonel in high regard and was very honored to have him contact me and ask me to write for the blog on issues pertaining to Yemen. I initially agreed, but a chronic illness in the family meant I was unable to do so.
I did talk up the blog in the couple of years I lobbied in DC against the Saudis and the war on Yemen and know for a fact that some of the people I talked to about it at the State Department, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ect are now avid readers.
Anyway, I think we have more in common than might be apparent. I apologise if my tone comes off wrong. I will work on it, it isnt my intention. Good day.
Stefan,
I never claimed that my opinion on anything is more informed than Col Lang’s. However, I am also not going to accept or assume that Col Lang had the infallible final word on the MENA either.
There are others with similar, even greater, experience than Col Lang who disagree with at least some of his conclusions to at least some extent. That doesn’t make anyone correct or wrong. It is a complicated region with many sub-cultures within cultures and, of course, a very long history – and there are many different aspects that could be emphasized over others by different experts; resulting in very different impressionistic pictures.
I think it is difficult for people who do not have to live there for their entire lives to understand; something that is true of any region and culture on the planet.
People from the US government (or British or French, etc) fly in for a year or two, meet with a select group of people for select reasons, who treat the American in special ways and then the American leaves with a perspective developed from the facet of the culture and history that was emphasized for completion of the mission.
I have not traveled ‘extensively” in the region, but have traveled. I have friendly distant relatives that still live in Lebanon and Syria. My father’s family began their journey to the US as Armenian genocide survivors who moved to Syria and Lebanon and then to the US. Some not arriving in the US until the 1970s. I grew up spending half of my time in the Detroit Middle Eastern community. My father would have me sit in on get-togethers at our home and speak with and learn from all these people, especially the folks that came over to get away from the Lebanese civil war.
In addition to English, I speak some Armenian, some Turkish and some Persian, but none nearly as well as I speak French (my paternal Grandmother thought that French was the most important language).
I am reminded of my first visit to the White Mountain Apaches at the invitation of a friend who was something of an up and coming Bear Clan leader. I wanted to be respectful and avoid making a faux pas. So I spent time in the anthropology section of the library reading up on Apache culture. I thought I had learned some basics by the time I was done. When I got to the reservation and my friend was showing me around and began to recite some of what the books had told me. At some point my friend stopped me. He was laughing. Where did I get all of these ideas? I explained. He then laughed harder and told me how once and a while anthropologists show up asking questions and the Apaches deliberately tell them all manner of silly stuff that ends up as facts in text books. As time went on, it became clear to me just how disconnected the text books are from reality.
I do not intend to read like Hasbara talking points. I wouldn’t know where to obtain any. My opinions are based on what I can confirm to be historic facts, current facts and rational thinking – all colored by my personal experiences.
I will also endeavor to watch my tone.
Saddam Hussein spoke Arabic and lived in the Middle East. Therefore everything he said or did was:
A) Ok, but not that great because he didn’t teach Arabic at West Point.
B) Worthy of the highest respect.
C) Gibberish spoken by a megalomaniacal homicidal sadist, but not for those two reasons.
D) Said in Arabic by a man of the Middle East.
F&L,
That was actually funny and spot on.
Right. So we have leaders of Israel, Jordan, KSA, Egypt, Syria, Iran, etc – and, of course leaders of Palestinians. All speak the language and all have spent ample time in the region. Yet somehow they all have different perspectives. How can that be?!!!??!?
Col Lang was a professional Arabist. A lifetime expert in Arab culture, language, politics, religion, and military affairs. We lost a good one.
ERIC,
White Mountain Apaches. I love that area. I was last there in November of 2019, hiking and following the wild horses that are so prolific on the reservation. Beautiful area.
I have been in and around the Arab community for 25 years now. I first got interested in the subject through Goethe and his fascination with Arab poets and poetry. He taught himself Arab, no easy feat in early 1800s Germany.
Stefan,
That’s great that you also appreciate the AZ White Mountains. Yes, those herds of horses are amazing. Now that I work from home, I have moved to AZ and was in those mountains this past August. I had forgotten just how beautiful the area is. I encountered herds of big horn sheep and the ubiquitous elk as well.
Goethe was, of course, a true genius. So I’m only mildly surprised that he was able to learn Arabic, but I didn’t know that he had.
Eric – there were some very serious debates on the Colonel’s site about Israel. I learned a lot from them.
What I learned fitted in with what I heard personally about the situation over there. Colonel Lang’s judgements resulted from familiarity with Israel, with the Middle East overall, and from his deep military and intelligence knowledge. There could have been no one better to assess the situation over there and his assessment even at this early stage stands the test of time.
On the current war, my views are I think directly opposed to yours. Or maybe not entirely. I think the Israelis are in the wrong, true, and I’ve no time for the way they treat the Palestinians; but I’ve also no time for Hamas. They fought alongside the Jihadis we used in Syria in our attempt to overthrow the government there. I think they picked up the atrocity theatre tricks those Jihadis used, plus the disregard for the welfare of civilians. I’ve also no time for the Western response generally to the crisis.
From that scarcely neutral position and given that, as you know, I know damn all about military matters, I attempt to consider the crisis from the military angle, from the moral angle, and from the international.
On the immediate military position, and setting all moral judgements aside, I don’t have any useful reading. Why is the IDF sending in tanks unsupported by infantry? What are their losses? Won’t the infantry following on behind face the same difficulties as if the tanks had never gone in ahead in the first place? How long is the operation expected to last?
These are a couple of assessments I found just recently. Are they realistic? Or are the people making those assessments influenced by their opinions on the conflict generally?
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/israel-and-americas-growing-zugzwang
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VwBBJsa9bY&t=1s
Accurate? You tell me. It’s so commonly done, to take selected evidence and from that build the story you wanted to arrive at in the first place. Is that what is happening in those two instances? Are there alternative assessments that arrive at a different view of the military situation?
From the evidence presented in those links and elsewhere it does look as if this operation isn’t going to be a quick in and out. Seems we’re talking months. Agreed?
On the moral considerations, I also came across recently the views of the historian Benny Morris.
https://www.logosjournal.com/morris.htm
And a recent and fuller exposition of Morris’ views.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B64JSRKG_o&t=42s
That takes me right back to that old debate on the Colonel’s site. At that time I chipped in with the argument that Israel’s current problems are the result of incomplete ethnic cleansing. Here we have one of the New Historians arguing the same. Morris blames that on Ben Gurion, I think. If I’m reading Morris right then in that recent interview he’s also stating that if it comes to a conflict between full ethnic cleansing and the loss of the State of Israel, he’ll go for the first. To put it bluntly, he’s ultimately an Endlösung hard liner even though that conflicts with his instincts.
But I don’t think that would work for the Israelis even were it practicable. The Israelis I know or know of would not wish to live in a society that could only survive by ethnic cleansing. They’d move out. And they’re the ones who are needed for economic survival. The country would be left with plenty of hard liners but nothing much except Western aid to live on. That is not a recipe for the long term. The moral angle, then, has practical consequences.
On the international position, that looks pretty disastrous for the West to me. Never mind all the talk. We’re sending massive naval forces into the area and the C17’s are airlifting in Lord knows what in the way of arms. I say “we” because we and the French are in there with the naval forces.
The Arabs know full well we’re not sending all that in to help them. This is the West against the Arab/Muslim world and I suspect that world isn’t the pushover it used to be. This is already a diplomatic disaster for the West.
You have recovered nicely, EO, I’m pleased to see it. Here’s something from the channel “It’s Still Not the End,” translated. It’s mildly interesting, and doesn’t overlap much with the Homology of the Venn diagrams your software implants seem to be projecting onto your retinas.
Is it true that the Chicken Pot Pie was first cooked up in an oven in Blighty? Is that what “Four and twenty blackbirds” refers to?
—————————
https://t.me/nonetutto/1386
The visit of US Secretary of Defense Austin to Kyiv was supposed to resolve the growing conflict between the OP and V. Zaluzhny. The result is positive. Zermak bit his tongue and stopped all behind-the-scenes attacks on the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The Minister of Defense of Ukraine R. Umerov received support for $100 million of the $250 million balance until the new year.
In addition, Austin discussed the results of the Shabak investigation into the GUR’s supply of weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah. Zelensky promised to stop Ermak’s flirting with the Republicans and D. Trump, as well as to publicly support the Democratic Party and D. Biden in particular.
In addition, the head of the Pentagon stated that it is inadmissible to disrupt the presidential elections in Ukraine and the elections to the Verkhovna Rada, otherwise the US military-industrial complex will not be able to guarantee the implementation of new budgets by Congress for the needs of Ukraine.
During the time of mud and complete freezing of the soil at the LBS, arms supplies from NATO countries and the United States will be reduced by 70%, since the Pentagon’s priority is still on Israel.
EO,
My opinion is that a lot of pundits and others are inappropriately projecting ideas arising from their own very different societies onto this conflict. So they are both overly complicating the situation and missing the mark.
To a couple of your points, I don’t see the Israelis as engaging in ethnic cleansing. There are Palestinians happily living in Israel as doctors, lawyers, all kinds of every day working people, serving in the IDF and at all levels of government. The problem is radical Palestinians who would, indeed, like to ethnic cleanse the region of Jews. They state as much in no uncertain terms and have since the 1930s – and their actions, current and historic, leave no doubt. You can make excuses for how those Palestinians became righteously radicalized, but all of those forgiving explanations rely on slanted history. It doesn’t really matter.
At this point, Israel is faced with a kill or be killed situation with regards to Hamas and all of its supporters in Gaza. Whatever people perceive as being Israeli atrocities, Hamas would do – and has done – to Israelis to the greatest extent possible for them given their resources and capabilities. Actually, it isn’t just Hamas. There are other radical groups operating in Gaza.
All of the talk about Israel making maters worse by invading and shooting up Gaza is just so much hot air. The radicals in, and supporting Hamas, et al aren’t going to be placated by Israel wearing kid gloves, doing surgical strikes, giving them their own state, etc.
Eric Newhill,
I see the problem with the pundits and all the extreme partisans on both sides is that they can only see the conflict in only in black and white. The only issue I see as black and white is that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are unrepentant terrorist who vow to continue committing their atrocities. I don’t think Israel has any real choice other than to destroy Hamas. On the other hand Likud and its right wing allies also want to cleanse the land they desire of Palestinians. They were just going about it in a more sophisticated manner until the massive bombing of Gaza. I doubt they want to kill that many Palestinians, but they don’t care if it happens. The bombings give the appearance of progress in the absence of going into the tunnels and rooting out the Hamas fighters. The IDF will not defeat Hamas until they go into those tunnels. And so far the IDF hasn’t demonstrated the intestinal fortitude to do so.
TTG,
I agree with your comment completely.
One thing you left out though is that apparently 31% of Gazans support Hamas. THAT represents a problem and I think it mitigates, but not completely absolves, the Israeli right wing’s not caring too much about civilian casualties.
TTG –
Para 1
“We preplan what happens if children enter into our area,” said one of the drone pilots, referring to calling off a strike. “We preplan what happens if the terrorists launch a rocket and then drive into a crowded area, as they so often do.”
Para 2
Critics of Israel’s tactics say the sheer volume of airstrikes it has conducted in such densely populated areas is worrying. In the first week of the conflict, Israel dropped 6,000 bombs in Gaza. In 2019, the U.S. dropped 7,400 bombs in Afghanistan over the course of an entire year.
———–
That’s lifted from this:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israels-secret-air-war-in-gaza-and-the-west-bank
The two paragraphs 1 and 2 are as divergent as four arrows shot N, E, S and W.
The only military activities I know of from recent history that dealt with comparable imponderables are some of the ISIS clearing ones where they dug into major cities in Syria and Iraq. The attacks, regarding civilians deaths were indiscriminate, as I recall but not as lunatic as this current bombing of schools, an entire university, refugee shelters, mosques, churches and 25 out of 36 hospitals. But I really don’t know those campaigns in any detail. However the audacity of the Israeli lying easily rivals the audacity of their indiscriminate brutality in my opinion. No one expected Al Capone to be honest about the St Valentine’s Day Massacre, and that’s about the best thing that can be said about this ongoing atrocity.
TTG
Do the Israelis need to go into the tunnels at this point ?
As they are taking control of the area they are undoubtedly discovering tunnel entries.
If they seal the entries/exits and control the surface, what can Hamas really do ?
Even if they cleared and destroyed all the tunnels, as soon as the population returns, so will the tunnel construction begin anew.
EO, if you don’t mind the abbreviation, I know this advice isn’t necessary for a man of your origins and distinction, but for those who overlook the fact that some Telegram posts aren’t always pleasant to print out and therefore it is wise to scroll up or down from one which is referenced, I’ve included this one which was one position further down from the earlier encrypted one concerning the Holograms of Commander Venn of Southwest Burgershire on Lady Avon. It demonstrates a keen regard.
——————–
https://t.me/nonetutto/1387
The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, visited Kyiv for two reasons.
The first and main thing is support for the regime of V. Zelensky and assistance in holding elections in the spring of 2024, where, subject to the terms of their agreements that can be reached today, Ze will win with the help of specialists controlled by the EC and Michel personally.
The second and no less important reason is the growing conflict between Ursula von der Leyen and Michel, which threatens to spill over into the public sphere and drown both. Michel really doesn’t want this and is ready, together with the OP, to include the resource of the British and Democrats to overthrow Ursula and package reformat the EC led by Michel.
In exchange, in addition to winning the presidential election, Zelensky will receive financial assistance from the EU for 6-8 months, regardless of the pre-election upheavals in the United States.
I hadn’t been ill, F&L, though Covid’s still around. Here and Germany. Hope not over your way.
Impressed by your computer pictures. Another of your talents and one that could be relevant here. Could you please look at the videos I linked to and tell me whether they are fake. Some of the weapons look very new and glossy. This is the section:-
https://youtu.be/8VwBBJsa9bY?t=222
EO,
TTG did an Ok job earlier of demonstrating why those particular clips prove next to nothing. I don’t think they are tinkered with electronically, simply that the first one could be of someone running up to a tank that ran out of fuel or was otherwise broken or abandoned, with an cardboard or other object shaped like a grenade and placing it on the tank. Then nothing happens. They are silly presentations. The best that can be said about them is that the presenters suffer from intellectual disabilities that prevent them from understanding that what they presented was inconclusive as to being proof of anything or that they are actually so stupid that they actually do blow up tanks but can’t organize a proper video documentation. Or the filming segments are purely fortuitous automatic footage from a runner wearing a camera he doesn’t even know he has and the footage was recovered remotely just before the runner died by detonating a land mine or being shot by a sniper. Which would explain why the real evidence, if there is any, wasn’t and couldn’t be recovered.
Why do you so mercilessly pull my leg, EO? You are reverting back to your very puzzling self that fast? I honestly hope you were trying to be polite and compose an intelligent response but the girl on Chaturbate starting talking to you personally in English so you just became a six year old, mentally.
F&L. The videos in question have not yet been commented on here . They’ve only now been released. It’s not a question of whether they were staged or incomplete, though they were certainly the latter. It’s a question of whether they were photoshopped. If you can’t tell, that’s OK but simpler just to say so.
Your final paragraph. I see enough offensive material on other sites. What you write here is your own affair but I have already requested you not to direct such material at me.
“Israel continues to face the same third rate, disorganized, back stabbing, flunky Arabs. Nothing has changed.”
Until it does. Everything about this current conflict suggests to me that the IDF does not view Hezbollah as in any way third-rate or disorganized.
Indeed, the IDF gives the impression of being mightily impressed by Hezbollah, and I suspect very much that the rank and file Hezbollah militiaman fancies their chances against the pampered princes and princesses that make up this current IDF.
And, indeed, I do not discount this current Syrian Arab Army, which has been through hell and back and is much, much, much more battle-hardened as a result.
If this war widens (which I suspect very much it will) then the IDF will have more than its hands full with Hezbollah, and once that becomes apparent then Assad is going to be very, very, very tempted to unleash his army against the Golan Heights.
After all, it is his territory, and he does indeed have a very well trained and well equipped army at his disposal.
And what does Netanyahu have under his command? Thugs with guns, to my eyes.
I’ll be honest with you, Eric. I don’t even think it will be a fair fight.
More like a back-alley mugging, with the IDF reservists as the victims.
YR,
IMO, Syria and Hezbollah don’t want a piece of that action. They won’t do anything serious. They have other fish to fry + you left out the US, which now has (I think) two Carrier groups in position.
You may be forgetting that the US was able to turn Iraq’s army into bloody dust, twice, in a matter of a few days – and the second time around, also cripple the country’s infrastructure just as fast. The desert is perfect for the fire power that the US can bring to bear on its enemies. The desert is not the jungles of Vietnam, nor the mountains of Afghanistan.
Nope, IMO, Hamas is on its own.
Turkey on the other hand may have a bone to pick for proposing the IMEC. It will compete with their IDRP and may make it useless. Egypt may have a dog in the fight as that would compete with the Suez canal as well. They are likely trying to use this to foment a coalition in the Pan-Arab world against the fragile linchpin of the corridor which reinforces the Abraham Accords. Iran and maybe Iraq(?) also do not want a pro-Western security pact that counterbalances Iran and their axis of resistance. War may not be the objective, but instead to dissolve agreements and relationships. I find the timing of this messy Hamas ̶a̶t̶t̶a̶c̶k̶ provocation to be suspect as it happened between G20 and APEC.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkey-erdogan-opposes-india-middle-east-corridor
“IMO, Syria and Hezbollah don’t want a piece of that action. ”
We will agree to disagree.
“They have other fish to fry + you left out the US, which now has (I think) two Carrier groups in position.”
Indeed true, the USA is furiously posturing.
But to my mind that’s all it is: posturing.
“Nope, IMO, Hamas is on its own.”
And Netanyahu has to hope that this is true, because if it isn’t then the war grows into something that his army isn’t equipped to fight, and can’t hope to win.
Seems a foolhardy assumption to make, but there you go: I’m not at all convinced that Israel’s ruling-regime has much between the ears other than boiling rage.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12769509/Mil the furei-victory-Trump-congratulations-Argentina-election.html
This goes to show the frustration in Argentina. Decades of Peronism has devastated the economic well-being of most Argentinians. Will this new President be able to make a dent in overcoming the deeply entrenched institutional prerogatives? I’m reminded of this quote from Tocqueville…”The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
If Milei follows Trump, then it would imply that he’ll be equally unsuccessful. Trump hired his entire administration from the Swamp.
The problem is in most countries the political parties are mostly run by the same establishment coming from the same swamp. There is little difference between them. They all push for the advancement of their social economic class over others.
There is a reason why Trump and the Clintons were so friendly before he decided to really get into politics. At the end of the day the establishment in the US will look out for themselves. Trumps, Clintons, and their ilk, all pulling together to make sure that them and theirs take more and more of what wealth our country has to offer, leaving everyone else of all politics beliefs, in their dust. Trump hired from the swamp because he is part of the swamp.
Trump’s genius is making people believe he is somehow apart from the swamp when he has been a member of the swamp since day 1,
If what you say was true, then the swamp would not have come after Trump so restlessly and ruthlessly. Also, for all the digging for crimes the swamp did against Trump, they really never fond anything serious, proving that he is nothing like the Clintons, Bidens, etc.
And how friendly were the Trumps and Clintons? So they attended some of the same black tie affairs and played nice in public. Means nothing. That is nothing like being embroiled in dirty dealings together, which they weren’t, but real swamp critters are.
Stefan,
“theirs take more and more of what wealth our country has to offer,”
What a bunch of marxist claptrap. Is “our” country’s wealth a finite resource stuck in that lock-box Al Gore was gonna put Social Security into? The Clintons were and are corrupt politicians. They didn’t have squat before they moved to Arkansas and got involved in running for office. Trump, before he got into politics, was a NY real estate developer and first class bore. He created plenty of wealth and appears, after all these years and lawsuits, to be a heck of a lot more trustworthy than that dynamic duo who rebuilt Haiti into a shining beacon of freedom in the Caribbean.
Biden and Barack, Pelosi and Newsome, and all the rest, of course, are shining beacons of integrity and humility.
Fred –
Thank you for inspiring in me the title for this masterpiece. I was going to call it “The Ancestors of Fred, TTG, F&L and Eric Newhill are Landing Near Ellis Island,” but the new title is:
Biden and Barack, Pelosi and Newsome, and all the rest, of course, are shining beacons of integrity and humility.
https://tinyurl.com/muua2d95
My only question is why are Kaiser Willy and Chancellor Bismarck not included? Why not Dick Cheney and Georgey Dubya? And where the F is Slick Willy? But I get it. “Where the F is Slick Willy” will be the title of an upcoming canvas. Thank you.
“marxist claptrap”. I am sorry, I dont think referring to how things were in the US for the “greatest generation” is “marxist claptrap”. Back in the days where a man, without a college education was able to hold a job and be paid well enough to buy a house, own a car, let his wife stay at home and raise the kids, take a vacation or two a year.
This is how it was in the 1940s, 1950s. Somehow I doubt the WW2 vets of this generation thought they were living “marxist claptrap”.
My grandfather, a WW1 vet, was able to buy a home, a car, let his wife stay home and raise the children and vacation every year. He sent his kids to private Catholic schools. What high end, highly educated job did he have that allowed him to be able to afford all of that? He was a train conductor. Yeah, a train conductor paid well enough to be able to afford the same things that dual income households are struggling to afford today. When he passed away, he was collecting his social security, his railroad pension, had owned his house for decades and had a good chunk of savings in the bank.
This is what “the greatest generation” in the US could expect. Now this is “marxist claptrap”.
It is not “marxist claptrap” it is how things USED to be in this country. I want to go back to when a man could do an honest day’s work and be able to afford to support his family on it.
The majority of Americans live pay check to pay check, usually on TWO wages and struggle to afford what my grandfather easily afforded on a high school education in an unprofession, unskilled job. The American dream, the greatest generation. All marxists. Who would have thunk it?
That dream’s gone. All that’s left for most is the sense of loss.
“Homeplace
“The homeplace is the home of the heart for many West Virginians. The term usually does not refer to one’s actual present home, but rather to the place where one grew up or to the original home of one’s extended family. In some cases a relative may still live at the homeplace, while other families work together to keep up the old family home, as a joint family camp or vacation home. Some West Virginians have held onto their homeplace for generations, while other families have lost theirs altogether. But many have such a place, at least in memory, which they cherish as the true home of themselves and their kin.”
https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/472
So the meaning in some rural parts of the US. Not a term I’ve ever heard used in England. “Who will watch the home place” is, however, open to an extended meaning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_V9ENXCD8Y
Stefan,
I am very happy for granddaddy’s success. I’m surprised he got SS and a railroad pension as the later didn’t pay into social security, but kudos for him.
“Trumps, Clintons, and their ilk, all pulling together to make sure that them and theirs take more and more of what wealth our country has to offer”
How is Clinton defrauding her own foundation or Trump building real estate across the Republic “taking” wealth the country has to offer; how did that keep rail road conductors, or anyone else, from earning a sufficient income, as defined by what your grand dad was able to do?
If you want to return to the ‘greatest’ generation days get rid of DEI, Feminism (which put a few million women into the work forces – zero impact on wages of course), and all the immigration that changed the social make up of the Republic. That’s about 70 million people more or less. Good luck.
Stefan,
Many of us long for those good old days.
The Marxist claptrap of “The Great Society” and women’s lib led directly to the societal ills that you bemoan. Women in the work place doubled the labor force, driving down wages, especially and worse, relative to inflation created by massive government spending on great society programs (increase of monetary supply always leads to inflation).
My father didn’t even speak English until sometime in grade school. There was no welfare. Yet his father was able to establish a successful tailor shop (and then a second one) in which the whole family worked. They had a modest, but nice, house in a solid middle class neighborhood. My father was then able to attend the University of Michigan, earn an engineering degree, fight in WW2, then earn a law degree and soon purchase a home in a very good neighborhood, allow my mother to stay at home to raise my brother and me and, generally, live the American dream. Never a handout from Uncle Sugar or anyone else.
Stefan,
I hope you understand that you are speaking here, in some instances, with very lowbrow people. As soon as you hear “Marxist claptrap” thrown at you in text boxes here, don’t try to argue with them. I don’t know how people allow themselves to become so hopelessly and erroneously indoctrinated other than that American society in many sectors is really base, mean, violent and cruel – its the only thing on offer and people just want to be accepted. If everyone’s a lowbrow Archie Bunker, what to do? You have devoted Trump supporters here. Supporters of a criminal psychopath who runs on a platform of locking up tens of millions of people in concentration camps and revoking every decent civil liberty remaining. Many are gun nuts. (Note – TTG, an actual military officer is NOT a gun nut.)
You need to comprehend that although a board like this can attract some intelligent people who understand military affairs and want to participate it also unfortunately attracts sadists and people drawn to the cruel dark side of life, as well as bitter old people grappling with senility or the ravages of age. You have here people who actually think the psycho recently elected in Argentina is just what the doctor ordered. There’s no point in debating anything with people who are that old and have arrived at such a place in their viewpoints.
Eric,
My great grandmother didnt speak English until she started kindergarten. They ended up having a cross burned on their law, pesky Catholic Europeans. My grandfather ended up building the home that my mother grow up in in rural PA. I was just up there recently. Still churches in that small town where the congregations are split by where in Europe you came from.
Stefan
I would blame deep seated corruption rather than Peronism for Argentina’s problems. My recommendation for anyone who wants to understand Argentina better is to watch the film Carancho(2010).
“Trump hired his entire administration from the Swamp.”
Trump cut his teeth in NYC tabloids. He learned to revel in controversy and free publicity. Even negative publicity is free publicity. Trump also learned to be acute in making the liberal media’s hunger for negative sensationalism eat their words. He also learned a unique skillset by spending over a decade cashiering out celebrities from made up jobs on TV for entertainment. Accepting a Trump nomination has been a kiss of death for his enemies. It seems like he hires certain people and gives them enough rope to hang themselves just so he can drum them out into obscurity. Reince Priebus who? Whats a Jeff Sessions? Why don’t I hear any more tough guy talk from James Mattis? This is just some of his 4D chess play.
Deep sea mining for metals and rare earth. The Aussies have been looking into it for over 40 years, perhaps since the 1970s. And Namibia. The Norwegians are working to transit from drilling offshore oil to deep sea mining. China now wants to get on the bandwagon to protect their market dominance in rare earths. The US could have been doing this decades ago. But we’ve been betting on the asteroids instead of the oceans.
So is undersea mining at 3000 fathoms a better level of Return On Investment than harvesting rock 300 million kilometers from earth?
How many grams of asteroid dirt have ever been returned to earth?
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/11/20/china-deep-sea-mining-critical-mineral-energy-transition-isa/
leith,
As a kid in the ’60s, I was just as interested in oceanography as I was in space travel. For some reason I remember reading about Germany mining nodules (I think gold) from the seabed to help pay war reparations. Don’t know if it post-WWI or post-WWII. Maybe the story was in my imagination, but I think it was in one of my monthly science club books. Most of the illustrations were large stamps that I had to paste onto the appropriate page myself.
I understand the environmental concerns and the concerns for the difficulty and costs of deep sea mining, but bet it’s a hell of a lot cheaper and not as difficult as asteroid mining.
Rick Brant? Tom Corbett?
Just asking 🙂
I forgot the source…
To pay the reparations provided for in the Treaty of Versailles, a German chemist had a kolossal idea: obtain gold by electrolysis of seawater . 0.004 mg gold in 1 m3 sea water. Too hard to calculate in your own units. Just remember that the proportion is very, very, very small).
The sheer amount of energy required, and therefore of coal, made those in charge take a step backwards. Of course, Belgium and France would have been satisfied with coal deliveries, as compensation in kind.
1- Coal, like oil and methane, is the real gold of our age.
2- The mere idea of gold clouds even the best brains.
TTG –
Me too. I turned to snorkeling as a boy after reading Gilpatric’s book on what he called ‘goggle fishing’. Plus another by a German author (forgot the name dammit) who spearfished the Curacao reefs before being interned. And of course Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues book and the 1950’s movie of the same. William Beebe’s bathyscape adventures grabbed the headlines back then. My cousin Bobby and I built an air-pump and could have killed ourselves using it in a local lake. I could never get it to work below a foot or two in depth. This was long before Captain Costeau and Scuba tanks became popular.
Did you also experiment in model rocketry?
drifter –
Not back then. But a marriage and a trio of kids later, my son and grandson and I used to experiment with water rockets.
TTG, your memory tricks you. It feels you may have stumbled across this, a very, very special type of mining. But notice it were unsuccessful experiments:
Fritz Haber:
via the Encyclopedia Britannica:
Technical projects of interest during this period include his unsuccessful experiments (1920–26) in extracting gold from seawater in order to pay Germany’s war debt and his proposal
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Fritz-Haber#ref260674
https://www.geologyin.com/2017/07/there-are-20-million-tons-of-gold-in.html
There Are 20 Million Tons of Gold in the Oceans, But We Can’t Get at It
LeaNder,
It was 60 years ago when I read that, so please excuse my faulty recollection. I couldn’t even remember if it was post-WWI or post-WWII. But thanks for the research.
You’re welcome, TTG, no excuse necessary, but to this German it immediately felt only made sense in the post WWI in the larger Versailles context. Thus, I checked. Familiar with Fritz Haber, but not with this bit of his biography.
TTG –
Speaking of undersea mining, it appears Hamas did a bit of it off the coast of Gaza. From WW1 Royal Navy wrecks, HMS Staunch & HMS Monitor M15, they raised hundreds shells to be repurposed. Video below, the diving and retrieval starts about minute 6:53.
https://www.memri.org/reports/al-jazeera-network-documentary-about-hamas-missile-industry-iran-sends-kornet-fajr-missiles
If only they had decided on using all those skills to create a tourist centered diving industry offshore, irrigation for local farms, and a hospitality industry years ago. “Imagine” (John Lennon reference) what they could have created in Gaza. Then there’s all that off-shore natural gas (allegedly). The Europeans, who love touristing in communist Cuba, could save money by going to Gaza, they place they are currently marching on behalf of. Imagine…..
Fred,
The Israelis wouldn’t even let Palestinian fishermen fish in peace. I doubt they’d let the the Gazans develop any of those industries and I doubt Hamas ever had any interest in doing so either.
Bush and Obama and the Orange Man and the EU and the UN did what? Where were all those Arab nations now so outraged?
Create circumstances you want instead of letting others create them for you. It’s a saying I heard as a teen that I never forgot.
I do not care about Russia, Ukraine, Israel or Palestine. We have a large bag of problems right here that nobody seems concerned with for some reason. Illegal aliens pouring in unchecked from all over the planet, hardcore drugs impossible to get off of, rampant homelessness, rampant crime, out of control debt.
If we don’t start honing in on this stuff we might have a decade or two but that’s a wrap and I guarantee you nobody in Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Palestine or anywhere else will give two shits about it.
Amen
I would add that our education system stinks and is producing pampered idiots that are not unemployable. That, in turn, impacts our ability to produce/manufacture critical goods such that we become dependent on foreign adversaries, like China – and further go into debt.
Minus (-) idiots times (x/multiplied by) minus (-) unemployed = employed idiots?
This article linked to below beautifully summarizes many of my thoughts on the present state of affairs. It necessarily omits a portion of them because they are unprintable according to the rules of decorum enforced on this site.
The collapse of Israel and the United States, by Thierry Meyssan.
For the first time, the world is witnessing a crime against humanity live on television. The United States and Israel, who have long since joined forces, will both be held responsible for the mass massacres in Gaza. Everywhere except Europe, Washington’s allies are withdrawing their ambassadors from Tel Aviv. Tomorrow, they will do the same in Washington. Everything is happening as it did when the USSR broke up, and it will end the same way: the American Empire’s very existence is threatened. The process that has just begun cannot be stopped.
https://www.voltairenet.org/article219991.html
You may also want to look over one of the late Colonel Lang’s highly recommended analysts here in this video – Ambassador Chas Freeman. On the iOS YouTube app which I generally use, there is a text blurb for purposes of grabbing attention which says “Worse Than the Nazis” written over the image which appears in the algorithmic feed, though I haven’t quite found Ambassador Freeman himself saying that explicitly yet as of the 10 minute mark. I myself would say “Easily comparable, so far, to the Nazi assaults on Poland and later Belarus, unquestionably and without a doubt, though who’s counting?”
Israel Doesn’t Even Try To Hide Its Genocide On The Palestinians. (Chas Freeman Interviewed).
https://youtu.be/OcXWHOhugyM
I watched the interview with Chas Freeman who I have immense respect for. He encapsulates the current situation well giving the historical context of the ” jail break” on October 7.
F&L
He claims Israeli cabinet to be Worse than Nazis literally in the first minute.
More specifically :
“…the worst determined genocidal cabinet the world has ever seen, and I don’t excuse the Nazi cabinet from that comparison”.
This is pretty harsh, coming from a former assistant secretary of defense and diplomat.
wiz,
It is indeed harsh, absolutely. The question is if it’s deserved. Stop just for a second, close your eyes, sit full or half-lotus and imagine that in the place you are living, fighter bombers have been flying overhead almost non-stop and dropping 1 and 2 ton high powered explosives on your street and those of your relatives for 40 days and 40 nights. Your clinic is rubble, your doctor is dead and two of your closest .. . Ok, I’ll stop. 2 questions arises in your mind as you watch another three carts carry two dozen corpses past what used to be a school. 1- Is anyone.I know in one of those carts? 2- Am I comforted by the thought that at least I’m not being marched into.a gas chamber this afternoon? Then a magic genie appears and advises you: Don’t be so harsh, after all, it isn’t 900 consecutive days of starvation and bombing, is it? Can you spell “Leningrad?” You say “P e t e r s b u r g” and the genie grants you the first of three wishes. Then you snap out of it.
All I can honestly say is that personally I detest the Israeli regime for reasons too numerous to list here. And yes, Chas Freeman unsurprisingly has history with that same regime and its agents in the US, a personally bitter history. In my opinion for nothing more sinful than having spoken up for the interests of his country as he watched the neocon’s surreal and destructively expensive horror show of lies and war crimes spanning at least two decades. Yes it’s harsh. So is killing 14,000 civilians including 5,000 children in only 40 days. You can’t propel a Boeimg 747 into the clouds with a rubber band and a handful of feathers, nor can you respond.to the ongoing treatment of Gaza with a smile and Gene Kelly’s Singin’ in the Rain, unless you are auditioning for the role of Norman Bates in ‘Psycho.’
F&L
Two people fighting over the same piece of land.
One has the upper hand and is able to inflict disproportionate amount of damage to the other party.
This has been going on for thousands of years.
Is Israel commiting war crimes ? Yes.
Is it trying to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza and the West bank ? Sure.
However, calling Israeli government worse than nazis and most genocidal in all human history is harsh.
Chas Freeman is not some random internet troll but a former US gov official and diplomat.
Haha. I hope these former soldiers don’t succumb to this temptation to re-up. Certainly not without a hefty reward for doing so, something on the order of a million dollars at least. Are there any hotshot lawyers on the case, or are these former service members permanent pariahs now in Genocide-Joe’s America? Yes, that’s Biden’s new name, I absolutely did not make it up. It’s a pity that Trump is even worse, but that’s a design feature of Hell.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/-news/army-sends-letter-to-troops-dismissed-for-refusing-covid-vaccine-amid-militarys-recruitment-woes/ar-AA1khJ3U?ocid=sapphireappshare
Kirby responds to reporter’s question on nickname “Genocide-Joe.”
(Joseph Stalin chuckles and says “‘Palestine’and ‘Pale of Settlement’ each begin with the same four letters in your language, Gospodina Bidena, ha ha ha!”)
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-issues-brutal-response-inappropriate-nickname-anti-israel-critics
Max Blumenthal has posted an audio recording in which an Israeli colonel seems to describe a “mass Hannibal” targeting by the Israeli military of Hamas militants AND Israeli citizens on October 7 to prevent captives from getting to Gaza.
https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1726681301535842338
Israeli police and media are reporting friendly fire incidents at the music concert. Given the chaotic nature of the events on October 7th and the subsequent push to take back land held by Hamas, it would be surprising if there were not friendly fire incidents.
There are also reports that Hamas had, and were using, IDF uniforms during the attack and occupation of Israel. Making friendly fire incidents even more likely.
https://www.businessinsider.com/idf-mistakenly-hit-festival-attendees-while-targeting-hamas
Stefan
Friendly fire would be one thing but something along the lines of a “mass Hannibal directive” would, to my mind, be something entirely different.
That’s been known for quite awhile now. Estimates run to well over 50% of the initially numbered 1400 Israeli casualties having been due to Israeli fire. (The official 1200 was already revised down to 1200 – all such numbers are always intentionally misleading).
F&L,
Without some hard core forensic evidence, I’m calling BS on the 50% friendly fire meme.
I know it’s been popular among the Israel hating crowd to repeat that meme. I guess they think it serves the purpose of diminishing Hamas’ evil, or something. Like Hamas only killed 600 and just fired a few hundred rockets indiscriminately at Israeli cities and that’s no big deal, because, well, Israel kills its own citizens? Some also seem to think the whole thing was committed by Bibi to distract from his political problems and to create an excuse to wipe out Palestinians. Sounds like wacky 9/11 “trutherisms” and Sandy Hook crisis actors to me. I don’t know. I’m just guessing at what the meme might do for that crowd.
I know LJ was backing the meme and his minions ate it up. They cited burned cars at the music festival as evidence of IDF killing their own people; like Hamas didn’t have RPGs, Molotov cocktails, WP grenades and other incendiary devices. Also, holes in houses that looked like they could have been created by hits from IDF tank guns. Maybe they were created by tank guns after the homes were taken over by Hamas and the occupants killed by AK fire. I don’t know, but I do know that we have video taken by Hamas of Palestinians killing plenty of Israelis. I’m also pretty sure that the rockets raining down over Israel weren’t holograms.
Those guys are also into the idea that Israel created the bomb proof bunker and tunnels under the hospital that Hamas used as a command center. I’m not sure what that meme is supposed to do either. I mean the kind hearted Israelis built the Palestinians a hospital and thoughtfully dug a bomb proof shelter under it to protect patients, doctors and nurses in the event of war. Then later Hamas used those structures for their own nefarious purposes. How any of that excuses Hamas and indicts Israel escapes me entirely, but the Israel haters appear to see something in it that makes them gleeful.
It does help clarify what might be wrong with the CIA though.
Those guys are also into the idea that Israel created the bomb proof bunker and tunnels under the hospital that Hamas used as a command center.
Not following him closely, but interesting hint and link by Bernard, still alive and kicking at his MOA:
I would assume you consider the staff of Tablet magazine beyond suspicion? No? Not really?
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/top-secret-hamas-command-bunker-in-gaza-revealed
Top Secret Hamas Command Bunker in Gaza Revealed
And why reporters won’t talk about it
BY STAFF NOTES, JULY 29, 2014
The Israelis are so sure about the location of the Hamas bunker, however, not because they are trying to score propaganda points, or because it has been repeatedly mentioned in passing by Western reporters—but because they built it. Back in 1983, when Israel still ruled Gaza, they built a secure underground operating room and tunnel network beneath Shifa hospital—which is one among several reasons why Israeli security sources are so sure that there is a main Hamas command bunker in or around the large cement basement beneath the area of Building 2 of the Hospital, which reporters are obviously prohibited from entering.
Not a fan of JL, never was, but didn’t you too eat him up on PL’s blog. Stolen Election?
LeaNder,
I do not understand what significance can be found in the fact(?) that Israel constructed the shelter and tunnels. Is it supposed to be a conspiracy by a far sighted Israel? Israel built the shelter and tunnels knowing that 40 years later Hamas would utilize them for its own purposes and therefore Israel is to blame for their own problems? I don’t get it. Seems like conspiracy theory by innuendo (is there any other kind?) and, unless the whole concept is more fully developed elsewhere, really stupid fluff for Israel haters to consume and belch and fart over.
I do agree with stolen elections and, therefore, with LJ on that topic. LJ came out of the gate strong on Ukraine, then, within a year, faded into a cheap knock-off of Bernard. They even share the same lefty, Eurotrash, US-hating and, on the right, US trailer park wannabe revolutionary scum commenters. Bernard at least attempts to develop a cogent – albeit hate filled and severely slanted – argument. LJ doesn’t even bother with that level of rhetorical attainment. Maybe he’s smart to not waste the time and effort. His minions eat up what he serves regardless. And he’s enjoying becoming “relevant” with appearances on various contrarian podcasts.
Is it supposed to be a conspiracy by a far sighted Israel?
Oh dear, no secret message to discover. Not in this case. 😉
Only the simple fact: Israel knows there is a tunnel, since it built it in 1983, and the topic comes up every time Israel fights Gaza once again. And thereafter is conveniently forgotten again, most of all by media with its fast access to the archives.
I found your characterization of Bernhard and LJ not bad. LJ was never my cup of tea. Don’t miss him, quite the opposite. …
PL the sometimes romantic, now that is an interesting idea. But wouldn’t you agree, he wasn’t very romantic under Trump. Counterrevolutionaries are no romantics ever, but political realists?
Well, if Eric Newhill “calls BS” on it I guess that’s definitive. A man on capitalized first and last name leading letter terms not only with Larry Johnson but with Bull Shit itself! Who accepts “hard core forensic evidence,” and not merely some childish, cockamamie “forensic evidence.”
F&L,
I am merely offering my opinion. I thought that was understood. Everyone has an opinion. I have never claimed to be a final authority on this topic. No one is. Not even Col Lang. Even the experts disagree, which is fine, of course.
What I don’t like is people making up facts and history and, yes, BS conclusions based on some childish, cockamamie “forensic evidence.”
Eric /
If you’re a paid Israeli troll I would not be the least bit surprised.
F&L,
I have no reason to believe Eric is a paid troll for anyone. We’ve shared ideas here for years and often don’t agree, but he is sincere and speaks his own mind, not anybody else’s.
At first I thought “Benjamin “ referred to the UK Sec of Defense Wallace but forgot that Schnapps read laced Cognac Ben Wallace. Then I realized he must mean the psychotic Genghis Khan imposter Squirtgun Bibi who is PM of Miseryreal.
Bottom line sports enthusiasts: Either the director of the Russian Submarine Force Herald is very cleverly deceiving me or Lloyd was taking the Gerald Ford home.
Which is why the clouds, the birds, the sun and the moon and all the beautiful living things on planet Earth sometimes just want to call Secretary of Defense General Lloyd Austin – “The Wise and Gentle Giant Lloyd.”
https://t.me/subforcherald/1406
The second attempt of the American AUG, led by the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, to leave the Mediterranean Sea and head home failed.
The ships only managed to reach the western part of the Ionian Sea when Pentagon chief Austin over the weekendordered the carrier strike group to be extended for about another month.
Benjamin finally persuaded Lloyd…
https://news.usni.org/2023/11/20/secdef-austin-again-extends-uss-gerald-r-ford-deployment
Gymnocladus Dioicus.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_coffeetree
I miss our discussions of trees and the etymology of their interesting names. Those were the days. And that’s why these wars have to end really soon, we can get back to thinking up codenames for some of our revered leaders and return to simply calling them crooks rather than genocidal war criminal baby killers.
I was reading that Brazil recorded it’s highest temperature ever:
————
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/others/brazil-records-its-hottest-ever-temperature
Brazil has recorded its hottest ever temperature – 44.8C (112.6F) – as parts of the country endure a stifling heatwave.
The record was hit on Sunday in the town of Araçuaí, in Brazil’s south-eastern state of Minas Gerais.
The unprecedented weather has been attributed to the El Niño phenomenon and climate change.
———–
… when I realized I knew nothing about the origin of the name ‘Brazil’ and it turns out it’s a country which owes its name to the Brazilwood Tree. “What came first – Kentucky or Kentuckywood Trees?”
So how should we refer to Mitch McConnell in code – Gymnocladus Dioicus or The Kentucky Coffeetree? Remember, codeword ‘Extinct Dodo Bird’ is always reserved for the provisional loser of a US Presidential election during the time intervals allotted for something it is impossible to discuss openly unless you play golf wearing a funny looking long black silk robe AND you also are the director, awaiting sentencing for several felonies, of the International Bitcoin Laundering Agency.
Anybody interested in wargaming a potential conflict with North Korea?
Here is a quite impressive example of such:
https://thebulletin.org/2023/11/why-north-korea-may-use-nuclear-weapons-first-and-why-current-us-policy-toward-pyongyang-is-unsustainable/
On CNN, former Mossad officer Rami Igra:
“Now, again, one little note, the non-combatant population in the Gaza Strip is really a non-existent term because all of the Gazans voted for the Hamas, and as we have seen on the 7th of October, most of the population in the Gaza Strip are Hamas”
Apparently in Israel it is the opinion that voting for someone is enough to strip that person of his status as a “protected person” under International Humanitarian Law.
And here I was thinking that a person loses their status of a “protected person” when they get called up for active service, don their “distinctive symbol visible at a distance”, and carry their weapons openly.
I stand corrected, apparently.
What do the ex-warriors in this thread think of Igra’s argument?
Because I for one think that it is an admission of a grave violation of the laws of war.
Yeah, Right,
The “all Gazans voted for Hamas” is absolute bullshit. Hamas won a plurality of votes in the January 2006 parliamentary elections running as the Change and Reform list. Fatah was widely viewed as corrupt and ineffective. It’s little surprise the Palestinians turned to an alternative after years of unmet expectations. In 2007 Hamas staged a military take over of Gaza and have maintained control since then. They weren’t voted into leadership in Gaza. Likud governments have bewilderingly lent support to Hamas even after the 2007 military takeover. So perhaps the Israeli electorate is responsible since they voted for Likud governments.
Protected persons are protected persons. A responsible and professional military does not target protected persons.
Maybe some SF teams should go into Gaza and help the people throw off the dreadful yoke of Hamas. Then the people would vote for a peace party that renounces the idea of “from the river to the sea” and, instead, works with the US and Israel and whoever else to build a prosperous, safe community. In time, it could even become a sovereign Palestinian state. How hard could it be for a couple million motivated people to get rid of 25,000 Hamas psychos?
Oh yeah, wait a minute, 31% of Palestinians support Hamas. Then there’s probably a not insignificant percent that would prefer one of the other violent terrorist groups.
Eric Newhill,
Except Gaza is Israel and Israel has no interest in implementing the two state solution. And until a month ago they had no interest in getting rid of
Hamas. They preferred to keep the Palestinians divided.
TTG,
I don’t know about any of that. Maybe you’re right. It’s an educated guess. Keeping the opposing people divided is an oldie but goodie. Inference says it could very well be what they have tried to do.
You and I are both spiritual people. We would like truth, justice and general goodness to prevail. And they will, just not in this world. Sorting through each sides’ cases and arriving at a fair assessment of right and wrong is beyond our capacity. I can’t see into men’s hearts like God can.
In this world, in my humble opinion, we have to judge actions on more base necessities. The Jews want a homeland where they can control their own fates. I don’t understand the lack of empathy for what the Jews have endured as a diaspora and why they need that homeland.
The Muslims could not handle a Jewish majority in Israel. They started waging wars against the Jews (and kept losing). So now Israel will do whatever it feels it must to protect itself. It cannot allow a Muslim majority in Israel because the Muslims will exile or kill all of the Jews (River to sea).
Only a fool doesn’t try to protect himself, his family and his people from a sworn enemy. If that enemy is intermingled with “civilians”, then the civilians are going to be killed along with the enemy. All countries have fought existential wars that way, including the US.
First and foremost duty is to your own.
I don’t like it either, but I didn’t make the rules of life on earth.
I think I’m done with opining on the subject, though will be interested to see how it plays out
Eric Newhill,
Muslims could not handle a Jewish state, period. But they eventually came around as did the PLO. And it is very true that Israel cannot allow a Muslim majority in Israel. The only way to prevent that is ethnic cleansing or a two state solution.
It is important to remember that back in 1993 the PLO and the government of Israel exchanged official letters.
The PLO letter acknowledged not only that the state of Israel existed, but that the state of Israel had a RIGHT to exist in peace and security.
The responding letter from the government of Israel said, essentially, this: that’s nice, we’ll pocket that.
No Israeli recognition of the state of Palestine, much less a recognition that the state of Palestine had a RIGHT to exist, let alone exist in peace and security.
No, just a “thanks, let’s talk”.
So forgive me if I take Eric’s one-sided view of all this with a grain of salt, because the Palestinians did indeed offer the olive branch and the Israelis showed not the slightest interest in returning the favor.
They still haven’t
TTG: “The “all Gazans voted for Hamas” is absolute bullshit.”
True, but irrelevant in terms of Igra’s argument.
Because even if it were true (and as you say, it isn’t) that doesn’t make the slightest difference: a civilian is a “protected person”, and the only way they can lose that status is if they take up arms against a belligerent.
Voting for Hamas doesn’t cut it.
Cheering on Hamas doesn’t cut it.
TTG: “Protected persons are protected persons. A responsible and professional military does not target protected persons.”
Indeed true. And a politician or pundit doesn’t go around pretending that a civilian can be stripped of that protected status because of their voting habits or their cheerleading.
Which, to my mind, makes Ingra an odious piece of shit, pardon my French.
It’s the same reasoning as executing everyone in Germany commencing on May 10, 1945 because “All Germans voted for Hitler.” In other words, completely criminal and insane. How about if Ho Chi Minh won by surfacing an SSBN in Lake Michigan in 1968 and then proceeded to execute every American citizen on prime time TV, nonstop for the next 30 years? For that Israeli Frankenstein monster in an IDF uniform, it would be just the thing to do.
Surrender Yanqui Dogs!
https://tinyurl.com/4mvupae3
The title of my latest four-part canvas is given by means of a multiple choice question.
Which do you think is a better title for these four panels? You may provide your own title in the reply box.
A) America in the years 1843-2023.
B) Palestine and Israel in the years 1948-2023.
C) Eric Newhill explains the secret of why 6,000 Gazan children must be murdered preferably using bombs dropped by jet airc by using his friends the green pterodactyls to fly around mysteriously as the Führer Adolf Hitler arrives by steamship to say “Well done, Eric! Harder, tougher! That’s my boy, I’m proud of you!”
Don’t forget to scroll right to left or up and down to view all four.
https://tinyurl.com/2sprnwd7
F&L,
Do any of these AIs allow you to step through the reasoning behind the creation of these images? The last AI I used did allow this which gave me a lot of confidence in its findings.
TTG
Not that I know of yet, but I know very little about what’s under the hood except in general terms. You read my mind though, it’s exactly where my mind went to. Some of the craziness levels in how it interprets the text input to produce what it does seems off the charts until you stop to think it’s a blitheringly dumb machine that had no idea what we mean by “walking their pet dogs while wearing pink hats” because it can only scan repositories of texts and images and try to infer corellations. It hasn’t the foggiest notion of what a squitgun actually is or a dog, much less “while Miss Universe holds down the pizza delivery boy bandit by shooting him with a squitgun.”
You must be thinking of those old step-through debuggers from the time of the battle of Bunker Hill and Paul Revere. Well, you made me remember them.
TTG
I thought the AIs that did this were neural networks, and I am pretty sure that neural networks are opaque models. I am a neural network and I can give you explanations for why I do things … but I think Freud would say that my explanations are not always correct. Hmmm.
Interesting times we live in.
Fred,
I’m still recovering from the loss of the Felicity Ace in February of 2022 off the Azores. A thousand Porsches! Fifteen of the rarest Lamborghinis! A gaggle of Bentleys! Some of the owners must have preordered in L.A. and even been at Newport waiting to run up Narragansett Bay to meet their baby at the dock. But their ship did not come in!
‘Full fathom five, thy Bentley lies…” Appalling, really.
So, I admit I was kind of hoping this time around that the Houthies had backed that ark up on the beach–those ships unload off the stern–and got them some Porsches, even if it was only four or five hundred, for the grandest parade they ever held in Sanaa! I can see it now, the Palestinian flags flying along with the others, the massed bands playing ‘Das lied der Deutschen’, and the mullahs waving from behind the wheel. Too bad, really. Better luck, next time. And who is to say the Houthis couldn’t get down to the Mozambique Channel?
p
The issue of global warming is clearly a big one,
and a major issue is how much should China as opposed to the United States do to combat it.
A good look at those conflicts is here:
https://www.politico.eu/article/cop28-climate-divide-beijing-china-us-washington-john-kerry-xie-zhenhua-joe-biden-xi-jinping/
KH,
They each stand to benefit from Global Warming but in their own ways and with unequal risks.
China has gone a very long way toward cornering the green and alternative energy market with its cornering of the various mineral supplies critical to battery and semiconductor development, gallium, graphite, rare earths & lithium. So as fossil power goes down, China’s prospects go up.
The US is the leader in high-tech, which certainly will be critical to development of all sorts of energy control, efficiency etc.
This is a really amazing article,
both for what it says and for the fact that Christopher Mellon felt the need to write it:
2023-11-22
https://thedebrief.org/disclosure-and-national-security-should-the-u-s-government-reveal-what-it-knows-about-uap/
Among other things, Mellon writes:
The article concludes:
the striking thing to me is revelation of his underlying belief system.
“… we need a powerful ontological jolt…”
TTG,
I was thinking about your past post about beavers building a dam on your land. And then I started thinking about an invention which allows for “excess” water to be drained out of beaver ponds without draining them out too much, and without the beaver knowing or noticing. It is called ” Beaver Deceiver” and here is a website about it.
https://wildlifehelp.org/solution/massachusetts/beaver/how-control-water-level-behind-beaver-dam/112
And it occurred to me . . . if you were to install a beaver deceiver in your beaver dam draining just a small steady amount of water from it, just enough to keep it from rising “too much” beyond an ideal level from your point of view, could the stealth-drained water by led by pipe down to the lowest feasible elevation on your land and at that point run through a tiny hydroelectric turbine? ( “micro-hydro”)
https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/microhydropower-systems
Could that generate enough electricity for a single household or a home workshop?
Is it an idea worth thinking about or even playing with?