pl
RSS- 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”
- Iran launches air attacks on Israel
- ISW on the developing Ukrainian defense industrial base and Russias strikes on the Ukrainian energy infrastructure
- Britain? Kaput! By Walrus.
- Declaration “Dignitas Infinita” on Human Dignity
- The situation and some possible courses of action … A Pat Lang post reposted from 26 February 2022
- HARPER: COL. W. PATRICK LANG R.I.P.
- A Note On Our Folly By Walrus
- Israel attacks Iranian embassy in Damascus
How a Young Activist Is Helping Pope Francis Battle Climate Change
Molly Burhans wants the Catholic Church to put its assets—which include farms, forests, oil wells, and millions of acres of land—to better use. But, first, she has to map them.
quote
Burhans decided her original career goal had been too narrow. Instead of reforming the land-use practices of a single convent or monastery, she thought, why not use G.I.S. to analyze all Catholic property holdings, and then help the Church put them to better use?
In the fall of 2017, she was invited to take part in two Vatican conferences, one of which related to the mission of “Laudato Si’.” She was pleased to go but worried about finding an affordable place to stay.
“I explained my problem to a member of the Vatican staff, and they said, ‘Oh, just stay in the Domus”—a guesthouse next to St. Peter’s Basilica—“cardinals do it all the time,’ ” she told me. “My room was on the floor below the Pope’s apartment, and I’d see him at meals, in the dining room. There were cardinals from all over the world there, too, and I had my maps with me, on the table. The cardinals were all, like, ‘We want copies of these.’ ” She had printed those maps on paper and canvas, partly because she assumed that printed maps would be easier than digital maps to demonstrate, especially to the Church’s elderly prelates. Those maps would not have seemed remarkable to anyone outside the leadership of the Church. (Some of them were smaller versions of the big map I’d seen hanging over her desk.) But the cardinals were amazed. “They’d never seen the global Church before,” Burhans said. She became known at the Vatican as the Map Lady.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/08/how-a-young-activist-is-helping-pope-francis-battle-climate-change
Looks like GameStop is still up close to $100 per share. I wonder when we’ll hear some news from Jen “circle back” Psaki about the conflict of interest with Treasury Secretary, and $800,000 speechess, Janet Yelin; or news from either one about that issue.
Kyle Rittenhouse skips bail; the heiress MTG gets a standing ovation from the Republican caucus — tough day for the reactionary anti-Dreyfusards.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has called on the services to conduct a 60-day stand-down on the issue of extremism in the military, prompted by the Jan. 6 attack on the the Capitol and subsequent reports of both active-duty and former service members attending a rally calling to overturn the 2020 election and the riot that ensued.
Austin held a meeting Wednesday of the service secretaries and Joint Chiefs, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters, to ask them about their concerns and ideas for improving the situation.
https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-military/2021/02/03/defense-secretary-orders-60-day-stand-down-to-confront-extremism-in-the-military/
Is it just me, or does anyone else think the lying-in-state at the US Capitol of the police officer who died of a stroke after the infamous Jan. 6th riot (that lasted only a few hours) seems like Wag-The-Dog-like theatrics, coincidentally occurring a week before YET ANOTHER impeachment trial? It’s a month after the event (why wasn’t the police officer buried weeks ago?) but no evidence has been made public yet that an assault on the officer caused his death, a death which occurred the next day due to a stroke he suffered back at police headquarters later in the evening on Jan. 6th.
What’s more, apparently he’d told a brother he was pepper sprayed at the riot without mentioning having been struck on the head by a fire extinguisher, as has been claimed over and over again by the MSM. We’ve heard of no colleagues who witnessed the fire extinguisher incident and so far, in spite of hi-tech investigative tools, cameras, etc., no other witness testimony regarding the supposed fire extinguisher incident, nor any incriminating autopsy results, have been released. It’s very hard to believe that autopsy results proving the stroke was caused by a blow to the head wouldn’t have been released a long time ago if that were indeed the case. I guess there’s still time for a medical examiner to bolster the MSM claim, but one would think such damning evidence, if true, would’ve been made public weeks ago.
https://www.wbaltv.com/article/investigators-struggle-to-build-murder-case-in-death-of-us-capitol-police-officer-brian-sicknick
longarch
IMO they will attempt to weed out people like me and create a praetorian guard that will guard the existence of a communist state.
akaPatience — I imagine the coroner’s report will answer the question of how Sicknick died. I doubt it was pepper spray. You talk about “weeks ago”…it is only 2/3/21…this all happened less than 1 full month ago and “stuff” has been happening in Washington. Remember the Inauguration, etc. I don’t see any reason why Sicknick should not have bee honored? Do you?
Kyle Rittenhouse didn’t skip bail. He and his family have been in a safehouse, per their lawyer’s advice. They are now trying to petition the court to keep their location private. You know that as soon as Antifa/BLM knows his location, they’ll be there in a hot minute to create more chaos and grab media attention.
Brad Hamilton,
Kyle Rittenhouse has gone into hiding because he was receiving death threats. His defense team offered to inform prosecutors of his change of address, but only if that information was kept under seal. The prosecutors knew this and went to his old home address anyways to carry out their charade. Hopefully the judge is reasonable and weighs the facts accordingly.
Colonel
Yesterday I wanted to lookup FB Ali’s historical SST posts, but when I clicked on the Category link “FB Ali” your blog’s homepage came up. I’ve previously observed that some Category links work (e.g. “Tunisia”) and others do not (e.g. “Fred” and “Walrus” simply show nothing). You may want to report this to TypePad for them to fix, unless the issue is specific to me. Perhaps others readers can confirm this or otherwise.
The Democratic Party establishment will continue leading the country down a path toward authoritarian government but it will not at all be communist. It will be an even more predatory version of the rentiér capitalism into which the American economy has already devolved. Furthermore the Republican establishment is on board with this because they are driven by the same force – the financial sector based on Wall Street. To paraphrase Woodrow Wilson’s comment on academic politics, the reason the conflict between the parties is so bitter is because the differences are so small. The characteristics, effects and implications of the rise and for the future of rentiér capitalism are vividly described by economist Michael Hudson in the interview linked below by Pepé Escobar,* where you can either watch the video or read the transcript.
Rentiér capitalism is at odds with economic interests of the legacy core constituencies of both parties. On the Republican side, as small entrepreneurial opportunities wither, the small business people are being replaced by Christian evangelicals. Since the Franklin Roosevelt era he Democrats’ legacy base has been the blue and white collar working classes. The Party began a gradual abandonment them not long after FDR died and the betrayal went on steroids with the inauguration of Bill Clinton. Since they did not have a religious movement to fall back upon a core principle of the Party’s communication strategy has been to distract what’s left of that base from what was going on. If the Party had to lose the 2016 presidential election, it was a godsend to have lost it to lightening rod like Trump. That’s what the years of Russiagate immediately followed by the seamless segue into a farcically planned impeachment, etc., were all about. And they’re still doing it with Impeachment II!
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/12/a-hard-look-at-rent-and-rent-seeking-with-michael-hudson-pepe-escobar.html
* I’m aware Escobar is not a favorite around here but Hudson dominates the platform. His message has been in such opposition to the official economic narrative for a so long that he gets no MSM exposure in spite of having at least a dozen books to his name. The revised and updated 2003 edition of his classic Superimperialism on the financially predatory nature of USA foreign policy is now available for free download at the link below. It was originally published 49 years ago.
https://michael-hudson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/superimperialism.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/opinion/how-to-defeat-americas-homegrown-insurgency.html
They talk about the threat of insurgency, as if Trump supporters are effectively the new KKK, but a greater threat is civil disobedience. If millions of American “serfs” stop voting and stop paying taxes, what will Grenier and his fellow “lords and noblemen” do then?
Barbara Ann
Use the search engine.
Catchy term picked up from Conservative Tree House: The Jobama administration.
Sir, if the post tags have gone I will do so, thanks.
fakebot
Rather than the KKK I’d say the enemies of the Nazis in 1930’s Germany are a closer analog. The
Reichstag fireCapital invasion has given the Left the excuse to treat its enemies as a dangerous threat to the nation to be rooted out and destroyed at all costs.“Though one may recoil at the thought, it provides the most useful template for action, which must consist of three elements.”
To continue the National Socialism analogy, I can see Himmler having used very similar language. His primary concern was that those tasked with implementing the Final Solution may be perturbed by the work. This was one of the reasons killing by close quarters shooting was replaced by the less distressing business of operating gas chambers – that and efficiency of course.
I try to avoid Reductio ad Hitlerum, but here I think it is useful to show the similarity of mindset. The piece you quote demonstrates this in spades, viz. how “facts, tolerance and empathetic sincerity” have become “effectively impossible”. The author is arguing against trying to empathize with the Other, lest that give the audience pause in considering the imperative of what now needs to be done. No, these “culturally marginalized” untermenschen throwbacks must be “isolate[d] and alienate[d]”. Sonderbehandlung (special treatment) is coming for Deplorables.
Lying in State – last person before present was long-serving Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
It can either be a formal unified national acknowledgement of eminent service to the nation; or it can be conferred informally for partisan political theater (aka mob-threatened virtue signaling).
The criteria for lying in state or lying in honor, like impeachment, is whatever the dominant political majority says it is. There are no formalized qualifying requirements. Just provisions for process.
https://www.aoc.gov/what-we-do/programs-ceremonies/lying-in-state-honor
Colonel – I was told of a history series on the war in the then Rhodesia. A forgotten war and, as often with past conflicts, now seen only in terms of starkest black and white. Some of the shades of grey now put in by this series of recollections. From long settled Boer farmers to French officers who put in some time in the war before going on to distinguished careers elsewhere, they sit there in front of the camera and tell us how it was.
I found it gripping. This episode, as with all the others but more so with this speaker, because it was so matter of fact.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHYiqBTICR0
There was an amusing story from one of the earlier episodes. Perhaps true, more likely one of those stories that becomes true by repetition.
Apparently the French, on the sound principle that my enemy’s enemy is my friend, gave a lot of help to the Rhodesian forces and supplied them with equipment. This was much disapproved of since the Rhodesians were getting sanctioned left right and centre by other countries. Eventually the French gave in to international pressure. They went so far as to enforce sanctions themselves, in that they listed an item of equipment as one that could no longer be exported to Rhodesia.
So the Rhodesian forces had to fight the entire war deprived of the use of French snow ploughs.
Scroll all the way down this PJ Media link to the map of the US highlighting why no one should “invade America” — there be monsters in every quarter inch of the whole country.
A bit of humor, and no wonder the Democrats are running scared –
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2021/02/04/insanity-wrap-139-traumatized-climate-activist-greta-thunberg-may-face-criminal-investigation-n1423053
Why you never want to waste a dime on an Ivy League degree for your own kids. Message from Princeton President – to alumni for annual giving:
……..“Most recently, a sitting American president refused to acknowledge his electoral defeat and stoked a mob that invaded America’s Capitol.
And if it felt as though our democracy and our Constitution were dangling by a thread on January 6, the thread held. Congress certified the results of the election.
President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., took office on January 20. Recognizing the need to heal a divided nation, the new president called upon Americans to “see each other not as adversaries but as neighbors” and to “treat each other with dignity and respect.”…………..
Fakebot, Barbara Ann,
It’s an old technique; dehumanization. Once a disfavored group of people is sufficiently drained of any claim to humanity, well then, anything is possible. Just anything. The “logic” of the oppressors dictates this.
But the funny thing about this process is that the oppressors are the ones losing all claim to humanity, and what they then do to the “othered” will fully, and irredemably establish their descent into satanic bestiality. The language that we now hear coming from these quarters is merely the preliminaries to what is the desired outcome; genocidal extinction of those identified as Bad Whites. I am not being hyperbolic, this is what is intended. Maybe not by all, but once the ball gets rolling (think the Great Terror of the French Revolution), who among the less bloody-minded would dare to stand against it? It is the inexorable course of radical leftism, that anyone who stands against the ever waxing madness becomes the next target for elimination, virtue signaling with jaws of steel.
I don’t understand why criminals hate cops. The Narrative says the solution is to adjust the cops’ attitudes. That proves sociology is a science.
Wearing masks in the rain is gomint mandated waterboarding.
I am retired so this story is way above my pay grade. Some may be interested in this story although I for one will never live to see the completion of it. Link is:
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/jan-23-a-pandemic-of-boredom-dinosaur-s-nether-regions-a-giant-telescope-on-the-moon-and-more-1.5882533/building-earth-s-largest-telescope-on-the-far-side-of-the-moon-1.5882554
Colonel: A totally off-the-wall question:
Did you ever watch the British spy show “The Avengers”?
If so, what did you think of it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Avengers_(TV_programme)
https://youtu.be/LVySPFWhmVE
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLmNNoQjvfC9_itudmoSldTA8-uqlZhBx
Never. I like “Reilly, ace of spies,” especially the little known 4th Episode which explains all. TTG has probably seen it.