Open Thread - 21 November 2014

  pl

Comments

[William R. Cumming]

ALL: Have a great HOLIDAY Season!

[HDL]

Colonel,
CIA reorganization. You've talked about this subject from time to time. This from WAPO 2 days ago. Can the director do this on his own (lot of that going on lately ) or does he need Congressional approval?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-director-john-brennan-considering-sweeping-organizational-changes/2014/11/19/fa85b320-6ffb-11e4-ad12-3734c461eab6_story.html

[turcopolier]

HDL

I don't know if CIA's structure is fixed by law. IMO it is a bad idea to put the analytic force and the HUMINT collectors together. The agenda of the collectors will inevitably corrupt the analysis. This is particularly true at CIA where non AUMF covert action is lodged. pl

[Fred]

Here's another black eye for the women in the State Department:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/21/us/politics/eavesdropping-on-pakistani-official-led-to-inquiry-of-former-us-diplomat.html

[Charles I]

More on ISIS finance and state ambition:

Iraqi dealers confirm ISIS hoarding gold, precious metals to issue currency – report

http://rt.com/news/207763-isis-state-coins-currency/

[Charles I]

Anyone being watched? Try to find out with this:

Detekt: New tool against government surveillance – Questions and Answers: http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/detekt-new-tool-against-government-surveillance-questions-and-answers-2014-11-20

available here:

https://resistsurveillance.org/

[FkDahl]

Colonel,

This claim to be an extract from a RAND study from June-July this summer:
http://beforeitsnews.com/politics/2014/07/ukrainian-president-uses-rand-corporation-plan-in-eastern-ukraine-2634472.html
Is it true or a fabrication?
Speaking for it being true are for exampel the following:
1. The region shall be encircled , especially the border to Russia (check for armored thrusts along the border, later caught in kettelslacht)
2. The use of airpower and unconventional weapons to soften up rebel targets (check until Su-25/Mi-24 losses became too large, and as for unconvenional one can consider the use of ballistic missiles (carcasses have been found).
3 "Settlements shall be liberated one by one, with armor going in first" - that somewhat puzzling tactic has been used, and the explanation from the rebel side was that this was due to the weakness of the Ukie infantry.
What do you think?

[Imagine]

This lurid article http://communitarian.ru/publikacii/kritika_politicheskogo_razuma/besslavnye_ublyuki_boynya_na_ukraine_vonyaet_gazom_i_totalnym_predatelstvom_ukrainskih_politikov_17062014/ [Russian]
quoted in http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_67005.shtml which was quoted in comments in http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-21/gold-repatriation-stunner-dutch-central-bank-secretly-withdrew-122-tons-gold-new-yor
alleges Yanukovych essentially sold most of Novorussia to the Dutch oil company Shell and American Chevron, including the right to repossess any favorable land currently inconveniently owned by Ukrainian citizens (backed by the faith of Ukraine's army, at the state of Ukraine's expense). After the putsch, these rights were somehow assigned to Burisma. So, if true, this goes a bit to showing why Kolomoyski is so eager to purge Novorussians off of their own lands. Hey, under some interpretations of the letter of the law, it might all be legal.

I guess property laws are just as good as the government protecting them.

I had missed that, besides Devon Archer, Hunter Biden, and former Merrill Lynch / Morgan Stanley exec Alan Apter, the fourth Director of "Ukrainian" company Burisma is former Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski. Interesting.

If Elon Musk creates Big Solar, will all this conniving for oil go away?

[Anonymous]

May I ask of you if you saw the movie Interstellar. It is a brutally subversive movie with The Blight, as I see it, being a metaphor for the darkening of the american pioneer spirit and identity.

It's becoming increasingly common of movie directors to warn about the inability of americans to escape from their own Cultural Revolution because they are not only living by lies and believing it (like the chinese did,) but also because they are bein replaced as a people in the process. That being the reason, I suspect, why Christopher Nollan opts for the quest for a new place that could receive the people who still preserves the divine spark that brough the great country into being (the corn people,) instead of insisting in preserving a place where the only destiny is to serve as support for those who despise not only what you are, but also the past that brought about the riches which they seek after so eagerly.

Anyway, it is a masterpiece of a film, as much science fantasy as science fiction, with all kinds of references to other books and movies, and with an intense social critique that is covered here by a tenuous "sleight of tongue," as can be seen in the scene where Cooper meets the black principal and the (single) woman teacher who are supposed to conduct and decide his children's future, or there, by presenting liberal candy, like the most hollywoodian scientist aboard, who, in effect, spends decades helping solve a problem that was already solved by the mastermind of the space quest.

In any case, when one puts a broken watch beside an enormous biography of Charles Lindbergh and talks about history being rewritten to placate popular sentiments, he is not only being subversive, but also inviting the rage of the crowd that would see Lindbergh erased from history altogether along with all the Apollo Project personel, the Wright Brothers (though only in american minds that catapult propelled thing was an airplane!) and beyond, Shackleton, Sir John Franklin all of them, so it should be expected that some reviewers will not be kind to the movie for what appear to be vague and obscure reasons though they are in fact doing the Emil Bessels work inside the drifting ship that has become America.

Also the way Dr. Mann is presented. It must be carefully noticed. Just for comparison I offer some of the last words of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, for those few who have not read them. These are the words of someone who has endured enormous hardship in a sledging journey through polar regions, dying of starvation and exaustion under unusual blizzard conditions, little more than ten miles from his target depot:

" We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last."

When you see Dr. Mann in the movie, remember that one of the "we" above was Edward Adrian Wilson, that one, I would say, was worth to be called "the best of us."

PS: The place they chose to become new America looks like the kind of place Col. Lang would feel at home. Maybe even with the possibility that waral monitors could be found that would provide lots of leadership moments for the expedition born youngsters and all this without the need for a single handshake with embassy visitors. Paradise.

PPS: Goats! Lots of them. The G.O.A.T. is the way we address Valentino Rossi, as in the "greatest of all time."

[turcopolier]

anonymous

"waral monitors?" either you were there or you have been at SST for a long time. Did I write about that incident on SST? pl

[Charles I]

waral monitors?, we're not talking lizard empires are we?

[turcopolier]

Charles I

I went out on the third "run" of my ground recon team in SA. They were following the cargoes of unloaded Chinese and Soviet ship that were delivering military equipment, tanks, APCs, etc. headed for Iraq. On this occasion they were way up in the northern Hijaz with a couple of four wheelers a mile or two from the coast waiting for a convoy to come out of a military port there and head north to 'ar 'ar on the Iraq border. We camped there overnight, steaks, etc. The troops got up on top of the vehicles to sleep. I put my air mattress and bag on the ground and went away to the land of nod. I woke in the dawn to hear the men talking to each other. About fifteen yards away a waral monitor about seven or eight feet long stood contemplating me, its long forked tongue flicking in and out. After that I slept on a vehicle like everyone else. pl

[Babak Makkinejad]

A term of derision and contempt in Iran; "Arab the Wiral Eater"...

You can see them caught and eaten...

[turcopolier]

Babak

the bedu do not eat waral. They eat another kind of lizard called a dhubb, they are about two feet long. When caught they are trussed up and tossed on a fire like an ear of corn. you eat them like ears of corn after they cook a while. Ah, another Glubb Pasha moment.pl

[Charles I]

thanks, holy S**t!

[Charles I]

Camping in the Canaries there were 2 footers in the rocks off the beach, they used to eat our turds. Sometimes the Aussies would catch and barbie them, its all good hot off the fire.

[alba etie]

Col Lang
You have written about the waral monitor here before.

[turcopolier]

AE

You see. I was so traumatized that I keep telling the story over and over again. I think al-Obadi should go up to Beiji for a victory celebration. pl

[alba etie]

Col Lang
And multiple sources are now reporting that there is a major counter offensive going by the Iraqi Army and assorted Shia Militias in Ramadi . I wonder if there are not some Iranian advisors mixed in with the Shia Militias - modeled after Hizbollah assistance to Assad ? And perhaps with the added combined arms from 'coalition " CAS. I am not an expert in any of this - but in my opinion it probably would be more of a political question then an operational question if somehow Iranian advisors on the ground were being Forward Air Controllers for F/18 S etc. in al Anbar . I keep reflecting on the 'leaked " letter from President Obama to President Rouhani about how their might be cooperation between the two countries in defeating Daash . I pray that the nuclear deal with Iran still gets done - Perhaps we are seeing the outlines for a new SW Asia strategic framework .
And yes al Obadi should go to Anbar and have support the Sunni tribes in person - it would also prove that Beiji really was taken back from al Baghdadi .

[turcopolier]

AE
"there is a major counter offensive going by the Iraqi Army and assorted Shia Militias in Ramadi."
Don't count your money while you're sittin' at the table..." pl

[different clue]

Not all of it, but some of it. Even if oil were entirely erased from the energy portfolio, it would still be used for plastics, petrochemicals,lubricants, etc.

[different clue]

Babak Makkinejad,

Why would eating waral monitor occasion derision and contempt? It sounds like they are big enough to yield enough meat to make them worth harvesting.
Maybe waral tastes like alligator?

[blue]

Sir, A variation on a theme;

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain

Regards

[The beaver]

Colonel,

Anthony Bourdain experienced that on his trip to KSA for an episode of "No Reservation)

[alba etie]

Col Lang
I am always skeptical of reports from Iraq in any MSM format . But the report of the counter offensive was multiple sourced - so I thought it would be credible . I am quite sure you are better informed then most of us here at SST .
"Don't count your money while your sitting at the table - there will be time enough for counting when the dealing is done " I don't play Poker - I have to many 'tells' I am told to be a viable card player. But I still believe that 'after the dealing is done ' regarding destroying and degrading ISIL - Daash we will find we had a lot of help from Iran.
At least Kobane is still in Kurdish hands yes ?