Open Thread 27 March 2017

pl

Comments

[helenk3]

https://www.scribd.com/document/342765662/Freedom-Watch-Whistleblower-Notification-to-Congress#from_embed

does anyone know this man, Montgomery? is he credible?

[Red Cloud]

It looks like the R+6 have the northern Hama attack by the Idlib-headchoppers under control. Some Tiger Forces were moved there from Aleppo and they took Kawcab and some hills right away. The terrorists failed to take Qomhane.

Any thoughts on what the next R+6 move should be?

One idea would be to turn that bulge into a meat grinder and just wear them down before any sort of counteroffensive.

[helenk3]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/article141047248.html

Sessions says no money for sanctuary cities.

can some one answer this question please
If I got caught robbing a bank in a sanctuary city and told them that I was al sharpton's cousin from Syria here illegally and was robbing the bank because it did not conform to Sharia law, could I go to jail in a sanctuary city?

[turcopolier]

A guided tour of the ISS conducted by the departing commander. pl

https://www.youtube.com/embed/doN4t5NKW-k

[turcopolier]

Red Cloud

They should not be allowed to escape from the exposed position that they have placed themselves in. Continued ground pressure must be applied to keep them moving. This makes them vulnerable to all that air power. Having weakened them that way the government should advance into Idlib Province and finish them. I favor a concentric offensive that ends with them squeezed against the Hatay border. pl

[turcopolier]

helenk3

A lot of the "sanctuaries," like Alexandria, Virginia do not call them selves that. they just take federal money and do what they please. pl

[helenk3]

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/03/27/iran-threatens-designate-u-s-military-terrorist-organization/

now this could get interesting. just what would change in the ME for us?

[John Minnerath]

The ISS and a Shuttle I captured passing over my house one night.
I'd go for a ride in that thing in a heart beat.
http://www.telescopejunkies.com/photos/show-album.asp?albumid=51&photoid=3331

[bks]

Cheney states that Russian interference in the U.S. election could be an "act of war".
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/325928-cheney-russian-election-interference-could-be-act-of-war

[Fred]

bks,

This morning it was the Democrats:
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/325606-democrats-step-up-calls-that-russian-hack-was-act-of-war

and two weeks ago it was a Senator:
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/322002-dem-senator-we-should-determine-if-russian-election-hacking-was-act-of

So the Democrats are giving us a choice: is it "on to Moscow" or "vote for us" we let the Russians win? At least the Democrats can finally agree with Dick Cheney on something - war. Didn't they vote for that one in Iraq, too?

[optimax]

It is with regret I inform the committee of the death in February of a long time reader and infrequent poster to SST, Euclidcreek. He was 67 when he died in his sleep of a heart attack, having lived with heart disease for over twenty years. A week before his death he emailed me, "SST is one of a kind, as is the Col."

He was my older brother and mentor in many ways: introducing me to SST; a music historian who introduced me and others to classic jazz and blues at a young age-- the last few years he listened mostly to classical. An avid reader he introduced me to everything from hard boiled writers, such as Jim Thompson, to historians, such as Max Hastings. He enjoyed going to plays and the symphony. He was cultured but unpretentious, not wealthy but generous. I, along with his many friends, miss him greatly. He was a good brother and a good friend.

Optimax

[Haralambos]

Col.,
Thank you very much for this. It is breath-taking and inspiring as some of us look at the future of our human endeavors and dream.

[Bobo]

Congressman Nunes seems to have riled up the MSM and the Democratic Party and here it's Monday night and nobody is saying they have ventured out to look at what Nunes saw last week. You have to assume that the material is there just waiting to be viewed. You would think his fellow committee members would of spent an hour or so to look over the Trump gossip supposedly in the mentioned Intel reports. Not even a fellow Republican Committeemember is coming to his side. This must be big.
Now listening to that South Carolina Congressman last week grilling Comey and Rogers regarding how many people in each agency can unmask a U.S. Citizen. He knew something. Trump knew something when he sent his Tweets.
Hopefully this whistleblower has some substance. Seems tomorrow's full committee meeting has been cancelled.

[ked]

If I were the SecDef or CJCS, I wouldn't be able to face myself in the mirror, given the billions of $s being sent my way (well, to contractors, mostly), while my CinC determines to shut down Meals on Wheels.

[ann]

I read recently that ISIS has been burrowing deeply into the Tabqa dam, which is an earthen dam on the Euphrates above Raqqa. A couple days ago I saw an article that ISIS was evacuating their people of Raqqa. And today this article on the partial collapse of this dam. Which would wipe out the river valley to the Gulf.

My question to the Colonel. You want the eastern seaboard and major cities recaptured first. I think the military needs a plan for the collapse of this dam. Whether by an earthquake or a few sticks of dynamite, it would be a monumental event. Is this important and do you think the military should plan for this type of event?
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13960107000209

Thanks, enjoy the conversation.

[C L]

"CL
I am curious as to where you think the anti-Trump jihad should end. Should it end in removal of the 45th president of the US? Should it end in removal of both Trump and Pence because they were illegitimately elected as agents of a foreign power? pl"

PL I was pressed for time yesterday and feel a better explanation is due.

In essence the POTUS is not democratically elected as say a congressman, mayor or senator. The voters recommend in their ballot choice, the unelected delegates are sent to the electoral college and they select the President. The electoral college could have given their votes to Jill Stein had they so wished. There is no re-do or undo of an election regardless if it was legitimate or not. The electing public has even less of a say in the election of the VP.

The anti-Trump jihad is more like the anti-Trump admin jihad and breaks in to the following:

1). New Admin failure on the basic ABC of staffing. Who did (not) do the vetting of personnel? I keep returning to Flynn and the VP botched cover-up of firing reason. ‘Lied to VP about meeting with Rus. Amb.’ is not the reason, ti’s the excuse. Non vetting of foreign turkish agent Flynn is the reason.
As I recall the meetings between Flynn & Rus. Abm came to light via the ambassador casually mentioning them in public, which sent the snoops to his testimony hearing to check why Flynn hadn’t mentioned this.
This basic lapse is on the VP and politburo around him. POTUS having no knowledge of any government norm or procedure delegated this to them.

The IC state apparatus is justifiably on this jihad and on Manafort/Cohen/Stone foreign connections. I see POTUS left standing but stripped of all sycophants.

2). Trump Org + Russian money. Nothing here of interest except for the taxman. This money needs an outlet and legitimizing. Real estate is the way to do it. Trump org provides the platform and its payback is Trump name lit up in giant neons on these buildings. His cut is small, his underlings make out like bandits on the details. Nothing but typical business investment sleaze.

The pearl clutches are on this jihad and will get nowhere.

3). Election meddling + Russia. The system got played, royally so - but no laws broken. The Russians identified the same flaw that others exploit, namely online opinion is easy to manipulate. Take any online ‘poll’ from the last decade and see how easy multiple votes and vote bombing is to do. The TV orgs that use online polls for their gameshows (e.g. big brother, the voice) don’t even bother restricting the amount of votes one person can cast.
The Rus took it a step further and identified that in our drive to let ‘you the viewer decide’ our main platforms used robots to track what topics were of interest using algorithms. These algorithms have been under constant attack since google introduced its rankings based on keywords, links etc… and have been gamed continuously.
And so they gamed the system using bots to amplify any chosen message. The algorithms search for a surge of interest especially in retweets, the bot swarm provided this. This amplification worked so well when coupled to emotional outlets as ALT-Right or ALT-left it created a storm (especially on the ALT-Right) that overwhelmed and eventually removed the human element trying to referee a fair game. The golden example is Facebook’s news curating unit being fired en mass because they refused to cow to the twitter bots. These curators saw news topics like Pizza-gate overwhelm legitimate news such as the turkish coup attempt and were completely dumbfounded as to how. Small left Bernie organizations were bombarded with fake members, their feeds overloaded with fake macedonian news sites - to the point where these sites administrators were posting on their home pages notices saying - Do not believe anything on our site - I presume this site also came under some random attack - but it is moderated by humans not computer algorithms and thus immune-ish.
The saying ‘call a man crazy enough times and he will believe it and act crazy’ comes to mind. Using pizza-gate as an example, once the bot-swarm had retweeted this stupidity 10,000 times, those predisposed to believe this crap took it bait hook and sinker, after all it had been retweeted 10,000 times and 10,000 people can’t be wrong.

This is the Trump Election Jihad by FBI / justice dept probe and ongoing election interference probe will sort out. A useless report will be published recommending how to avoid this interference in the future.

Secondary fallout such as - was Breitbart colluding? - I think not, they were given what they wanted without looking the gift horse in the mouth and were played. It looks so simple in hindsight yet non of us comprehended it in real time, including them, Perhaps they bought some bot time to drive their ratings, yet overwhelming news sources and macedonian websites, fake members etc… is beyond their organizational skills.

4) 44 spying on 45. - This is the Jihad that could get him removed, this has POTUS/USA integrity written all over it. It is driven by the ‘last honest men with integrity in government’. This is the lie too far that conservatives can bring him down with if they choose. The parameters of the lie are clearly defined - ‘Trump tower + Obama personally ordered + specific time- This cover-up is in play and hard to do - see Nunes squirm. All excuses so far have not met these defined criteria. Trump tower was tapped - in 2013 not 2017. The transition team was tapped at white house in transition - wrong locale, the claim is at Trump tower. Ditto for Obama personally tapping him - No POTUS after Nixon can do that.

This is the Congress Critters Trump Jihad if they choose to remove him.

5) DNC hacking + Wikileaks. Wikileaks I should say ‘got played’ but their mission is to publish leaks regardless of how they come by them. Perhaps our government should leak to them other countries secrets and see what happens. DNC, RNC, USGOV, Big Biz, FBI, Cyber crime div, etal… Shame on all of you for being so sloppy in your security.

This is the Tech Jihad and will lead to many white papers down the internets. We will hear close to nothing about this and understand even less.

My feeling is the USA is under attack by a classic ‘Divide and Rule’ strategy. The exterior player is using our social media against us effectively since we have given up on communal norms such as agreed upon facts (Flat earthers’ are making a comeback, fake moon landing, no holocaust etc…) and refusal to call an un-truth a lie.
We outsourced the referees of the public debate to the ‘like’ button and the machine algorithm.
As yet I see no solution except a huge jolt to the national psyche for quick sanity realignment - such as 9-11 which I prefer not living through again. (I lived at 400 West Street - the WTC address was 100 West Street.) Though our collective 9-11 reaction hastened us in to this modern age of no-truths.

The other half chance we have is the POTUS who I didn’t vote for, who’s organization owes me money for labor provided and stiffed me during the calamity of 9-11.
Here is the mad genius who can simplify something like ‘Medicaid for all + corporate tax relief (by removing health obligations) + Stupid wall + Jobs Program + tax reform’ distill it into a bumper sticker and sell it to the emotional/raging right and left - all to feed his ego of being loved.

CL
Carpenter/woodworker, Manhattan NY
No formal education

[ex-PFC Chuck]

Does anyone here know more about this or have any comment? Headline: "US Forces Block Syrian Army Advance in Preparation For Syria Partition."

http://russia-insider.com/en/prepare-partition-us-forces-block-syrian-armys-advance-raqqa/ri19344

[Peter AU]

At the 1.16 mark in this short news video, John Kerry states the US detected the launch and trajectory of the missile that shot down MH17. I take it the launch flare and rocket engine burn heat traces were detected.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78r1qAHUVwY

How accurately can a launch area be determined if a launch is detected by heat trace?

[Stumpy]

helenk3, I would offer the suggestion that the people of Iran pretty much actualized that idea back in 1979. Sounds like a tit-for-tat public relations tactic, imo.

[turcopolier]

CL

A lot of bloviation. Do you want Trump removed or not? pl

[SAC Brat]

Some giveback to TTG: Frank Sinatra singing Pass Me By

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQKmvA1VD9o

I really enjoyed watching the movie Father Goose after you brought it to my attention. When I was a stupidvisor I always tried to understand the motivations, learning skills and character of the people working for me to get the best results from my crews like the Frank Houghton did. A fun film with real world physics.

[C L]

Leaning No, seeing the line of succession as competently worse. I'll take the devil I know well

[turcopolier]

ann

You need to start looking at maps. It is impossible to understand military operation without maps. I never said anything about the seaboard or the major cities. The seaboard is already in government hands. You are putting words in my mouth. Idlib Province is a semi rural area that lies at the heart of western Syria and which is held by the jihadi enemy. Their men must be killed in that area and now in northern Hama Province and then this region must be wiped clean of jihadi and Turkish presence or the Syrian government will not survive in the long run. The Tabqa Dam? Yet another bright shiny object with which to divert attention from what should be the main priority, but, Assad seems to share your opinion. He will learn the hard way. The dam itself is a major feature of the Syrian efforts over many decades to control water flows in the two rivers. These are major civil engineering works (the Mosul dam is another). The militaries of any or all countries are incapable of dealing with such huge engineering projects in the context of an ongoing war. Basically there is nothing that can be done about the neglect and/or undermining of these big dams by our army or any other. pl

[turcopolier]

CL

I find all this talk about "the Turkish agent Flynn" to be amusing and reflective of a lack of experience of how international business woks. pl

[turcopolier]

optimax

We grieve with you and miss his voice among us. pl