Open Thread - 21 March 2018

pl

Comments

[Peter AU]

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[Adrestia]

I hope you're right. It would be a better alternative, but I don't see people do it. When a new party or movement starts they either play the game by the old rules or cave in to pressure. Look at Greece.

Another problem is that they tend to focus on their own interests instead of focusing on the society as a whole. IMO that's needed when you want to beat the Borg on both sides of the pond.

[Philippe T.]

François Furet, not Fucet. "Le Passé d'une Illusion". https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Pass%C3%A9_d%27une_illusion

[J]

AC-130 Gunship Mysteriously Flew Hours Worth Of Laps Over Seattle on Tuesday (Updated)

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/19497/ac-130-gunship-mysteriously-flew-hours-worth-of-laps-over-seattle-on-tuesday

[English Outsider]

Colonel,

I can make neither head nor tail of this - links between Cambridge Analytica and other organisations. (via MOA). Perhaps your London correspondents might make sense of it. Is this the fringes of English think tank land?

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2018/03/20/scl-a-very-british-coup/

With this, + the freak show I see from time to time in the Commons, I'm slowly beginning to form the view that it might be better if our Old Etonians stuck to rowing.

[Eric Newhill]

outthere,
Trump's domestic policy is excellent - even inevitable given the pervasive anti-American derangement of the liberals.

However, with the appointment of Bolton, Trump has demonstrated that Col Lang has been correct all along; Trump lacks the depth of intelligence and character to manage foreign policy. Worse, he is seduced by a faux tough guy mentality. As a Trump supporter I am extremely disappointed.

That said, it's not like any of the other viable candidates - right or left - would have done differently. Even Obama had Libya and the support and encouragement of head choppers to go after Assad. I would like to see a step by step breakdown of how the FP hawks get their clutches into just about everyone who sits in the WH. I imagine they have the entire FP apparatus so tightly sowed up that no other can even start to make inroads. This has probably developed over many decades.

Maybe bring Bolton on board gets some of the Mueller, etc heat lifted from Trump. Still no excuse in my book (if that is even the case).

[mikee]

#56 "If Europe continues to buy Russian gas--that will be bad news for US."

Bad news for some, but good news for US consumers and manufacturers. There are many in the oil/gas industry who want us to believe that these resources are infinite. I'm opposed to the export of energy resources from our country. There should be high tariffs on energy exports.

By the way, 2017 was a record year for Gazprom in European gas sales.

[Eric Newhill]

A close friend of mine - before and after 9/11 - was working for the DoD at the time and was heading to the Pentagon when the attack occurred. He also saw the airplane.

[Fred]

J,

So the poor reporter needs some click-bait for his new magazine. What are the non-mysterious flight patterns of four engine AF aircraft flying in the state of Washington? Oh, they did it a year ago too with a different plane. My my. Let me know when he has another breathless article but focussed on Amazon's drones flying over my house ready to drop parcels with thier pattented airbag style inflators instead of parachutes.
https://dronedj.com/2018/03/15/amazon-patent-drone-drop-packages/

[Pacifica_Advocate]

"Chinahand"--or, Peter Lee--has been an extremely reliable and accurate commentator on CCP politics for something close to as long as this blog has been a reliable reporter of NATO military activity.

He has pointedly indicated that, first, in the Chinese constitution there is no established law about term-limits or any kind of limits of any sort, regarding the CCP. Second, he has explained that the "rule" of "67/8" was essentially promulgated by Jiang Zemin as a ploy to eliminate several of his party rivals, who each were 68 years or older--while everyone he wanted to appoint was well below that cutoff date.

So this idea that Xi Jinping wants to establish himself as a "New Mao"--which is what the NATO press seeks to inculcate with all this nonsense about "President for Life"--is just, as we say in Texas: "SOOOOOO much bullshit."

Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign is delivering extremely valuable results at the LOCAL levels. The Chengguan are being challenged. Americans like to think of the Chengguan as a sort of "local police," but in China what the Chengguan actually are is a localized military force that has been--until Xi's reforms--solely and entirely under the judicial and legislative control of localized, provincial "Bigshots."

Those "Bigshots" might or might not be under the full control of the CCP; to some extent, all "Bigshots" have a "relationship" with the CCP. But the idea that each and every province, and--each-and-every county within those provinces--are all locked down by political groups who are loyal and deferent to the CCP is pure fiction.

But it is that kind of fiction that the NATO/US vision of China rests.

[jpb]

Did your friends observe the plane impact the Pentagon?

[Thomas]

Adrestia,

Honestly, I hope am right too, because the alternatives will come after much bloodshed.

There are many honorable and decent people to step up but won't do it because of the current climate or are frozen out by the Borgians and their masters. With the crop of "Western" leaders losing their credibility, respect, and people's fear of their institutions daily, their last refuge to maintain power will be to terrorize their own population with state force, which is going to be hard to do since the presumed enforcers are treated with the same arrogant contempt.

One way or another massive change, for good or ill, is coming this year. What it looks like on Jan 1, 2019 we will have to wait and see.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Fred:

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/restoring-americas-economic-mobility/

Don't blame the poor immigrant.

[mikee]

reply to #8

Some interesting stuff there. I thought this was a good point:

"Just as diplomats, British and otherwise, are the most ardent upholders of the principle of diplomatic immunity, so security service personnel everywhere are the least likely to wish to destroy a system which can be a key aspect of their own personal security; quite literally spy swaps are their “Get Out of Jail Free” card. You don’t undermine that system – probably terminally – without very good reason."

[Eric Newhill]

jpb,
No. He did not actually see the impact. Only the aftermath.

[turcopolier]

jpb

My friends in the naval annex watched the plane hit the building. Other people I know well saw the embedded fuselage within the building. pl

[Pacifica_Advocate]

If you think immigration from Latin America is responsible for the decrease in quality of life and spending power in the middle class, then you are unqualifiedly delusional.

Illegal immigrants make up 3% of the US population--and their numbers are declining.

From MIT:
"The basic family budget for a two-parent, two-child family ranges from $49,114 (Morristown, Tenn.) to $106,493 (Washington, D.C.). In the median family budget area for this family type, Des Moines, Iowa, a two-parent, two-child family needs $63,741 to secure an adequate but modest living standard. This is well above the 2014 poverty threshold of $24,008 for this family type."

The "Basic Family Budget" referred to, here, is what would have been called "minimum family income for the middle class," in past years. Notably, this level indicates that some 60% of the US is currently classified as what would have been defined as "lower class," in the 70s and 80s--or what would have been defined as "poverty" in the 50s and 60s.

If you think those changes have happened because of the 3% of the population who are in the US illegally, then you're flat-out delusional.

Or maybe you're relying on US Census and Bureau of Labor data, which has been (going back at least to the times of Nixon) notably jerry-rigged to disguise the actual economic facts of what's going on in the country.

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/only-20-are-middle-class-most-dont-come-close-5679

[Fred]

Babak,

Spare me. There are more than 5,000 colleges and univiersties in the US. Why haven't they been able to teach the skills all those H1B visa applicants possess? Why haven't employers raised wages to employ US citizens in those jobs "no American will take" at that low wage rate? Why has the US sat on it's fat ass regarding the destruction of Mexico while spending trillions engaging in wars in the Middle East? Well, lets not ask professor Buckley as he hasn't figured out that the marxists have moved on to cutlure and the proletariat and bourgeois are now just the victims and the opporssors, until the ideologues destroy another society, when they'll change terminolgy like a 5 year old changes dirty clothes.

This weekend you'll see the victims of oppression marching at the behest of unionized government employees and the sponsors of the "March for Our Lives Action Fund, a 501(c)(4) "social welfare" nonprofit organization, was registered on March 8 with the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs"
http://freebeacon.com/issues/march-lives-now-operating-dark-money-nonprofit-advocacy-group/

Televised by ABC/NBC/CBS/Fox/BBC/everyone else. If you thought there was a propaganda campaign in the run up to the war in Iraq, that was nothing compared to the coming war on the constitution; the propagand is just getting going. The kids are gonna "free the slaves, end the war in VIetnam make schools safe from the NRA." Demanding the firing of the incompetent sherif of Broward Country Florida, punishing the FBI employees who couldn't follow up a phone call, the deputy who refused to Baker Act the eventual killer or the multiple teachers who also refused to Baker Act the man, well that's just not the on media,501(c)(4) corporation's agenda.

[Mark Logan]

J,

re: Gunship search pattern.

And they STILL haven't found me!

Seriously though, strange as it may seem to the uninitiated the most un-occupied bit of airspace around a major hub airport is the area directly above the runways, above small plane pattern altitude extending up to about 5-6,000AGL. There is no reason for normal traffic to be directed there. If they wished to try out their surveillance gear on an urban environment that would be the place where it creates the least conflict with air traffic.

[Babak Makkinejad]

And pray, tell me, were immigrants responsible for this litany of misdeeds?
Did they destroy Detroit? Or invade Iraq? Or shred the social contract in US?

[Adrestia]

The EU is undemocratic. After the Catalan referendum an 'official' election was done and again the people voted in favour of an independent Catalonia.

Crowds of protesters in Spain's Catalonia region have clashed with police after the Supreme Court stepped up legal action against separatists.

Spain's Supreme Court ruled 25 Catalan leaders should be tried for rebellion, embezzlement or disobeying the state.

Convictions could result in up to 30 years in prison.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43523811

Again. Unless the politicians start listening to the voters, the situation will escalate untill it cannot be stopped. IMO more controlled changed will be preferable to rapid, uncontrolled change.

[Fred]

PA,

I said no such thing. I used the word "immigration, as in from all sources. You use the word "immigration" then in the next line switch to "illegal imigration" than quote some data on "a two-parent, two-child family". That's first rate sophistry. A+ comrade.

[Fred]

Babak,

Not good immigrants like you. You have completely assimilated. However you have failed to address my points about wage pressure and skills taught at US colleges. Feel free to address those with something besides ad hominem commentary.

[Babak Makkinejad]

I think your points are irrelevant to my rebuttal of your assertions in regards to immigrants. Go to Hamtramck and see the Benglai Muslim immigrants revitalizing that place while Euro-American led entities shipping jobs abroad.

[Fred]

Babak,

I made no assertion about immigrants in Hammtramack; neither the German ones who founded the city, the Poles who came in the early 1900s nor the Bengali ones there now. I said immigration affects wage pressure. Feel free to tell me what impact immigration has on wages.

"Euro-American led entities shipping jobs abroad". Which entities are those and how did you conclude they are Euro-American led? I won't bother to ask how many of those jobs wound up in Iran.