Intro
This is another of the W.O.O.D. series of semi-regular
Weekly Occasional Open Discussions.
(i.e. if I forget and skip one, no big)
Immediate prior one here:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/09/14/w-o-o-d-14-september-2019/
and remains open for threads running there (at least until the ‘several month’ auto-close of comments on stale threads).
Canonical list of old ones here:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/w-o-o-d/
I’m deprecating the use of “tips” pages. As the open discussion pages caught on, tips dropped off. For a month or two now I’ve not had a “tips” page put up, and nobody seems to have noticed. Then this last month folks started using the last TIPS page again. So do I need to bring them back? All the old ones remain for historical reference:
“Tips Pages”
What’s Going On?
Hyperventilating Impeachment Follies Begin
The hyperventilating and emotionally unstable Dimocrats have decided to impeach POTUS Trump for doing his job.
Why? Because they want to cover up that Joe Biden helped his kid graft off about $Billion (mostly as investment funds but with at least $Millions to the Biden pocket) AND to have a distraction from the AG report pointing out their illegalities, malfeasance, and flat out criminality in the 2016 election and prior. All in my opinion, of course.
What did Trump do? Asked for help with the 2016 “Russian Interference” investigation (CroudStrike) and the “Russian” interference that started (in the origination) from Ukraine. He also did due diligence to feel out if the Ukrainians were still as corrupt as they were prior to the present President, found them not corrupt, and released the aid money (ALL Without the Ukrainians knowing about any delay in funding). Then, when the Ukrainians had brought up the issue of corruption and prosecutors, basically said it was OK with us if they wanted to investigate the corruption, including that of Biden.
NONE of those is a crime of any sort and certainly not a “high crime”. Under the US / Ukraine treaty on mutual support in investigations they are, in fact, required duties.
So now we will be treated to the most extreme histrionics, most hyperventilating press reports, and most abusive “House Committee Investigations” on Earth, all over a completely fabricated hit piece in the Soft Coup by the Democrats
I hope the Republicans can gather enough courage to actually do something about this extraordinary abuse of power. IF they do not, I’ll only be voting for those who do support Trump. The rest are worthless.
It has become very clear that the D.C.Swamp is way more corrupt, immoral, and evil than thought. Felon Hillary gets not even a nasty letter, while Trump is roasted in the docks for doing his job? OK, noted.
For the first time ever I feel like jumping in the car and standing in front of Congress with a sign saying “You lying, cheating, immoral bastards.” Frankly, if some other country decided to bomb congress. I’m pretty sure I’d not lose much sleep over it now. It isn’t like NYC where people felt some connection. I’m very very slow to anger, and I’m not prone to much emotional state at all, really.
But right now? Right now I have zero respect for any Democrat Politicians or their Media Lap Dogs and I’m getting a “slow burn” going toward the House Democrats. Watching Pelosi, Shiff, and Nadler is like watching an Evil Three Stooges. They wouldn’t know a moral pang if they felt one. I’ve not seen a single Democrat stand up and say “This is wrong” or “This is an illegal railroading” or even “This is stupid, we are already campaigning for the next election”.
The Evil goes way deeper than Epstein.
BREXIT – Or Ought I Say Surrender Bill?
Parliament is back, the Supremes are on side, HM Lizzy is taking a nap, and Boris is up in the polls while reviled in London.
In theory, this is the last month of this mess. The British people are sick of it with Just LEAVE now polling almost 60%.
I suspect if an election were held now Boris would be crowned Princeling rather than just elected.
So we’ve got a Deep State / Globalist battle running from the USA to the UK and on to other nations, too.
FUD Watch – Fear, Uncertainty, & Doubt
Gargoyle Gretta was screwing up her face and trying mightily to look evil, pissed, and like an angry God. Hard to pull off as a young girl, it came across as petulant, nagging, and emotionally disturbed. But Afraid, yes, very Afraid.
I thought child abuse was illegal?
Space: The Last, and Next Frontier
SpaceX Starship prototype is fully stacked. Likely about a month more of interior work before they can start test hops.
Watch that space space.
Saudi War Escalates?
Anyone remember when war in Yemen, attacks on a Saudi Oil facility happened, and Syria was a thing?
Strange how they have just fallen entirely off the radar. Yet they have not gone away, have they?
Hurricane Season
Seems to e running down with a whimper. Still possible, but I think it’s time to start looking at snow season.
Snow Season
We’ve got massive snow dumps starting. So many I’m not tracking them. From Alaska to Montana to Colorado. Even had a bit of early snow in California.
It’s looking to me like this is the year that the winter starts early and hard, and stays late.
LOTS of midwest crops were planted late, and many don’t fully ripen until the end of October. This early start to snow means some of those will be lost, many will be frosted early or harvested runted. There will also be a lot of fall / winter crops and planting that won’t happen as there isn’t time between the end of harvest and the start of snow.
I don’t expect a food panic yet, but we will likely see the start of the change to shorter seasons and larger “one crop a year” areas.
Deep State Skate
Rumor (on the news) is that indictments will happen “Real Soon Now” and that something like 130 “Staffers” have had some kind of notice of wrongdoing with sending email to Hillary Clinton on a private mail server or misclassifying documents.
One can only hope this section expands. Soon.
Ebola Watch
Yeah, it is still “a thing” even if not top of the non-news MSM.
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/ebola/drc-2019/
Last time:
Latest numbers as of 11 September 2019
3099 Total cases
2074 Total deaths
938 Survivors
Compare now:
Latest numbers as of 28 September 2019
3188 Total cases
2129 Total deaths
991 Survivors
Socialist Policies On Parade
Anyone remember Venezuela? Argentina?
I thought not…
Musings from the Chiefio 
E M I am not sure that there will ever be anything done to those Treasonous Deep Staters in any of the areas, ie Demorats, FBI, CIA & DOJ.
They are all being let off without even a hand slap.
The fact that they had the gall to place a CIA agent in the WH to spy on the President to pick up anything they can run an impeachment on just shows that they have absolutley no fear of being charged with a damned thing.
Brexit is still a disaster and most Brexiteers are expecting Johnson to just bring back a slightly revamped May AW, which is not Brexit in any way shape or form.
I don’t know if you are aware that while May was supposedly negotiating Brexit she actually sold our our Military & Security to the new EDF. Who will actually have control of them from Brussels and run by a German.
So 5 eyes in serious jeopardy, the USA should be absolutely livid, I am not sure if Pres Trump knows waht has been done.
A C Osborn is correct: political chaos rules the scene in UK.
No shortage of political traitors to the democratic vote LEAVE now 3 years ago, June 2016.
Predictions? Not possible, I’m afraid.
I’ve been marking my voting papers since the 2003 Iraq invasion: NO VOTES FOR LIARS THIEVES & WARMONGERS. I voted Brexit.
I contributed a £few£ to getting the Stony Bliar in front of a jury. Got nowhere.
I look around me at 66 & see Fascists governing us, from different Parties, with different labels,
but Fascists all. Seasoned political analysts are starting to predict civil unrest.
John Doran.
JD, I am 72 and have never seen anything like what has happened in Parliament and Courts over the last 3 years.
What it has done, when added to the Expenses Scandal is to show the electorate what a bunch of self serving, lying, traitorous Bar Stewards the vast majority of MPs are.
Just found these delightful versions of popular songs but played on Korean gayageum by Luna Lee.
Prince-Purple Rain Gayageum version by Luna
and
Queen- I Want To Break Free Gayageum version by Luna
Enjoy
I come to think that the Biden family graft per se is just a side show. In the Center Ring is the investigation into the deTrump initiative. The only reason the Biden graft got sucked in was due to the effort to determine what part Biden played in deTrump. AG Barr is going to be a tough stump to remove from the field and the Dimowits just might blow themselves up trying.
The lack of charges of Dimowits IS very disheartening, but I have to continue to hope it will happen and when it does, the cases will be solid. There is this zephyr of hope (from the article):
“According to the Post, the State Department has contacted as many as 130 former Clinton aides in recent weeks as part of a probe into the email records of officials who sent messages to Clinton during her time as secretary of state.
Many of the aides have reportedly been informed that their emails have been retroactively classified and that the messages may amount to security violations as a result. ”
That will make for an interesting game Othello. :)
I reckon if BoJo is dumb enough to re-present a TheArse May type surrender deal, that he would be annihilated in Parliament I strongly suspect Boris is not that stupid, hopefully.
Greta I feel sorry for.
It becomes increasingly obvious she’s a victim: brainwashed by an ambitious antifa family & incapable of answering the simplest off-script question.
A tool of Soros’ money & globalist’ ambitions, I hope this insanity does not burn her too deeply.
I have an autistic grandson. To me, Greta, & her school strike movement, represent child abuse on a global scale: youtube & put in: Retired Head of FBI Tells All….
1 hr 4 mins video of honest Ted Gunderson.
He was being poisoned with arsenic when he died of cancer.
First place I saw Pawns In The Game, by William Guy Carr, recommended.
JD.
Again, A C Osborn is bang on the money, I am sad to confirm.
JD.
Yemen.
Wow. The Globalist One World Govt project just got knocked flat on its butt.
Yemeni Houthis & army just invaded Saudi, bashed up several airports & 3 Saudi brigades & took 2,000 prisoners, allegedly.
Amerikkkan $multi-billion$ defenses humiliated. Saudi ‘Royal’ head-chopper goatherd family humiliated.
What more could one ask?
JD.
After all the deep state stuff coming to light, I wonder who did kill JFK. Not the trigger finger guy, the deep state guys who hired him? Conspiracy In Action. Possible?
Computer question — in Win10, testing some listed 0.0.0.0 sites in my hosts file in the Firefox address bar to make sure they don’t come up. Almost all show the “unable to connect to site” message, but a couple actually bring up a site (usually Chinese). Not sure how that can happen — somehow the site is getting around my hosts file “protection”. And to try to make sure, did the following in hosts file for site in question:
0.0.0.0 site.com
0.0.0.0 http://www.site.com
0.0.0.0 x.x.x.x #where x.x.x.x is the ip address obtained from nslookup of site.com
@tom0mason
I liked her version of Hendrix’s Voodoo Chile:
I guess this is sort of a mashup of Brexit and Greta:
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/09/30/brexit-party-mep-parodies-greta-at-london-rally-tells-anti-brexit-mps-you-have-stolen-my-dreams/
After all the deep state stuff coming to light, I wonder who did kill JFK. Not the trigger finger guy, the deep state guys who hired him? Conspiracy In Action. Possible?
The general consensus for those in the US for the last couple decades has evolved toward something like the following.
There were apparently elements of the CIA, the FBI and the Mafia blended together with the deep state Democrats and some very powerful Texans who all decided that JFK was stepping in their mess kit. Throw in a bit of international intrigue from international Communism and you have an international conspiracy.
For years I wrote that idea off as a bit too broad brush and unlikely, (ie how would you get all those dirty players on the same page). Recently I have come to the conclusion that they have always been on the same page by the very nature of the games they play.
It appears that the “deep state” is actually a world wide loose association of criminal enterprises, who much like the Mafia had divvied up their areas of responsibility (ie one family ran the drugs in a certain city another did the extortion for protection rackets, another ran the numbers rackets and gambling etc.)
So you have the international Communists who want to take down capitalism and democracies by assisting any activity that poisons those enterprises. They also actively work to cultivate people at all levels of official organizations as captured assets through blackmail or some sort of criminal vulnerability such as taking pay offs, insider trading etc. These are very frequently tied to many other criminal enterprises because they run in the same circles and sometimes have to be careful not to intrude on the enterprises of others, the use the same accountants, and lawyers, share stake holds in money laundering operations etc.
The union that controls transportation is a natural ally to the smuggler who is a natural ally to the groups that need to smuggle goods (human trafficking, drugs, etc.)
Inside the large cities you get a dark web of corrupt officials who cover each other and facilitate others corruption for a piece of the action.
The result you end up with guys like Jack Ruby who runs a stripper dive bar, and hangs out with 2nd and 3rd echelon organized crime guys and dirty cops, who are somewhere up the line connected to someone who is shady at the FBI or a controlled asset of the CIA etc.
It is very much like the corrupt Feudal system where the Sheriff of Nottingham does the dirty work of the royals to make a loose analogy. The only difference is we traded names for the guilds that performed the dirty work.
You now had very rich Texans like the Hunt brothers who wanted to corner the entire world wide silver market, and others in the oil business, rich Democratic power brokers who “owned Texas” through a corrupt network, and power players like Lyndon Johnson who knew a guy who knew a guy that once dated the daughter of a guy who worked at the CIA etc.
I don’t think it was an “organized” thing but rather a whole lot of corrupt “families” who had interests which would be best served if JFK stopped trying to fix things. I suspect the Marilyn Monroe murder was a warning shot unheeded by the Kennedy’s ( who remember had a connection to the mob of the prohibition days )
I once worked with a guy that had lived in Dallas and got into investigating the JFK killing, he got scared off (literally moved away to a small town in Colorado) after being watched and followed by mysterious men in black cars as he told it. He was sufficiently scared he did not like to talk about it and only told me about it after I had known him for quite some time and even then it was a one time discussion – never talked about again).
My personal feeling is that it was a combined affair of special interests in the CIA, FBI and the organized crime, seasoned with a bit of Cuban Communists getting pay back for Bay of Pigs. Not an official conspiracy, but a lot of fellow travelers with mutual interests that were willing to facilitate the same result.
Like today the “deep state” and its commercial equivalent “corporate state” were much deeper and wider than the public generally perceives, and the players are far more corrupt than most are willing to acknowledge. They normally operate in the shadows and as long as they get their kick backs and bribes or insider deals, they stay out of the news and awareness of the general public who largely does not even recognize they exist. Folks in the inner cities probably have a better awareness since they see the routine applications of levers of power by political players, dirty cops and the local gangs and organized crime, where those who grew up in the peaceful suburbs never see any evidence of that layer of corruption in their daily lives unless they accidentally get involved some how.
I don’t think you can fairly say, “it was the CIA” but you can fairly say elements of the CIA, FBI, Dallas Police force, Democratic party machine, Cuban Communist agent provocateurs, the Organized Crime families, and some elements of International governments and the power brokers in the Corporate State were all involved and handled various pieces of the action.
When I worked for government, I saw hints of this sort of thing, comments by one person that the going price at the time for an ambassador ship appointment started at about $50 K donation and up depending on the slot they wanted. A governor that totally ignored rules and set up his own system so he could use our agency as a portal to curry favor with local political power players. Backroom deals where our whole division was fired and everyone that they wanted to keep rehired under a different organizational name and organization structure, where our entire staff including the director found out about the re-organization listening to a live TV speech by the governor.
By the time we found out about it – it was a done deal.
Those things really happen and government is a lot dirtier than many people think.
A bit more on the corruption in Ukraine – it is bigger than just Biden’s sweet heart deal.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/10/must-read-ukraine-burisma-story-is-massive-involves-billions-of-imf-and-us-funds-looted-and-lost-by-bank-connected-to-burisma-holdings/
A mini Ice Age? 2020 to 2030?
Looking all too likely:
http://www.thegwpf.org/professor-valentina-zharkova-the-solar-magnetic-field-and-the-terrestrial-climate/
She’s claiming a 97% probability. Worth a look.
More chaos in Parliament than since the 1640s civil war. Possible food shortages. An impending financial blow-up, 2008 X 2. What could possibly go wrong?
JD.
And from Breitbart Hilary is also apparently directly linked to Ukraine.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/09/30/wsjs-freeman-2017-politico-investigation-puts-hillary-clinton-in-ukraine-spotlight/
Hmmm maybe like they took down Al Capone with tax evasion charges, maybe they are going for Hillary using Ukraine?
Agreed Larry. Well stated. When it happened I followed the bits over many years and (can’t recollect exactly but way before Internet) saw some paperwork about news reporters who shot up through their ranks, ostensibly as a result of being on the ground that day. Some within earshot of the cavalcade at the momentous moment.
To my dimming memory these were not entirely they:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/five-journalists-that-got-their-start-covering-the-jfk-assassination
@pinroot
A good version but Hendrix’s Voodoo Chile original was unique.
Larry Ledwick said: “It appears that the “deep state” is actually a world wide loose association of criminal enterprises, who much like the Mafia had divvied up their areas of responsibility (ie one family ran the drugs in a certain city another did the extortion for protection rackets, another ran the numbers rackets and gambling etc.)
So you have the international Communists who want to take down capitalism and democracies by assisting any activity that poisons those enterprises. They also actively work to cultivate people at all levels of official organizations as captured assets through blackmail or some sort of criminal vulnerability such as taking pay offs, insider trading etc. These are very frequently tied to many other criminal enterprises because they run in the same circles and sometimes have to be careful not to intrude on the enterprises of others, the use the same accountants, and lawyers, share stake holds in money laundering operations etc.”
Adam Smith never said the Invisible Hand was limited to legal markets.
Hmmmm does this response mean – you can stuff your subpoena?
Rudy Giuliani
Verified account
@RudyGiuliani
20 hours ago
More
I have received a subpoena signed only by Democrat Chairs who have prejudged this case. It raises significant issues concerning legitimacy and constitutional and legal issues including,inter alia, attorney client and other privileges. It will be given appropriate consideration.
Police Raid Headquarters Of Ukraine’s Largest Bank As IMF Mission Arrives In Kyiv
llanfar says:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/10/01/w-o-o-d-1-october-2019/#comment-117613
The page does not exist.
Rudy: “It will be given appropriate consideration.”
Hahahahahahahaha!
Rudy: “Okay. After appropriate consideration… pound sand!”
“WHO Accuses Tanzania of Withholding Details of a Potential Ebola Outbreak”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/10/01/who-accuses-tanzania-of-withholding-details-of-a-potential-ebola-outbreak/
@llanfar and jim2: Yeah. Gone. Poof. Either it was disappeared very fast or it was a bad link.
llanfar, did you happen to mark the link? That would be the start of some Heap Big Ugly.
Reading through the comments: OMG there’s a lot breaking right now…
I have to hit Al Jazeera for the Saudi bit.
I have to hit RT for the Ukraine side angle.
I have to take the spouse shopping… (grumble…) so it will be a while before I have something intelligent to say…
“The RBA is run by incompetents”
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2019/10/01/the-rba-is-run-by-incompetents/
Ukraine bank raid
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-police-raid-privat-bank-headquarters/30159430.html
Oh goody, more high tech surveillance – honest it will make the city more efficient – trust me have we ever lied to you?
https://www.thedailybeast.com/smart-cities-are-creating-a-mass-surveillance-nightmare
Is anyone else losing it over the censorship which seems to be everywhere now?
I find this idea of “scouring youtube to spot a real source” to be commendable if exhausting. But no longer believe Youtube can be relied upon to faithfully host content of any controversy.
Zeronet is a very flawed and under resourced decentralized system – so it may never be up to the task of freeing citizens from corporate control. Still hoping that it (or something like it) catches on sufficiently to make corporate hosting irrelevant. Just don’t see any way the big boys can be trusted again. They’ve really made a mess of things.
It is getting really obnoxious but hopefully they are just laying the ground work for a digital breakup as a result, or a hard rule that they cannot selectively shut down access to critical on line domains for political purposes.
I think we are in for a few years of legal battles on this, but so far their are back door solutions.
Probably related-
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1179011768326246402.html
Sec of State Pompeo tells House that State Department will not testify at their “show trial”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/10/secretary-of-state-pompeo-says-state-dept-officials-will-not-testify-next-week-before-house-show-trials-on-impeachment/
Looks like someone is turning over a lot of rocks
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-vatican-raid/vatican-police-raid-top-offices-take-documents-idUSKBN1WG45E
Larry got it. Somehow a double-quote got in at the end of my href…
[Reply: I think I fixed the broken link. -EMSmith ]
Re the Vatican raid: It looks like there were some in the Vatican who were fleecing the flock and skimming from the collection plate, but on a Vatican scale.
It happens in some churches everywhere, although in the case of the Vatican, it’s a bit more than one of the Deacons at the local church skimming a hundred here and there or a Pastor living a wee bit large. Some things never change.
What will be interesting is who the outsiders are that were working with the Vatican insiders.
I seriously doubt Biden broke any laws. But as has been pointed out, he did exactly what they are accusing Trump of doing. His problem is that he cannot be cleared unless there is an investigation, and that will reveal Hillary’s crimes.
I am amused hearing all the YSM talking about “no evidence”. THey are not smart enough to understand the ironic humor in their screeches, And why it falls on deaf ears.
#metoo! Sorry, Urinalist, only the accusations matter.
“NO VOTES FOR LIARS THIEVES & WARMONGERS.”
Nice, although I prefer:
“Honourable? Dubious.
Member? Definately!”
:-)
Brexit. It just might happen.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu/final-proposal-pm-johnson-to-unveil-brexit-offer-to-eu-idUKKBN1WG4S8
This looks reasonable to me, the best that can be hoped for under the circumstances. Even for the EU. More time won’t help, so why extend it. Corbyn won’t help — start negotiations all over again with a guy who doesn’t even know what he wants (apart from being PM). Cancel Brexit with a new vote — not a sure thing, then what. Take the deal now and keep talking. This might even be an opportunity for Ireland (the whole island).
Gargoyle Greta. I like that. Jeremy Clarkson (who has had a little PC problem with the BBC) called Greta a spoiled brat. Sure, we know the parents used and abused her, but watch her UN speech, preferably the death metal version on YouTube, then imagine her parents saying “see what we had to put up with!”.
So much for planned efforts to contain the tractorcade in Netherlands
Oh that is just too precious! Putting up road blocks for a vehicle designed to run over dirt and where it’s a bit of a challenge to take them down the road… Guess she’s not a Farm Girl ;-)
Maybe someone can explain to her what those giant cleated wheels in the back are all about… or the ones with treads…
One of the first vehicles I ever drove was a tractor. My first “ride on toy” (at 2 or3?) was a green John Deer Tractor with wagon behind it. To this day I still want a tractor ;-) (Does Mercedes or Subaru make a tractor? 8-] )
UPDATE:
Just remembered Subaru is part of Fuji Heavy Industries… they make Tractors and a whole lot more:
https://www.heavyequipmentguide.ca/products
I knew Mercedes made trucks and buses, looks like tractors too!
https://www.tractorhouse.com/listings/farm-equipment/for-sale/list/category/1100/tractors/manufacturer/mercedes-benz
This is an excellent polite rant expressing the same “cold anger” many of my friends and I have been feeling for some time.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/10/01/stand/#more-172594
@Jon K:
Interesting read. And exactly right.
I find it interesting that they chose a Red Head for the image and a Celtic tale of battle.
then this:
So exactly right.
What I think is missed by the Established Bastards is that should POTUS Trump put out a tweet “All Militia come defend the White House” in minutes there would be dozens of armed citizens defending it. In hours, thousands. By the next day or two, Millions.
He could raise a “Personal Army” overnight, should that become necessary.
It is in the Celtic Tradition. What is lost to the PC Addled of today is that the “Burning Cross” was not a racist symbol, it was a call to arms. ANY Celt could call for an army to form and if “their cause be just” it would form. The call to arms was via a set of runners, running through the valleys with a Burning Cross torch (so you knew it wasn’t just someone lighting their way). Then the Celts, in their numbers, would descend from their High Cold Places to asses the merit of your call.
Many an invader was dispatched by that means. Even the Romans a few times.
There is very strong Celtic Thread that runs through the culture of America… The New Romans have been trying to extinguish it for generations…
SO, OK, now the “Burning Cross” is vilified because the KKK abused it. Fine, whatever. But a burning Tweet will do just as well.
I’m pretty sure THAT is what the Dims don’t get. IF they succeed in the Take Down of Trump, the next step in the recovery of the Nation will not be their victory lap…
Or maybe they do “get it” which is why they want to take all the guns and gasoline…
The stupidity in that move is simply this:
Look at all that Red Map Area. Then look at the blue pockets. Now ask yourself:
“Which one has the food and which one needs it?”
The reality is that the guys driving trucks, trains, and tractors are a far stronger force than any Militia with rifles. ALL they need to do is take the keys and go fishing…
Bernie Sanders is probably out of the race, at least for the shot term, but his will taint his electablity on health grounds.
https://trendingpolitics.com/breaking-sanders-off-the-campaign-trail-after-emergency-heart-surgery/#.XZTRzItrkcs
E.M.: “The reality is that the guys driving trucks, trains, and tractors are a far stronger force than any Militia with rifles. ALL they need to is take the keys and go fishing…”
Yup. I don’t think a single shot needs to be fired. The Regressives huddle in the cities and have been trying to herd everyone else into the cities for ease of control. Oopsie! They are in a trap of their own making.
Pick a dozen of the bluest power-center cities, blockade food, fuel, toilet paper (no more newspapers and catalogs now, eh?), and coffee, and in two weeks the survivors will be begging for a meet to come to terms.
Someone didn’t think this revolution through.
Stents, eh?
He can be back up and at it in about a week. BUT his doctor will be telling him not to.
With one blocked, the rest are marginal. Think we ought to tell Bernie that he needs to just increase his Vit-C as that’s the cause?
Nah, let him eat cardboard and saltless greens ;-)
@H.R.:
Might not even need that many…
The ENTIRE LA Basin is serviced by I-5 and 101 from the north. I-15 from Vegas, and I-8 / I-10 from the East. That’s 5 block points.
Now you do have ocean access, but that’s what, 3 ports? (L.A., Long Beach, San Diego).
So add Crane Operators and dock workers…
San Franciso (and Portland / Seattle are similar ) has I-5 “nearby” but really it’s just 101 from the south and I-80 from the east. 101 continues north through Marin so there’s a spot there. Then hwy 37 ? is a back door through Petaluma. Oh, and I-4 I think it is, something like that, being built up through Concord . Yes, there’s some other “odd bits” like I-280 / 680 that are through the East bay – BUT: They all converge on I-80 (as the three numbers ending in 80 indicate). So the entire SF Bay Area is maybe 4 points to block.
For most of these cities, it’s maybe 1/2 dozen (often less) major freeways that are THE major connectors for trucking, then 2 or 3 rail lines. A dozen or 2 dedicated guys could shut them down. (It would take a LOT more to keep them shut, though).
BUT, really. Think about it. Do the Liberal Elite really care about anywhere but Washington DC and New York City?
I’d wager just those 2 would be quite enough…
The other “fun bit”? Due to their insane tendency to treat a box of fingernail clippings as though it were Nuclear Waste, nobody would need to do anything horrific. Just mix up about 100 gallons of a mix of Diesel and some toxics (like pesticide and / or “toxic” lead dust (wheel weights + grinder…)) and let it “spill” across the freeway. Now it’s closed for a day of analysis and clean up. Rinse.. and then repeat…
Now you and I know that bits of Diesel, lead drippings, and pesticides are all over the place and that this isn’t really adding enough to notice… but … The EPA Has Rules.
Obligatory Disclaimer:
I am NOT advocating for those actions. As a Computer Security Guy, my job is to evaluate and predict risks. That skill set does not go away when looking at shipping networks instead of computer networks. It’s just part of the mind-set to spot where there are risks. By pointing them out, folks can know what to protect, not just what to attack.
One of my jobs as a disaster planner, was to anticipate exactly that sort of situation, and find things that the bad guys might try and how to handle the consequences.
It taught me to try and think like a bad guy to figure out alternatives and preventive tactics.
A useful skill if you are dealing with any high value or high risk asset.
The biggest problem with government legislators is most of them are not too smart, and do not have very good imaginations and simply ignore obvious risks or work-arounds to their legislation or tactics. They then are aghast that someone thought of a tactic that would be obvious to an intelligent 9 year old.
Same here, when I was a county EMA person. It really doesn’t take much .. and that’s why we had various training sessions to test specific points. That way we’d know what worked, what didn’t, what needs beefing up, what could slide (for now); given a limited budget.
Ho boy I think you are about to see the final act soon.
Do I hear jaws theme playing in the background?
TheLastRefuge
@TheLastRefuge2
2 hours ago
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Inspector General Identifies DC U.S. Attorney Leaking Grand Jury Evidence…
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/10/02/inspector-general-identifies-dc-u-s-attorney-leaking-grand-jury-evidence/
@Larry re civil charges by President Trump – Criminal cases have a higher burden of proof and the people working on the criminal cases are probably swampers and will make *ahem* mistakes that will allow the culprits off the hook.
The civil case angle is pure genius. President Trump can bleed every ill-gotten dollar from the coup plotters by requiring them to hire armies of lawyers. Just making up numbers, but if he decides say, $200 million is worth it to make sure no one ever tries such an attack ever again on him or any President, I’d imagine it will require many times that amount out of the pockets of the swampers just to defend… and President Trump may win the cases.
The President can’t be sued in office, but as best I know, nothing says the President can’t sue others. Anyone know any different.
I have no doubt his family can initiate law suites as can those like General Flynn who no longer hold a government job.
I agree best way to keep this from happening is to let them know that lawfare works both ways and given the imbalance in fund raising between the RNC and DNC, if the DNC gets named in the suits he can bleed them dry.
Yep. Cold anger.
There is Scots-Irish in my heritage. There is, reportedly, Amerind (mom’s dad’s side had a full blooded Choctaw female in it, though I think she wasn’t on the Rolls), and though I could have pushed it, I didn’t. (Why? Person had to be on the Rolls, one way or the other). There is the old saying: Don’t get his Irish up. Mom’s mom had the clan tartan … think about that for one who wasn’t ‘white’ (given how the Celts ‘got around’, I don’t scoff at Beto being ‘Hispanic”). Clan Finley (various spellings for it). Part of it ended up in and around West Point, GA, including the AL side of the river nearby. On dad’s mom’s side, they traced it back to 1700s Harris County NC, with branches that went as far west as Woodland and Davis, CA. It was mixed even back then: part Cherokee, part Scots-Irish, part west African (often forgotten, is that Cherokee did take ‘black’ slaves, and I met a descendant of one who, I think, was on the Rolls, but blacker than lots of “African-Americans”). And they want to enforce the old ‘one drop rule’: so I ask, “Which one drop?”, for grins.
We just lost another flying B-17 in an emergency landing accident with fire and fatalities.
B-17 G #44-83575 civil registration N93012
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-connecticut-crash-idUSKBN1WH1RB
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/collings-foundation-b-17-flying-fortress-crashes/
Just saw on Bongino: Trump donations way up. With cash on hand, now $308 MILLION or double what Obama had for his reelection campaign….
IF the Dims keep pushing this Impeachment Soft Coup, they will be nose to nose and belly to belly with a $BILLION of LawFair “right quick” as I’ve not donated a penny yet so clearly there’s a LOT of untapped wallets on the Trump side…
You Go Dems! Raising RECORD CASH for Trump! Wooo Hooo!!!
“Epic Trump – President Trump Tweets Photograph of Biden, Exposing Ukraine Corruption…”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/10/02/epic-trump-president-trump-tweets-photograph-of-biden-exposing-ukraine-corruption/https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/10/02/epic-trump-president-trump-tweets-photograph-of-biden-exposing-ukraine-corruption/
And from Hong Kong a speech which will be a signature moment in the protests in Hong Kong.
@Larry L
Oh the bad joke possibilities! :-)
But then it is just a shot in the dark.
I continue to be amazed at the planning of Trump and how the dims keep dancing to his tune! This has got to be his best plan yet! He has forced the YSM to cover the Biden scandal (albeit they lamely bleat about no evidence). And then, each time the dims think they have something, he snatches it away and turns it on them! Latest example – forcing Schiffless to admit this whole episode was a set up, with one major flaw. Schiffless got snookered by another lie!
By the time the election comes around, he may win 49 states. The dims are bound and determined to alienate 67% of the people to please the 33%. And they think that is a winning strategy. They should stop listening to Hillary for campaign advice!
If you can, look up Lou Dobbs for tonight. He has Guliani on. Looks like Rudy is talking a few dozen different law suits including Civil Rights Violations. Also points out that while Congress Critters have immunity while on the floor, they do NOT when in public or issuing press releases. So was talking about SHIFF saying bad things (provably lies) about Trump to the papers in public… Shiff is trying to intimidate a Junk Yard Dog that worked with NYC Unions / Mafia to get things done and the Lawyer who took on the mob bosses & Teamsters and won… Shiff has no clue what teeth are…
Quoting Rudy per the Mafia Dons and others he’s taken down:
“Jesus, they were a hell of a lot smarter than Shiff…”
Pity the pencil neck who pisses in Rudy’s direction, but enjoy the show when he gets eaten alive.
LL @ https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/10/01/w-o-o-d-1-october-2019/#comment-117669
Let’s hope Barr flipped this lawyer (and therefore no prosecution) because if Barr is just letting people off for no good reason we have a much hugher problem on our hands!!!
If I had to lay bets, I would suspect that in the suit against Schiff, that they will in the course of building the case, attack his character and use that as a strategy to expose the congressional slush fund pay outs for sexual misbehavior.
Discovery is such a wonderful tool if the attorneys know how to use it.
philjourdan: “By the time the election comes around, he may win 49 states. The dims are bound and determined to alienate 67% of the people to please the 33%.”
Their strategy is to piss everyone off and then win in a landslide. Kinda like “We lose money on every sale but we’ll make it up in volume.”
@ cdquarles re “Person had to be on the Rolls, one way or the other”
I was told we’re British, Scots-Irish, Pennsylvania Dutch, Choctaw, Cherokee, and Iroquis.
My uncle told me that if you had a documented ancestor whose sibling was on the Rolls, you could use that to document your connection.
It is beginning to look like Hillary is looking for a rematch. 8-) With Biden fading and Sanders health questionable that leaves only Pocahontas. I’m sure that the Democratic Central Committee would side with Hillary Clinton one more time. Also likely the only way she can stay out of prison as the Trump Administration launches their counter attack…pg
I think the plan is to have her pop in at the last minute after all the other candidates have wrecked themselves and portray herself as “the moderate” candidate.
(simultaneously they have preconditioned the public to accept as at least open for discussion all the radical proposals already touted by the current candidates – just slowly moving the Overton window to the left bit by bit each election cycle.
I suspect Trump has already figured this out and is just waiting, then right before she is ready to announce dump on her, Clinton charity abuse etc.
A bit of history about those that claim Ancestry to the Civilized Indian Tribes. After the French-Indian war, by treaty Colonists were not allowed west of the Appalachian Mountains so from time to time Whites were adopted into the tribe to live with them. Many of these people had farms and businesses there as members/citizens of the tribe, as such they were exempt from eastern government control and taxes. Many of tribe members sided with the British during the Revolutionary War as well as during the War of 1812. Andrew Jackson Voided these treaties, rounded up the Civilized tribes and drove them west to get rid of them so that his Democratic friends could seize the property and farms. Many of the tribe’s members just scattered and melded into the society that then grew up in the area. So for a hundred years they have existed among the rest of the population with the oral history of being “hidden” tribe members. Many others just walked off the Oklahoma “Reservation” to become citizens, specially after the Oklahoma Land rush that cost the tribes their best lands.
So if Elizabeth Warrens claims a distant relative that was a Cherokee Tribe member she may have been correct, even if it was all European. My Grand Mother claimed that she could have claimed Head Rights on the Cherokee Nation due to a predecessor that walked off of the reservation and went to California during the Gold Rush. Grandma certainly looked like a Cherokee Indian Woman and would go on the warpath any time she got into the Booze. Otherwise a wonderful woman, at least towards me. ;-) …pg.. .
Well if this checks out, here is the basis for civil asset forfeiture of Biden’s assets. That should be a pretty good lever to flip him on Obama and Clinton.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/10/russias-novaya-gazeta-drops-documents-that-show-ukrainians-transferred-3-4-million-in-criminally-obtained-money-to-hunter-bidens-business-accounts/
Want to add some ecitement to your life?
“Tesla Rolls Out Smart Summon Feature”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/10/02/tesla-rolls-out-smart-summon-feature/
I think that Russia has heard Trump say he’d like better relationships, seen Trump trying to clean up the corruption (that Russia had run into with their “Oligarchs”…) and has decided to toss some dirt in the direction of the Democrats. Likely didn’t like the whole “Russia Hoax” calling them names either…
Putin knows that you can be a Strong Man and still be an honest one working to good ends. He’s restored the Church, recovered their Economy in many ways (from the worst of it), gotten the Oligarch corruption under control, is getting the military into some decent form (mostly via new weapons but not a lot of money), and returned Russia to the International Stage. Along the way, needed a few assassinations and some dirty tricks. About par for that part of the world.
Given all the crap that has been surfaced about the Democrats, the “Color Revolutions” taking down whole countries, Soros raking in the dough over it, and USA being leveraged as a lap dog in the process: Frankly, I think he was justified in thinking he had to use any tools available to preserve Russia and prevent that ilk from taking over his country.
So not surprised he might admire Trump and how he’s hanging in there against a consortium of a dozen or so corrupt nations, Soros and his organizations, and a domestic soft coup. (Though he might be wondering why Trump just doesn’t order a few strategic “disappearances”… or maybe he realizes that with the FBI & CIA against Trump, the necessary “assets” are on the wrong side of the board…)
But it DOES explain why they chose the Russia in Russia Hoax. Vilify Russia in the process. Since Russia was resisting the Globalists, taking down the Oligarchs (that I now suspect were pets of the Globalists… “Their Man In Moscow”…), and then squashed their operation in Ukraine, well, of course they don’t want Russia and The Devil Trump talking to each other…
@Another Ian:
Oh Dear! “That’s gonna leave a mark”… or already has ;-)
Maybe they need a new name. How about:
“Special Needs Summon”?
IF Hillary has 1/2 a brain (facts not in evidence…) she will know that Trump has enough dirt on her to sink her. Unfortunately, hubris will win and she feels she is destined to be the First Woman President (by god – lower case of course…) so I fear she will go for it as the dwarves all knife each other.
One can only hope that the Biden Take Down has enough splatter to make it interesting to look at the corrupt Clinton Foundation Pay-to-Play schemes too.
I think it will come down to who gets papers filed first and what the first verdicts are…
Yet another Deep State Criminal found guilty as charged gets away with not being prosecuted.
While the DOJ ever prosecute anybody NOT involved with Trump?
I don’t think so, I think it will take something like Military tribunals or something similar to change it.
https://truepundit.com/inspector-general-protects-another-justice-department-criminal/
In a impromptu press conference just now, Trump said Biden, Biden’s son, and people like them are how China has taken us to the cleaners (paraphrasing). I love that guy!
The new uber?
Recently there has been a bunch of talk on twitter and in the media about the missile systems China showed off on their birthday parade.
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1165931.shtml
The above link asserts that the DF-41 will be the longest range nuclear missile in the world at 14,000 kilometers and MIRV capable of 10 warheads. This would only be technically true and totally ignores the newest Russian super missile the SARMAT which is undergoing final test phases will be operational probably next year and out ranges it by some 2000 miles at 18,000 kilometres max range (giving it the ability to attack the US from any point of the compass.)
This item shows Russia assisting China in developing a top tier missile defense system.
The combined capabilities of Russia and China would be a very challenging attack scenario for the US to defend against, and would give the two of them sufficient capability to if working together destroy deterrence by our current systems.
https://www.rt.com/news/470148-russia-china-missile-warning-putin/
Right now we out rank both in ballistic missile submarine tubes at 336 tubes but at the current rate of upgrade and modernization by both, that won’t last long, especially since our Ohio class boats are nearing end of service life in just a few years. If we don’t start a crash building program on new nuclear missile boats we will no longer have credible deterrence against soon to be fielded abilities of other peer nations.
compared to the Russians which currently have
48 tubes on 3 Borai missile subs which are active
20 tubes on the only typhoon class boat that is active
108 tubes in the Delta class boats which are active
China has
12 tubes on their single type 092 boat
60 tubes in their 5 active type 094 boats (but they have more planned)
Interesting read.
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2019/10/01/confessions-of-a-climate-scientist
Caning Keynes
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2019/10/03/classical-inflation/
Now the Republican leadership is finally standing up and publicly questioning the legitimacy and methods being used by Nancy Pelosi & the Democrats in the House and their highly irregular Impeachment inquiry.
Looks like Nancy Pelosi is saying there are no rules and she can ignore historical precedent and run a kangaroo court proceeding where the accused has no rights to respond.
It does look Like Nancy is intent on running a Rail Road.
IIRC, the Constitution says “THE House”, it does not say “The majority party of the House can set any rules it wants and exclude the others from participating”.
I’m pretty sure on that grounds alone this can be punted to the Supreme Court.
At present, this is NOT an “Impeachment Proceeding By The House”, it is an “Impeachment procedure of some unknown sort by the Democratic Party”…
I suspect Rudy has had a hand in crafting those questions and as soon as a couple of key “due process” ones are answered “No” or by action shown to be “No”, a suit will be dropped on their heads. That’s what I’d do. At a minimum, that delays until until the Supremes give the OK. Even the President gets constitutional rights to legal due process.
You don’t always get what you want – – – but sometimes you get what you need.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/10/brilliant-corrupt-congressional-dems-ask-trump-state-dept-for-ukrainian-docs-get-crooked-hillary-and-biden-docs-instead-video/
I have no link, since I was listening to ABC news on the radio. But I heard the stupidest comment yet on this! From one of their info babes (she has to be pretty as she has the brains of a gnat).
She basically said that Trump has not refuted ANY of the Whistleblowers report. I guess she never read the transcript of the call as it refutes ALL of the report!
You really have to wonder if these idiots use an ipod to remind them to breathe.
Seems the Dems are freaking out over business as usual with China now.
Only problem is like in Ukraine this is a routine part of diplomatic contact. Almost every very country in the world which has normal diplomatic relationships with other countries asks for law enforcement assistance when one of their citizens is connected to illegal actions in that foreign country.
He did not ask them to make stuff up like the dossier, but to investigate a known corrupt transaction.
Oh by the way we have a mutual assistance treaty with China too on law enforcement cooperation.
Click to access 13102-China-Law-Enforcement-MLAT-6.19.2000.pdf
Larry L.: “Oh by the way we have a mutual assistance treaty with China too on law enforcement cooperation.”
I did not know that, but it comes as no surprise to me that China would make those agreements with any and every country so they could retrieve any Chinese citizen that somehow displeased the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). However, I don’t see them reciprocating with any country if it doesn’t benefit the CCP.
I’m not sure how much cooperation President Trump will get out of China if it might reveal how many Congresscritters and Senators they own. Chinese State Secret and all that.
We Need to Eat the Babies!’ Climate Activist Confronts AOC at New York Town Hall
Pale rider says:
October 3, 2019 at 11:05 pm
We need ‘T’ shirts lots of ‘T’ shirts. CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL EAT THE BABIES. then maybe some yummy recipes on back. I’m sure North Korea has some.
Would they allow you to sell them at the DNC convention?
@Taz – It took me a while to catch on to what was going on.
Better’n “Eat The Babies” is Green New Meal.
(Hahahahahahaha! I stole that, but best one yet!)
AOC and the DNC own this. Who wants to bet me 25¢ that this comes up in the next Dim debate?
Wow! AOC just got confronted by someone even more crazy then herself or was this a parody?
@Taz: Just OMG!
I wonder if that is a real nut bar, or if a clueful right winger is doing IRL Trolling :-)
Even if a nut job, it does show hiw The Left won’t step away from any insanity.
And that their current proposals ARE on the final edge of insanity. So the concept of an IRL Troll Of Insanely Left “has legs”.
I found this by accident- i swear…
I submit the following in support of the ultimate troll theory.
@Larry, you are correct. The woman’s speech paturns and voice are quite unique.
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/10/01/w-o-o-d-1-october-2019/#comment-117755
Well, this is weird. I can’t see anything in Larry’s post except the text about “troll theory.” Hmmm…
I can view page source and see what I’m missing.
Try this remove the braces
[https://twitter.com/i/status/1180117818278330372]
Most of the time when I run into that it is that browser settings for pop-up blocking are the culprit, some of those videos seem to trigger that setting others don’t, not sure what the difference is.
@Jim2:
I’ve noticed, as I move between platforms, OSs, Browsers and releases that some of them show the twitter stuff and some don’t.
Sometimes it shows it until the thread is long enough with enough video / heavy page weight stuff, that it just gives a little box / something there but not visible indicator.
I think it’s a browser limitation not a crude memory limit as I usually have 2 to 12 GB of swap space. I suspect some browsers just have a timer and time out if my small slow system does’t pick up the image in time…
On Solar power and their real impact on total emissions due to requirements to produce make up power when the sun is not shining.
https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/04/north-carolina-energy-company-finds-solar-power-actually-increases-pollution/
Short title – physics trump policy
Well how nice of them to come to the party.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/oct/4/antifa-america-canceled-rally-trump-minneapolis-/
Well this is depressing, while poking around on the eat baby topic – –
do a search for “gold covered roasted babies”
You will be surprised by the number of hits.
@Larry re Minneapolis rally – As soon as I saw the rally announcement, I knew Antifa would be there in as much force as they could muster.
My first thought was, “Wouldn’t it be an odd coincidence if there was a Military Exercise to practice Riot Control in an Urban Environment Beyond the Capacity of Local Law Enforcement on the same day as the rally?
It probably also wouldn’t hurt if Bikers For Trump scheduled a rally in Minneapolis on the same day as the rally.
.
.
.
There is a difference between non-politician-never-ran-for-office-before candidate Trump holding a rally and The President of The United States holding a rally. I believe it brings some Federal laws into the equation.
@H.R.:
It do…
Along with the Secret Service and their tendency to treat anyone as a strong threat to be neutralized.
Do remember, though, that part of the Color Revolution Play Book is to vilify the target and then create violence in the streets against them. They WANT the “battle for the streets”.
a) They win: Victorious Saviors Of Liberty Defeat Evil Usurper!
b) They lose: Valiant Freedom Fighters Overcome By Evil Shock Troops of discredited Dear Leader!
This is ALL right out of the Soros / Color Revolution method.
Maybe I need to do a review of it ;-)
They one thing that they can not abide is just being cordoned off in a corner and ignored. So I say give them an assigned area to be in, surround it with SWAT, and anyone gets uppity outside that area, swam them with a team of undercovers and toss their ass in jail.
Of course the good news is if they get out of hand it could be the perfect pretext to designate them a terrorist group and shut them down.
I am also waiting for the Bikers for Trump to announce a ride to Minneapolis on the same day as the rally.
Looks like the Intel community is sending warnings, they might be biting off more than they can chew. They were created by the National Security Act of 1947, and can be undone by a restructuring of the government departments. If President Trump wins big in 2020 (which I expect), he very well could initiate a complete overhaul of the FBI and intelligence agencies, perhaps putting in place an executive oversight of their operations.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-trump-intelligence-agencies-crime-punished
Ooops clean up on isle #5
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/409961-russian-deputy-ag-linked-to-lawyer-in-trump-tower-meeting
@Larry L:
Per that “Russian Deputy AG” article:
“Yes, Comrade. Come with. Sit here. We go fly. No, only I get parachute…. “
@E.M. Parachute in a helicopter? Gonna be interesting…
Get it going full up, free fall out the door in the downdraft and away, later pull cord.
Not as hard as you might think… Just don’t pull too early :-‘)
E.M.: “They one thing that they can not abide is just being cordoned off in a corner and ignored.”
I had forgotten about that, ‘that’ being that at any Trump rally, he and his organization cheerfully recognize the right of others to disagree and protest. But it’s his rally, his party, he’s paying for it, so he has some say. He didn’t invite ‘Negative Nancys’. At his rallies, there is always a protest area set up on the perimeter for anyone who wants to protest to do their thing; have at it. That held true for the rally I attended. They had an officially sanctioned protest area.
It will be interesting to see how much Antifa action will be tolerated and how much – and how – any Antifa action will be squelched.
I don’t know how much Minneapolis is like SF or Portland. I guess we’ll find out.
Making a 90 degree turn at 57 mph…
Mrs. H.R. has Lou Dobbs on and the topic is H1-B visas.
E.M. has already posted plenty about his experience on the topic. What I heard (half-assed; I’m near deaf doncha know) was some pushback on H1-Bs.
If I heard right (I didn’t), “someone” is saying that yeah, we will need H1Bs, but we should be pushing for American IT professionals first and only then start importing what we need to make up the shortfall.
“Watch This Space” as others pick up on the details to flesh this out.
But it’s his rally, his party, he’s paying for it, so he has some say. He didn’t invite ‘Negative Nancys’.
That I think is one of the reasons President Trump has people register for tickets to the rally, that makes it an invitation only event and he can kick out anyone that causes problems no questions asked.
It is also nice for building a data file of supporters to target with election related messages, and if need be fund raising queries.
The Daily Beast reported that Saak Albertovich Karapetyan was aboard an unauthorized helicopter flight, which crashed near the village of Vonyshevo, outside of Moscow.
Makes you wonder if he was shot down!
@Larry:
Why “shoot down” when the right immiscible liquid put on top of the (small) fuel load shows a full fuel tank that “suddenly” doesn’t keep the engine going after 20 minutes?
(Did I ever mention that I had the C.I.A. application in hand but decided not to turn it in… I’m really fond of “dirty tricks” scenarios… and, I think, pretty good at them… but there was this morality issue…. )
A rather fascinating thing…
You might remember my commenting some days (week or two?) ago that the ChromeBox was “out of support” AND that I’d had sporadic failures of the password to “take” on the first typing.
Well, I’m now typing this as a “guest” on that box. Why?
Well, I’ve been unable to log in for 2 days now. I’ve repeatedly tried the (only password I’ve used on it for 4 years…) password and it doesn’t recognize it.
Now, the really good thing is that I don’t have a damn thing on this box that I care about and I was planning to convert it to Linux Real Soon Now anyway. About the only thing of interest would be the open tabs in the browser that were stacked up for some future interest and the bookmarks of various music videos. (that I was unlikely to really ever visit all of them again…)
I’d backed up and taken off the box almost everything I might care about some months back.
BUT:
It sure is mighty suspicious that Just As It Exits Support, this failure to launch shows up. Almost like it ‘s a plot to get me to buy a new one…
Now, imagine I’d put 4 or 6 years worth of All My Stuff on this box… Think I’d buy a new one if promised that it would all Magically Be Restored? Hmmm?
Sigh.
I’d like to think it was just me messing up the password, but really, after several years of typing the same thing, really?
I’ve never ever trusted the ChromeBox. Now I’m pretty sure that was a wise decision…
Oddly, it still works with a “guest” login… which was really how I was always using it…
Hmmm try changing the system date to a year ago and see what happens?
Cool tech in wheel chairs
E.M.
More on our federal government computer system.
As I learned yesterday it doesn’t like Firefox (though it did a week or so ago) – mind you that took an ear-flattening dig on the phone as there is no warning of such. The only other browser on my computer is the one that comes with Avast anti-virus, so I gave that a go and it worked fine.
This morning I needed to upload another one-pager and NEITHER WORK!
But I’ve worked out the scenario.
Being a public service system you’re supposed to have as many browsers as you can “hire” in the hope that when needed you find one that works.
Sort of like their staffing methodology I guess.
Interesting paper on Vitamin D and sun exposure
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3897598/
For discussion of sun exposure etc go to:
“Factors that Influence Cutaneous Vitamin D3 Synthesis”
and figure 22 and following
Bottom line is those of us who live in northern latitudes and who are older will not be able to make any cutaneous vitimin D from about November to March.
Potential word games here (IMO) – check out “short shrift”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/short%20shrift
@Larry – Seriously, I wonder if my Wintering in Florida will now make a difference?
I added vitamin D3 to my daily supplement a while back as the only D3 I was getting was possibly in my coffee creamer and the sour cream on my baked potato. BTW, I love a little bit of potato to go with my sour cream ;o)
Interesting stuff. Thanks.
A couple years ago I started taking Vit D3 supplements beginning around Halloween and continue through about March, I take 2 of the pills every day in the heart of the winter, and it definitely helps my mood and energy level.
Rule of thumb if you cannot get a sun burn you cannot make Vit D from sun exposure.
The option of using a UV lizard lamp or similar is also an option but unlike EM I have not actually done it as the oral Vit D3 works for me.
“Interesting paper on Vitamin D and sun exposure” — make that super interesting.
Neanderthals were red headed and had Celtic-like fair skin. p.24.
Vit D deficiency causes … way too many diseases to list. Big names in this list.
Sun exposure is good (but sunburn is bad), it even prevents cancer, and even skin cancer.
UVA vs UVB. sunscreens block the wrong one.
The face doesn’t make much Vit D.
More on our federal government computer system.
I gave it another try at lunch. After two attempts Avast uploaded.
So they have it so you have to deal with moods too?
Larry
Just what you need for Vit D etc
https://www.redpowermagazine.com/forums/topic/121995-since-the-joke-thread-is-gone-here%E2%80%99s-something-to-chuckle-at/page/14/?tab=comments#comment-1343481
A rather long historical summary of the true history of the Republican and Democratic parties and race relations in the US.
Interesting side note, he documents 3 massacres of Black Republicans by white Democratic mobs.
(Is ANTIFA the next addition to this list?)
July 30, 1866- Republicans gather in New Orleans at Mechanics Institute to support black voting rights and adopting it into that state’s Constitution. A Democrat mob attacks and kills 48 unarmed Republicans and wound as many as 150, many of which were former black Union soldiers.
( https://www.wwno.org/post/absolute-massacre-1866-riot-mechanics-institute )
The Opelousas massacre occurred on Sept 28, 1868, when Democrat mobs slaughtered 150 black Republicans who were trying to defend a GOP newspaper from an attack that started when one of the writers wrote of how blacks in LA should remain loyal to the GOP instead of the Democrats
( https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/story-deadliest-massacre-reconstruction-era-louisiana-180970420/ )
April 13, 1873, An Easter Sunday massacre occurred in Colfax, Louisiana following a disputed Gubernatorial election. Approximately 150 black Republicans were killed by white Democrats who had surrounded the courthouse with a cannon and killed them as they surrendered.
( https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1873-colfax-massacre-crippled-reconstruction-180958746/ )
The interesting similarities between Andrew Jackson and President Trump
https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/09/30/heres-how-andrew-jackson-stood-up-to-unaccountable-elites/
Saw anaconda on YouTube today that brings to mind the discussion of disguised protective gear… https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/park-diamond-foldable-bike-helmet
https://support.google.com/chromebook/thread/7635124?hl=en
Gee, I’m not the only one with surprise password fails on ChromeThings…
I suppose the reason I didn’t hit it earlier was my low usage frequency….
It looks like a conflict between the actual box and what Google thinks the login ought to be… so every login does some kind of Phone Home to Google. In one case, waiting a day let it work again.
Hmmm interesting, does that mean every login gets authenticated to the web instead of locally on the device, or is it like a dhcp lease where periodically it authenticates with home and by waiting you timed out the last problematic log in?
Apparently, yesterday, there were “too many” failed login attempts on the Chromebox. It put up a red triangle under my login name. Immediately goes to a “login to gmail” panel (an account I never used after creation some many years ago) that seems to be tied to the ability to login to the box. So, OK, that prevented trying the “just disconnect from the internet” as it repeatedly just told me to connect to the internet or I’d get nothin’…
Well, it took my password (which, it seems, is the same as the box…) and now I’m typing this from the ChromeBox…
Sigh.
It looks like my last export of a bookmarks file was about February. That’s about 99% of all I’ve got on this box. (The open non-bookmarked tabs are the rest, plus 3 recent downloaded files of no importance).
Guess I’ll stick in a Thumb Drive and make a new bookmarks backup.
Then comes the decision. Time to put a Linux on it, or leave it a “browse when it lets me” box…
I think I’ll add another user account IF I leave it chrome… hopefully one can have some kind of dual “owner” system… I added a spousal account when we were in Florida together and this was the only working computer (laptop fan had died…) but she forgot that password a couple of years ago ;-) and says she left nothing on it.
So, the good news it I’m able to use it again.
The bad news is I don’t trust it and won’t use it in any meaningful way…
Oh Well…
@Larry L:
I’m not sure. It can’t be every login unless the ChromeBook only works when WiFi connected, so there must be some offline ability.
My suspicion (not going to be tested until I’ve got my bookmarks backup copied off ;-) is that it gives you a “few” unconnected logins but then there some kind of Phone Home if either:
a) It’s been a while and now it has networking
b) You muff the local login “too many” times and it sends off to validation with the Mother Ship.
I’ve never particularly liked the thing, but bought it because it was THE cheapest way to get email and editing when the laptop checked out (rental already had a nice hdmi TV for output) and I figured I could learn what Chrome was about in the process. I did check that there was a pathway to Linux at the time. Hope it’s still out there… It requires that the box be “wiped” in the process, though, so I’d not done it. Now that it is out of support, It is a more attractive option.
I mostly use it to put videos on the TV in the bedroom. Occasionally to check the blog or post a video. That’s about it. It looks like I downloaded 4 pictures / .jpg over the last year or so, and then the pdf of Trumps transcript of call. So a tiny bit of “data” on it to remove.
So it is what it is.
Never liked the idea I had to have a gmail account to set it up, but as it is never used, it isn’t exactly a risk. It does peg the individual to the machine use, though, so they can (and likely do) track all usage to the person. Google browser, Google OS, Google email, and we all know how Google just loves to snarf up individual data… Not using the email cuts off that information flow, then also no contact tracing from it either. I don’t use their Apps (writing, etc) other than the calculator for time to time, so none of that in their hands either.
So they know that some anon@gmail uses the browser on this chromebox sometimes…
Maybe I’ll put a sniffer on it and see what all it sends to whom when… maybe in a few weeks though, today’s booked…
Interesting. I’ve copied off the few things that were on the box (3 jpg images posted somewhere that I’d copied and both an old and new bookmarks file dump – after putting all open tabs in a bookmark folder named ‘open tabs’ ;-) so all that’s on a thumb drive.
Logging out and back in, I still have the red triangle with ! in it under my name and I’m still routed through the gmail validation loop. Wonder if that will run out in a day or two…
It’s a strange feeling for me, not to have real admin rights on my own box. I’m used to just “being root” and doing whatever is needed to fix something.
As of now, with nothing I care about on the box at all, I’m leaning toward “just nuke it” and see what it takes to put linux on it. Worst case is the reset to factory (a necessary step in getting to the boot loader) puts me in 5 years ago software and the loss of support is not just “going forward” but also just getting up to date on last update… Which would only matter to me if I failed to get it working on Linux (which is somewhat unlikely IMHO).
So again “whatever”… Tepid feelings about a tepid box with tepid performance and tepid software… So I think I’ll just ignore it for now. Maybe I’ll try replacing it’s TV / video function with that R.Pi Kodi box I did as a test run a while ago… Might be nice to have it being driving by a Pi, and I’ve got one not doing anything at the moment. Somehow that sounds a whole lot more fun than jail-breaking a ChromeBox that’s gone all moody in it’s old age ;-)
” Hillary’s “Reasons I Lost” file continues to grow
Saturday, 05 October 2019
Sounds like she’s running again.”
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2019/10/hillarys-reasons-i-lost-file-continues-to-grow.html
More on economics
“Learning from history”
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2019/10/05/learning-from-history/
You could say “the blame game”
@Another Ian:
That’s a great read and a nice new bit of understanding to the kit…
Interesting background on what is going on with ISIS, the Kurds and the Iraqi army in the stalemate insurgent war in Iraq.
ISIS is still there but like the Locust is waiting for the next cycle to emerge.
https://www.meforum.org/59454/how-isis-operates-in-iraq-today
@Larry L:
All of Islam is like that. The Koran tells them how to run an insurgency, how to “pass” until the time is ripe. IMHO what is needed is for every Christian to read the Koran. Just read it. Cover to cover. And believe it means what it clearly says.
I agree! You really don’t have to read all the way through the texts to understand. Any rational reader catches on after just a few dozen pages.
The other option is to read a book like “Catastrophic Failure” which disscects the whole structure.
When someone tells you who they are and what their dogma is, believe them.
They might not be “observant” today but the basic canonical texts of their belief system spell it out very clearly, and that is amplified by those to take those texts literally and repeatedly do exactly what the text describe and tell them they should do.
Gee… about that “take the keys and go fishing” and / or blocking up a few roads:
https://www.iceagenow.info/dutch-farmers-in-mass-protest-against-green-fascism-video/
Has a video in the original..
Wonder how many tractors are inside a 1/2 tank of Diesel of Washington D.C…..
“Tractors For Trump” has a nice ring to it…
So does “Impeachment or food, your choice…”
E.M. wrote:
“Tractors For Trump” has a nice ring to it…
So does “Impeachment or food, your choice…”
E.M., I know you read the CTH link on “Cold Anger” because you commented on it. Sometimes, I get a wee bit discouraged, but then I realize that “The People” still have the final say. We haven’t gone over the Cliff of Tyranny just yet.
This meme that I’ve seen a couple of times now is what always lifts my spirits. The rest that we discuss are just American’s options for action.
Tractors For Trump isn’t a half-bad option for starters.
Justice Antonin Scalia comments on the Congress and their unwillingness to serve their constituents.
Levin’s guest on the last show said the Hunter Biden setup is a “game” frequently played in DC to enrich family members. There has to be some quid pro quo benefit for the hosting country, so even if legal in the host country, it is still criminal. Some Republicans are probably guilty of this also and I wonder if the drop-outs lately are because of this. I hope any of them of either party guilty of this get balls nailed to the wall. (Even if it’s PeLoser :)
Well, that is real annoying. Just got done building an apple pie for breakfast tomorrow morning and Public Graft and Extortion shuts the power down “due to high winds and fire danger” Wonder where the high winds are? Not even a breeze here. I really need to cook this pie! Looks like I will to fire up the Bar-B-Q early in the morning, cook my pie and breakfast. Power may be off until tomorrow afternoon. …pg
General note to comments on this thread about our crooked politicians:
Americans have always known about crooked politicians. “Sure he’s crooked, but he’s our crooked politician.”
Well that was all fine and good until those crooked politicians forgot about bringing home the bacon to their constituents and just concentrated on getting as much bacon as they could for themselves. So here we are today.
Today’s Congresscritters don’t even pretend to be working for the benefit of the people that elected them. Not smart. The intelligence of the electorate is the same as it has ever been, but most of that same-ol’-same-ol ‘ electorate expects their goodies, and they are not getting them.
It would not surprise me at all to find out that the politicians have sunk their own ship due to hubris when they could have milked the system for years by continuing to throw a bone to “the little guy” here and there.
A second whistleblower has materialized. The Dimowits are wanting the public to get on board with impeachment, this is their immediate goal at the moment. So they will keep trotting out these useful idiots until it works or it fails. I’m thinking the public won’t get on board any more so than they already are, and according to the polls more would like to see impeachment – a gain mostly of Dimowits. If the Dimowits can’t move the needle any further, they may impeach no matter. But it dies in the Senate and the Dimowits could take on more water there depending on who the Senate subpoenas.
Well, today the ! in a red triangle is gone. I’ve just done a test where I pulled the ethernet wire and did a login. It worked.
So, OK, it looks like some kind of “security feature” that “to many” blown passwords sends you off to remote validation land, but then after you succeed and it has had a bit of a think, it goes back to normal, later…
Not real keen on the notion I can own a computer that will refuse to work unless someone else gives me permission… but it is what it is.
Dug the Pi media box out and plugged it in. It doesn’t boot now. Blinky lights and nothing on the screen seems to indicate that it can’t find an initramfs or kernel. Other OS types boot, so I suspect it is bit rot on the uSD from being ignored a long time. Install was easy enough, so I can just have a do-over… Then the ChromBox is on deck for a retread to a real OS ;-)
Looks like it was last April that made that chip / build:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2019/04/09/w-o-o-d-9-april-2019/#comment-111492
Then it went in a box for a while… Wonder what blew the bits? Chip was in the Pi. Pi was in the shipping box in a cardboard box on a wooden shelf…
Oh Well, time for a respin of it…
@Jim2:
It has reached the point where it is just too over the top Groundhog Day… Tim Pool has a video where he spends most of the time (from today or yesterday) complaining that his is So Tired Of This and wants to talk about something interesting… Calls it the media “Scraping the bottom of the barrel and bringing up splinters”…
Trump Supporters are NOT going to budge. They WANT him draining the swamp.
The Socialist Democrats are NOT going to become more numerous. They’ve been anti-Trump forever and will remain so.
The murky middle is vanishingly small. It splits about 1/3 for the Dim Lie and about 2/3 for “Biden did WHAT again?”…
So I don’t see the numbers changing in any meaningful way. Then there’s that 24 hour effect… First the news is horrible for Trump and the numbers for the Dims rise, then 24 hours later the truth and the retractions come out… Well, you can’t tell Porkies every day for 6 months and not suffer from loss of veracity and listener fatigue… Look at how NYT, MSNBC, CNN etc. have already burned themselves so much that thousands of “Journalists” have been laid off…
So speaking of scraping the bottom of the barrel:
There’s currently a big flap about the NYT publishing an “imaginary” interview of a fake “Flyover Man” Trump “supporter” by an “Urban Guy” where the whole thing is just slandering Trump and calling those that support him uninterested uniformed idiots. Think that’s going to help their circulation in “Flyover Country”? Think that’s going to “Get Trump”?
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/new-york-times-columnist-david-brooks-mocked-for-creating-imaginary-flyover-man-trump-supporter
My prediction / guess would be that Trump & Team have a series of indictments “on deck” to be let loose over the next 6 months or so. That will cause a chunk of the middle to sit up and take notice AND drive the more Dim into a terror stage of TDS, and they will flame and burn…
@P.G.:
Well, guess an electric car isn’t in your immediate future ;-)
Baking in a BBQ can work well, just watch the temperature and use indirect heat. And maybe burn off any old BBQ sauce first ;-)
Or you could put it in a large Dutch Oven and put some coals around it. I highly recommend a big Dutch Oven for use in rural wood rich / sporadic electricity areas.
Oh, and PG&E dumps power over very large blocks of space even if the predicted wind is for about 2 hours in one canyon somewhere… They put a Rate Increase request in for something like $2 Billion to get wires fixed and trees trimmed, so they will be aggressively cutting power for a while to make people scream at the PUC to approve that…
yeah, they had a crew up here to trim, Private contractor, 5 men only one could speak English, had a big boom truck and took 3 hours to do. ? ? ? almost nothing! except block our drive. Cooked breakfast on the Bar-B, next to try the hooded area to bake my pie…pg
EM – there are some wild cards / jokers in the deck. There is anecdotal evidence blacks are becoming more pro-Trump – nothing quantitative. There was the article about the striking GM workers leaning towards Trump.
Hispanic and Independents are wild cards. Any of these with a sense of morality and fairness could lean Trump.
We’ll see what we see!
On NPR “Wait Wait” this morning, they had several questions aimed at the “Orange Man Bad” theme. One was about how Trump (said with great snyditude) had just said he didn’t ask foreign countries for Dirt on Biden then announced he had asked China for Dirt on Biden.
Aside from the obvious that this ia CORRUPTION by Biden investigation, so not asking for dirt, asking “What happened?”: THE thing that was just glaring at me was the 100% complete lack of any concern what so ever that Biden Jr. had bagged $1.5 BILLION of China Dollars after showing up on Air Force 2 with V.P. Daddy. That’s just so corrupt on the face of it as to make me want to spit.
But not a single word from the NPR folks… Guess Democratic Corruption, Graft, Selling the VP Office, Nepotism are all JUST FINE with them.
I got introduced to Democratic business as usual in the early 1970s. It’s Ok, everybody does it! AGs and DAs protect them as long as they play along and pay their dues and most important STAY Bought. …pg
President Trump Troll level infinity.
Hong Kong property values drop 7% – 20% due to protests and violence.
HSBC bank is in bad shape due to exposure to property mortgages in HK.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/explosion-violence-hong-kong-drags-home-prices-down-20
62 year old co-founder of Hamas accidentally shoots himself in the face (dies).
Ooops hate it when that happens.
https://nypost.com/2018/01/30/hamas-co-founder-dies-after-accidentally-shooting-himself-in-head/
Kanye West is waking up a lot of folks in the black community – he is making it cool to like Trump.
The black walk away from the Dems is real.
@Larry Ledwick
What did he ever do to the Clintons?
Looks like Trump is making progress with never-Trumpers:
“Never Trump” no more, conservatives have largely resigned themselves to a more accommodating state of mind: “Never mind Trump.” And their change in attitude helps to mute the much smaller group of conservative voices who remain highly critical of the president and have questioned his conduct.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-never-trump-coalition-that-decided-eh-nevermind-hes-fine/ar-AAIjNMw
“Dick’s Destroyed $5 Mil. Worth of ‘Assault Rifles’ to Keep Them ‘Off the Street’”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/10/06/dicks-destroyed-5-mil-worth-assault-rifles-keep-them-off-street/
Brings to mind the alcoholic who reckoned that “My father died an alcoholic and it is my job to destroy as much of it as possible”
@Another Ian:
The Whacky Left really is a mental disorder. When some guy running some company says he’s only lost hudreds of $Millions with a policy but is going to do more of it, you know they have lost the plot…
From your link:
Such stupidity is incredible. All it does is cost the shareholders a big chunk of value, drives away a LARGE segment of the market and turns your “Sporting Goods” store into a clothes shop.
Well, nice to know I don’t need to bother going in one anymore… (though I’d already stopped on their first iteration – I’m a tiny part of that $1/4 BILLION losses.)
“Get woke, go broke.”
WTF
Maybe this is why we have a whole generation of special snow flakes who cannot, handle anything that is not perfect in their eyes.
Looks like Syria might be getting complicated again.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/turkey-announces-incursion-of-northeast-syria-us-backed-kurds-have-vowed-all-out-war
At our once local mall in Allen, TX, you could walk from Dick’s to Cabela’s. Cabela’s is not planning to stop selling rifles any time soon.
E.M.
“The Whacky Left really is a mental disorder. When some guy running some company says he’s only lost hudreds of $Millions with a policy but is going to do more of it, you know they have lost the plot…”
The feds here have noted publicly (around calls for disinvestments by super funds) that their first legal requirement is maximising fundholders benefits.
Could get interesting
For the Hmmmm department
” Who was top subprime lender responsible for 2008 financial crisis?
Countrywide Financial Corp
In 2008, Countrywide paid the mother of all predatory lending settlements – $8.6 Billion
Who was sales manager & loan officer for Countrywide from 2003-2008?
Paul Pelosi Jr pic.twitter.com/iAgX7dD2E7
— Red Nation Rising (@RedNationRising) October 6, 2019″
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/10/07/october-7th-2019-presidential-politics-trump-administration-day-991/comment-page-1/#comment-7430821
Looks like the Trump tax returns are still in play – likely heading to the Supreme Court.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/judge-orders-trump-to-turn-over-8-years-of-tax-returns_3108430.html
Meanwhile on the cooling planet beat.
Do I get a participation trophy?
I got my snow tires mounted today.
https://kdvr.com/2019/10/07/projected-50-degree-temperature-drop-wouldnt-be-biggest-swing-in-denver-recorded-history/
Re Deep State: On Youtube tonight, 9pm EST.
https://www.youtube.com/user/noteviljustwrong?mc_cid=256ac1279a&mc_eid=3674234098
And the inevitable consequence of flooding small towns with immigrants unqualified to enter the society at large now is finally being recognized in northern Europe.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14894/swedes-are-fleeing
I expect a mass flight of traditional Europeans out of those countries in the next decade or so, one of the great mass migrations in history is underway.
The Dimowits may drive record Red turnouts (I HOPE TO GOD!!)
“We broke our record, 4 years ago it was over 7,000. It was a great turnout, we had about 8%. With all 3 offices, in person, we had over 10,000 people that came in and voted,” said Fontenot.
Fontenot said depending on the election, voter turnout can sometimes waiver. However, early voting across the state, especially in the lake area, is growing in popularity.
“I mean we’ve never seen this much interest in politics. I can’t tell you when… I would have to say the last presidential election, of course.”
We looked at the numbers for early voting in Calcasieu Parish and found that out of 11,810 voters, female and republican voters are leading the charge.
https://www.kplctv.com/2019/10/08/southwest-louisiana-early-voter-turnout-breaks-record/
We’ve talked about this
More Trump stirring?
“White House Clarifies: Donald Trump Moving 50 Troops Within Syria, Not Out of the Country”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/10/07/white-house-clarifies-donald-trump-moving-50-troops-within-syria-not-out-of-the-country/
Meanwhile not that far from you
“Del Mar CA demonstrates the idiocy of “managed retreat” from sea level”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/10/07/the-insanity-of-del-mar-cas-managed-retreat-from-sea-level/
E.M.
Have a look and translate please
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/10/08/october-8th-2019-presidential-politics-trump-administration-day-992/comment-page-1/#comment-7433952
Posting due to 10/14 activation date. Haven’t gone through more than 1 eval on it yet: MANPOWER GUIDANCE FOR ACTIVATION AND DEACTIVATION OF RESERVE COMPONENT MARINES ORDERED TO ACTIVE DUTY ISO DEFENSE SUPPORT OF CIVIL AUTHORITIES
Your link to that doc is a circular link that just points back to this page, the correct link is:
MANPOWER GUIDANCE FOR ACTIVATION AND DEACTIVATION OF RESERVE COMPONENT MARINES ORDERED TO ACTIVE DUTY ISO DEFENSE SUPPORT OF CIVIL AUTHORITIES
https://www.marines.mil/News/Messages/Messages-Display/Article/1979422/manpower-guidance-for-activation-and-deactivation-of-reserve-component-rc-marin
I took a look at that and my sense is no big deal, just a routine updating of standing guidelines that they have for all sorts of possible issues. Obviously they cannot sit down and write something like that while rioters are burning stores so they have a guidance doc in the files that they periodically update and re-issue as needed.
@Larry L,
I agree. When I was a county EMA person, we used to do things like that periodically. Likewise, the hospital revised its policy and procedure manual periodically, too.
Well, the “saga” of the ChromeBox continues ( resumes )…
This morning it won’t let me in NOR will it let me login via the bypass / validation of the gmail account. It wants me to put in my “old password” ( I presume to change it to a new one on gmail?) but doesn’t like the only password I’ve got. Sigh.
I wonder if someone is trying a Man In The Middle attack on Chrome-stuff? It would be the classic way to do it. Cause failure to log in and ask for the password as clear text…
No big in any case. I’m currently typing this a “guest” on the box, which is basically how I used it anyway (other than saving bookmarks). I had removed all data about a year ago (and whatever dregs had accumulated since just a few days ago – along with a current bookmarks backup) so it isn’t like I’ve got anything to lose.
As it had started to behave itself again, I’d figured to just let it be a few months until I had time to bother with the Linux conversion. With this becoming an ongoing recurring piss fest, that plan now changes.
Clearly Google Chrome stuff can not be trusted to work and as soon as you get the “no more supported updates” notice “something” (or somebody) seems to decide you need encouragement to go buy a new upgrade version…
Well, um, no. I have plenty of computers, thanks, and in fact the RockPro64 does a whole lot more than this one in a quite acceptable manner with Ubuntu being suited for the less technical users and other OS choices (like Armbian) for the more technical. Cost is about 2/5 that of the ChromeBox.
So what I’m going to do is just deprecate the Chromebox. It goes to the “Island Of Retread Toys” where it will (eventually) come to life again under Linux on some day when I care and / or am bored enough.
FWIW, the things that have made this a nice Bedroom Box are 2, but only one of them the Chromebox. That one is that it plays videos nicely (where things like the Pi M3 just didn’t have the horses for 1080p). Boards like the Odroid N2, the XU4 and the RockPro64 make that point moot (though you do need to fiddle a bit to fine what OS is the one that works well for video / sound and where Pottering [pulse audio] hasn’t broken sound too badly). The other is the Logitech small keyboard / mousepad that’s about 15 inches long all told and integrated, with a nubby dongle for the connection to USB. That’s portable to any computer…
I suppose there’s almost a 3rd in that it comes in a nice white big lozenge like case, but I can get a case for the SBC if I really want one.
So there you have it. Likely today is the last time you will hear references from me saying “doing this on the chromebox” as it is not officially on my “Shitty Behaviour List – needs retread”.
@Larry L:
Pepe Face Paint! OMG I love it! I predict facial recognition will cause a large increase in the sales of makeup… I’m thinking of buying some to try things… Like the Johnny Dep picture with multiple eyes. Just paint on a few eyes and two noses and add lips on your chin. I suppose manual intervention to mark the real points would still work, but the automation isn’t set up for it…
@Another Ian:
When posting links to comments, if you could include a name of poster and topic that would be nice. The link doesn’t always take me to the exact comment on sites with threaded comments (nested) and I have to inspect the comment numbers to find what one you are talking about.
I THINK you meant the one on Net Neutrality. Here’s a good explainer. My take on it is that the Federal Level is now free for AT&T and Such to blackmail Netflix and Amazon Prime for all the money they want (AND promote their own DirecTV offering that is the competition) via throttling their own competitors unless they pony up a lot of money. It gives AT&T Monopoly Power over their ISP connection to the home to advantage themselves, extort the competition, and ignore the customer. Yet it also says that the States are free to make tighter rules, so we’ll see a whole lot of activity at the State level.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/3/20895909/net-neutrality-mozilla-fcc-appeals-court-ruling-state-open-internet-law-legal-questions
@Per Activation Policy:
You do policy updates when NOTHING else is going on and you need to look busy.
When in SHTF moments, you do NOT touch policy as it is not possible to get everyone in sync.
Well, after putting up two postings using “guest”, and logging out, I decided to try one more login as “me”. And it worked, first time, same password that was rejected a dozen times.
OK, either there’s someone running an attack of some kind, Google is “playing games”, or the box is decaying in the software department (see #2 just prior…) or, remotely possible, there’s some kind of background “phone home” that’s failing at login due to God Only Knows what networking issues.
Unless there are thousands of current Chrome-Thingy users being shut out (and I’ve not seen the screaming…) then that last one is unlikely and that first one would need to be narrow focus.
Whatever.
The box is now unreliable (entirely due to the login / software issues) and so it’s time to move it to the Linux pile.
But at least it lets me log in now and again, sometimes, maybe…
E.M.
Thanks. That was all I had.
This ought to spike the “pissedoff meter”
“New Law Requires You To Listen To Greta Thunberg Lecture Before Purchasing Gasoline”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/10/08/new-law-requires-you-to-listen-to-greta-thunberg-lecture-before-purchasing-gasoline/
“The illegitimate spawn of a relic from the Great Depression”
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2019/10/09/the-illegitimate-spawn-of-a-relic-from-the-great-depression/
I do hope that gasoline story is a humor piece…
Oh, and this is from the Odroid N2 which has now displaced the ChromeBox. Both Chromium and Firefox under Armbian on it work fine and I’ve got full 1080 p at full screen video, so “we be done” ;-)
I’m happy with this. It’s a smaller (physical) package and while the ChromeBox has a nearly silent fan, it still makes some noise. This also gets a Real Linux in the room instead of the “sort of a browser ++”. It is on a wired spigot, so gets nice wire speed video without loading up the WiFi (that the living room uses) nor competing with any other gadgets.
It also puts the N2 into active service (instead of just being a hangar queen toy), so that’s a good thing too.
FWIW, it still has Ubuntu Mint on the eMMC card, but I changed the boot command to launch Armbian from the uSD card instead. I did put a 500 MB swap file on the eMMC so any swap will hit that before the uSD. (No, no hub, disk drive, whatever on this box now. Just the kb/trackpad dongle and a network connection (+HDMI TV). Any files I need I can get via nfs.
Now the ChromeBox goes to that Someday Pile. For when the urge strikes me to repurpose it as a Linux of some stripe.
Strange how that works: Piss off the customer, hit the dust bin…
Well this is annoying… Looks like setting machine-id to 32 zeros is not “acceptable” to the folks who want to peg you. From my syslog file:
So there’s a “secret key” somewhere, eh?
It sure smells to me like somebody at “freedesktop.org” has their payoff from a TLA to put code into systems they infest to assure they can nail to to a particular machine, one way or another….
So more digging to do to find out how to get rid of it. Maybe I left the “newline” off the end?
http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man5/machine-id.5.html
says it needs one. I thought vi put on on the end by default?
Well, I think I’ll change it to 31 zeros and a 1 and see what it thinks…
Theirs some kind of bug in FireFox such that it spins and consumes cycles until a dictionary or language pack is installed. On high end machines there are so many extra cycles it is hard to notice (on the XU4 just now it was only a flicker of the cursor in the comment box and a rise of the CPU bars in HTOP). But on low end machines it can make them very doggy.
Anyway, on this new Armbian install I just noticed it (again) and after installing the US Lang pack, the flicker is gone and spell check is working. And idle CPU is once again low.
This has been around a long time, so I can only assume the FireFox guys all have high end workstations so can’t see the problem…
But if any of you are using FFox on a small SBC and it’s doggy: Check that.
secret key?
systemd-machine-id-setup may be used by system installer tools to
initialize the machine ID stored in /etc/machine-id at install time,
with a provisioned or randomly generated ID. See machine-id(5) for
more information about this file.
If the tool is invoked without the –commit switch, /etc/machine-id
is initialized with a valid, new machined ID if it is missing or
empty. The new machine ID will be acquired in the following fashion:
1. If a valid D-Bus machine ID is already configured for the system,
the D-Bus machine ID is copied and used to initialize the machine
ID in /etc/machine-id.
2. If run inside a KVM virtual machine and a UUID is configured (via
the -uuid option), this UUID is used to initialize the machine
ID. The caller must ensure that the UUID passed is sufficiently
unique and is different for every booted instance of the VM.
3. Similarly, if run inside a Linux container environment and a UUID
is configured for the container, this is used to initialize the
machine ID. For details, see the documentation of the Container
Interface[1].
4. Otherwise, a new ID is randomly generated.
http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/systemd-machine-id-setup.1.html
Dbus machine id:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/84777/how-dbus-calculates-machine-id
Re: face recognition camouflage :
Several folks are working on or have tested such strategies to hide or misslocate key landmarks of the face.
Most of them are adaptations of the Navy dazzle camouflage concepts.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/makeup/374929/
https://cvdazzle.com/
View this collection on Medium.com
US / Japan trade deal signed today.
Gee too bad the media don’t actually ask these questions.
Great take down of the press.
Not sure if this is credible, but throwing this out there for people to comment and evaluate.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-10-04-medical-horror-genetic-sequencing-vaccines-mrc-5-cancer-genes-modified.html
Are they misrepresenting what is going on, or is this really something sinister? I have no clue but it strikes me as something that should trigger lots of questions.
Brings to mind multiple sci-fi stories about apparently benign things which sterilize a population to trigger a silent genocide.
Who is getting these vaccines and why?
Or is this just more panic inducing FUD being thrown out there to confuse the masses and cause hate and discontent?
Well here is the counter punch on the invalid impeachment inquiry.
/https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/PAC-Letter-10.08.2019.pdf
Just another example of intelligence agencies that think they don’t have to follow the laws.
New court records show the FBI did tens of thousands of improper searches of secret intelligence databases for what appears to be vetting of its personnel and/or contractors. Those databases are supposed to be for foreign intelligence gathering.
FBI’s Use of Surveillance Database Violated Americans’ Privacy Rights, Court Found
U.S. discloses ruling last year by Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that FBI’s data queries of U.S. citizens were unconstitutional
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fbis-use-of-foreign-surveillance-tool-violated-americans-privacy-rights-court-found-11570559882?mod=djemalertNEWS
I read that letter earlier today, Larry. It spells out what the Regressives are doing in fairly plain English so Joe and Jane average can read it and understand it with ease. It is footnoted to keep the sleep inducing legal references from detracting from the flow of the letter.
It should have been cc’d and mailed to every American.
Not sure if this is useful to you EM and others in Calif. but for what it is worth.
https://projects.sfchronicle.com/trackers/power-outages/#
Here’s a demo of Microsoft’s computer vision tech. The features demoed here are pretty old, but still pretty cool.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/videos/connect-2017-microsoft-cognitive-services-put-intelligence-into-your-business-apps/
FWIW, from the saga of the Chromebox, Epilogue:
This morning I’m using the Odroid N2, as the computer on the TV, instead of the Chromebox (that now reposes on top of the Junk Box / Project Box). I’m loving it! No more Chrome-thing straight jacket on abilities. No more Chrome-thing lockouts and limitations. Full on Armbian Linux and decent media performance.
Suddenly instead of a nice TV with “media station” I’ve got a nice TV with Full On Computer with media station ability.
Wish I’d done this years ago. (Then again, they didn’t have the N2 years ago…)
This also seals the fate of the ChromeBox. I could not go back to it for this use. Not sure I can think of any use where I’d want it, given that a $60 SBC is superior, other than as a Linux Conversion project box. Might need to get a case for the N2 (as the spouse likes to “dust” where it sits and I’m not sure how it would take to that…. feathers caught in components or fins?)
So there you go. Happy Camper. With this “Wow, it’s like a real computer now” glow ;-)
@Larry L:
That “take down” video is great!
Per Vaccines:
Finally got time to read that article (having dealt with Chrome Follies…). It has a LOT of hype in it.
1) CHANGED Genes! Horrors!!! Well, no. All “cell lines” have had to undergo significant genetic changes to become cell lines. Normal cells don’t like to live in petri dishes. They want an entire organism to support them. Essentially you have to deactivate things like apoptosis pathways and activate things to keep the line immortal. Same kind of things that are in cancer cells.
2) 560 genes “associated” with cancer! Horrors!!!! Well, no, sort of. Yes those genes are “associated with cancer” but they don’t say in what way. Are they cancer killing associations? Are they in the apoptosis pathway or the telomere shortening pathway (that’s essential to block to get an immortal cell line). Are they just some gene that says “if you get this gene and 4 others you have a 20% higher risk of breast cancer as an elderly woman?” and this irrelevant to a male cell line?
3) To cause cancer in recipients! Horrors!!!! Um, no. If just injecting some other human cells into you caused them to grow, everyone with a blood transfusion would be a chimera. Nobody with transplanted organs would need big doses of immunosuppressant drugs. Heck, even eating sushi would put you at risk of growing gills as the gut is not a perfect barrier. The reality is that the body is pretty ruthless about finding and destroying foreign cells. So, even if the cells found were viable (a fact not stated… are these pasteurized or killed vaccines? Hmmm?) they would not implant and grow in any normal person. Now, there is a small possibility that in immune compromised folks (HIV, transplant patients) IFF it were a live vaccine with whole intact viable cells in it they might survive. As vaccines are packaged in vials without oxygen nor cell nutrients I strongly doubt even this hypothetical.
Overall, I rate the article as a incitement article and not a science one.
Is there some remote possible for a Very Bad Thing from leaving human DNA in the vaccines? YUP! Cells of various kinds are known to pick up stray bits of DNA and incorporate them (bacteria do this all the time, and some experiments show even planaria worms can pick up the memory molecules of a friend who learned a maze and that got macerated for lunch…) So yeah, it would be “better” to not leave that junk in the vaccine. But really? I think the risk is vanishingly small. We are exposed to random stray genetic junk every day, lots of it heavily modified. It’s called “cooked food”. We live in a sea of genetic garbage, and our bodies seem to handle it pretty well. I don’t see my friends growing pigs ears, chicken feet, or getting cows noses.
Exactly. What do people think viruses do? They exchange DNA or RNA all the time, from one group to another; even across species. Years ago, many of the vaccines were live attenuated types. Not just processed dead bits.
Everything material that is actual is a chemical or a mixture of chemicals. Tell me, how many chemicals are there in 1: a tree, 2. a bacterium, 3. an animal? /rhetorical. Hint: hundreds to thousands, at least, if not tens of thousands or more; per specimen.
There is nothing special about natural. The rule is be fruitful and multiply, lest ye be replaced. Every successful life form alters its local environment to enhance its own survival. One effect of that is to limit the survival of others. Nature is *full* of toxins. Most of the time, the dose is insufficient to cause harm.
“Tulsi Gabbard: The Democrats’ Black Swan”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2019/10/09/tulsi-gabbard-the-democrats-black-swan/
President Trump administration statement on Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria.
https://publicpool.kinja.com/subject-wh-pool-3-1838913336
I am beginning to suspect this is another Trump setup.
1. The Kurds being attacked by Turkey are the PYD/YPG off shoot of the PKK faction (communists), not the Iraqi Kurds KDP which is pro-west and Pro Turkey and helped us in Iraq.
The PKK and the closely affiliated PYD/YPG groups are considered terrorists by Turkey, the EU and the US. (although as an ally of convenience we helped them some as they were in some places the only effective ground opposition to ISIS in Syria.
But if Turkey goes all in and commits atrocities as it attacks the Syrian Kurds it will provide pretext to take actions to blunt Turkey which lately has been a proxy for Russia rather than a true NATO ally.
Due to the value of Incirlik Air Base it is helpful for us to stay out of it if we can, but I suspect Trump knows that is going to be a casualty of the situation in time, but by remaining there we retain both influence and access to what is going on in Syria.
I just get the feeling that the Trump admin is holding the barn door open so the crazy horse in the stalls can escape.
Note that the Media never in any way mentions that the north Syrian Kurds are communists and go out of their way to conflate these folks with the US / western friendly Kurds in norther Iraq.
The swamp critters are still doing swamp critter stuff but some of them are getting nailed.
Looks like they are still rounding up leakers and small fry.
Looks like corruption and influence peddling go way back for the Bidens
https://www.waynedupree.com/joe-biden-hunter-mbna/
And Joe got $900K for “consulting”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/joe-biden-personally-paid-900000-burisma-according-ukrainian-mp-bombshell-admission
Obviously the best government you can buy.
Apparently kangaroos are not friendly when you just drop in on them unannounced.
Since CNN is the official propaganda distributor for the Democratic (socialist) leadership, it might be useful to take a careful look at their talking points to see how they are trying to twist the situation to make the President look he did something that other presidents (including Obama) do all the time.
Like Snopes they intentionally mischaracterize both the allegations and their “facts” to skew the public perception to match their battle plan.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/10/politics/whistleblower-complaint-corroboration/
They use innuendo and intentional incomplete information to build their “case”
Many of their assertions are flat out laughable, but they are what they are going with – anything to steal the media spot light and prevent President Trump from making his case.
Democrat Privilege.
“JUST BIDEN HIS TIME?”
https://www.pickeringpost.com/2019/10/09/just-biden-his-time/
And
“Ukraine–piggy bank of corrupt U.K. Democrats”
Just above that
I think we got a hint of how Soros is both making his money these days and buying influence. He helps get a “Color Revolution” done, then he owns the replacement government. Using them, he does shake down racket to buy other politicians (like Biden(s) being investigated in Burisma along with Soros). Using that plus his “political donations” he now owns anther government. On to the next “Color Revolution” (and continue to expand the graft / corruption money tree inside the existing corrupted states…)
Which is likely why the Democrats just love him as do most of the Western European ones…. and why the UK Remoaners tend to align with him. They share a gravy train…
“Clinton Foundation HQ in Australia – regulatory reports overdue, staff gone and the lawn needs mowing”
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2019/10/clinton-foundation-hq-in-australia-regulator-reports-overdue-staff-gone-and-the-lawn-needs-mowing.html
In general I’m Ok about what trump does. After all if he as president is not a USA nationalist, who ever will be ?
But he has goofed up in Syria withdrawing US troops working with the Kurds to destroy ISIS.
There is now a widespread Turkish invasion of Syria and Kurdish people who thought of the USA as an ally now feel betrayed.. That’s a few millions..30 million or so Kurds across Syria, Iraq & Iran..Plus a couple of million Kurds in Turkey itself…
And now Turkey ays it will not prevent refugees on it’s territories from trying to enter EU countries…
All in all a major stuff up.
He asked the EU to take back it’s ISIS nationals in prison and they refused.
Maybe this is called payback.
The situation in Syria vs Turkey and the Kurd faction in that area (ie Marxsist dominated YPG) is basically a choice of evils problem. Side with a short term ally you have little in common with other than at one time a common foe or a long term valuable strategic partner when you have some friction points with.
If in the grand scheme of things you think containment of Russian military build up is the primary local threat (Russia is helping Syria primarily to maintain its warm water port/base in Tartus Syria then it is a no brainer, give Turkey what it considers absolutely essential, and let the locals sort out the local issues. The Russians also used the conflict as an excuse to battle test some weapons systems and blood some troops, and provide flank protection for its incursion into eastern Ukraine.
https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/syria-us-will-step-aside-turkeys-push-against-sdf-kurdish-militias-ypg-pkk
It is not as simple as people want to make it the alliance with the SDF Kurds was an arms length arrangement from the beginning and only existed because the Obama administration did every thing in its power to destabilize that region of the world instead of bringing conflict in that area to a conclusion they ripped the bandage off and made it bleed again.
There will never be a cessation of conflict in Syria until local issues get sorted out by the locals, so now that ISIS is seriously degraded, let it happen under a watchful eye.
We have a strong relationship with the Northern Iraqi Kurds who are not Marxists, so the media’s intentional efforts to blur that factional distinction is telling of their agenda. The PKK/YPG Kurdish guerrillas have been engaged in long term low intensity warfare with Turkey for decades and in the eyes of Turkey, the EU and the US are officially considered a terrorist group. A marriage of convenience to oppose a bigger threat (ISIS) does not wipe away that historical conflict.
Real world alliances are often messy and everyone makes the best deal they can at the moment to deal with the biggest threat to their agenda.
Other than the risk of Russian influence and military basing in the region we have very little strategic interest in that part of the world. There is no “right” or “honorable” way to get out of that mess, (wouldn’t be there without the intentional destabilization of Syria, following the war in Iraq by previous administrations) other than to count your chips and figure out which hand to play that causes the least harm to your own interests.
President Trump has decided a long term bleeding sore that kills American military is not in our best interests in the long tern and best to cut losses and leave to let the inevitable conflicts of the region get worked out.
I’d have to agree with Larry, there are tactics and there is strategy. The present tactic of withdrawing a few thousand American advisers from northwest Syria and letting the Turks in may look foolish, but, blocking Iran is the strategic move. We shall see if the Turks can be trusted. Trump claims he has a big stick to curb that dog if it gets too aggressive. Not all Kurds are made the same, some are our friends and some are NOT. There is nothing in the area that we need…pg. .
Jack Posobiec on the Syria / Kurd background
YPG ‘Marxist ?
No.
https://thekurdishproject.org/history-and-culture/kurdish-nationalism/peoples-protection-units-ypg/
Kurds are Kurds. It is one people divided by the victors of WW1 into four countries. Iran, Turkey, Syria & Iraq. This betrayal has pissed off all of them.
their perspective is simple : The USA was their powerful ally against ethnic cleansing by Turkey and Iran and the Arabs of Iraq & Syria. Now that ally has said “Bugger you, we’re leaving ”
And wait ! There will be another oncoming flood of Kurdish refugees fleeing Turkish aggression. It will sweep Europe and probably reach the USA & Canada.
On point regarding Iran’s activities in the area, they were conducting a clandestine war in northern Iraq and Syria against ISIS, to gain a military foothold in the area (and intelligence and influence base). The Mahdi militia now stirring up trouble in Iraq are also directly controlled by Iran.
Iran has great domestic troubles right now and is seeking a military confrontation to suppress the internal conflicts (or give cover for hard core suppression of it).
https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iran-launches-Turkey-border-exercise-after-Erdogan-invades-Syria-604167
The ypg is a direct off shoot of the PYD which is a direct offshoot of the PKK.
(hint any group that uses language like Peoples Workers Party and a big red star as their logo are communists / marxists)
https://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/48526?lang=en
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Kurdistan-Workers-Party
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/who-are-the-syrian-kurds-the-us-is-abandoning/2019/10/07/b0e75ed4-e919-11e9-a329-7378fbfa1b63_story.html
PKK flag
PYD flag
YPG flag
(note the flags – classic communist symbology)
Hmmm – I just hate it when trying do defend one corrupt official you accidently spill the beans on an even higher ranking corrupt official.
https://trendingpolitics.com/biden-campaign-slips-up-may-have-just-implicated-obama-in-scandal/
Strategic energy background on Syria – cut those pipe lines and the Russian base in Tartus is hobbled.It would also cut off exports of oil and gas.
The politics of the middle east is very complicated.
Turkey and Greece fought a war in 1974 over cyprus.
For those of you who periodically shop news sources looking for old fashioned news coverage, right now one of the best is the relatively new OANN, if you want a quick overview of daily news.
https://www.oann.com/
or
A summary of the Kurdish groups in Turkey and their intent with their move into northern Syria.
https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/four-myths-about-the-pkk-ypg-terrorist-group-that-need-refuting-30457
@Larry L – Re: 1974 Greek Turk war
I will never forget that! I was trying to hop a MAC flight back to the states so was on standby in Rhein Main for 10 days! By the end of the 10th day, I was lower on the wait list (I was a D3) than at the start. SO Davis chartered a 727, and a bunch of us bought tickets on it.
Since Greece and Turkey were both NATO and this was still the Cold War, the US had basically mobilized the entire European Theater. Which meant very few spaces going home.
10 days in an airport. Yea, that sucked. I have held a grudge against those 2 countries ever since.
Meanwhile on top of the LA fire and violent mobs in Minniapolis, appears someone fired a couple missiles at an Iranian tanker off the coast of Saudi Arabia (or Iran blew it up themselves to create a pretext for drama)
https://apnews.com/55f68b50763c40eeb25ee19027573d86
Want to steam eggs?
[Reply: Yeah, the embedded “F-bomb” in the link sent it to trash directly… -E.M.S. ]
This “missile attack” sounds suspicious. From the article:
Iranian state television said the explosion damaged two storerooms aboard the oil tanker and caused an oil leak into the Red Sea near the Saudi port city of Jiddah. The leak was later stopped, IRNA reported.
Hmmmm … missiles fortunately hit only a couple of store rooms and an oil leak was stopped. Right.
https://www.apnews.com/55f68b50763c40eeb25ee19027573d86
That’s what I was thinking, I suspect self sabotage to provide a propaganda basis for internal political consumption to try to focus the Iranian people on an external threat instead of their grievances with the regime.
The fire in LA continues but it is not getting pushed by the media. You have to go looking for the coverage not front page they are more interested in political crap.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-10/saddleridge-fire-sylmar
A historical perspective on the Kurds of Syria, Iraq & Turkey.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/10/08/once-again-the-kurds-have-been-betrayed/
E.M.
I posted a link to “steaming an egg” with a difference – the direct site link might have put it in the spam bin.
The link is gettable via the “egg steaming” in
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2019/10/11/selection-box/
Another for the growing list of “California didn’t think about – – ”
“Nobody saw this coming: Electric-Car Owners Shocked by California Blackouts”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2019/10/11/we-dont-need-no-flaming-sparky-cars-40/
And would you believe?
“Some Californians Are Buying Gas-Powered Generators To Power Electric Vehicles During Blackouts”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/10/11/some-californians-are-buying-gas-powered-generators-to-power-electric-vehicles-during-blackouts/
Seems to go with a current headline
” Shep Smith’s “me or him” threat to Fox over Tucker Carlson appears to have back-fired.
Shep out, Tucker remains.”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2019/10/11/maybe-megyn-kelly-can-put-in-a-good-word-for-him-somewhere/
Sheep herder is out! About time, Never could understand how he became a part of FOX, he belongs elsewhere, Maybe CNN…pg
Interesting item on how the hard Left took over California and their plans for the US.
“About lies and liars.”
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2019/10/11/about-lies-and-liars/
“Short Schriff”
@Larry L:
Spouse informs me there’s a recall petition for Gov. Nuisance at the local Bass Pro Shop… Latest nutty bit is they have banned small plastic bottles in hotels, so no more shampoo to take with you. You get to share a squirter on the wall and whatever germs the last person had on their hands…
I really need to speed up the Get The Hell Out plan / process…
One of THE key steps was when, back about the early ’60s? when they changed the State Senate from being appointed by the counties to being elected. That pretty much ended the ability of the conservative rural areas to limit the plunge to the left. Since then, the Counties have basically been bankrupted by the State mandating they must do things but not providing money.
Then in the 80s to 90s they pushed to import a load of new voters and give them id like drivers licences (along with “motor voter” sign up and zero checking of citizenship). So I see a WHOLE lot of Mexican and Asian folks in the stores now and a fair number from India and with head covers. They are typically speaking non-English languages or heavily accented. These are not the home grown population…
So Hillary only “won” the popular vote due to the California vote, and it is, IMHO, a few million of illegals voting what done it.
@Per Shep:
Tucker beats him hands down and hard! I love Tucker. Shep was always sort of mushy.
@Another Ian:
I’d actually thought about getting an electric car or a hybrid and loading a generator in it for long trips. Even went so far as to figure out what size Diesel Genset would keep it going “as you drive” and that it would need a trailer. An acceptable choice… EXCEPT that in California anything with a trailer is limited to 55 MPH (for God only knows what reason as not other State does and they seem fine…) It looked like the minimum was about 10 kW and max was about 20 kW, so a pretty big size. Honda made (makes?) a nice 12 kW job that looked ideal.
But I figured I’d not want to drive 55… and max you could roof mount would be about a 5 kW job. That would be roughly a range doubler, but that’s it. Would get me to L.A. in one go, though ;-) Provided the added wind drag wasn’t too high.
The big problem with them, generally, is getting the juice into the car. IIRC Tesla takes something like 30 hours from a 115 VAC wall socket. You would need a 220-240 VAC socket on the generator to go faster, and then I think it only drops down to about 15 hours… So it would work for overnight charging. Maybe.
But yeah, better than nothing.
Noisy as hell though… and the neighbors won’t like you… During one quake when I had a big 5 kW Briggs & Stratton powered thing, I kept the neighbor happy by tossing a drop cord over the fence to him ;-) I was only using about 1 kW anyway so it wasn’t a big deal. Saved his fridge and kept him in lights so they were happy ;-)
I later sold that to a friend as I found the Honda 1 kW job was just astoundingly quieter (57 dB IIRC) and was “just enough” to run everything we really needed. Fridge, entertainment / TV center, lights in the house. Hot water is gas. Can do fine without AC in summer here, and winter is easily dealt with via the fireplace. So only thing I really needed the 5 kW for was running the washer / dryer. Not really a need…
IF I were doing it all over, I think I’d just get the Honda 2 kW generator and be done. It would be less loaded most of the time but still have enough for some added things if I really needed them. Like skill saw, drill, toaster / toaster oven ;-)
Were I ever to own an Electric Car, I think I’d get that 2 kW job as my insurance policy and just leave it in the trunk…
An aerodynamic car requires about 12 -15 hp to cruise at 60 mph so it takes between 9000 and 11000 watts continuous to cruise on the highway which fits very nicely with the size range you mentioned. Most cars get maximum fuel economy near 45 mph which would be about 10 hp or so. That is the speed where aerodynamic drag begins to dominate rolling resistance and other losses, and also were most cars are geared to the most efficient engine speed in the gear used for that speed range.
Would not work for long term cruising but you could go a long way if you took some breaks to recharge every now and then.
Highest fuel economy records are held by cars that use burst acceleration and coasting, but that won’t help you much on flat coastal road ways. In ideal situations like coming down Donner pass you can coast for 10’s of miles if no one gets in your way and forces you to hit the brakes.
@Another Ian:
That Pointman is spot on. I watch for that micro-smirk or mini-smile to know when someone is lying. It just seems to always be there when they think they go away with it. I personally do not rely on the up-right vs up-left but that may be because as an ambi-dexter neither direction means anything to my behaviour. I typically just maintain eye contact and occasionally look down to think. I don’t look up to remember nor make stuff up.
There’s also an overall demeanor thing. Folks “caught” can be squirmy but they also can just get that locked down tough aspect that says they are used to this and “working it”. Those are the ones I find easiest to spot as the squirmy can just be uncomfortable with tough questions. Essentially, the “tough and terse” isn’t doing what a normal person would do of just interacting like a normal innocent person.
But yes, Pelosi, Shiff, Chucky Schumer, the lot of them get the smirk when telling whoppers about Trump. Nadler sometimes smiles, but mostly he’s the grumpy tough act – “working it”…
Compare to Trump: He’s just having fun working the crowd at events, and focused on the other person in 0ne-on-ones (watch him, he picks a person and focuses on them asking about them, then moves to the next person and focuses on them. Very little deception in him. Some Sellers Puff is about it. “I beat ISIS” when really it was “The US Military beat ISIS with the help of a lot of others and I let them.” But I’m OK with that.
There’s also a humor aspect. Liars are usually humorless. It’s a serious business and stuff is at risk. Trump in the latest rally talked about making a joke that welfare recipients would get a Rolls Royce AND then pointed to the YSM and said “Just joking – I have to tell them that or tomorrow they would say ‘Trump Lied again – said people would get a Rolls Royce’ and so I have to tell them” more or less. He likes the little jokes of exaggeration and plucking a few select short hairs…
Basically, Trump sets off my “I’m comfortable here” feelings and the Democrats in Congress set off my Creepy Meter big time…
Interesting data on sea level measurements over 100 years in Australia
On the quiet sun front
“The recent prolonged solar minimum and subsequent weak solar cycle 24 have led to suggestions that the grand solar maximum may be at an end,” says this study on nature.com.
The study, published in 2015, looked at past variations of solar activity. In 2010, the study found, scientists estimated a mere 8% chance of a return to Maunder Minimum-like conditions within the next 40 years.
However, “the decline in solar activity has continued, to the time of writing, and is faster than any other such decline in 9,300 years.” (Italics added)
https://www.iceagenow.info/fastest-decline-solar-activity-9300-years/
Well.
Typing this on my Rock64 (NOT the Pro). Finally had time to pull it out of the “Dead Boards” box and see if it, too, was just SystemD interacting badly with fstab and a “don’t show what’s going on” auto boot to logged in. So did a new install of Armbian.
And now it’s working fine.
There are times I’m glad I’m a pack rat and don’t toss “dead” equipment for a good long while…
At this point, I’ve “recovered” 3 or 4 Single Board Computers that appeared to have died, as in dead hardware, that clearly were not.
Every one of them was running a Ubuntu like OS with SystemD and they all appear to have had the same mode of “failure” – black screen at boot time, no boot.
This was when SystemD would look at the /etc/fstab file and decided what to mount, or not. They were also all set up to hide the boot diagnostics. Just a blank screen until it gives the logo and tosses you into a desktop.
That means any ‘glitch” and it hangs in the boot with zero feedback… And if you simply unplug some disk that /etc/fstab says ought to be there, it hangs in the boot… the INVISIBLE boot….
Well, OK, kudos to me for figuring it out AND recovering all those boards to working status. Ding to me for not figuring it out faster, OR making the boot the traditional one that shows you what is going on and presents a command line login for repairs if needed. (I’ll be doing that in systems from here on out – quashing auto-login too)
And I’m really happy to have Yet Another Computer back in the working pile. IIRC, it was Odroid C2, Odroid N2 and Rock64 that had all “died” in the non-death of a dead black screen and failure to boot as systemD was confused about disks. So that’s about $140 worth of hardware back from the “dead”. Nice.
At this point, I’ve recovered to working 100% of “board failures” (other than a single Pi B from back about a decade ago that died of static discharge in Florida…)
Needless to say I’m really not a fan of the hidden boot process settings and the broken way systemD interacts with /etc/fstab.
Well, it’s late, I’m sleepy as heck, and I’ve got a positive note to finish with ;-) I’d really liked the Rock64 and was bothered that it had “died”. It’s very nice to find out it wasn’t really dead and to have it back in service. 2 GB memory. USB 3.0 port. 1.5 GHz clock. Has a nice big heat sink on it. Looks like Ameridroid is selling them for $25 now (the 1 GB memory version) with the 2GB being $40 and the 4 GB being $50
https://ameridroid.com/products/rock64?variant=7231430688802
So while I was feeling sour about them after the “failure” I’m not that way anymore as it didn’t fail. The software / admin couple failed.
Well, I like it more than the Pi M3 and it’s about the same price (or less for the 1 GB, but having 2 GB is really nice). I’d be tempted to buy more of them, except I already have more hardware than I can productively use. So until I’ve got this lot doing more, I’m not getting more.
It really ran video nicely when I first set it up, so I think that’s what I’ll be doing again.
It’s nice to have it back ;-)
Larry Ledwick says: 12 October 2019 at 6:41 am
“Most cars get maximum fuel economy near 45 mph which would be about 10 hp or so.”
In the UK my son’s Vauxahall Vectra 2.0lt was setup to cruise at 70mph at 2000 rpm in 5th gear and was very economical at that speed.
So gearing must vary quite a bit between countries as it depends on where the engine is setup for max BHP and Torque.
Speaking of systemD, something creepy happened to me on Linux Mint. Note that I don’t use the computer as an admin user. Nevertheless, a web site was able to detect a TV Tuner I have installed (but don’t use anymore) and asked to use the microphone and camera. Not that the board has either of these, but it creeped me out.
SystemD has some vulnerabilities, or at least I found some by searching, so I guess it could be that. But an even scarier thought is that systemd developers intentionally made it easy for third parties to get your hardware and software information.
Once I get a little time, I’m finding a non-systemd OS.
Okay. We’ve officially gone nuts in this country. We’re in 3-felonies-a-day territory now.
A 13-year old girl in Kansas has been charged with a felony for making a finger gun and pointing it at some classmates.
https://www.ajc.com/news/national/finger-gun-gesture-earns-kansas-girl-felony-charge/nCHL8zULJUzK24B14AAmML/
I figure every one of us here over the age of…. 30?… would be in prison if things were this crazy back when we were kids.
However… kids are screwed up differently nowadays. When we were kids, not a lot of our cohort shot up schools. Today, frequently enough, some kids shoot up a school so I do understand the concern, but a felony for a finger gun? Where is the crime?
Yes, there should be someone checking out the kid’s mental state and perhaps getting her some help if she needs it, but I guess I’m under the old-fashioned notion that you have to actually do something criminal to be charged with a felony. This girl just needs to be checked out is all.
HR – I think the school system is the entity in need of a “mental exam”. Those people are idiots!
A C Osborn says:
12 October 2019 at 1:22 pm
Larry Ledwick says: 12 October 2019 at 6:41 am
“Most cars get maximum fuel economy near 45 mph which would be about 10 hp or so.”
In the UK my son’s Vauxahall Vectra 2.0lt was setup to cruise at 70mph at 2000 rpm in 5th gear and was very economical at that speed.
So gearing must vary quite a bit between countries as it depends on where the engine is setup for max BHP and Torque.
My Subaru will not pull 5th gear below about 1800 rpm, 2000 rpm in 5th is right at 40 mph, and 70 mph is about 3500 rpm.
You can get away with really high gearing on flat terrain and near sea level, here at 6000 ft altitude, we are down 18% on power compared to sea level,
If people stay out of my way I can cruise at 40 – 45 mph in 5th gear at 1800-2000 rpm but on the low end of that it will lug the engine on any noticeable hill, and you have to down shift to 4th at about 2500 rpm.
That said air drag at 70 mph is 2.4x what it is at 45 mph so if you could pull 5th gear at 45 mph you would still get significantly better gas mileage. Below 45 you are basically only over coming rolling resistance and mechanical friction in the drive train air drag is trivial compared to those losses at that speed.
Correction 70 mph in 5th is at 3500 rpm.
Gearing splits in the Subaru are set up so if you shift up at 2500 rpm you drop to 2000 rpm in the upper gears, just slightly lower (about 1800 rpm) in 2nd as the extra gear advantage allows you to pull 1800 rpm without lugging the engine.
[Reply: Fixed it for you. -E.M.S.]
@A.C.Osborn:
Yup. The SAME year, make, and model of Mercedes will have very different gearing in Germany / Europe than was shipped to the USA (especially when we had the 55 MPH “Nixon Speed Limit” 8-{ crap). My mechanic has a transmission shop and I’ve gotten to watch him work out for a given vehicle what the rear end ratio and gearing will be. Part of his mantra being US vs Grey Market. Even the speedometers will be different to account for the different rear end ratio. (My Grey Market car needed some work on the speedo… )
I had a 1980 Honda Civic that was best economy at about 50 – 55 mph. That was THE lowest you could effectively run 5 th gear. It was about 1800 to 2000 RMP (red line a bit over 6 K IIRC) At my usual cruise speed it was 2200. Got really good MPG. Drove that car over 1/4 million miles and 14 years before I finally let it go. Then someone else drove it to over the 1/3 Million mile mark and after that I lost count…
IMHO a quick test for engine life will be take it to freeway cruise. Did you just shift into top gear about 10 MPH below that? Is your engine tach doing about 1/3 of max? Not lugging the engine, but just barely into the power band with lots of headroom.
FWIW, my only complaint about my Subaru is that it is just a little too high an RPM at freeway cruise. I run about 3000 RPM plus some as Larry pointed out. I really wish I had a taller top gear and it ran about 2200 RPM or even 2000. I don’t mind at all downshifting that to 4th on a mountain. Then again, 95% of my time is FlatLander and only once in a while do I climb the mountains, so not the same case as Larry_In_the_Hills ;-)
Climbing the Sierra Nevada on I-80 I’d spend a lot of time shifting between 4th and 5th in the old Honda. Coming back from Truckee, I’d coast for about 40 miles often needing to use the brakes. Great gas mileage though ;-) Sometimes I’d fill up at the top, then again at Roseville just out of the hills; just to put an incredible MPG number in my book ;-0
@Jim2:
Both Chrome and FireFox have settings under Preferences to allow or deny access to your camera, microphone, etc. I spend 4 or 5 minutes per system install just turning them all to OFF and turning ON the “do not track” notifications, etc. On Chrome you have to tick the “advanced” toggle at the bottom of the list to get them.
Note that in FireFox you also need to tick the box to STOP it doing things to be friendly to the handycapped (I forget the exact phrase) as it allows sites to change some actions of the browser (so as to accommodate needs) that can also be used for some dirty tricks. The browser then re-boots with those features disabled.
As much as I despise SystemD, I’m pretty sure you were having a Browser Issue that’s present on all of the systems.
BTW, I looked into The HAMR HAMMER a little bit, and it is a Browser Exploit specifically aimed at Android, Linux, and MacOS / iOS. I find that very encouraging. It means the basic OS was tight enough they couldn’t easily get in, and needed a special tool to whack on the weak spot – the Browser.
So start with learning all the toggles and switches under Preferences that leave you wide open to observation and turn them off. MOST Distributions (especially Ubuntu) have them set to wide open as then “things just work” even if it is insecure. A very few (Slackware was one) have them set to OFF and you must turn them on to get those “features” active.
And yes, it IS creepy…
FWIW, IIRC, Seamonkey browser is a FireFox clone that is locked down by default. I have it on my tablet but otherwise haven’t seen much of it lately. Stallman was pushing it (he’s a security fanatic, and that’s a good thing) but went so far that many sites had problems running “correctly” on it. I think it didn’t make the transition to Rust / LLVM and is several revs back level on the code base now…
Oh, and one other point: TOR has the TOR Browser where they lock stuff down hard by default, even removing the offending sections of code so you can’t accidentally activate bad things. It’s worth a look for those “special” days ;-) IF I’m ever worried, I’ll boot a fresh system install on some SBC and ONLY run the TOR stuff on it, then wipe it when done
Larry Ledwick: “Most cars get maximum fuel economy near 45 mph which would be about 10 hp or so. That is the speed where aerodynamic drag begins to dominate rolling resistance and other losses, and also were most cars are geared to the most efficient engine speed in the gear used for that speed range.”
I’ve always had a hard time trying to measure this myself, without lab equipment. My vague conclusion is that speed does not make very much difference, except at very low and very high speeds the mpg drops. Drag goes up rapidly with speed, in theory, so I don’t understand.
Maybe it is all in that last sentence, about the gearing. In a pure electric car, that shouldn’t matter, so maybe it is easier to measure efficiency versus speed in a Tesla?
“Highest fuel economy records are held by cars that use burst acceleration and coasting, but that won’t help you much on flat coastal road ways.”
That would be the “bang-bang theorem of optimal control”. Seriously. It’s heavy on the math, but Wikipedia is pretty accessible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bang–bang_control
Apparently the Soros minions (David Hogg etc.) are trying to push this item to be on the ballot in Florida.
@YMMV:
In low gears, your engine is turning fast and there is a lot of internal friction. Typically you are accelerating from a stop in normal driving that also cuts mileage. VERY few people drive 200 miles at 20 mph steady… so you get crappy mileage.
This page says air drag is a square function. In any case it’s an exponential so you hit a ‘knee’ as it suddenly becomes big relative to rolling resistance and internal engine pumping losses.
https://www.lmnoeng.com/Drag/index.php
These folks have a nice list of typical cooefficients of drag:
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/drag-coefficient-d_627.html
(We still have a LOT to learn from Dolphins…. They are at 0.0036 while a streamline body is 0.04 and an airplane wing is 0.05 motorcycle and rider 1.8 )
So at some point for your given degree of streamlined vehicle you have that v^2 dominate the rolling resistance and engine pumping losses. For most folks that’s about 40 to 45 mph. In an ideal condition, you put your max efficiency engine RPM on that spot and drive that speed.
Now, since gas engines are most efficient with the throat wide open, to get THE best numbers, the extreme guys run the engine wide open to the top end of V^2 that’s efficient then shut it off and coast to the bottom end, rinse and repeat. FWIW I did that once in a VW Carmen Gia coming back from Oregon. Was up in the high 40s to low 50s or more on MPG even with some flat land to the gas station.
Now most folks, me included, do NOT want to drive a few hundred miles surging from 35 mph to 45 and back again, so we pick a fixed speed (or nearly so) and sit on it. For max economy in that mode, you want that fixed speed to be where you have your engine at lowest effective RPM but still in the efficient operation / throttle open range. That typically means as low an RPM as it can be with open throttle and not lugging. Pumping losses in the engine are minimized, fuel burn still efficient, thermal efficiency good with long slow expansion. And you want your air velocity low so drag is low (so under 50 MPH). Oh, and tires “rock hard” helps too ;-)
The first Honda Insight models had 80 PSI tires for that reason. Small slippery form. Gas engine run at efficient range and electric drive taking the power surges. 60 MPG.
FWIW, the big advantage of the Diesel is no throttle losses. It’s all wide open so the pumping losses are low. The bore / stroke tends to the long stroke side so lots of slow expansion taking all the heat out of the gasses and making it motion, plus able to take a load at low RPM for the hill climb / stay in the highest gear possible. Why I like them. (This is the “Old School” Diesels, not the new electronic prima-donna things…)
The short form of all that, is you get the best gas mileage just over the line into top gear at significant throttle open and air speed under 45 ish.
The absolute efficiency of the engine (torque) is maximum at the torque peak rpm. That is the rpm the engine uses fuel most efficiently and produces the most turning force on the crank shaft for he least fuel per ft/lb of torque. It is also the rpm where the engine breaths most efficiently and produces the highest cylinder pressures.
Power is a function of both torque and rpm so the peak power is always at a higher rpm than peak torque.
At a given road speed you have to exert a certain amount of torque at the wheel contact patch to maintain that speed (ie force to counter all sources of drag).
Best gas mileage is at the lowest rpm in the highest gear that the engine can pull with out laboring (lugging) and produce that required force at the wheel contact patch.
For most cars that engine speed is about 1800 – 2000 rpm. Large displacement engines which produce more torque can pull lower rpm under load but because of the large displacement they use more fuel per revolution and have higher friction due to more stuff flying around inside the engine.
In my car, peak torque is at 4000 rpm but at 4000 rpm the engine produces far more power than is needed to maintain common road speeds (in 5th gear it would be near 90 mph with my gearing and tire size).
I have a fuel mpg meter in the car (standard equipment) it zeros when you zero the odometer, and right after you zero the odometer it essentially gives you real time absolute fuel mileage (before the moving average is skewed by how you drove 10 miles ago or 3 days ago etc.) using that function I have found that my true road fuel mileage on level ground in 5th gear with almost no throttle (just enough throttle to maintain 2000 – 2200 rpm is close to 40 – 41.5 mpg, which is a road speed of 45 – 50 mph level ground almost no throttle.
If I work at it, I can get a long term average (over 1000 miles) of commuting on roads that have few traffic lights and speed limits from 40 – 45 mph of 31.2 mpg driving more or less normally (no fast starts etc.) If I kick it out of gear and coast on the obvious down hill stretches I can get a long term fuel mileage (greater than 1000 miles) of 31.5 but I have to work at it and only in warm weather.
(tire rolling resistance is lowest at higher temps when the tire is more flexible and less energy is used up deforming the tire)
I know my peak reasonable fuel mileage is just a bit over that 31.5 mpg but I did not have enough good weather this year to get it to jump to the next number increment of 31.8 so real absolute fuel mileage under ideal conditions is around 31.6 or 31.7.
Long term (other odometer which goes back to 2000 miles before I bought the car) is in the high 29.5 – 29.7 mpg range with normal day to day driving and no effort to extend fuel mileage.
Each car is a bit different but if you are trying to stretch a fuel tank in an emergency, drive near 45 mph at the lowest engine rpm the engine will pull, in the highest gear you have.
When leaving a stop light use low gear the shortest possible amount of time (think of engine revs per mile, keep that number as low as possible.
Stay in low gear just long enough to get the car moving fast enough you can get into second gear and pull it without lugging the engine. Likewise short shift second as soon as you are going fast enough to pull 3rd gear. The Corvette due to its high power available has the automatic transmission programmed to skip shift at low load and starts out in second gear if it can to stay out of low gear.
With my gearing on dead flat ground or a slight down hill slope I can start in second gear without laboring the engine, on slight up hill grad I need to use low gear to get up to 5 mph or so before shifting to second and try to shift to each successive gear at 2500 rpm which with my gearing drops the next successive gear to right about 2000 rpm.
Hmmm apparently being a climate shill (ahemmm activist) pays pretty good money.
E.M.
” Even the speedometers will be different to account for the different rear end ratio.”
You might find that you can change the size of the drive gear for the speedo drive at the gearbox and that there are different tooth counts.
“Records Found in Dusty Basement Undermine Decades of Dietary Advice
Raw data from a 40-year-old study raises new questions about fats”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/records-found-in-dusty-basement-undermine-decades-of-dietary-advice/
Via http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2019/10/12/the-sound-of-settled-science-58/
“Dems Aiding Iran’s Backdoor to EU Trade”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/dems_aiding_irans_backdoor_to_eu_trade_.html
I’ll readily admit that the BBC is no friend of Trump. But Trump’s decision to withdraw USA forces from Syria a week ago, does not need to be ‘hammed up’ by the BBC. The facts speak for themselves. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-50029540
NB : The Kurds under Turkish attack are now saying keeping ISIS prisoners in prison is no longer a priority for them… And how many thousands of ISIS fighters & their families are there in those prisons ?
And BTW, in case anyone here has forgotten, Erdogan the president of Turkey, is no moderate. He is an Islamic extremist and his party has over the past 15 years, ‘Islamicised’ the formerly secular republic of Turkey. And it was no accident that ISIS got started in Syria back around 2013-4. It got a lot of unofficial support from Turkey..
So this Turkish invasion of Syria is having the result of releasing the ISIS extremists !
But it seems that Trump has lost this historical perspective.
Sorry Bill in Oz.neither the BBC nor you have any right to say anything about Trump’s decision on Syria. Until you put your young people’s lives in harms way for some etheral ideal, you have no right to dictate to the USA what value it places on the lives of its own young people.
Trump never made a secret of the fact he did not like the US being the unofficial police force of the world Who get slammed for whatever happens, while the rest of the world sit safely behind the shield and snipe at the USA. What hypocrites!
I am glad Trump did what he did. And if you do not like it, send Australian boys and girls over there to be the buffer!
But you will not. It is easier to play a holier than thou hypocrite than to place your own citizens in harms way.
Deal with it.
Prison? What prison? That was an ISIS training compound!
My read on the Syria thing is that Trump talked to the Europeans and said “These are YOUR citizens, so YOUR problem. Pony up the resources and troops” and they blew him off. So it’s quite reasonable, IMHO, for Trump to then say “OK, well, your choice. So I’m bringing our soldiers home and you can deal with it however you like. Oh, Erdogan, make sure it’s a clean and tidy border occupation or I’m gonna smack you in the pocket book.”
Well you know what? I’m OK with that too.
We can either be the global police force nobody wants; using way too much of MY money as taxes, or we can tell the folks in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia that it’s THEIR turf and THEIR problems. Fix it yourself. I vote for “not my problem”.
Now, if you’all WANT us to run the world, I’m fine with that too. Please arrange for a 5% of GDP tax to be deposited in our military fund and for us to have conscription power over your soldiers and we will be happy to police the Global US Empire… OK?
(I thought not…)
Our current on the books national debt is $22.8 T, we spent $8 T over the last 19 years fighting in the middle east. Almost everything that we were told was wrong or at least skewed to get us into that mess. The Obama administration went out of their way to miss opportunities to wrap that up with relatively stable governments in place and get out.
Today we have kids fighting who were born while their fathers were fighting in the same war.
If you read Iran, and Osama Bin Ladens commentary their intent was to bog the US down in a never ending war and bleed us dry. Obama helped them do exactly that. At the end of his terms he had practically destroyed our military, he had burned out our troops, wore out their equipment, and used up our ammunition stocks. It will take us years to dig out of that hole.
Money that should have been spent to build new Nuclear subs and similar systems was thrown to the winds in the sand storms of the middle east, so our current top line subs and other key systems will start being decommissioned before we can build their replacements.
Since the government no matter what its tax rate, tends to net about 17% of the countries GDP, the only way we can dig out of this hole, is to cut expenses that are not essential, and grow GDP faster than our national debt burns up our reserves.
By making us a net oil exporter we are now paying ourselves for essential energy supplies (which gets us velocity of money multiplication) rather than paying someone else who takes our money off shore and uses it against us.
Reelecting President Trump is literally a matter of national survival. If the Dems win this next election cycle, our goose is cooked.
@philjourdan I take offence mate your ‘ad hominem’ attacks. It’s the tactic of the clueless !
I also take offence at your at your ignorance of the facts ! Australians have been there with the USA in every major ( and some minor ) conflict since December 7th 1941. The Pacific War, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Horn of Africa ( to suppress piracy ) and the the Gulf right now.. with the Iran threat..And there were a few others where the US did not go like Malaysia, Timur L’Este, Solomon Islands, Bouganville etc..
And the USA services folk in Syria were not there as a fighting force. But as liason, & support. About 600 to 1000 to the Kurds who were actually doing the on ground fighting.. And Australia was not asked to help…But I suspect a few Aussies were there on secondment.
Frankly speaking as as a defender of Islamic state..Could not do better if you tried…
Watch Turkey Phil ! see what will come from what it is doing. Now there is a real issue for everyone in the whole Middle East region – even your major allies Saudi Arabia & Israel and Jordan… And the regime which the USA established in Iraq.
I suspect that the USA will very shortly be very worried and annoyed at the misguided consequences of it’s own policy.
And given the Dimocrats a really stick to beat Trump with.
We all generally recognize the turn of Turkey toward the dark.
There is a fundamental value to recognizing a truth.
So is it not possible that by allowing Turkey to demonstate to the world who it really is; that will move us more rapidly to properly address it?
Do we in the USA really need to stand between 4 or 5 forces that all are against our values and pretend they are our buddies? The Syrian Kurds are basically national socialists. The Turks are increasingly islamists. Assad is NOT our friend, and ISIS a fundamental enemy. Russia is, well, Russia. Iran and Iraq are no big soulmates of ours. So just why ought OUR blood defend any of them? Let them kill each other, then we can deal with the survivors. OR they can choose to make peace.
In any case: Not My Problem.
The question is what can you do, and what should you do. This is a blood feud like tribal conflict that goes back generations overlayed with political ideology (communist revolutionary group which is a direct philosophical / political threat to the stability of Turkey)
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1182046793384824832.html
Ummmm, and there is this from P A Pundits :
https://papundits.wordpress.com/2019/10/13/syria-its-time-to-pray/
“VERY few people drive 200 miles at 20 mph steady… so you get crappy mileage.”
I was curious about the crappy mileage at the extreme, crawling in a traffic jam, say half of idle speed. Most of the gas is used just to keep the engine running.
According to the internet, the friction forces in the engine are roughly linear with RPM. “It takes about 15 horsepower to barely run a typical V8 engine at idle”, and it takes about 3 hp to turn the engine over to start it.
This page has graphs of torque and power for gas, diesel, and Tesla engines.
https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/5574/why-do-engines-have-so-much-unused-horsepower
“the big advantage of the Diesel is no throttle losses.”
And lean burn, but what about turbo-charged fuel injection gasoline engines? Throttle losses wouldn’t mean much there. A small engine to get good economy, a turbo or a hybrid to give extra power when you need it, without adding too much inefficiency when you don’t need it.
A couple of matching Thunberg studies to amuse, even as they reveal the yawning gulf between media people and reason. You may have thought you had simply seen what St. Greta was saying, mentally added her to the alarmist list and passed unfavourable comment. But no! Your comment shows that you’re just a nasty misogynist who is upset because she’s not tarting herself up with a pretty hairdo and minidress! One journalist, one actress, both apparently as strong on psychiatry as they are on climate.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/greta-thunberg-climate-change-trump-malala-yousafzai-sexism-girls-men-a9121336.html
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2019/10/11/anne-hathaway-greta-thunbergs-critics-are-textbook-misogynists/
“Delingpole: How President Trump Can Beat St Greta and Save the Planet”
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/10/13/how-trump-can-beat-st-greta-save-the-planet/
“Hillary and Bill Clinton Get Mushy on Twitter: ‘He Still Cleans Up Pretty Well’”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/10/12/hillary-bill-clinton-get-mushy-he-still-cleans-up-pretty-well/
Landed another one?
Bill In Oz – The Kurds and most other people in the ME have been fighting for literally centuries. It’s really not our problem, especially given the huge amount of blood and treasure spent by the US.
What worked best is when, with the help of the CIA and other intel agencies, the West helped set up dictatorships. That seems to obtain the best, most economical, peaceful situation in that cesspool on Earth.
Hopefully, Turkey will bomb the hell out of the ISIS prisons to get those people off the stage forever. Or that might be a good farewell action from the USA.
At any rate, Australia and Europe are always welcomed to go over there and fix everything. Please do.
And lean burn, but what about turbo-charged fuel injection gasoline engines? Throttle losses wouldn’t mean much there. A small engine to get good economy, a turbo or a hybrid to give extra power when you need it, without adding too much inefficiency when you don’t need it.
Well yes and no – it is a very sound idea and if well executed accomplishes exactly what you say.
For example the 2.0 Liter Subaru WRX, the base 2.0 liter engine running at low to no boost makes about 100 hp. A little anemic to handle the 3300 pound weight of the car but on flat terrain near sea level it is adequate.
A few years ago I had a 1800 cc Subaru naturally aspirated (basically same engine as the WRX with a slightly less efficient valve train and heads (1988 model). Depending on the fuel system it makes between 84 and 97 hp. Mine was rated at 90 hp but here at altitude only produced about 72 hp at the flywheel. I put it on a dyno just for grins and it made a pulse pounding 45 hp delivered to the wheels. 30 – 40 hp was lost in the drive train.
Drive train losses are essentially fixed for a given design regardless of speed, friction in the U joints friction in the transmission gears and energy lost stirring up gear oil in the transmission and differentials etc..
The difference between drive train losses for a cold car vs a car at full operating temperature can be 30 – 40 hp. One of the subtle tricks performance shops do, is they put a cold car on the dyno, and get a “base line” power output, then they make several runs on the dyno fiddling with it and give you back the car with charts showing it is making 30 or more hp than it did on that first run. Not because they did anything useful, but because they got the tires and drive train up to full temp and reduced internal drive train losses while they did their song and dance. You give them your money and go home happy. Not a bad racket. The good shops will warm up the car first and give you A – A comparisons rather than A-B comparisons of cold engine vs hot engine and drive train.
Any way, back to your comment Ford did the same thing with their Eco boost engines small displacement engines at light load and no boost use little gas inching along in a traffic jam. Get out on the highway and the turbo makes boost (which in effect is just variable displacement for the engine) as it allows the engine to burn more air/fuel mixture than it can process without boost.
The bad news, is there are still throttling losses (and mixture heating losses by the turbo) so it is not a free lunch. The only way to achieve the goal you suggest is to use a high octane fuel that can handle high boost without killing the engine.
This is where E85 comes in. It is a far superior fuel for a turbocharged engine than straight gasoline able to produce about 20% more power output from the same engine compared to top quality gasoline. All because it is a fuel that works very well with high turbo boost. It has high natural octane, it also has significantly better evaporative cooling as it vaporizes and burns cooler at high boost which helps keep the engine from melting piston tops and burning valves or destroying itself with detonation.
Last for a give amount of intake air flow E85 produces significantly more exhaust gas volume (more mols of exhaust gas for a given air flow) which makes the turbo very happy and allows it to spool faster and make more boost than it can on gasoline.
That little 2.0 Liter engine that naturally aspirated on gasoline and able to make about 110 hp, slap a turbo on it and run it at 14 psi boost and common premium gasoline and it will make 227 hp at 14 psi boost. Give it top line racing gasoline (100+ octane) and you can get 350 -400 hp out of it. Feed it E85 and push the peak boost pressure up to 24 -27 psi, and you can make north of 500-550 hp without killing the engine.
The problem is one of fuels available and the fact that manufactures use designs which use fixed turbo boost designs. Like the WRX which standard boost pressure maxes out at about 14 psi.
To achieve your design goal you would need to feed the engines a very high octane fuel like E85 and have a sophisticated variable boost turbo system that can run anywhere from 0 boost to 30 psi boost. Then you could get by with a 1 liter engine displacement and as you needed more power the engine management system would give you more boost depending on load.
What Larry said ;-)
I’d only add that some of those concerns (detonation) go away in a turbo Diesel. My old turbo Diesel wagon would climb the GrapeVine into Los Angeles (a LONG steep climb over the mountains that used to have a radiator water stop about 1/2 way up) on cruise control. All you would hear is the turbo spinning up ;-)
BUT, that comes at the cost of a $1000 or three of added hardware in the engine… Turbo chargers, especially good ones that will go 400,000 miles, are NOT cheap. Then the engine itself was juiced up with various oil squirters inside to spray oil on the parts of the engine that got hot inside at full boost… and a few more bits.
That, BTW, is why we are not all driving turbo driven cars. Most folks are not keen on spending $3000 more up front to save $100 / year on gasoline for the 3 years before they trade it in…
Interesting commentary on the Turkey/Kurd/US withdrawl situation.
Staying there is compounding a mistake made long ago, throwing more money down a bottomless rat hole.
No matter what we do, the Turks and Kurds will continue to have friction just like Greece and Turkey have been at odds for many years and fought a war over Cyprus in the 1970’s.
In a region where blood feud style of never forgive never forget tribalism and opposition is the norm and institutionalized, the only solution that will bring peace to the region is the Carthage solution.
One or the other of the combatants will have to ultimately utterly destroy the other to actually end the conflict. It won’t bring peace, but it will put conflict on hold for 50 – 80 years while the subdued group rebuilds rearms and births more soldiers.
You have half a billion people who as a cultural identity hate other segments of that same stew of tribes. There is no “civilized fix” for that, the only two options are long term simmering conflict that goes on for generations or one group to win so decisively that they other ceases to exist or is no longer a viable threat.
If you doubt that assessment, read up on Turkeys genocide of Christian Armenians at the start of the 20th century. That cultural savagery has not gone away, it is only hidden when it is not convenient.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/turkey-and-the-kurds-its-more-complicated-than-you-think/
Some car calculations for those inclined to play with numbers extracted from a cheat sheet I put together a few years ago. Hopefully word press does not mangle this too badly.
Total Rolling Drag
F= 0.011 W ( ranges from 0.007 --- 0.013)
W = load on tire in lbs
F = drag force in Lbs
V = speed in MPH
Speed effect on rolling resistance
F = 0.00003 WV
Air Drag generic
Air drag in lbs
Airdrag = (0.00249)(A*CD) * V^2
A = frontal area
CD = coefficient of drag
V = velocity (ft/sec)
Air drag = pounds force
============================
Total drag expression:
Ftot = 0.011W + 0.00003WV + ( (0.00249) * (A CD ) V^2)
AerodragHP = ((0.011W)+(0.00003 WV) + (0.00249) (A CD) V^2) * ((V*1.4667)/550)
======================
Air drag formulas
HP book "Aerodynamics for racing and performance cars
drag (lbs) = (Cd x FA x mph^2 ) / 400
V= mph,
FA = frontal area
Cd = coefficient of drag
---------------------
Streamlining and Car Aerodynamics
Tab Books
Drag (lbs) = Cd x FA x (air mass density) x mph^2
---------------------
Race Car Aerodynamics
Joseph Katz
Drag (newtons) = ( 1/2 x Rho x V^2 x A)
Rho = 1.22 kg/M^3
V = M/sec
A = M^2
-----------------------
Proper drag formula for English units
Drag (lbs) = Cd x FA x ( 1/2 x (air density lbs/ft^3/32.2) x velocity in ft/sec)^2 )
==============
Typical air density near sea level 0.765 lb/ft^3
standard conditions = 15 deg C (59 deg F), 29.921 in hg barometer,0% humidity,
Standard sea level air density is 1.225 Kg/M^3 = 0.002378 slugs/ft^3 = 0.765716 lb/ft^3
===============
gear ratio = (tire dia x rpm) / ( 336 x mph)
mph = (tire dia inches x rpm) / gear ratio ) / 336
example ---- 95.03 mph = (( 24.3 in tire dia x 7000 rpm) / 5.327 total gear reduction ) / 336
Best to use a value of loaded radius from axle to ground x 2 as that is the effective diameter of the tire.
=======
(engine rpm / total gear reduction) /60 = tire rev/sec
5280 / (tire rev/mile) = ft / rev
1 mph = 1.4666667 ft / sec
(5280 / 60 x 1.46666667) = 60
mph = [(engine rpm) /(total gear reduction) x tire rev/mile )] x 60)
========================
Altitude vs typical air pressure
Standard atmosphere pressures at standard conditons
in PSI for given altitudes
ALT ........ PSI
0 14.70
500 14.43
1000 14.18
1500 13.92
2000 13.67
2500 13.42
3000 13.17
3500 12.92
4000 12.69
4500 12.45
5000 12.23
5500 12.00
6000 11.78
6500 11.56
7000 11.34
7500 11.13
8000 10.91
8500 10.71
9000 10.51
9500 10.30
10000 10.11
Things I learned from the Haynes RR Merlin Workshop Manual
Fuel was fed in before the supercharger so they cooled the intake flow about 20 degrees which you don’t get with direct injection. Aftercooling was needed when they went to two stage superchargers.
You needed plenty of TEL as you raised the boost to control detonation
They used methanol in the “witches brew” fuels for the “R” in the Schneider Trophy race engines
They were playing with 30 psi boost on Merlins with PN 140 fuel – getting about 2400 hp
“WHO WAS THE MOST EVIL MAN IN HISTORY?”
https://www.pickeringpost.com/harryrichardson/13036/who-was-the-most-evil-man-in-history/
They were playing with 30 psi boost on Merlins with PN 140 fuel – getting about 2400 hp
Yes PN 140 octane fuel and 50/50 water methanol injection ( ADI Anti Detonation Injection) directly into the hub of the centrifugal super charge so it was turned to a mist on impact to the rapidly spinning compressor impeller hub, to cool the air as it was compressed. In cold environments the ADI injection sometimes had higher alcohol percentages to prevent freezing at high altitude. Sometimes up in the 60% – 70% methanol range. Ethanol also worked just as well as the Methanol but isopropyl alcohol blew up engines due to its different flammability limits – it acted like a fuel rather than a coolant.
The Grand National Buick folks often use isopropyl alcohol injection but they have to accommodate its fuel characteristics in their tune. Methanol and Ethanol injection can use the same fuel air settings interchangably but with Isopropyl alcohol you need to change the fuel mixture which was not what the military wanted to do – they wanted to set it and forget it out of the plant.
Turbo chargers love that method of injection but the higher rpm of an exhaust driven turbocharger means the water droplets are hard on the impeller if you get any of the water entering the supercharger inlet as large droplets.
I used it on the WRX for a while, (50/50 water methanol) really improves the efficiency of compression, makes the turbo act like it is about 30% larger than it really is. But the layout of the intake forced me to inject the water as a mist a few inches ahead of the turbo inlet so some water droplets ran down the walls of the inlet and they eroded the impeller tips over time.
The compressor impeller looked like it had been chewed on by a mouse at the tips of the impeller blades. If you are willing to think of the compressor impeller as a consumable item it works great.
How to describe Journalists how are shills for an agenda
IIRC the piston aircraft of WWII has isopropanol injection in the intake for a short run as EWP Emergency War Power. You could use it, but then an engine rebuild was expected as the large increase in HP was hard on parts…. But better to be alive needing an overhaul than a pile of scrap on the ground.
Don’t know how long it was good for, but I think it was short minutes.
A quick search has one site calling it WEP War Emergency Power as a water isopropanol mix.
I ran into a nice history page on it some many years ago. Things you wish you had bookmarked ;-) IIRC it was used to cool the air intake for more charge entry, add just enough flammables to burn with the added air in the charge, and cool at the tht would be over heated at that level of power / compression (valves, pistons, etc.).
As an irrelevant aside: Butanol is a drop in replacement for gasoline. No need to change your mixture at all. IF gasoline ever becomes a banned substance, just order a barrel of butanol for “industrial use” ;-) Supposedly it isn’t the nicest smell in the world, but is acceptable…
I would expect that the higher alcohols if diluted with water would also work, but then you get into difficulties getting it to evaporate as the alcohol is heavy and hard to evaporate and the water soaks up a lot of heat too.
One other bit of tid:
A 1%-2% addition of methanol / ethanol in Diesel improves combustion and fuel economy (but I’d not recommend it long term without assurances the metal parts would not corrode – the article I read said it had shown no problems, but…) I’ve used this in my Diesel from time to time as a 10% addition of 10% ethanol gasoline and it does seem to work.
FWIW, the 240 D Mercedes manual says that up to 25% Regular Unleaded can be added to the Diesel for winterizing the fuel (so it doesn’t gel or thicken too much). This worked FINE up until the 10% Ethanol hit AND California went to funny gasoline (low on volatiles and aromatics). Then, at the 20%+ level, it starts to have a very hard time starting sometimes. Kerosene up to the 50% mark (as per the 300 D manual from a few years later) still works just great as winterizing. (Or any jet fuel from your local airport…)
I’ve run a LOT of odd mixes of fuels in my various Diesels over the years. It was an R&D Hobby of mine for a good while. Probably the oddest 2 were a mix of Crisco cut with enough Kerosene to make it flow added to a few gallons of Diesel (in an International Harvester Scout 6 cyl Nissan Turbo Diesel) and then Propane valved into the air intake of the same vehicle up to about 75% of power (using the injected Diesels as the “spark” to set it off).
That last one does not work well in very high compression (non-precombustion chamber) engines like the Dodge Cummins where it will knock. Oh, and I’ve run various alcohols in the air intake of a Volvo Penta Marine Diesel as “co fuels” in a similar way. In an EOTWAWKI situation, the traditional (Ricardo?) Diesel will burn high octane volatile fules as intake fumigated co-fuels or heavier oils / kerosene / cooking oil in the tank. This does not work on the “modern” computerized delicate little things called Diesels today…
As long as there are jets flying, trains running, trucks on the road, kerosene lamps, cooking oil, propane tanks, and more; I can get my Iron Diesel across the country. Even if I have to render rats & squirrels to do it.
@Larry L:
I’ve heard them called Presstitutes as well… So the Journatutes of the Presstitute corp has a nice ring to it ;-)
They tried isopropyl in europe (they were using deicing fluid alcohol because it was readily available but it destroyed engines) the designer of those engines and ADI found in the dyno cell that they could not use isopropyl without recalibrating the engines it had much poorer performance that either methanol or ethanol. After that it was mandated to only use methanol or ethanol
Story is here (great read)!
Frank Walker may have won the second world war with his engineering talent.
/http://www.enginehistory.org/Biography/FrankWalkerWeb1.pdf
@Bill in Oz – I will ignore your ad hominems and point out your ignorance. I did not attack you. Stating facts is not ad hominem. I called you no names. I correctly labeled you.
Second, look up the definitions of a “war” and the function of a police force. A war (and Oz has been there in every one with the US) is/are major battle(s) between opposing armies. Policing is trying to KEEP the Peace and getting shot at by lone wolves or gangs of thugs – criminals in every sense of the word. They are NOT the same. And the only nation that has been there “all” the time is the US.
As for defending any islamic state, I mentioned none, so that is just an ignorant assumption on your part. Australia has to be asked to join the fun? While I (unlike the BBC and you) do not fault them for not volunteering at every hot spot, you proved my point. You are not “expected” to be there, the US IS. Nor would I presume to slam Australia for NOT being there – I did not. I slammed those who criticized the US without being there.
As far as giving the democrats any sticks, well I guess Trump stole one of your items for that one. Any attacks they try on this issue will boomerang on them since they have virtually demanded the US pull all troops out of the hot spots. But then when it comes to Hypocrites, no one, not the BBC, nor you, can beat the democrats.
What the USA may or may not do based upon this decision, I did not see where Oz jumped in and replaced those Americans who were moved. If it worries you so much, tell your PM to send over your Joeys. But I will not be so callous as to suggest that to your leader. But feel free to tell us how Oz is going to pick up the slack for the “lousy” decisions of Trump.
Re Syria & the Kurds : mostly you have missed my point EM & Phil. Since 1941 the USA has lead an alliance of nations freely choosing to support and cooperate across the globe..That is based fundamentally on one thing “Trust.’
The Syrian Kurds chose to be part of that Alliance of Trust and the USA recognised and supported them against aggression from Islamic State. Trump has abandoned that policy.
And the governments of the other nations in that Alliance of Trust are watching that change with alarm. There are a number of countries in the Alliance which face similar threats : The Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Aran Emirates, Greece, Israel etc..
The aspects of concern ? The suddenness or the decision and the unilateral character of it. Those things undermine trust.
And here in Oz this decision has given strength to the arguments of those who advocate with drawing from the Alliance with the USA.
What is significant about the Kurds ? Larry ( or was it you Phil ? ) has accused them of being ‘socialist’ because they have a flag with a red star on it. I say to that “So what ? ” Lots of countries have stars on their flags.. Including Australia & New Zealand.. It’s just a flag.born out of history..
But there is one thing not being mentioned here : The Kurds in Syria are lead by a secular organisation not an extremist Muslim one. And Kurdish is actually a dialect of Persian.. So here we have the USA leaving to the not so tender mercies of a Sunnis Muslim Turkey, a secular people who speak Persian but who are not extremist Shias backed by Iran which has declared itself the enemy of the USA which it names “The Great Shai’tan” !
This is a criticism of a specific Trump policy. In general I do not comment on USA internal politics. And you can see that by looking back on the absence of of comments on USA internal politics.
But on this issue, I think my criticisms are valid.
I did not “accuse them of being socialist because their flag had a red star on it” They self identify as Marxists and socialists. One of the tells for Marxists is they like to use the same symbology in their flags.
Every reference you look up about the PKK which is the parent organization explicitly states they were formed as a Marxist organization.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-20971100
The group, which has Marxist-Leninist roots, was formed in the late 1970s and launched an armed struggle against the Turkish government in 1984, calling for an independent Kurdish state within Turkey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Workers%27_Party
Ideology Kurdish nationalism[1]
Communalism
Democratic confederalism[2]
Libertarian socialism[3]
Jineology
Anti-capitalism
https://fas.org/irp/world/para/pkk.htm
Kongra-Gel was founded by Abdullah Ocalan in 1974 as a Marxist-Leninist separatist organization and formally named the Kurdistan Workers� Party (PKK) in 1978. The group, composed primarily of Turkish Kurds, began in 1984 its campaign of armed violence, which has resulted in some 30,000 casualties. The PKK�s goal has been to establish an independent Kurdish state in southeast Turkey, northern Iraq, and parts of Iran and Syria. In the early 1990s, the PKK moved beyond rural-based insurgent activities to include urban terrorism. Turkish authorities captured Ocalan in Kenya in early 1999, and the Turkish State Security Court subsequently sentenced him to death, a sentence later commuted to life imprisonment following the abolition of the death penalty.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/inside-kurdistan-workers-party-pkk
Why They Fight
The PKK was formed with Marxist-Leninist roots in 1974 and, until recently, sought to create an independent Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey and parts of neighboring countries inhabited by Kurds.
…
Nearly a decade after its founding, the group turned to terrorist tactics in the mid-1980s, relying on guerrilla warfare that included kidnappings of foreign tourists in Turkey, suicide bombings, and attacks on Turkish diplomatic offices in Europe.
…
An estimated thirty-seven thousand people have been killed in the fighting.
https://thekurdishproject.org/history-and-culture/kurdish-nationalism/pkk-kurdistan-workers-party/
The 1970s saw Kurdish nationalism branching off into Marxist political ideology which influenced a new generation of Kurdish nationalists. A group of radical Kurdish students led by Abdullah Öcalan in Turkey formed the militant separatist group called Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK), or Kurdistan Workers’ Party in English.[1]
Refusing to acknowledge an organization that has been involved in a guerrilla war for 45 years resulting in over 37,000 deaths, been labeled a terrorist organization by multiple jurisdictions, was founded as a Communist/Marxist revolutionary force and openly identified as such, uses all the traditional trade marks of Communists/Marxists (ie workers party, and traditional red star symbology) is a bit of a leap.
@Bill in OZ; Interesting point of view on this Syrian mess, I’m not sure how 50 US ground troops in the area can resist 12,000 Turkish troops without calling in massive air attacks. Turkey is a NATO Treaty Ally. In my opinion Erdowan’s Turkey is no friend of the U.S., and should be treated as an Enemy, but the great game must be played for the long term. To bring Turkey to heel will require Congress to make the first move before the President can bring full pressure to bear. Erdowan’s Turkey is the aggressor here that is bent on Empire building, Americans will have to get out of their way, for a time. Trump’s position because of the YSM and the Democrats preclude his use of aggressive action at this time. Congress must declare themselves first…pg
History is important : Turkey until 1918 ruled an empire which covered not just current day Turkey but Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Most of Lebanon, Armenia, Iraq, most of Northern Greece and Bulgaria. Egypt was theoretically also part of the Ottoman empire though the Brits had actual dominance after the Suez canal was built.
World war 1 was a huge disaster for the Turkish people.. And I suspect Erdogan’s long term aim is the restoration of the Turkish state as it was in 1914…
@Larry, the PKK has fought a guerilla war with the Turkish government for 30 years..Indeed it has. And did it draw inspiration from Marxism ? Probably yes again.But so what ? Marxism is irrelevant here.
More relevant is that the Turkish government since the 1930’s has forbidden the teaching of the Kurdish language in it’s schools & use in any official capacity. So there are about 20 million Kurds in Turkey who are naturally very pissed off. The English tried that in Ireland with similar results.
Meanwhile the Kurds in Syria have now aligned themselves with the Syrian government as reproted by the BBC today… So Syrian forces are moving North to the border.. I wonder what Putin will do now ? Continue backing Assad or drop off his aid to Assad ?
AS near as I can tell the BBC does not have an axe to grind in this shummozzle so their reporting is accurate…But of course that may change when they work out who is their ideological ally.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-50036901
So when Turkey starts losing this power grab, does NATO come to their aid? or does the west say screw you for starting this mess.. Russia, Syria and the Kurds against Turkey and all of them against ISIS and Iran, Good Time to sit this one out, at least for now…pg
Oh yes, we also have Saudi Arabia and the Emirates on the verge of a real war with Iran.
We live in interesting times for sure….pg
On the other hand
“President Trump Announces Initial Economic Action Against Turkey – Erdogan Left Naked to His Enemies…”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/10/14/president-trump-announces-initial-economic-action-against-turkey-erdogan-left-naked-to-his-enemies/#more-173638
The real game behind the Kurd PKK safe zone that Turkey is now taking action against. It is a stalking horse, created by the Obama admin to give the Iranians a gate way into Syria and northern Iraq.
So now the other shoe falls
My suspicion is that President Trump knew Turkey was going to go too far, and pulled our troops to protect them and was sitting their waiting for the proper pretext to slap economic consequences on Turkey.
Yes it would be great if that could have been done before hostilities began but he would have been accused of over reacting and being anti-Muslim without the pretext.
Sorry Bill – until those lives on the line are yours, your criticism is invalid. Put your live where you mouth is.
*life
It’s all moot, Bill, phil, and all. The E.O. President Trump issued today had Erdogan calling the Whitehouse saying he urgently needed to speak with President Trump.
Ya think the President had a clue what he was doing when he “abandoned the Kurds?”
You can bet your last nickel that E.O. was written many, many days before 50 troops were moved out of the area and President Trump announced that he wasn’t going to play the same old games.
President Trump knows what he is doing. America can economically cripple any country in the world any time we want without a shot being fired. What we can’t do is settle tribal and regional scores no matter how much money we spend and no matter how many troops we commit. If American soldiers don’t stay as policemen and get shot at, at great expense BTW, the conflict will flare up again.
“So let it,” says President Trump. But if you can’t play nice together and work things out, “we’ll take away your toys and send everbody to bed without supper and a functioning economy.”
The downside is the pols and their buddies don’t get to rake in the bucks from the insane expenditures that go to the military-industrial complex. Well, it’s a downside to the war profiteers. Taxpayers, soldiers and their loved ones may see it differently.
Feels Like President Trump has been reading the comments here.. And doing something to sort out the issue.
I hope it works. I have no inherent preference for US military to sort out the world’s problems..
But I suggest that this could have been acheived without the awful mess which is now there on the North Syrian border..
I do get the feeling Trump knew exactly how this was likely to go, had the E.O. already written, has some secondary reason / benefit from it for the USA, and even telegraphed the move to Erdogan (he WAS warned).
Yeah, that makes the PKK Kurds a bit of pawns in the game between the Turks, Russians, Iranians, and USA: But were they not always so?
So what is Trump getting?
Spanks Turkey so they know who’s the Alpha Dog.
Gets the PKK where it has a harder time spreading the Socialist Dogma.
Gives Assad a Bigger Problem than the PKK on the north.
Craps up the Iranian plan for a proxy there.
Gets USA out of the blood games.
Potentially gets a monetary benefit (depends on the exact sanctions).
Puts a bunch of NATO troops INSIDE Syria (but not in too active a way) and that has to put a cold chill in Russian ideas about a base being secure.
You know, I’m having a hard time seeing where that’s bad stuff for us.
EM you have missed my point EM perhaps.I repeat ” Since 1941 the USA has lead an alliance of nations freely choosing to support and cooperate across the globe..That is based fundamentally on one thing “Trust.’
The Syrian Kurds chose to be part of that Alliance of Trust and the USA recognised and supported them against aggression from Islamic State. Trump then abandoned that policy.
And the governments of the other nations in that Alliance of Trust are watching that change with alarm. There are a number of countries in the Alliance which face similar threats : The Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Aran Emirates, Greece, Israel etc..
The aspects of concern ? The suddenness or the decision and the unilateral character of it. Those things undermine trust.”
So I’m pleased he has rethought things and is putting economic pressure on Erdogan. But I guess now we all know the extent that Turkey has descended into the dark side.. Though it was only in 2015 that the Turks were doing big business with the Islamic Califate..Buying ‘their’ oil & gas etc.. It was how that state got it’s foreign exchange to survive and grow..
And I notice how the Turkish armed forces targeted the gates one of the Kurd camps where ISIS famillies were interned.. So now there are over 700 ISIS folk who have escaped..
Turkey is not exactly the ally that the USA needs in the Middle East !
Turkey is not exactly the ally that the USA needs in the Middle East !
Turkey was never the ally we “needed” in the middle east, they have always been a wild card (ex ottoman empire with ambitions of being the leader of the new caliphate)
There are 3 primary reasons Turkey is a NATO ally.
1. They control the Bosporus straits.
2. They control the Bosporus straits.
3. They control the Bosporus straits.
There are also secondary reasons.
They had the perfect vantage point (along with Iran) to listen to the USSR before the satellite era
Their Incirlik air base is a critical asset to support air operations south of Russia and in the eastern Mediterranean.
Better to have them nominally on our side then definitely on the side of the Soviet Union / Russia.
They are like the mean dog in the neighborhood that you make a point of throwing a dog biscuit now and then to make sure he does not take a bite out of you.
In the Cold war days they also had the biggest standing army in the area and because of their long standing animosity to the Greeks served as a check on the late 1960 communist movement in Greece (and Cyprus a critical strategic location in the eastern Med0. The Communists tried really hard to gain control and open a land route to the Mediterranean around the Bosporus straits via Yugoslavia, Romania and Greece to open up the southern flank or eastern Europe.
They have always been an arms length ally mostly as a block against Soviet expansion into the eastern Med during the days that the Soviet Union was actively subverting Egypt, Syria, and Libya.
@Bill in OZ who wrote: “And I notice how the Turkish armed forces targeted the gates one of the Kurd camps where ISIS families were interned.. So now there are over 700 ISIS folk who have escaped.. “
700 escapees is a new number to me. I’m not going to argue the number here but make a point about government propaganda, which we’ve discussed under ‘Fake News.”
In US news, I was reading that 1,000 ISIS fighters escaped or so said Turkey and the US warmongers. Then yesterday, I ran across a report from the Kurds that the 1,000 number was bollocks and that they were only holding maybe a couple of dozen of ISIS fighters and family at the site.
So today, you write ‘700 escape’, which I’m guessing is the number being peddled in OZ. Obviously someone is lying about the number and they are doing it to influence opinion in friends and foes and in hopes that the number will produce a favorable action. All three numbers can’t be right and I suspect none of the three are the right number.
Anyhow, I now know that the only group that knows the real number that escaped is the Kurds that were at the prison site, and they have good reason to lie about it. The Turks have good reason to lie about the number, too.
I thought I was hardened to ‘Fake News’, but between the 50-ish and 700 numbers I saw yesterday and today after the widely reported 1,000 number over the previous days, I realized that all of those numbers were fake news being used to push a viewpoint and elicit a desired response.
I should have been suspicious right from the start of the 1,000 number. Your third number gave me that “Doh! We’re being had!” moment.
Thanks, Bill. Just putting out that number helped me fine tune my ‘Fake News’ detector, which is turning out to be pretty much ALL news from the YSM.
Victor Davis Hansen has a great article about the vagaries of the US interest in Syria, and some thoughts on Bill in Oz’s concerns about “trusting the US”. It is a complicated situation.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/kurdish-syrian-turkish-ironies/
@Bill in Oz:
I didn’t miss your point. I saw it, and saw other factors that might over-ride it.
I don’t know why, but folks seem to frequently attribute to “missed it” failure what was actually “saw, evaluated, addressed other points”.
Yes, USA is The Big Sugar Daddy who is Pack Leader Alpha Dog. I know this. We hand out the party favors too. What Trump is doing is telling the Beta Pack they need to step up to the game or they get no cookies while at the same time seeing Turkey starting to act out, so set them up for a run-in with the Alpha Dog. “IF you go into Syria and mess up the PKK, I’m going to bite your financial throat in a way you will not be able to handle.” knowing full well their hubris will have them do it anyway. And then you administer the “discipline”. Standard pack dynamics.
Now the question is: Will Turkey get the message and be a good Beta joining the pack and taking proper direction again? Or will it keep pushing to be its own Alpha BUT everyone will know they are out of the pack, not getting into the EU, and not getting rewards?
Identify Friend Or Foe is very very important. Any good Leader knows to test allegiance and kick out the traitor wanna-bees.
All the other Pack Members will also see this and realize that they don’t want to cross Trump either. If he says “will bite financial throat”, you know what happens… and it isn’t an Obama Bluff Red Line…
@Jon K:
Oh Boy, more reading ;-)
Sidebar on Computers:
I’m typing this on a Pi Model 2. I was doing the “update upgrade” cycle on one of the compute nodes of my pi stack and figured I’d just use it for a while.
It’s noticeably slower, but not horribly so. Quite acceptable, but near the minimum.
It is still on Devuan 1.0 and yesterday I tried to swap it to Devuan 2.0. Did a chip backup, then dd put Devuan 2.0 on this same uSD card then…. nothing. Not even attempting to boot. I re-did it a couple of times, but no-go.
Now the board is (obviously) working fine, as is the uSD since after restoring the backup it’s what I’m using now. The data copy rig is clearly working right as I used it for both the 1.0 and 2.0 images.
So I’m not sure what’s the deal with the Devuan 2.0 image (freshly downloaded from their site).
I’ll likely try again in a few days, but download from a different mirror and onto different media with a different computer. I’m hoping it is a “Process Error” and not just that Devuan has had a broken image up for a year and nobody noticed…
So, FWIW, the 900 MHz Pi M2 is about 3/4 as fast as the 1200 MHz Pi M3 which is about as expected. The nice bit is “everything just works right” on Devuan 1.0 at least. There are a few times when you have an unexpected pause as it loads a heavy web page or launches the WordPress editor. Yet having things “just work” if slow is more comfortable than fighting a fast new board where stuff is broken.
Well, my upgrade cycle is pretty much over, so a bit later in the day I’ll be on other hardware. For now, this one is comfortable and about the right speed for “first coffee” ;-)
A commentary on what President Trump is trying to do in Syria. I mostly agree with this except I don’t think we are losing an ally in the Kurds. The Kurds we want to be our ally are the north Iraq Kurds who revere the US for crushing Sadam, they are a separate faction from the PKK YPG terrorist faction on the Turkish Syrian boarder.
They want to carve out a Kurdish autonomous zone in Turkey and Syria – not going to happen, both authoritarian governments of Turkey and Syria are against that and have actively opposed that for years. The North Iraqi Kurds have as a result of the war in Iraq already carved out a semi-autonomous region of their own with our help, in spite of the fact that Daddy Bush abandoned them to Saddam and the shoddy cease fire they agreed to at the end of the first gulf war, and refused to no-fly the Kurds to protect them from Saddam’s helicopter attacks etc.
Will they keep it in the long run – hard to tell, 244 years on we are still trying to keep our republic, so nation states are fragile things, and self governing zones even more fragile.
The USA has a huge & dangerous problem with Turkey. Erdogan wants USA nuclear weapons that are housed on a US airforce base in Turkey.
https://www.news.com.au/world/middle-east/deadly-diplomatic-challenge-turkey-holding-50-us-nuclear-bombs-hostage/news-story/1a89583915a67a51546a1f1f47c396e9
Big whoops !
Sorry that is complete BS, I don’t believe that at all, media FUD to make all the folks who are obsessed with Trump to freak out.
Erdogan knows full well that he will not get those weapons. That is happy talk to make himself look good, If he tries it would justify all means necessary to stop him up to and including a nuclear strike to take them out – not going to happen.
Even if he did, the anti-tamper systems would not allow him to use them he would have to re-fabricate them if(after) he got them.
The folks that guard those nuclear warheads are not to be messed with.
They use very sophisticated protection systems on nuclear weapon transport and storage. One of them on the trucks they use to transport warheads, if the doors of the truck are opened without proper codes or the truck is hijacked etc. The have a system that will fill the entire tractor trailer with urethane foam which quickly hardens to a solid plastic foam. The also have systems that lock all the brakes so the trailer cannot be moved.
All that to delay folks long enough for the backup resources to take full control of the warhead, that includes swat trucks and helicopters.
It would take a full military invasion of that facility to even get to the bunkers and there would be massive response up to and including physical destruction of the warheads before they could be captured.
@Bill in Oz:
Well, at least now I know where your worry level comes from.
BTW, I would classify that article as Rank Speculation at best, FUD Monger at worst. Full of maybes and IFs and such. Then cites NYT as an authoritative source when we know it’s full of Anti Trump TDS folks. Spin Doctors all.
Now, to the specifics:
Those nukes have hard lockouts on them. You can’t just fire them up without the go codes. Anti-tamper means attempting to take them apart can get you killed.
There’s a load of folks assigned to assure they don’t get stolen. There are thousands of other US troops “nearby”. Any attempt to take them becomes an instant hot war with the USA on the winning side.
I’d expect there to be ‘destruct’ charges placed, just in case; but even if not, it’s about 30 minutes until the place is a smoking hole in the ground should anyone capture it (probably less… personally, I’d detail a drone over all such sites 24 x 7 ). If not, which see:
https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/a-permanent-carrier-strike-group-in-the-mediterranean
Conditions have been deteriorating for a long while. Were I POTUS, I’d have relocated them with the end of USSR, but if not, then the “Coup Attempt” on Erdogan ought to have done it. We have flights out of there every day. Would not surprise me at all if anything of interest there were being removed day by day for months. Our Generals are not stupid. I would however keep practice / dummy weapons there so everyone THINKS they are still there.
The article juxtaposes Erdogan wanting SOME nukes with the existence of OUR nukes, creating a false impression he was talking about ours. BAD Journalist – NO Cookie! Flags as FUD driven click bait journalist.
Were Turkey so stupid as to attempt that, the smoking remains of the Capital would make a nice addition to Greater Greece… (I’m sure they would like to control the shipping lanes and retrieve Troy…)
I’m not going to lose any sleep over this.
Ummm I think I accidentally hit a hot button for you guys.
There will be no exposure to risk. Knowing we were going to pull out our troops ahead of time (really, the most I heard was 150 non-combat troops), I believe preparations were completed well in advance. Including relocation. Did the government make this kind of announcement, or a conspiracy moneymaker type? Were they even there to begin with?
Just sayin….
No Bill, you broke rule #`1 . Unless you have skin in the game, you cannot sit at the table.
In defense of Bill, why would anybody want to have skin in that game? Besides, ANZAC had a lot of skin in the game at Galipoli, enough to last a long time and it has not been forgotten.
There is no black and white in that region, no good guys with white hats, no good friends, no friends. All alliances are temporary and conditional. What could possibly go wrong?
Other than that the whole population of the area will end up in Europe. They will need a wall. Myself, I’ll just kibitz, and keep my skin.
Reading for the “C” file
“India’s dodgy AIDS drug brothers who were funded by AUD taxpayers arrested on fraud charges”
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2019/10/indias-dodgy-aids-drug-brothers-who-were-funded-by-aud-taxpayers-arrested-on-fraud-charges.html
E.M. I understand your rage at our functionaries. Consider that I heard this in the 50s.
As my grandpappy always used to say, (in a thick Eastern European accent) “They are all crooks.”
The level is greater than anything I imagined.
Definitely hit a hot button…
A very curious conversation. I don’t speak for the Australian government.. But I am not alone in my thinking here. There is a view that Australia should not be allied with the USA. That it should be more friendly to the country on which we depend for our economic prosperity – China.
That’s not a view I have ever supported. But the abrupt change in direction has definitely made many people here think hard about the alliance.
And i expect we will see a flood of Kurdish people applying for refugee status in the next year or so. I wonder how many there Kurds there are in Northern Syria.
Jumping subjects back to the “impeachment inquiry” Gullianini just told them to stuff their subpoena where the sun don’t shine.
Meanwhile back in 1995, same sort of operation against the Kurdish terror groups conducting raids into Turkey – President Clinton was assured by the Turkish govenment that the raids would be brief and limited to military targets.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995/03/21/turkey-invades-north-iraq-to-battle-kurdish-guerrillas/75b0efbb-a441-4986-9109-26e3c7542cdb/
@Bill in Oz:
Speaking for myself, no hot button at all. In fact, were you not doggedly pursuing it, I’d not be thinking about it much at all. Then, citing a fear monger news article just mandates pointing out the trash in it.
Ever play the game Risk? Almost inevitably, nobody lets anyone hold all of Asia as the continent points rack up so fast they win. Frequently, you end up trading Afghanistan back and forth…. Think about it… UK, Russia, USA, how many others…. The game is remarkably well thought out to be instructive…. Everyone bleeds troops doing it, and the one who bleeds the least while holding a stable home continent typically wins. FWIW, my favored wins came from holding Australia and avoiding losses….
I think some of our difference in level of concern comes from 10 (or is it 12 now?) Carrier Task Groups… gives a different POV.
Sadly, Australia is on a Turbocharged run to the crapper in their embrace of the Left Agenda (as is my home State of California) so I doubt it matters if you chose to be flooded with Chinese looking to buy the place. (A considerable number buy Californua too). Things will get a lot worse before they collapse untirely, with only a small chance of avoiding that. The open door to Asian & M.E. massive migration assures the end of the culture. (As intended by Soros and the globalists).
And now the squeeze begins
https://newsbreakinglive.com/2019/10/15/breaking-turkish-bank-charged-in-federal-court-in-multibillion-dollar-iranian-sanctions-evasion-scheme/
@Larry L:
I’d not be surprised to find out Trump knew about this case, knew Turkey as lying and helping the Iranians get $Billions, and decided to set them up with a PKK Temptation so he could then spank them for the Money Laundry and “administer discipline” as needed….
The hollering if he had just announced sanctions on an “Ally” with nothing but a court case about some company would be horrific. This way he has a freer hand for the spanking…
Sidebar on Computers:
I’d started to update / ugrade my Odroid C1 computer. It is on a Debian Jessie build. Turns out, it is out of support, so the sources.list finds nothing ( I could likely repoint it, maybe…) but decided to put Armbian Buster on it instead (as a very new release). Well, it gave me a blank screen. I could log in via SSH, and did an update / upgrade / reboot… at which time it no longer gets an IP address AND has a black screen. OK, some more development required.
So off I went busy downloading options. Seems the Odroid C1 is becoming “uninteresting” and a lot of folks are dropping updates for it. Along the way, ran into a distro from 2016 based on Jessie that’s just nice eye candy. I’m running it right now. Pearl Linux.
It is a BIG distribution. About 1.5 GB. OTOH, I’ve only had to add a couple of things. Stuff like browsers are already in it. It also has kodi and claims to be a good media player (I’ve not tested that yet). It is styled to have a Mac OS 10 like look and feel. It really does look nice.
Trying to find more about it is a bit sketchy.
Apt-get update / upgrade and install work fine, so clearly the usual stuff is there. Distrowatch says it is active. BUT, when trying to reach their web site, it doesn’t have a DNS resolution. Going out of business or someone forgot to pay a bill? Who knows…
It is configured with 2 GB of zram swap, so apparent memory is only 837 MB. OTOH, having 2 GB of virtual memory is a nice touch. (Though the compression / decompression will have a CPU hit).
It seems fairly crisp and speedy.
Yes, it is SystemD. Not much I can do about that ATM.
I went looking for the sources or a build script (so as to do a “roll my own” on the look and feel aspects) since source for Linux is supposed to be available; but couldn’t find it. There’s several entries on SourceForge for various things so it’s a bit scattered searching. There’s also a Raspberry Pi Model 2 version (in yet another location…) but I didn’t see a Pi M3 version.
It has the feel of a dormant project that the “owner” has not admitted to himself is effectively dead. I had to find a readme page on SourceForge to tell me the login was odroid password odroid as the main site was unresponsive / no IP address…
Yet the product is very well done. Fast. Pretty. NO problems with the install or bring-up (networking, video, sound, etc. all just work). IF I’m going to be “stuck” on an old unsupported Jessie, I’d rather it was this one than the other one ;-)
Ah well, it is what it is.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pearl-mate-7-odroid-c1/
Then a Gnome variation:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pearl-os-gnome-for-odroid-c1/
Those are tagged 2018. I think this one is the one I got, dated 2016:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pearlos-xfce4-for-odroid-c1/
Though I got it from another location:
Here’s the Pi M2 version:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pearl-linux-mate-raspberry-pi2/
And in looking for that, I found the Pi M3 entry but it looks empty.
And when I try to go to their web site, nothing works:
https://pearllinux.com/
So I think it is on the verge of coming undone… Maybe… Or it is a one man show and has a very slow devo cycle with “issues” keeping the site up ;-)
E M, I love Risk, but haven’t had anyone to play it with for years, so the game has gone somewhere over that time.
If Australia actually think China would be a better ally than the US they don’t understand China’s plans for expansion by stealth.
They will buy up everything you allow them to and then own you.
My golly gosh !
In the replies here I detect two things here : 1 : The American Arrogance so often mentioned as a USA character trait. 2: An unwillingness to hear even what your friends and allies are saying. Good luck maintaining an ‘Alliance of Trust’ with such approaches.
Thanks for the interesting work you did EM on climate earlier this year. It was an interesting approach “Out nerding the nerdidh climate modelers”…But as most folks are not nerds, it had a limited impact at the popular level – unfortunately.
So I’m now helping out Ken Stewart here in oz with his investigation into the 720 + BOM weather stations which BOM relies for evidence of global warming. Ken’s checking them against the BOM’s own guidelines for ensuring accurate temperature measurements.
So far over 140 fail that test.
So far ~20.44 % of the total 720 with another 250 left to check.
It’s a basic approach which I think ordinary folk can understand. And it is breaking down the faith that folks here have in the BOM & it’s alarmist nonsense.
https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/
And now I bid you farewell.
Just shut up and let your children die in a war that isn’t ours and BTW spend another 8 trillion on it. No thanks.
Pearl Linux:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pearl-pro-7-1/files/
Bill in OZ: “A very curious conversation. I don’t speak for the Australian government.. But I am not alone in my thinking here. There is a view that Australia should not be allied with the USA. That it should be more friendly to the country on which we depend for our economic prosperity – China.”
Bill, I really appreciate your participation. You have a different viewpoint on some issues (and similar on other issues) but the key is you post why you have a particular view; history or the news as you’ve been getting it or some other backing. The key is that you give the ‘why’ for your opinion.
I find your views quite valuable when you do that. I know you’re not the only one with your view on a particular issue as others will have the same information as you have and form a similar opinion.
I also like that you push back (and get pushback!) on many issues. It makes me keenly aware that everybody does not “think like me.”
If you didn’t join in the argument, and I use that word in its best sense, I’d only be seeing the US left/right picture of any issue. America is watched by the rest of the world and you provide a view from the outside. It helps me examine why I am holding a particular view.
As they say in your neck of the woods, good on ya.
Bill in Oz – the big thing about this blog is the straight talking. That can be offensive if you’re inclined to take offence. Better though to look at the data offered and consider whether it’s valid and, if so, add it to your total experience and to get a better base for opinions. I’ve fallen foul here in the past and needed to change my opinions on the danger of having Muslim immigrants, since my original attitude was basically the standard English “live and let live” and that there wasn’t a real problem. Though the Muslims I know are good people, the religion itself is antithetical to our Western civilisations and intends to take it over. It’s after all written in their Book. I had a similar problem with the US concept of Free Speech, since in Europe we are brought up to self-censor rather than risk causing offence and the laws here make true Free Speech illegal anyway. Those traditional attitudes that make a multi-ethic society fairly frictionless in the UK and Europe are open to any such group that intends to take it over, and it helps somewhat to have a different viewpoint on things and reconsider my own attitudes based on evidence I wouldn’t otherwise have encountered or considered.
I figure the reason for the USA having become the world’s policeman was because the sources of oil needed to be protected. It’s a basic resources problem. I also figure that that time is past, because the USA can produce all the oil it needs and export some energy too, and because there are now cheaper ways of getting energy coming along. Wars may be over other resources (such as Lithium) or over simple domination (religion, politics) but it looks like the wars over energy resources won’t have any legs. With cheap-enough energy and improved technology, I figure wars (or police actions) over other resources won’t be necessary soon, since recycling will become cheaper than mining new stuff.
There’ll probably always be Pournelle’s Iron Law of Oligarchy, and countries wanting to extend their borders for no good reason other than that they can. I can’t personally understand why the UK has held on to Northern Ireland so tightly when joining it to the rest of Ireland would have been logical, and I can’t understand why we don’t want to let Scotland be a self-governed country again. Would have been easy to arrange that while the UK was in the EU, after all, The EU itself is a logical thing to do, and if it was actually democratic I’d be happy with it – the gains exceed the losses. As it is, the EU is a dictatorship and was designed that way – OK while it’s a benign dictatorship, but risky for the future.
Since I also have friends/almost-family in Oz, I’d prefer Oz to do well. I do remember the sacrifices Oz made in the wars to help us, and I remain pissed-off that when the UK joined the EU it screwed people over there. Not a lot I can do about that, though. Looking at China’s ambitions, I suspect that Oz getting closer links with China is not a good option for the future, and you’ll find they end up owning everything. They are doing that in Africa at the moment in order to get cheap materials to drive their manufacturing.
As others have pointed out here, the Middle East have been fighting each other for a very long time, and I don’t see that stopping. Do we have the moral right to go in there and stop the fighting or is it more reasonable to keep out of it and let them reach their own equilibrium? I don’t have the knowledge or experience to decide on that, when we could stop at least the worst atrocities but I don’t see any end in sight for their people wanting to start new atrocities. Possibly if they only had muskets and swords the scale would at least be smaller and localised. Iran seems to want to be top dog and take over (or gain influence) in other countries around there, and if they become nuclear armed they will likely use them. benefit to us to stop that, at least, since the effects of a nuclear war spread a long way outside the local area.
Thus before I settle on an opinion I can back with data, I’m going to listen for a lot longer. Though I’m naturally a pacifist, I can see there’s a possibility of war being the better option in some cases, to stop something worse happening. I can see there’s an advantage in being so scary that no-one will dare to attack you. There are things that don’t make sense, such as Syria (and Bashar al-Assad) being peacemakers in the region until he was suddenly a baddy even though the majority in Syria supported him. Seems to me the war in Syria was a dirty trick for other reasons than stated, and I haven’t worked out precisely why. I’ve seen Erdogan in Turkey as a fundamentalist dictator who wanted to extend his dominion, and wondered why he was being treated so gently. A lot here doesn’t make sense unless there’s *something else* driving the events. I’d hope that the US military have more information than I do and are making correct decisions.
The only good reason I can see for sending Aussie soldiers somewhere else to fight is because if you stomp on something when it’s smaller it doesn’t grow large enough to damage you in future. Much the same for sending US soldiers, or UK soldiers, to some other country. There needs to be a non-altruistic reason. Otherwise, better to keep out and let the locals decide their own future. Not an easy decision to make, though.
Just to be clear, I welcome BiOz opinion. But I expect to be able to express my own also.
Bill in Oz.
Ref your comment –
1 : The American Arrogance so often mentioned as a USA character trait.
2: An unwillingness to hear even what your friends and allies are saying.
There is another side to that coin – The trait folks in Europe and other countries see as Arrogance, is just an American lack of tolerance for hypocritical bull shit – for observers that are so sure they are right that they won’t even listen to the American point of view.
Every day all day from every foreign source we hear about how we screwed this up, how we screwed that up, how we ought to do X and when we tried X we did it wrong and should have considered Z.
Then in the next breath – “holy crap we’re screwed” – American please send us money and your troops to fight a conflict we created 100 years ago by drawing random borders on a map in a tribal culture, and oh by the way we will just send humanitarian aid or a token detachment of troops, and please don’t use really big bombs, because BASF and 12 other large corporations have multi-billion Euro contracts with badguy A and B and C and we think it inappropriate to screw up their revenue stream.
(note German engineering companies (and other European countries) were making bank selling restricted materials off the books to side step sanctions, or designing fortifications and industrial facilities that Sadam was using or planned on using to create chemical weapons, and at the same time was running a bluff on the whole world (which they bought into) that he had chemical weapons and was close to developing Nuclear weapons).
Remember those high quality aluminum tubes that Iran was buying and we said were going to be used for centrifuges and they said – Oh no those are tubes for mortars – and they turned out to be tubes for advanced centrifuges that they are still building and optimizing so they can sprint to enrichment break out in their nuclear program when the time is right?
Then, when that bluff was finally exposed, after we fought our way into the heart of his kingdom in one of the most brilliant rapid ground assaults in history, all the other countries said “Oh my bad” then waited a couple months before they started telling us we should have known all along the intelligence information they had confirmed to us was really not to be trusted.
Then we got burned because we expected those that lived in those countries to actually want a peaceful society – free of a tyrannical dictator, instead we discovered we were trying to baby sit, and hold together a patchwork of predators who each wanted the be the biggest bully and war lord on the block to increase the status of their clan, and did things like blowing up new hospitals because the wrong group built it, or started slaughtering their neighbors because they were the wrong sect of the same religion or belonged to a religion that just wanted to be left alone.
It is not an unwillingness to hear what your friends and allies are saying, because we hear it every single frigging day from a dozen talking heads on every news source on the planet for the last 50 years. And now lucky us we are hearing it from our own captured “news” sources too.
Been there done that have the tee shirt.
After WWII we instituted the Marshal plan to reconstitute Europe after the war. One of the most generous ends to a large scale war in history. We did the same in Japan. It took Germany only 5-10 years to get back on their feet after being bombed to rubble because we sent truck loads of money and industrial experts and resources over there to help them rebuild. Then we, along with mostly the British and a token effort from the French, set up a military shield that Europe could hide behind to protect them from the Soviets for almost 50 years and for the last 15 years of that they marched in the street telling us how our military shield was evil while they used the protected status it provided to divert their resources to industrial competition against our industries instead of carrying their fair share of the risk and expense of protecting themselves.
Right now if Russia made a major military move in Europe the armies and air forces of Europe (except for Ukraine and Poland) would be nothing but speed bumps.Their military forces (the stuff that makes NATO a credible alliance) are a complete joke.
That is the reason we are the world’s police force – because almost every other country in our “alliance” has sat back with their feet up drinking a beer rather pointing out our mistakes, rather than look after their own security needs.
There is a very real difference in mind set between America and Europe. My cousin ran into it after 9/11 when he moved to Switzerland (his offices were in the north tower and all his coworkers were killed). He commented to me one time that the Swiss assume everything is illegal until you prove to them they can do something. Americans assume they can do things until you can prove there is some reason not to. The expectation of free exercise of initiative is a foreign concept in Europe (and much of the rest of the world). I have run into the same issue with Indian contractors. They would just sit on their hands and do nothing even though it was obvious that the task that needed to be performed was in their technical specialty, until someone explicitly told them to do what was needed.
Foreigners see that can do – let’s get this done – attitude of Americans as arrogance, it is not, it is simply folks willing to take a risk to accomplish something that needs to be done an absolutely no one else is willing to lift a finger to solve the problem.
It is pretty well summed up in a couple sayings.
Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way.
Or the Seabee’s
“The difficult tasks we accomplish right away, the impossible may take a little longer!”
If you have read this far – yes I do value your comments, but I also value the right to respond in kind.
Larry; good rant! ;-) …pg
Larry – “Then we got burned because we expected those that lived in those countries to actually want a peaceful society”…. Of course they wanted a peaceful society, just one where everyone who was a different religion, or a different sect in their religion, was dead. Then it would have been peaceful, at least for a while….
Though I think we British didn’t help way back when we helped to draw (straight) lines in the sand to divide up the tribal areas into countries, and maybe it would have been better to let those borders be fuzzy and fluid, I doubt if that much fighting would have been avoided if we hadn’t meddled. There has to be a major cultural change before the wars stop, or a lot of genocide.
I don’t understand the strategies, and haven’t got the information, but I can see that there’s very little benefit to the US of being in anybody else’s war zone at the moment. It stops them killing each other, of course, since both sides will see the US soldiers as targets, but once the US goes then they’ll go back to killing each other. Yep, seems pretty bleak, but I have an ex-brother-in-law in the US army who’s been there. Also the viewpoint of an ex-SAS friend. The problem is not soluble, so stop trying to unscramble eggs.
@Bill in Oz:
Is it arrogance to state you can squash whole countries like a bug and not have most of the population back home notice, when that is the truth? Just ONE of our subs or just ONE of our carrier battle groups can make Turkey a wasteland. That’s just a fact. Yet we do not.
Now you want to call that extraordinary restraint, “arrogance”. Oh Kay….
Then “An unwillingness to hear even what your friends and allies are saying.” Well, no. There’s a difference between “not hearing” and “hearing, thinking about it, and stating an alternative opinion”. I’ve read (heard) every word you have said (typed). I just reject it as of lesser importance than other things. Not ACCEPTING and ACTING ON what someone else has said is NOT being deaf to it.
Now, despite that, I think it very valuable to have notions challenged. So hopefully your ‘farewell’ is only “on the topic” and not in general. It very well might be the case that changing the leadership style has some unexpected effect. I don’t expect it to; but that’s sort of the problem, isn’t it?
FWIW I am still working on Climate Stuff, just slowly. Right now is an infrastructure refresh cycle and as I have a lot of infrastructure, it can take a while. (You can go about 6 months without doing the proper update / upgrade stuff then the security risk gets high. Then, in doing it, on minor or older SBCs, or odd OS types, you find some are no longer supported and get to Go Fish…) Basically you have to clean up and sort the bits every so often or the trash builds up to where things break. I ought to be done with that in another week or two, but this one is a big cycle as a lot of stuff was left for about a year…
So for the next few weeks the major “hinge points of history” (my term for them) will be the looming Brexit (or not…) and the Dimocrat Impeach Screech effects (if any). Those simply can not be ignored as they will lever everything else. Trump must stay in, and must get a 2nd term, to put the final stake in the heart of the “Paris Agreement”. Otherwise we’re all toast. Britain must escape the EU, or there will be no Britain. Only L’Pakistan de L’ouest et L’Afrique du Nord run by Germans voted for by Poles. The New Holy Roman Empire dictating terms.
So those things kind of matter more than the fact that the Midwest is being bombed by snow with high crop losses. (But don’t worry, I’m working on the next W.O.O.D. and it will be in there…)
@Jim2:
Thanks for that! I took a look at /etc/apt/sources.list and it was all standard Debian. So looks like this is really just a skin and spin on top of Debian. So ought to be easy enough to put it on Devuan, should I come to really like it.
I have had one odd “hang”, where the cursor worked but clicking on a window would not activate it and I could not drag it. That was after about 1 GB had been rolled out to swap (compressed memory) so I’m thinking maybe it swapped out something needed to recover swap ;-) But it took the power fail / recovery well. Not really much buggier than any other Debian I’ve used… (I’ve had similar hangs with large swap on real USB disk…)
Right now it’s just a “toy” while I decide what to do with the Odroid C1.
@Simon:
From the US perspective, the reason we “became the World Cop” was 2 World Wars (i.e. European Empire Wars) that killed off way too many of our people ending them. Then the Cold War and dirty tricks department that followed.
The attitude became “end them when they hatch” rather than have another one.
Now, with the USSR gone, China as a capitalist wanna-be (but slowly mutating into a simply Tyranny of the Elite) and the EU a (mostly) unified thing: Just why ought we be the only Cop On The Block? Is the EU so small and economically backward it can’t take 1/2 the job? Is Russia (with their one aged aircraft carrier…) such a threat that we need to toss $8 TRILLION into the sands of the Middle East?
Basically I’m saying “it is a different world now than in 1960”.
Then there’s that “other thing”. IMHO what brought down Egypt, Libya & Iraq; overthrew Ukraine, and was headed for a Take Down of Syria was that the Globalist Octopus (SPECTRE?) had got control of the US / European military and was busy implementing the Soros Open Society doctrine. To do that required a “take down” of all the “Strong Man Dictators” that had prevented massive migration and kept the peace. They needed a “crisis” to take advantage of, to flood Europe with Demographic Change and destroy the Nation State. (And so far have succeeded).
Now I’m all for things like protecting Australia. I have family there too. But I’m not so keen on having our “Global Cop” become “Global Tool For Soros & The Globalists”.
If you are doing Bad Things, it is better to just STOP.
The real arrogance here was that of the folks who just “decided” that the various leadership in all those Color Revolution countries had to go, and that Europe needed a replacement population.
So, IMHO, that’s the “something else” that’s been driving events. Globalist Ambitions using EU and USA military and a snowed voter base to “fundamentally change the world”…
Personally, I want Egypt to be Egyptian and Poland to be Polish and Germany to be full of Germans and Sweden to be Swedish. I don’t really want to visit Sweden to see Little Syria or go to Britain to experience Pakistan West or have a nice “Algeria Experience” in Marseilles. When we all end up one mush of PC Silenced there’s no fun and no diversity and nothing of interest. It is all that grey drab you always get in Marxist Paradise…
So better to NOT be a tool for that destruction of individual countries.
We may still end up “Global Cop”, but ONLY if the world wants it and not at the cost of our own destruction economically. (And that starts with a “breather” where you at least STOP being the instrument for Globalist Ambitions.)
Now, THE big problem is that China wants to own, and culturally dominate the world; while Islam wants to have the entire world Submit to Islam (it’s in their Book…), while the EU wants to get the world being more “colony like” but indirectly, while the Globalists in the UN want to stir the wold population into one homogeneous mass that’s willing to take them as Dear Leader, while…
It is inevitable that these global ambitions will collide. Wishing it otherwise (as the Open Society – “insert feeding tube” folks do) will not make it so. World dynamics are not driven by a John Lennon song. Best to deal with that after thought, and not as someone’s tool.
Martin Geddes
@martingeddes
2 hours ago
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“Your nation is being upgraded to MAGA 2020 Constitutional Edition… please wait. Civilization will reboot automatically on completion.”
— You always think it takes 2 minutes at the start of the install, when you actually have to watch the progress bar crawl along for 40 months.
@Simon Derricutt
The problem is not soluble, so stop trying to unscramble eggs.
Yep that pretty much sums it up. As I have gotten older I have begun to realize that some cultures “need” a tyrannical dictator, to keep them from killing each other in wholesale lots. It was arrogance to think we could make everyone into a happy capitalists or sparkling modern democracies.
Not going to happen, some cultures resist peaceful coexistence because the very nature of the culture is to hate. Some of them rant about battles fought 400 years ago.
The civilized west has mostly moved away from that but there are still sufficient hints of that cultural dogma to allow someone like Obama to stir the pot and rekindle a dying flame of hatred and resentment, starting the cycle all over again.
This is comforting:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/10/huge-fbi-employees-conducted-3-1-million-questionable-and-illicit-searches-including-searches-on-us-citizens-in-2017-2018/
I’m sure that CNN and MSNBC will cut away for a breaking news update on this real soon.
https://gellerreport.com/2019/10/muslim-migrant-jihad-attack.html/
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All the CCTV cameras do make for nice illustrations in that news report.
He claims “‘got lost’ around Westminster and panicked.” Hah.
In another news item, some people were arrested in the US after driving across the US/Canada border where there were no border agents. They claimed to have got lost and accidentally crossed the border. I was going to try to figure out where and how they did that, but a later news report says they had to drive across a ditch to do it. So much for it being accidental and innocent.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/british-family-wrong-turn-canada-us-denied-entry
The initial reports were all about how mean the US agents were and how cold and dirty the jails were, so that much was on the liberal media.
Here are a couple links to the Canadian coverage of that “accidental border crossing”.
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/we-have-been-treated-like-criminals-british-family-who-accidentally-drove-into-u-s-detained-with-infant
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/uk-tourists-arrested-entering-us-illegally-1.5321656
And if they had been crossing the other way, what would have happened?
Bye Bill.
@YMMV – and England has skin in every game – just not today. Why is it needed? Before you go criticizing how a country risks the lives of its men, you better have your own in the same risk. Right now, Oz does not. He can criticize Oz’s commitment to Syria until he is blue in the face. But he has no right (skin) to dictate or criticize the US for pulling troops out of a situation that not even his country will commit their boys lives to.
@Bill – The NBA agrees with you. Go for it. Just do not criticize your new partner. or mention their human rights abuses in HK. (I chastised you, I did not disappear you)
Reminds me of the story of the fox and the gingerbread man. I guess Oz is very tasty to China.
Re: Risk – the interesting thing about Risk is that while Oz is the easiest Continent to hold, it is also the cheapest (fewest armies). So hard to stage a breakout as the only way out is through Asia.
I prefer Diplomacy. If you have never played it, give it a try. The basic premise is that there are no rules – you can create alliances, and break them in the same turn. Risk is strictly color versus color. Diplomacy you can combine colors to increase the odds against a common opponent du jour.
Bill – I agree with HR. We have a disagreement. If we all agreed all the time, this would be a boring place. If that is what you seek, I would suggest du,org where it is in their charter that everyone must agree all the time.
Stick around. But only if you expect to be challenged,