[ZeroHedge] A year ago, The Babylon Bee wanted to help the US military promote its new recruitment efforts with a stunning and brave commercial advocating for more diversity and inclusion in combat.
Now, it appears that the US Navy among other branches is taking parody and turning it into reality.
Surely the Navy's latest drag queen digital representatives will be enough to secure the number of volunteers needed to shore up the military's waning numbers.
They just needed the Bee to show them how it's done...
[Western Journal] California’s commission to decide how much the state should pay in reparations to black residents has decided upon a payment plan it sees as the beginning of a flow of cash.
Although ostensibly formed to address slavery, which was outlawed in the 19th century, the panel came up with differing annual amounts to quantify various forms of 20th and 21st century discrimination, according to The New York Times.
A qualifying lifelong state resident who is 71 years old, would get $1.2 million for what the panel claims were the effects of housing discrimination, mass incarceration and additional ills.
The panel noted that the cash payments are just the beginning.
#2
"That's chump change! Are you suckers gonna settle for a measly $1.2 million? When I am elected, every deserving resident of the great State of California will receive $2.5 million dollars. The other guys just want to put you in chains. Vote for me and I'll set you free!"
#3
So a state that never allowed slavery, is forcing people that never owned a slave, to pay people that never were a US slaves. What about the estimated
1.2 + Million African immigrants that came to the west coast, after slavery ended? Why them also?
#4
^ Logic and consistency are not any part of the liberal agenda.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/08/2023 9:45 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Lots of trumpeting what an advisory committee is proposing, but what odds of it actually getting passed by the legislature and signed into law? And what will happen to special interest support of the California Democratic party if it fails after all the hype?
#6
^ The liberal dream is pretty much everything being dictated by unelected apparatchiks.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/08/2023 10:01 Comments ||
Top||
#7
#5 "Just the beginning". When someone tells you they intend to inflict serious harm upon you, believe them. Again, the issue is not whether this will actually be implemented. The issue is, what will be the reaction on the part of the most violent demographic in our society when they realize they aren't gonna get jack after having been promised it? Well, instead of reparations based on treasure, they just might seek to gain it in blood. What have they got to lose?
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
05/08/2023 10:48 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Here's a bill for all the civilizational damage done, social safety net spending, crimes & incarceration costs, wasted school spending that the black community owes us.
What's that you say? You weren't personally guilty of any of that? I could say the same about my white ass. FOAD on reparations.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/08/2023 10:57 Comments ||
Top||
#9
^ This
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/08/2023 11:00 Comments ||
Top||
#10
Once you have agreed that you are due money, then everything else is a negotiation about how much and when. Failure to deliver what was "promised" will result in the BlackBloc tactic of "No Justice, No Peace". The people in question generally have a very poor understanding of actual government structure, law or history, but they understand SNAP, MediCal, and Welfare.
As an aside, a real opportunity for California based genealogical research, with emphasis on creative writing, is researching the family history of slavery.
#11
Since the death of Jesus, Christians have been periodically slaughtered and sometimes been suggested to poor quality television. My committee believes that a $1T per month is just compensation unless I overspend at Christmas and run short of cash. These are my demands. If they are not met, I will continue to generate similes that include Gilligan’s Island and Scooby Doo.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
05/08/2023 11:34 Comments ||
Top||
Posted by: Ebbimp Lover of the Trolls5787 ||
05/08/2023 12:26 Comments ||
Top||
#13
Our governor and legislators are stupid enough to do it.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
05/08/2023 14:23 Comments ||
Top||
#14
#11 The particular unit I belong to have long relied on forced viewing of "Hello Larry!". Works like a charm.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
05/08/2023 14:33 Comments ||
Top||
#15
Maybe California is implementing the $1.2 million reparations on the installment plan. One retail store at a time. Early birds get the designer handbags and Air Jordans.
[American Out Loud] Robert Malone, MD, self-acclaimed inventor of the mRNA vaccine technology, delivered a speech to a reported crowd of 800 souls in Stockholm, Sweden, on January 21st, 2023.1 His subject was psychological warfare, in the past referred to as psyops or psychological operations and now as Fifth Generation Warfare. Dr. Malone appeared to be perfecting a new stump speech which has now been delivered in Sweden, Canada, and in other venues. More recently, on April 24th, 2023, the Malones announced that they are writing a new book titled PsyWars: The 21st Battlefield, adding to the importance of this new twist in their approach to the psychology of the "masses" and who or what controls them.2
Dr. Malone titled his talks "Fifth Generation Warfare and Sovereignty." The speech might have been called: "A Demonstration of Fifth Generation Warfare." Malone employed many of the very techniques that he suggests within his presentation that are being used by covert individual forces today. He completed his speech by urging his audience of 800 attendees to become Fifth Generation warriors.
Malone urged his audience, "Okay, learn these methods; you learn the defensive and the offensive techniques." He seemed to be asking people to become high-tech manipulators and psychological terrorists in the mold of psyops warriors.
WHAT IS FIFTH GENERATION WARFARE (5GW)
Fifth Generation Warfare (5GW)3 is a term used in military circles to describe the current era of psychological/propaganda warfare. The phrase describes techniques using communication, art, propaganda, and psychology in any medium to influence the receivers of the message. It is specifically taught and used within military and intelligence communities and many government agencies. It is used in digital and legacy communication mediums, new and old.4
Digital mediums and especially social media outlets have increased the potential power and reach of 5GW, although the influence of the techniques has been a part of life ever since the serpent whispered to Eve, "Don’t tell Adam." In fact, if sex is the oldest occupation of humans, then gossiping is the second oldest occupation, and is an example of Fifth Generation Warfare.
PSYOPS IS NOT HONEST COMMUNICATION
Psyops or Fifth Generation Warfare differs in its purpose and intended outcome from what might be called honest, forthright, or sincere communication. Psyops is the opposite of giving an individual informed consent. In order to give informed consent, an individual must be free of coercion and must be provided the necessary information to make a rational decision based on their own independent reasoning. In other words, informed consent aims at providing the education and conditions for making a voluntary decision.
About what we expect from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
[ZeroHedge] "Defense of Others," Not "Self Defense"; Legal Justification
The Washington Post is reporting that the legal standard the New York DA is planning to apply in determining whether to charge a former marine for his role in the death of a convicted criminal threatening passengers on the subway is: “whether the 24-year-old’s actions against Neely
...Jordan Neely, the schizophrenic with 47 arrests on his record, who in happier times enjoyed busking in costume to Michael Jackson tunes...
were justified and if he feared for his life.”
But this is wrong for several reasons, notes public interest law professor John Banzhaf, who has analyzed and corrected predicted the outcome in many such cases, including the subway shooter case which also occurred on the subway.
The good samaritan probably would not argue that he feared for his own life - especially given his physical size and conditioning, as well as his self defense training.
Instead, he would almost certainly rely upon a legal privilege which goes back hundreds of years, and is now codified in New York State [§ 35.15 ] - the right to use reasonable force to defend or protect another from “unlawful physical force.” This term could include many forms of unwanted touching, including groping, of the other passengers.
This is not “self defense," but rather “defense of others” - e.g. the other passengers less able to defend themselves - the law professor would remind the DA.
THE USE OF FORCE
Any good samaritan may generally not use “deadly physical force” to defend himself or others. This term is defined in New York as “physical force which, under the circumstances in which it is used, is readily capable of causing death or other serious physical injury." [§10.00(11)]
But while a neck hold can cause death, so also can the use of a Taser, tear gas, a blow from a police baton, or even a punch to the body or face, so the use of a neck hold by a civilian is not necessarily “deadly force” since the determination requires consideration of the “circumstances.”
While so-called "choke holds" have been banned for some (but by no means not all) police, different considerations apply since police carry other weapons and well as restraints, and can generally call for backup.
Here the samaritan had no other readily available ways to restrain the criminal - who was still struggling despite the efforts of three men to protect other passengers by holding him down - and holding him by the neck is generally more effective, and less dangerous to the restrainer, than trying to hold him down by holding hands and/or feet.
The fact that at least two other men assisted the good samaritan in using force to restrain the criminal - and therefore could probably be charged as accessories if the samaritan were to be charged with murder or other homicide - suggests that they all believed it was both necessary and justified to use such force to restrain him.
The verbal approval by other passengers not involved, and the fact that apparently no one complained and/or called for the neck hold to be removed, is further evidence that the use of such force was reasonably necessary under the circumstances.
WRONGFUL CRIMINAL INTENT
To win any criminal prosecution, the DA must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant acted with a wrongful criminal intent (scienter).
But here the facts that the samaritan asked other passengers to summon police by calling 911, made no effort to flea the scene to avoid possible prosecution, and apparently did - unlike a recent infamous case - ignore claims by the criminal that he could not breathe or cries by any of the witnesses to release the hold.
So premature demands that the samaritan should be prosecuted for murder are not well founded, and it can only be hoped that the DA will carefully consider the legal privilege to defend others, and not simply an argument of self defense, in deciding how to proceed, says Banzhaf.
[ConsortiumNews] The conflict is domestic, regional and international. Western media have been exaggerating the role of the Wagner Group and all but omitting the influence of U.S. allies in the region.
There are various ways in which we can examine the Sudanese conflict and its underlying causes. We can treat it as a purely domestic conflict between two warring factions and leaders who are vying for absolute political power. Or we can view it as a proxy war in which outside powers — regional and international — are fighting for the imposition of their own agendas on Sudan.
We can also borrow from the racist Orientalist tropes and assert, yet again, that the people of Africa and the Middle East have always been at war and that the West just wants to establish peace on earth.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: badanov ||
05/08/2023 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Sudan
#1
Frankly, for more than fifty years the US has hoped the Sudan would just disappear: From 1967 to 1972 the embassy was closed. In 1973 Ambassador Cleo Noel was killed in a Black September attack on the Saudi embassy in Khartoum. From 1991-96 the embassy paid little attention to the presence of Osama Bin Laden and the growth of Al Qaeda. Fearing an attack, the embassy was again closed in 1996 by Susan Rice. It Reopened in 2002, and until 2022 the DofState posted a sequence of innocuous chargés d'affaires ad interim to the country. An Ambassador was only resumed in 2022 with John Godfrey. Now he has been evacuated.
#3
Mossomo you've got to understand how deep and how pernicious are the ethnic and religious hatreds in the Sudan. On the one hand there are the Rizayqat Arabs of western Sudan -- Arab is laughable, African is more like it, but they paid good money to geneologists to prove their relation to Arabia. They are pitted pitted against the Nile river Arabs (who are just a shade lighter) who feel they own the impoverished expanse of African landscape. The battle right now is over who will run the country, and who will benefit financially pinching pennies from beggars' cups.
[YouTube] The much expected Ukrainian 2023 counteroffensive (sequel to the well known trilogy in 2022 "Kyiv" "Kharkiv" & "Kherson") has, alongside Bakhmut, been a major topic of speculation and discussion for months now. As a topic it is so heavily debated that there isn't even agreement over whether or not it has started, is yet to start, or will never start at all.
For the most part, while some preparations are obvious, Ukraine has succeeded in keeping its actual plans secret, and even a leak of classified American documents did little to definitively answer the question of where and when Kyiv is likely to strike to attempt to reclaim the initiative after Russia's Winter and early Spring efforts.
By popular request, today we take a chance to look at how we got to this point - how have both sides prepared for the offensive to come, what military actions are presaging it, and what it might mean for the war over the next few months.
CAVEATS & COMMENTS:
A few main comments for this video (as well as all the usual caveats which have been previously advanced).
1- explaining what has happened in UA is hard enough, predicting battlefield developments (when so much key data, especially around force-status is classified) is extremely difficult. As a result, note that I have deliberately refrained from many definitive predictions.
2- Reporting on allegedly leaked US documents is based entirely off content that has been published openly in media sources
3- It is expected the content of this video will be rapidly outdated, such is the nature of the fluid environment and steady flow of new information
4- I mess up the designation of the S-125 by adding an unnecessary "a"
[autoblog] Buying a new car is a ton of fun, but the shine quickly fades when maintenance costs start adding up. There’s nothing worse than a hefty repair bill, and while many issues are covered by today’s vehicle warranties, there are still costs involved for many vehicle problems. Consumer Reports recently released its list of cars that cost the least to maintain over the long haul, and there aren’t many surprises among the names in the top-performing group.
The publication studied repair costs over 10 years and only listed vehicles that it recommends. Several models without 10 years of data were excluded for being too new, while others may have had cheap repair costs but lower scores in other areas. Beyond repairs, the publication cites factors like fuel economy and tire replacement costs as drivers for some of the totals we see. Consumer Reports’ list includes:
#1
This article doesn't tell the whole story. 'Maintenance' is only one aspect of vehicle ownership. EV's vs gasoline powered cars...? The spark plugs on my refrigerator never need replacing. A bit of apples and oranges in my view.
#2
'Battery Replacement' for EV's in the 11th year would skew the article's results dramatically.
Average lifespan of an EV's battery pack estimated to be at least 10 years or 100,000 miles. If you have one, sell or trade at 80-90K.
This might be fine for our urban dwellers who rarely travel beyond 50 miles per trip. Move inland, where the distances are greater (oftentimes a LOT), and you have a problem.
There will be no 'Used' market for EV's outside of urban areas. In the outback, one would be forced to buy 'New'.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
05/08/2023 9:17 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Haven't heard much about trade-in value on EVs, but as the charging cycles go up, I bet the trade-in value drops precipitously.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/08/2023 9:26 Comments ||
Top||
#4
As long as you don't actually use them, and take an Uber everywhere, the list is mostly correct.
Out in the real world, we generally use our vehicles.
The list is mostly an ad for public transit.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
05/08/2023 13:36 Comments ||
Top||
#5
As Bruce Williams said, the only things that go away if you ignore them are your wife and your teeth.
Skimp on maintenance at your own peril. Pay now or really pay later.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/08/2023 13:46 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Until the $7,000 to $14,500 battery has to be replaced in 7 to 8 years or less.
BLUF: There’s a rift because Turkey prefers that traditional method of controlling Al Nusra (HTS) and the Ottoman catspaw it amuses them to call the Syrian National Army.
[NPASyria] Despite both were formed under the auspices of Ottoman Turkish intelligence, the division continue to increase between the two de-facto governments that rule northern and northwestern Syria, namely the Salvation Government representing Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else ...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State... (HTS, formerly al-Nusra ...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli al-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ... Front)
...i.e. Al Qaeda in Syria...
and the Syrian Interim Government representing the opposition’s Syrian National Coalition (SNC).
...i.e. a grab bag of former ISIS turbans and various former Muslim Brotherhood groups.
Abdullah al-Omar, a human rights When they're defined by the state or an NGO they don't mean much... activist in Idlib, says, "The division is fueled by Ottoman Turkish intelligence for strategic interests, based on the principle of divide and rule. The intra-opposition unity will take it out of Ottoman Turkish control. The ongoing dispersion, however, keeps the Ottoman Turkish state the sponsor of the region and in control of the Syrian issue and the [opposition] factions which it uses in its regional wars."
The Salvation Government was formed in November 2017, while the interim government was formed in 2013.
Unlike the Interim Government which enjoys over some international recognition and is backed by The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...just another cheapjack Moslem dictatorship, brought to you by the Moslem Brüderbund... , the Salvation Government does not have any, as it is the civilian wing for HTS, which is classified as a terrorist group by the US, Europa ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... and even Turkey.
The division started a month after announcing the formation of the Salvation Government, which came after the latter evacuated all the headquarters of the Interim Government in Idlib and its countryside and forced its employees to leave towards the areas controlled by the Interim government, causing a rift between the two opposition parties.
According to Muhammad Hamed, a pseudonym for an Idlib-based Syrian activist, the division increased as HTS started, at the end of 2017, to take over economic resources in the Interim Government’s areas of control, such as electricity, water and the Internet.
Widening the rift, the Salvation Government also took control of the strategic Bab al-Hawa border crossing, and pushed out the Interim Government from the area. "This was the beginning of hostility between the two parties, especially since the Interim Government relied on this crossing as its most important source of income," said Hamed.
Ola al-Hassan, a pharmacist in the city of Idlib, expressed her annoyance at this division, "as it badly reflected on the livelihoods of citizens and the education of their children, not to mention obstructing any political solutions for the Syrian crisis."
With regard to the normalization efforts between Ankara and Damascus, al-Hassan told North Press, "The Interim Government seems unable to strongly express its opinion regarding the Ottoman Turkish moves that aim to embrace the [Syrian] regime because the Interim Government is just a feather in Erdogan’s hands. As for al-Jolani [HTS’ leader], he stressed that he has several cards that will end any Ottoman Turkish attempts at normalization with the regime."
Sure he does.
Idlib residents believe that the areas held by the opposition’s Syrian National Army (SNA), the military wing of the Interim Government, "will be directly affected by the normalization, given that all military and civil institutions there are directly managed by Ottoman Turkish intelligence, leaving the SNA factions’ leaders unable to object," she said.
As for the areas held by the Salvation Government, however, "The residents believe that the situation would be different, especially with the recent statement made by al-Jolani in which he confirmed his willingness to rapture such efforts."
According to Ahmad Mulla, a pseudonym for an official within the Salvation Government, "These steps by the Salvation came to meet the demands of the people of northwestern Syria following the great administrative and political failure of the Interim Government, locally and regionally, in addressing the issues of the revolution since its establishment in 2013."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[American Out Loud] 
[YouTube] The much expected Ukrainian 2023 counteroffensive (sequel to the well known trilogy in 2022 "Kyiv" "Kharkiv" & "Kherson") has, alongside Bakhmut, been a major topic of speculation and discussion for months now. As a topic it is so heavily debated that there isn't even agreement over whether or not it has started, is yet to start, or will never start at all. 
...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...
