[Business Insider] As the US's involvement in Vietnam steadily grew with more conventional troops, so did its secret war.
To counter the Viet Cong's guerrilla campaign, supported by the North Vietnamese army (NVA), raging inside South Vietnam, the Pentagon established a highly secretive special operations organization in 1964.
The Military Assistance Command Vietnam-Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) was tasked with taking the fight to the enemy regardless of where they were. Cross-border operations in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam—where US troops weren't supposed to be—became SOG's specialty.
SPECIAL-OPERATIONS PIONEERS
Composed of Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Recon Marines, Air Commandos, and their indigenous allies, SOG primarily conducted reconnaissance and direct action operations, such as ambushes, in South Vietnam and across the border.
Cross-border recon missions often led to epic gunfights, as the small SOG teams would be compromised and hunted down by devastatingly superior enemy forces. It was more common than not for a recon team to be extracted under fire and with their perimeter minutes, if not seconds, away from being overrun.
"SOG operations hurt the NVA [and] impeded the shipment of supplies/soldiers south on the Ho Chi Minh Trail," John Stryker Meyer, a legendary SOG operator, told Insider.
"There were also major intel coups. For example, Operation Tailwind, which saved the CIA in Thailand, produced troves of key NVA intel. There was also Bargewell, who found valuable intel on an NVA base camp despite having been shot in the chest," Meyer added, referring to Eldon Bargewell, who went on to be a renowned general and commander in the Army's Delta Force.
[RollingStone] Last week, Lil Uzi Vert went viral after he took to Instagram to reveal a years-long project of his: a $24 million pink diamond that he had implanted onto his forehead. According to the rapper, he’s spent the past several years paying off the expensive diamond in order to complete the feat of body modification. While outlandish jewelry is endemic to rap culture — who can forget Gucci Mane’s iconic iced-out Bart Simpson? — Uzi appears to have taken things to a new level. He even tweeted as much. "If it’s accepted from the jump it’s not ICONIC," he said in response to a wave of online critics and jokesters.
The stone comes courtesy of the New York-based jewelers Eliantte & Co, who specialize in custom pieces worn by celebrities. Simon Babaev, speaking on behalf of the company’s owner, Eliott Eliantte, spoke with RS to explain how this piece went from Uzi’s imagination to the front of his noggin.
#3
I don't want to hear one f'ing whine about "teachers having to buy classroom supplies out of their own pockets" until the "entertainment" industry cleans this sort of thing up.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/09/2021 14:16 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Seems OK. Think of all the other places he could have put it....
[Washington Examiner] The head of the World Health Organization team investigating the origins of COVID-19 suggested the WHO would not continue investigating the hypothesis that the coronavirus escaped from a Wuhan lab, deeming it an "extremely unlikely" possibility.
China had long done its utmost to thwart investigations into the origins of the virus, which subsequently turned into the pandemic that has killed 2.32 million people around the world, and the Trump administration withdrew from the WHO in 2020, claiming that the United Nations agency was incompetent and influenced by China, although the Biden administration rejoined it.
A WHO joint investigation with Chinese officials was conducted over the past couple of weeks.
Dr. Peter Ben Embarek, the head of the visiting WHO team in Wuhan and a WHO program manager specializing in food safety and animal diseases, announced at a press conference on Monday that the WHO had considered four main hypotheses on the pathway for the virus to be introduced to the human population: direct transmission from an animal species to the human population, transmission through an intermediate host species, transmission through the trade of cold-chain products or frozen foods, and a "laboratory-related incident."
He said a jump from an animal to another animal to humans was the most likely infection vector, and he also claimed that an accidental release from a Wuhan lab was extremely unlikely, indicating that the possibility wouldn’t be further scrutinized.
[Express] Donnachadh McCarthy is an Extinction Rebellion activist and author who proposed the idea after Tony Danker, Director of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), urged the Government to mimic the postwar recovery programme of 1945. Mr McCarthy took it one step further and claimed we should reintroduce rationing, which was implemented to feed the country on limited food supplies. This method, he believes, would be the fairest way to combat climate change when compared to alleged government plans to introduce a carbon tax on the food industry. No. And we have cutlery
A bewildered Cristo Foufas looked at the columnist with his jaw-dropped and wanted to clarify he wanted to bring back rationing again.
Mr McCatrthy said: "Well what’s the other fair way of doing it, the Government is saying it will bring back a 40 percent tax on meat which means only the rich can afford to eat it."
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is reportedly looking into extending the carbon emissions tax, currently reserved for airlines and power companies, to all sectors including the food industry.
No percentage figure has been revealed by the Government yet, but a 40 percent increase on a four-pack of store brand burgers costing £2.78 would be £3.89.
[Townhall] We've seen plenty of highly charged statements from Republicans ahead of this week's second impeachment trial against President Trump. They've argued that it's a waste of time, that Democrats are only staging more political theater. But the message just released by Sen. Kevin Cramer (D-MD R-ND) minutes before the trial kicked off may be the biggest showstopper yet.
"Welcome to the stupidest week in the Senate," Cramer said. "While Speaker Pelosi has backbenchers come before the Senate to make her case, she sent the rest of the House home instead of carrying on the actual work of the American people. Impeachment is not a process we should use flippantly. As a response to her view that Donald Trump demeaned the Office of the President, the House Speaker is now making a mockery of Congress and one of the most serious institutions in our country. It’s disgusting."
Cramer then shared a message from all Senate Republicans: "The Senate should work together to defeat coronavirus. The Senate should work together to rebuild our economy."
In his own statement, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) argued that Americans by and large want Congress to take action on the coronavirus pandemic.
"There isn’t a single American that’s going to get a vaccine because of this impeachment trial," Sen. Rubio said in a video statement Tuesday morning. "There isn’t a single American that’s going to find a job because of this impeachment trial.
There isn’t a single thing that’s going to happen to make us safer from the threat of China from this impeachment trial. And these are the things I wish we were focused on — focused on getting more vaccines to people, focused on getting the economy growing again and getting people back to work, and focused on confronting the challenges before our country. We should be spending every second we’re up here working on those things, not on a trial to impeach a president who’s no longer in office."
[Jerusalem Post] The trial is being run by Ziv and Rambam medical centers with researchers from Bar-Ilan University and Technion Institute of Science.
A group of Israeli researchers have launched a Phase II study of a drug that they believe could keep patients off mechanical ventilation and speed their recovery.
The trial, which is being collectively run by Ziv and Rambam medical centers with researchers from Bar-Ilan University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, is examining the use of a drug based on a naturally occurring peptide called angiotensin 1-7 to help counter the impact of COVID-19 on the lungs.
[Aljazeera] Police in Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw fired gunshots into the air on Tuesday to disperse demonstrations against the ruling military, witnesses said, as protesters defied bans on gatherings amid nationwide outrage at last week’s coup.
One witness said demonstrators were running away as weapons were fired into the air, but not in the direction of the crowd.
Police initially used water cannon and tried to push a large crowd back, but demonstrators responded with projectiles. Footage on social media showed people running with the sound of several gunfire in the distance.
"They fired warning shots to the sky two times, then they fired [at protesters] with rubber bullets," a unnamed resident told AFP news agency, adding he saw some people injured.
[World Tribune] Big-box hardware retail goliath Home Depot is taking a stand. It will not support those treasonous, traitorous Trumpian insurrectionists. How noble. How brave. But wait ’til you find out what Home Depot does want to back. It should help clarify things nicely.
Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone, a major Republican donor, drew widespread establishment media attention last month when he said he feels "betrayed" by former President Donald Trump’s denying the validity of the fraud-riddled process that installed Joe Biden in the White House and by the overhyped unrest on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6.
Sara Gorman, Home Depot Senior Director of Corporate Communications, on Jan. 27 declared the company was planning to cut off donations to GOP elected officials who supported Trump in questioning the validity of the Swamp Uniparty’s Nov. 3 coup (bold added throughout this column):
We are pausing to take time to carefully review and reevaluate each of the members who voted to object to the election results before considering further contributions to them. While the PAC is making contribution decisions on the next cycle, as always, it will evaluate future donations against a number of factors. Our PAC supports candidates on both sides of the aisle who champion pro-business, pro-retail positions that create jobs and economic growth.
We included that last limp sentence because it reveals the true nature of Home Depot’s alleged Republican leanings. Their "conservatism" is nothing more than the familiar "free-market" globalist racket that seeks open borders for cheap labor and unhindered trade with communist China so it can stock its aisles with crappy merchandise.
Check out this extremely disturbing video clip of Langone in 2013 gushing about how "wonderful" it is that you can find desperate Mexicans in any Home Depot parking lot pining for work like good conservative Americans should. This is a glorious sight to behold for out-of-touch billionaires like Langone: Day laborers piling into the back of pickup trucks to earn whatever they can with no hope of ever accruing benefits, pensions, health care coverage or paid vacation days.
[Campus Reform] A University of Illinois-Chicago professor included a redacted reference to a racial slur on an exam. The professor told Campus Reform that the controversy surrounding the incident led to him being subjected to an hours-long mental examination.
According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education — which defends the legal right to free expression for college students and faculty members — law professor Jason Kilborn created a hypothetical fact pattern in a mock employment discrimination case for his final exam. The fact pattern referred to "profane expressions for African Americans and women," identified as expurgated text ("’n_____’ and ’b_____’").
More than 400 people signed a petition condemning Kilborn’s actions.
"The slur shocked students created a momentous distraction and caused unnecessary distress and anxiety for those taking the exam," said the petition. "Considering the subject matter, and the call of the question, the use of the ’n____’ and ’b____’ was certainly unwarranted as it did not serve any educational purpose. The question was culturally insensitive and tone-deaf."
#2
From Wiki, "Political Abuse of Psychiatry in the Soviet Union":
During the leadership of General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, psychiatry was used to disable and remove from society political opponents ("dissidents") who openly expressed beliefs that contradicted the official dogma.
The term "philosophical intoxication", for instance, was widely applied to the mental disorders diagnosed when people disagreed with the country's Communist leaders and, by referring to the writings of the Founding Fathers of Marxism–Leninism—Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin—made them the target of criticism.
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.