[Zeihan]The American Retreat, Part II: Soldiers of Fortune by Peter Zeihan and Melissa Taylor
President Donald Trump has a knack for making Prime Ministers and Presidents hope to remain unnoticed. It’s a stunning ability given that national leaders aren’t exactly wallflowers. The past few days have seen a flurry of news releases indicating the Trump administration has turned its focus to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe. Specifically, the DC community is abuzz with leaks out of the White House that Trump is considering abrogating the American-Japanese security alliance. Trump has long made his displeasure with the alliance public, noting (correctly) that the treaty calls upon the United States to come to Japan’s defense but not vice versa.
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[Babylon Bee] WASHINGTON, D.C.‐Ahead of Trump's planned July 4 military parade, several dozen Imperial walkers began to arrive in Washington throughout the week.
The AT-ATs were dropped off by U.S. Space Force Star Destroyers just outside the city and then slowly marched toward the capital (rather than being dropped right next to their target, for some reason). Military bands solemnly played the Imperial March in honor of their arrival. Trump was seen at the White House, pointing excitedly at the looming all-terrain armored transports through an Oval Office window.
"Wow, look at those guys!" he said while gleefully clapping his hands. "Do you think President Xi has any of those? I bet he doesn't. Ha! Guy is probably sooooo jealous right now. And North Korea only has those little chicken walkers! This is definitely the best military parade on the planet!"
He quickly added that he "loves democracy" however.
Some light Antifa resistance attempted to milkshake the walkers but were crushed.
[American Thinker] President Trump has chosen a huge winner for the Federal Reserve Board: economist and monetary expert Judy Shelton.
Start with her achievements: same as our friend Herbert Meyer, she forecast with near-date accuracy the economic collapse of the Soviet Union based on economic reading alone. It was a bold prediction, made two years before it actually happened, in 1987. She was criticized for it, but she knew she was right and doubled down. In 1990, she wrote a book called The Coming Soviet Crash: Gorbachev's Desperate Pursuit of Credit in Western Financial Markets." The book drew naysaying, too. They called her an extremist...except that she was right.
She also warned about the currency meltdowns in emerging markets that occurred through the 1990s. Her 1998 book Money Meltdown is a classic of the genre, explaining how these disruptive events occur and can occur ‐ coming out right when Mexico, Asia, and Russia were going down. Someone with this kind of forecasting firepower alone is worth paying attention to. She's exactly the kind of person you want at a place like the Fed.
So naturally, she's already being subject to all kinds of criticism from the conventional-wisdomers and swamp aficionados ‐ same people who told her she was nuts for forecasting the Soviet meltdown. They criticized her then and got left with egg on their faces, so off they go, criticizing her nomination again now. Not even the real leftists, such as Paul Krugman or maybe Joe Stiglitz have weighed in yet, but they will. The current ones holler at Shelton for pointing out the value of a stable money standard, such as gold, something she has stuck to her guns about ‐ defying even Milton Friedman.
[Breitbart] Michelle Malkin warned of tech companies’ increasing political censorship ahead of the 2020 presidential and congressional elections, offering her remarks in a Tuesday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak.
"What’s alarming is the coordination and collaboration between so-called mainstream journalists and Antifa," said Malkin. "And along with that, you turn it into a little triumvirate because the Silicon Valley overlords are simpatico with these forces of Antifa whose agenda is destabilization, disruption, destruction of the civil order."
Listen:
Technology companies such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter are increasing their deployment of political censorship towards left-wing and partisan Democrat ends, noted Malkin. “Increasingly, the window — or opportunity — to be able to expose it, to criticize it, to fight back is shrinking by the day. That’s what’s so alarming to me.”
Malkin lamented, “There’s going to be a lot of Independence Day celebrations, and I have to say, this is will be one of the darker years, I think, in my mind, where I have not felt like being in a very jubilant mood. I don’t think it is time to be throwing parades right now when so many people’s ability to speak and to assemble is being taken away from them, and there is no recourse for it.”
Malkin continued, “You’ve got people like [Twitter CEO] Jack Dorsey allowing explicit Antifa terrorists to reign free on his platform while ordinary moms and peaceful citizens are being eradicated just like that — poof — and it’s happening even with some of the people this weekend who exposed the videos of the violence in Portland.”
Freedom of speech and expression is being continually eroded by technology companies across the internet, observed Malkin.
#3
Stop whining about their platform and build your own.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/04/2019 11:45 Comments ||
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#4
Don't like Facebook. Build a competitor. Same with Twitter and Google.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/04/2019 11:46 Comments ||
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#5
Abu, I agree in theory but am concerned that the black robed tyrants would squelch such efforts in proceedings around copy right, patent, libel, etc.
[NYPOST] Rep. Alexandria Boom Boom Ocasio-Cortez Dem represntative from da Bronx in Noo Yawk and leader of the Mean Girl Caucus in Congress. One of the Great Minds of the 21st Century, she is known as much for her innaleck as for her dance moves. She is all in favor of socialism, even though she's fuzzy on the details... is horrified at what she’s seen on her visit to a holding facility for illegal immigrants colonists ‐ just a week after she voted against emergency funding to improve conditions at what she’d taken to calling "concentration camps."
This after months when Democrats insisted that talk of a border crisis was just a Trump administration contrivance, and refused to even vote on its requests for funds.
AOC has a great gift for theater, as in her claim that detained women are forced to drink from toilets ‐ which apparently refers to standard plumbing units for these facilities, which hold both a sink and toilet.
This was almost as inspired as her stunt last fall, getting photographed with tears while supposedly viewing kids held in cages ‐ when a wider shot revealed that she was actually looking at an empty lot.
All the outrage is supposed to lead the American public to blame President Trump. Even when Democrats admit that overcrowding at these "camps" dates at least to the Obama era, they pretend the US government is the cause of the chaos.
Yet Washington didn’t tell these migrants colonists to travel across thousands of miles of Mexico to then cross the US border illegally. It’s the governments down in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to blame for conditions there, as El Salvador’s new president, Nayib Bukele, told the BBC on Monday.
If anyone’s encouraging them to come, it’s people out to provoke a crisis ‐ immigration activists who think it will promote their desired reforms; narco mobs that profit from the border chaos; politicians back home, milking their own agendas.
The combination has created a wave of more than 100,000 illegal border-crossers a month, overwhelming the Border Patrol and the agencies tasked with housing, feeding and caring for the detainees.
Yet, though the migrants colonists have been coached to claim asylum under US law, their motives are mainly economic: Undocumented immigrants colonists from these countries have profited from time in the United States for decades, and the courts wind up denying most asylum claims.
The grassroots of the Democratic Party has gone full-bore #AbolishICE. The 2020 contenders are rushing out plans for waving the migrants colonists through, and vowing to provide them with free health care, too. But that’s not US law now, nor remotely what most Americans want ‐ since it would plainly invite far larger waves, from across the globe.
AOC’s theatrics aim to play on American hearts ‐ and distract American minds from her absurd prescriptions. At bottom, she’s just exploiting the suffering she claims to deplore.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2019 00:00 ||
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[Ynet] As long as interests are aligned and understandings reached, actors in the Syrian arena stay out of each other's way, but that may not always be the case, so Jerusalem should choose its opportunities wisely.
This latest bombing raid in Syria was not just another attack on Iranian and Hezbollah sites in Syrian or weapon systems earmarked for the terror group in Leb.
It appears to be a much wider assault on Iranian infrastructure, picking up where the 2018 Operation House of Cards left off.
Then, the Israeli government owned up to a massive bombing raid on Iran's targets in Syria and announced it had destroyed 70% of the military infrastructure it intended to send to its proxy Hebzollah in Leb.
With the raid that took place over night Sunday, which has been attributed to Israel, it seems like the IDF is back for the remaining 30%.
If in fact Israel is behind the bombing, as the Syrians claim, it could not have carried it out without an understanding with the Russians.
At least some of the air raids were carried out from the skies over Cyprus which is why a Syrian anti-aircraft missile ended up hitting the island.
Firing missiles from the direction of the Mediterranean Sea is not like using Israeli territory.
The attack that resulted in an Israeli F-16 downed by Syrian fire in February 2018 is a case in point.
Flying over the Med from Cyprus in the direction of Syria and Leb requires coordination with the Russian military which has both naval and air forces operating in the area. It is obviously a result of new understandings between Israel and Russia over the "division of labor" in Syria.
When the Russians wanted to embarrass Israel, they made public the exact number of aircraft involved and where they fired from. This time they remained silent.
This new understanding was most probably secured in the meeting American, Russian and Israeli national security chiefs held in Jerusalem last week.
What do the Russians gain? For one, they gain American silence over the cruel bombing by the Syrian regime of tens of thousands of forces of Evil in the Idlib province, carried out with the support of the Russians, which is causing daily fatalities and complete destruction.
Europe ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... ans are also staying mum, and no one is appealing to the UN Security Council either.
A Ottoman Turkish division is in position on its side of the Syrian border near Idlib, waiting but not yet taking action against Assad's forces. That is also a result of the trilateral understandings reached in Jerusalem.
Everyone seems to be getting along now, and Israel has free rein to coutneract Iranian and Hezbollah entrenchment in Syria and Leb.
Moscow's silence confirms it is in its interest to cooperate with the United States and Israel in Syria.
But interests will change down the road. Israel has a narrow window of opportunity which it should use wisely and efficiently, staying true to the understandings reached with Moscow, so that the all-too familiar Russian cold shoulder is not turned their way again soon.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
07/04/2019 01:30 ||
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[Officer.com] It’s been a widely held belief that a police officer’s heart rate has a direct impact on how he reacts in stressful situations. The consensus has been that as the heart rate increases, fine motor skills decrease, thus limiting our ability to react swiftly and appropriately. That theory, however, has had its share of detractors who dispute the findings and question the validity of the testing. Recently, research results have been published that not only challenge those long-held beliefs, but also debunk the position that heart rate is a reliable predictor of police officer performance.
The results of the surprising new research dealt with three specific areas of physiological arousal: officers’ verbal communication; nonverbal communication; and, tactical skills. The study, published April 2019 in Frontiers in Psychology, Differential Effects of Physiological Arousal Following Acute Stress on Police Officer Performance in a Simulated Critical Incident, found that heart rates are not a totally reliable predictor of officer performance. Please read on.
For years, law enforcement trainers have been studying the correlation between elevated heart rates and performance during stressful encounters and situations. Much of the research included the wearing of heart rate monitors that recorded base line heart rates and rates recorded during the confrontations. The results were predictable‐those participants’ heart rates were much higher during the encounter than before. Logical, right? But what did those findings prove? Particularly when many of those involved in the training successfully resolved the situation they confronted, even with elevated heart rates.
#1
Yet another unsuccessful attempt by bean counters to reduce a complex system or situation to a single number, the better to manage it. Doesn't work with BMI to judge fitness. Doesn't work with CO2 level to predict climate. Doesn't work.
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.
The American Retreat, Part II: Soldiers of Fortune
[Babylon Bee] WASHINGTON, D.C.‐Ahead of Trump's planned July 4 military parade, several dozen Imperial walkers began to arrive in Washington throughout the week.
[Breitbart] Michelle Malkin warned of tech companies’ increasing political censorship ahead of the 2020 presidential and congressional elections, offering her remarks in a Tuesday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak.
Dem represntative from da Bronx in Noo Yawk and leader of the Mean Girl Caucus in Congress. One of the Great Minds of the 21st Century, she is known as much for her innaleck as for her dance moves. She is all in favor of socialism, even though she's fuzzy on the details...
[Ynet] As long as interests are aligned and understandings reached, actors in the Syrian arena stay out of each other's way, but that may not always be the case, so Jerusalem should choose its opportunities wisely.
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
[Officer.com] It’s been a widely held belief that a police officer’s heart rate has a direct impact on how he reacts in stressful situations. The consensus has been that as the heart rate increases, fine motor skills decrease, thus limiting our ability to react swiftly and appropriately. That theory, however, has had its share of detractors who dispute the findings and question the validity of the testing. Recently, research results have been published that not only challenge those long-held beliefs, but also debunk the position that heart rate is a reliable predictor of police officer performance.
