The OSM notion of which Ace wrote back in 2005 morphed into something else with the rise of blogs, Breitbart, etc, but it does seem like alt-media has gotten way more respect and ad dollars since 2005, and has seen a number of its personalities break into old-media gaining wider audience (ex. Malkin)
The right side of alt-media was respected enough that Axlerod sent swarms of trolls out to attack it. When you took fire from the Whitehouse itself, you were over the target. Trolls, annoying as they are, mean you're HAVING AN EFFECT. You ARE worth attacking. They validate you.
The MSM and politicians have always dismissed new-media as a bunch of yappy ankle biters, but now, in 2013, they're doing it with pretty bloody ankles.
Alternative commentary is still our stock in trade, but original reporting is happening (ex Zombie, shutdown theater, etc). People are out there digging deep into things that never got dug into before - dry IG reports, and all manner of other government documents that were selectively filtered by old-media previously. Leakage of previously sequestered stories has risen from a trickle to a small but steady stream.
We're still evolving daily. Its been a wild ride. It promises to get wilder.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain ||
11/02/2013 17:57 ||
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[Dawn] An entire week elapsed when two sides of Bangladesh ground against each other like tectonic plates. Last week, upheavals erupted across the country as if a nation was convulsing in pain. People lived in the fear of an approaching Armageddon between the two political camps that threatened to throw this country back to the Dark Age. They also lived in the tormented hope when the two supreme leaders of this country, despite the disruptive episode over a red telephone, managed to talk to each other for 37 minutes! Throughout the week lesser leaders were spitting invectives like sparks flying from friction. The chance of a reconciliation between two sides swung like an overactive pendulum. All that time it was seeking equilibrium, this nation had its nerves on edge.
It was a week that looked like the sequels of a dystopian action film huddled within its seven days. Bands of political activists roamed the streets in their post-apocalyptic madness as they clashed with their opponents and the law-enforcement bodies. Vehicles were torched, houses and shops were gutted, cocktails were hurled, guns were fired and kerosene-induced flames danced on the roads like snakes swaying to the sound of a flute. Altogether, anywhere between fourteen and twenty lives were lost to violence. Hundreds were maimed.
Although the week was packed with actions, it couldn't produce even an ounce of solution. That inanity has been best epitomised by the telephone conversation between the two leaders broadcast on television. The conversation has set a world record for blowing something out of proportion. If one cuts out the repetitions, it could be contained within a fraction of its duration.
The overstretched conversation from its start was jinxed. The prime minister kept dialing a number that didn't respond for forty-five minutes. The television channels promptly broke the news that could be misunderstood as if the opposition leader was deliberately avoiding the call. But why did the head of government try an unresponsive phone for so long? Why didn't somebody find out after two-three tries if there was something wrong with the connection?
The opposition's response was also reprehensible. Whilst rest of the country was watching the breaking news on television, why didn't anyone in the party urgently draw their leader's attention? Why couldn't someone immediately inform the prime minister's office that they were wasting time on the wrong phone?
The whole thing had the appearance of a box-ticking exercise. The prime minister took almost a week to make the phone call. When she did she explained that she was inviting the opposition leader as part of her effort to sit with all the political parties. But from the number of times she harped on one particular subject, it got many of us confused why she had called. Did she call to insist on lifting the hartal ... a peculiarly Bangla combination of a general strike and a riot, used by both major political groups in lieu of actual governance ... or invite the opposition leader to a dialogue?
Our politicians are addicted to apocalypse and they respond to stubbornness with stubbornness. The opposition leader stuck to her guns. She refused to call off the strike to accommodate the prime minister's invitation.
The unpleasant truth here is that the battle of egos preceded national interest. Otherwise, the two leaders should have agreed on a mutually convenient date in that one call. If October 28 was not suitable for both, they should have finalised a new date next evening or any evening after that. An invitation to national reconciliation shouldn't be conditional. Neither should its acceptance.
Clash of egos couldn't be the only reason, part of the fault lies in the preparations for the talks. The prime minister's advisors didn't prepare her for a recalcitrant opponent. The opposition leader wasn't rehearsed to expect the prime minister's carrot and stick proposition. The end result has been yet another deadlock. The silver bullet is now contingent upon who is going to pick up the phone for the next round of talks.
Advisors give advice, but they also add vices at times. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, US president John F Kennedy told his wife Jackie that if all his life he had known better not to depend on the experts, he was stupid that one time to let them go ahead. Just to understand what Kennedy meant, Air Force General Thomas Power, who played a key role during the Cuban missile crisis, contended that if at the end of the war there were two Americans and one Russian left alive, America would have still won.
The political showdown last week was seething with that guiding contention. It underscored the futility of our political system where people are captive of politicians who are captives of their own contradiction. Two sides of the same coin, our leaders are one selfish lot in benevolent garb. Head they win, head they lose. In the ultimate tragedy, the people lose every time.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2013 00:00 ||
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Oh my goodness, read this, from our Raf Sanchez in Washington:
European intelligence agencies and not American spies were responsible for the mass collection of phone records which sparked outrage in La Belle France and Spain, the US has claimed.
General Keith Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency, said reports that the US had collected millions of Spanish and French phone records were "absolutely false".
"To be perfectly clear, this is not information that we collected on European citizens," Gen Alexander said when asked about the reports, which were based on classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor.
Shortly before the NSA chief appeared before a Congressional committee, US officials briefed the Wall Street Journal that in fact Spain and La Belle France's own intelligence agencies had carried out the surveillance and then shared their findings with the NSA.
#3
Of course at one time it was till government crony regulation and socialism brought it down to the level of other socialist government intervention countries....so, let's cut back our UN Danegeld to that of all those other nations, both in cash and kind. Works for me.
#5
And with the tax money we can buy up the surplus cotton at 3 times market, dip it in chocolate and sell give it to the Egyptians. Remember you have a piece of the action.
#7
European style soft socialism with high taxes and higher unemployment.
Small cars, high gas prices, littler and littler homes, LARGER AND LARGER gov't bureaucracy - the new aristocracy.
A service economy to WHO?
Only people I know buying houses or taking Hawaii vacations over the last six years are gov't employees or attorney's who have to deal with the fallout - got to pass it to know what's in it - of gov't legislation.
[The Hindu] The deadly kabooms that struck a Bharatiya Janata Party rally in Patna on October 27 confirmed that terrorism will remain on top of the agenda for an over-stretched Indian police and a heavily burdened Intelligence Bureau (IB). Investigations have revealed the involvement of at least six individuals in the planting of 18 explosives (of which only seven went kaboom!) in Gandhi Maidan. The Indian Mujahideen A locally recruited auxilliary of Pakistain's Lashkar-e-Taiba, designed to give a domestic patina to Pakistain's terror war against its bigger neighbor... (IM) is the leading suspect for the daring attack. Its intentions seem clear: convert the rally into a mass fatality event, and spread fear and panic with a blatant message to the security apparatus that the IM is a force to contend with.
To the credit of the Bihar Police, some operatives from the IM's Ranchi cell -- one of its newly unearthed field entities -- have been locked away Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try! in connection with the Patna bombing. Unfortunately, arresting IM operatives does not appear to prevent the outfit from launching terror attacks with relative impunity, and in fact could be a sign that further attacks are in the works.
In the forthcoming book Indian Mujahideen: Computational Analysis and Public Policy (Springer 2014), the four writers here were able to use data mining algorithms developed at the University of Maryland to identify broad conditions that were predictive of different types of terror acts carried out by the IM. Over the years, the IM has consistently carried out simultaneous attacks with multiple devices within a few months of the arrests or deaths of its top operatives. Following the arrest of Yasin Bhatkal in late August 2013, this behavioural rule led us to predict that the IM was likely to launch attacks in the last quarter of 2013 -- a prediction that has unfortunately come true with the Patna attacks.
The prospect of a renewed IM terror campaign is dismaying because the next few months are going to be dominated by heightened political acrimony related to the general election and the inevitable use of valuable police resources. In contrast, organizations such as the IM and their allies (such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba ...the Army of the Pure, an Ahl-e-Hadith terror organization founded by Hafiz Saeed. LeT masquerades behind the Jamaat-ud-Dawa facade within Pakistain and periodically blows things up and kills people in India. Despite the fact that it is banned, always an interesting concept in Pakistain, the organization remains an blatant tool and perhaps an arm of the ISI... ) and sponsors (such as the Pak Inter-Services Intelligence) would remain focussed on creating maximum damage for India's governments.
SOFT TARGETS
A striking feature of all IM attacks is the choice of soft targets such as crowded markets. These have caused havoc, killing hundreds of innocent civilians. The IM's trademark has been multi-pronged attacks that maximise casualties. These attacks, such as the near-simultaneous bombing of three courthouses in different cities across Uttar Pradesh in 2007, require substantial coordination and organizational skills. After the U.P. attacks, the IM terrorised India with a string of bombings throughout 2008. In an attack in Ahmedabad in July 2008, the IM set off nearly 20 low-intensity bombs across the city, and when crowds gathered at the City Trauma Centre, it detonated a boom-mobile, killing dozens. Since then, the outfit has carried out at least 10 forays, including the 2010 attack on the German Bakery in Pune (possibly in conjunction with LeT) that killed 17, a triple bombing in Mumbai in 2011 that killed 27, and in February 2013, a double bombing in Hyderabad that killed 17.
There have been a few significant IM arrests in recent months. In a coup for India's security agencies, two of IM's top operatives, Yasin Bhatkal and Asadullah Akhtar, were captured. Unfortunately, these arrests do not seem to have caused a major dent on the IM, which retains its skill in planning operations with deadly precision and efficiency. The serial blasts in Patna, which were strikingly similar to the twin blasts in Dilsukhnagar (Hyderabad), on February 21, and the July 7 Bodh Gaya blasts this year, illustrate the IM's capabilities. These repeated terrorist successes here and elsewhere can, unfortunately, only help to boost the morale of groups like the IM.
This raises the overarching issue of how to check terrorism in India. It is more than clear that the IM is one of the most active terrorist groups in India. Its achievements have been disproportionate to its actual strength or marginal popular appeal.
Predicting exactly when and where an attack will occur is a task that cannot be consistently done. However, ars longa, vita brevis... the authors' detailed study of the IM, based on a clinical analysis of carefully curated data, and employing the "big data" analytic techniques (similar to techniques used by the Amazons and eBays of the world), is now starting to pay its first dividends in understanding when the IM will launch attacks and what types of targets it will select.
The study projects an ominous scenario. Periods during which Indian-Pak diplomatic relations begin to warm are followed by internal IM conferences and chatter, a month or so later. These high-level internal meetings are seen as necessary to plan the IM's signature multi-pronged bombing campaigns. These meetings are then followed by "ramped up" collaboration with other terrorist groups such as the LeT and the Harkat-ul-Jihad Isami. Pak terrorist groups, with the active connivance of Pakistain's ISI, have provided funding, explosives, training and other crucial support, all of which have facilitated the IM's emergence as a deadly terrorist organization capable in its own right. Shortly after every strike, there are the usual arrests of IM activists. These arrests may be the result of visible IM activity in preparation for an upcoming attack. It is also possible that attacks follow the arrests of IM men, because the IM or its Pak allies, LeT and the ISI, want to demonstrate their resolve to carry out further attacks.
VALUABLE WARNINGS
This sequence of events preceding IM bombings can provide valuable warnings of likely attacks, and highlight points in IM operations that are vulnerable to disruption by security agencies. Specifically, security agencies must subject IM operatives and their networks to extensive covert electronic surveillance. While this is routine in most counter-terror operations, travel intelligence systems must track the movement of IM operatives within India, across India's borders, and even beyond those borders. IM operatives have previously used Indian passports to exit India to friendly neighbouring countries like Pakistain and Bangladesh -- from there on, they have used fake Pak passports, no doubt supplied by the ISI, to travel to Pakistain and the Gulf.
One of IM's top leaders, Mohammed Sadiq Israr Sheikh, from Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh, is believed to have travelled from India to Bangladesh in 2000 on a legitimate Indian passport and from there on to Pakistain on a genuine Pak passport arranged by the ISI. In Pakistain, he met with LeT commander Azeem Cheema in Bahawalpur and trained at an LeT training camp near Muzaffarabad. At least another 10 people from Azamgarh alone, who travelled to Pakistain through various intermediate countries, have been identified.
Disrupting a network requires understanding it thoroughly in real-time so that attacks can be stopped before they occur. Closer coordination with agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other law enforcement agencies will not only help uncover IM's global support network, but also the detailed interlinked relationship among terror, financing, and criminal organizations.
Though it is impossible to predict the exact location and timing of an attack, data mining technology has now come of age. It can predict the types of attacks that terror groups will carry out -- and the approximate time-frame (in three-month periods). This provides a valuable input to law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, enabling them to intelligently deploy scarce investigative resources. If this translates into fewer number of IM attacks over the course of a six-month period, we will have brought about a welcome and needed synergy between researchers and law-enforcement at a time when national security demands it.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
From what i make out there are actually people in Pakistan like Hamid Gul,Saeed who think they can take over India and covert the people to Islam.
Absolute madness but no doubt funded by the Gulf states who want the whole world muslim.
[Dawn] AFTER considerable silence and ambiguity on the number of people killed in American drone strikes in Fata, the state, for the first time, went public with official figures on Wednesday, the same day missiles rained down on suspected faceless myrmidons in North Wazoo. In a written statement to the Senate, the defence ministry, replying to a politician's question, said that over the last five years drones had eliminated over 2,100 terrorists, while 67 civilians had been killed. The number of civilian deaths the state has released is in stark contrast to statistics cited by critics of the drone war, including reputed rights groups, who claim that hundreds, if not thousands, of non-combatants have died in the attacks.
While the release of the figures by the government is welcome, why has it come so late in the day, especially when drone strikes in this country have been occurring for nearly a decade? If the government and previous dispensations had released casualty figures regularly, the drone debate, both at home and internationally, would have been more rational and less prone to guesswork. However, death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate... no set of figures can be taken as accurate, unless more details are released. The discrepancy in numbers exists in large part because of the inaccessibility of Fata. A transparent investigation is needed and all sides must come up with the names of victims and the venue and dates of the attacks. But regardless of whose figures are correct, the death of civilians is deplorable. It shows the strikes are not as surgical as touted, and that innocent people get killed in the process |of drones eliminating bad boys.
The official figures, if they are correct, also show that the strikes have taken out thousands of bad boys. The list indicates that local, Afghan, Arab and Central Asian faceless myrmidons have used North Waziristan as a launching pad. The government's own data supports the argument that Pakistain needs to act if it wants the faceless myrmidons eliminated. While we believe that America's unilateral drone strikes violate Pakistain's illusory sovereignty and are not legitimate, the state is also responsible for its lack of action and for leaving a vacuum to be filled -- unlawfully -- by the US. Drone strikes have stopped where the security forces have taken action, and that's one reason why Pakistain should now lead the effort to eliminate foreign faceless myrmidons who are based in the tribal areas.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
2,100 terrorists... 67 civilians
Three percent of the wackees have been civilians. Pretty much statistical noise, especially given the fluid definition of 'civilian'.
My advice: if you find yourself repeatedly blown up in drone strikes, you need a better class of friends.
Yevgeny Zamyatin's experiences in the Tyne shipyards fed into his dystopian fable "We", which was published in 1919. It depicts a city of glass where citizens are spied upon. Fans of the book have included George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Wolfe and it increasingly resonates with today's concerns about surveillance techniques. Matthew Sweet and an audience at The Free Thinking Festival from Sage Gateshead discuss the novel with poet Sean O'Brien, columnist...
via Belmont
Our technocracy is detached from competence. It's not the technocracy of engineers, but of "thinkers" who read Malcolm Gladwell and Thomas Friedman and watch TED talks and savor the flavor of competence, without ever imbibing its substance.
These are the people who love Freakonomics, who enjoy all sorts of mental puzzles, who like to see an idea turned on its head, but who couldn't fix a toaster. The ObamaCare website is the natural spawn of that technocracy who love the idea of using modernity to make things faster and easier, but have no idea what anything costs or how it works.
It's hard to have a functioning technocracy without engineers. A technocracy made in Silicon Valley with its complete disregard for anything outside its own ego zone would be bad enough. But this is a Bloombergian technocracy of billionaires and activists, of people who think that "progress" makes things work, rather than things working leading to progress.
...Competence is the real modernity and it has very little to do with the empty trappings of design that surround it. In some ways the America of a few generations ago was a far more modern place because it was a more competent place. For all our nice toys, we look like primitive savages compared to men who could build skyscrapers and fleets within a year... and build them well.
Those aren't things we can do anymore. Not because the knowledge and skills don't exist, but because the culture no longer allows it. We can't do them for the same reason that Third World countries can't do what we do. It's not that the knowledge is inaccessible, but that the culture gets in the way.
#1
Don't forget the progressive 'magic' money tree that can print an endless amount of paper money that is suppose to have any value (see - Weimar inflation). Also known as - economic creationism.
#3
The SEALS are already pissed off over what happened to Team 6 members post OBL mission.
Yes, things are happening fast, Obungles is running out of time, certain provocations haven't had the desired effect. He knows 2014 will be a blood bath for the Dims.
I'm praying they're as inept as usual, rush their agenda before all the pieces are in place and we gut them once and for all.
Posted by: Secret Asian Man ||
11/02/2013 6:42 Comments ||
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#4
Yes Sam, my prayer as well. I continue to hope someone at Fox or in the MSM will do a story on the FLOTUS and ACA Web Site developer firm. Nothing yet. Some talking-head on Hannity alluded to it last night, but no one touched it.
#9
Oh really?? So what are you implying? A military coup?? Seriously, you teapot dipsh*ts should get a life...
If you force through your actions, your best, your razors to quit, the line becomes thinner as time goes on. That may be what Obama wants, but it is not good for the nation.
And be nice. I doubt 10 percent of those who comment here are influenced by or support the TEA Party.
#10
Yeah, see, I don't belong to the tea party. I belong to the Imperialistic Warmonger Party. When we conquer Canada, I'll put you down for a fate worse than death. You'll be a martyr to non humans everywhere.
#11
Navy SEALs ordered to removepurge 'don't tread on me' Navy Jack from uniforms. - corrected headline
Given the political orientation of the present administration, my guess is the "feelings" of the "authorities" when viewing the uniforms is an embarrassment to them as well as a reminder of our military's strength. Hence, the actions of the "guilty feeling administration" falls to the need to purge it from view, a small action, but significant when put into the context of this administration and its former appointees (czars).
PURGE verb (used with object)
1.to rid of whatever is impure or undesirable; cleanse; purify.
2.to rid, clear, or free (usually followed by of or from ): to purge a political party of disloyal members.
3.to clear of imputed guilt or ritual uncleanliness.
4.to clear away or wipe out legally (an offense, accusation, etc.) by atonement or other suitable action.
5.to remove by cleansing or purifying (often followed by away, off, or out ).
We have seen such "purge" actions before in several former free states in South and Central America, Caribbean, Russia, and Asia.
Hence the picture below:
Posted by: Au Auric ||
11/02/2013 11:14 Comments ||
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#12
Last coup in a major westernized nation nation happened in Moscow when the frothing at the mouth ideological socialists ousted a more pragmatic Gorbachev. When they ordered their political generals to send the troops into the streets, it appears the rank and file weren't with the party program. As they say - the rest is history.
#13
It's actually known as the Gasden flag. After 9/11, the Secretary of the Navy authorized its use by USN ships in place of the "jack", the small flag displayed at the bow while the vessel is in port.
There's also the first Naval Ensign, which has elements of the Gasden flag combined with the red and white stripes of the national flag.
#17
Yes Sam, my prayer as well. I continue to hope someone at Fox or in the MSM will do a story on the FLOTUS and ACA Web Site developer firm. Nothing yet. Some talking-head on Hannity alluded to it last night, but no one touched it.
B'Man, I'll get this in quick. Every night I go to sleep I play the Gary Owen. It's the 7th Cavalry regimental march.
I pray to God to give me the strength and show me the time to commence butchering my enemies.
Just using the term butchering is abound to attract the attention of the overseers, good.
To them I say, come, I've prepared for you.
Posted by: Secret Asian Man ||
11/02/2013 21:03 Comments ||
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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.
Wazoo
