[YouTube] Perhaps the scariest takeaway from the Ukraine War is that it's just beginning. To fully understand what is at stake here, we must look at Russia's motivators and the possible outcomes.
#1
I can’t watch the presentation but IMO the world is backing itself into a corner in Ukraine; Russia cannot afford to lose and without ongoing Western support Ukraine will lose… but both are or very well might be nuclear capable. If we (West) provide enough support for Ukraine to win will Russia go nuclear? And if not, will (if indeed they can) Ukraine go nuclear? And then what?
#2
There is no win for either side. See - Korea. However, from 70s year later, it appears the South has won, so far. Nukes are there too. SK better get their own soon as the Swamp is fickle.
[ZeroHedge] Retired U.S. Army LTC Alexander Vindman, who gained fame for helping Democrats impeach President Donald Trump for a phone call Trump had with Ukrainian officials in July 2019, is urging the Biden administration and its Western allies to swiftly and dramatically increase military aid and supplies to Ukraine to help the Ukrainian armed forces credibly threaten to take back Crimea, which Russian forces seized in 2014. He lays out a Ukrainian military campaign--armed and funded by the United States and its NATO allies--that he claims will cause Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate a Russian withdrawal from Crimea and reduce the risk of a wider war. Vindman is reminiscent of those European statesmen and generals before and during World War I who thought that mobilizing for war would somehow prevent it and, if not, would result in a swift victory.
[MAIL] On the campaign trail, Biden said he wanted to break up Big Tech monopolies and end Section 230. But the 2021-2022 Congress came and went and Big Tech legislation remained in limbo.
While it's normal for the White House to meet with business leaders, the frequency of such visits begs the question of what sort of closed-door promises were made, insiders say.
'The White House did very little to push Congress to move forward tech legislation anti-trust legislation, in 2021, and 2022,' one former Democratic congressional aide told DailyMail.com.
'They had all those meetings with Big Tech executives, but the real question is, how much were those executives successful in their private lobbying, in getting the White House not to escalate that fight?'
'The idea that this revolving door of tech lobbyists and executives are allowed to have access to officials who allegedly are working on reining in Big Tech who are allegedly going after some of the most egregious behavior, it's really problematic,' another former Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill told DailyMail.com.
Last Congress advocates criticized the White House for failing to utilize Democratic control of the White House and both chambers of Congress to prioritize legislation to take on Big Tech.
[American Thinker] The media report of a Chinese-sponsored high-altitude balloon, the follow-up reports of its flight path over U.S. geography, and the "shoot-down" event that followed are all subject to factual testing, but on its face, the story represents one overwhelmingly incoherent assertion: that a slow-moving midlevel atmospheric balloon could violate U.S. airspace.
How could a Chinese (or any other) foreign object enter U.S. national airspace (the "NAS" or national airspace system, controlled by the DOD and the civilian FAA) without its presence known far beforehand, and its flight path not tracked and projected? And if a very slow-moving balloon, let alone a supersonic aircraft, or a hypersonic missile, is not announced over a public communication system until it is already over U.S. airspace, loitering over the Midwest, what does this say about our entire national defense system and about NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command), or about general civil defense and public notification systems?
It is of interest that the September 11, 2001 tragedy was defined in part by a still unexplained failure of the entire NORAD system, declared in the final 911 Report to be systematically preoccupied with joint simulations and drills. In the case of the Chinese balloon incident, what then is offered as an explanation for its apparently unknown presence over the U.S., and its casual trajectory over military installations, nuclear facilities, industrial operations, dense population centers, and civil infrastructure? Moreover, why was it supposedly shot down over the Atlantic Ocean, and its recovery made problematic, when it could have been captured through routine in-flight procedures, and towed effectively to a defense installation for examination? It could also have been easily compromised in its ability to maintain altitude, without destroying it, and recovered intact.
So its undeclared presence until it was reported through a purported chance observation by a civilian airline passenger near the U.S.-Canadian border, its casual observation as it trekked across America, and its effectively botched capture and examination all point to a command structure that is operating a low-level psychological operation; a domestic project labeled a foreign source (which is a traditional military and intelligence practice); a simplistic pretextual exercise for eventual military escalation; or a reflection of a defense bureaucracy apparently preoccupied with political, racial, and biomedical interferences, and otherwise led by a civilian commander who qualifies for 25th Amendment, Section 3 removal (fitness).
Or is the current Biden administration perhaps so ideologically allied with China that it continues to see its leadership, political system, and philosophical ideology as a model and roadmap for U.S. domestic control, and is acting in concert with it? As the current administration continues to violate the Constitution in explicit acts characterized under Article III, cooperating with a foreign enemy who has declared a 100-year strategic war against the United States, it would not be inconsistent.
One thing is sure: whenever an event has any military or national security implications, the story that is released to the public is carefully crafted as a public relations communication and not as a report of fact.
#2
Moreover, why was it supposedly shot down over the Atlantic Ocean, and its recovery made problematic,
Far from problematic. We knew just where it was at, we recover things like this 9and smaller) all the time, and we could do it in conditions of reasonable privacy and security.
when it could have been captured through routine in-flight procedures, and towed effectively to a defense installation for examination? It could also have been easily compromised in its ability to maintain altitude, without destroying it, and recovered intact.
Please explain in detail these 'routine in-flight procedures".
#4
Or is the current Biden administration perhaps so ideologically allied with China that it continues to see its leadership, political system, and philosophical ideology as a model and roadmap for U.S. domestic control, and is acting in concert with it?
BINGO!
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/09/2023 11:56 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Ref #2 above
You obviously missed the Wakandan Science capabilities briefing in the Captain America/Marvel Productions/ releases over the past few years:
#6
Satellite overflights are permitted under international law. Military aircraft overflights are not. Where do 20 mile high, nominally uncontrolled, balloon flights fit in?
[War Zone] The U.S. Air Force's U-2S Dragon Lady spy planes were among the assets tapped to monitor and collect intelligence on a Chinese government surveillance balloon during its recent trip across parts of the continental United States and Canada. An F-22 Raptor stealth fighter finally shot down the balloon with an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday, and efforts are now underway to recover the wreckage from the Atlantic Ocean. Readers of The War Zone can first get up to speed on what we already know about this incident, and its conclusion, in our past reporting here.
A U.S. defense official confirmed the use of the U-2S as part of the broader response to the Chinese spy balloon to The War Zone today. It's not immediately clear all the points along the balloon's voyage that U-2s were present.
The Pentagon said over the weekend that the balloon had first entered U.S. national airspace over the Aleutian Islands on January 28. It then passed into Canadian airspace two days later and returned to U.S. airspace, over northern Idaho, on January 31. The balloon then followed a broadly southeasterly track across the contiguous United States before moving out over the Atlantic off South Carolina, where it was ultimately shot down.
[RedState] At a time when the rate of attacks on Catholic churches is increasing–a study found 278 such attacks since 2020 alone–the FBI has decided now is the time to label traditional Catholics as purveyors of anti-Semitism and white supremacy. A so-called “intelligence analyst” at the Richmond Field Office authored a recently-released report that warns the nation apparently faces a serious threat from Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass. The analyst also coined two fancy new acronyms: Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists (RMVEs) and Radical-Traditionalist Catholics (RTCs).
The report is long on accusations and short on actual evidence that there’s an existential threat from Catholics, who prefer monks chanting to nuns playing folk songs on tambourines. RTCs seem to really rankle the author:
RTCs are “typically characterized by the rejection of the Second Vatican Council.” The writer makes an unsubstantiated leap that a preference for the Catholic Mass in Latin instead of the vernacular and a number of more traditional views on other world religions can amount to an “adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ and white supremacist ideology.”
As someone who racked up 12 years of Catholic school in the post-Vatican II 1970s and 1980s (see above reference to nuns wielding tambourines), I can say without hesitation that longing for pre-Vatican II traditions is a sign merely that many Catholics see value in them. It certainly isn’t a sign that they are plotting to bring down the country, and the report fails to provide an iota proof to support that supposition.
Instead, it relies on the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center (even pre-Elon Musk Twitter didn’t trust them) and its list of “Radical Traditional Catholicism Hate Groups.” According to one source, “The SPLC appears to be a source for the intelligence analyst’s beliefs that RTCs exist and that they are anti-Semitic. The SPLC description for this “hate group” states RTCs “may make up the largest single group of serious anti-semites in America.”
Other sources for this attack on Christians include the left-leaning Salon and The Atlantic. These two leftist publications regularly demean and slander conservatives–and it seems their inclusion in this FBI report is merely to tie Catholics to right-leaning political performance artists like Nick Fuentes and Milo Yiannopolis, whose tired schtick appeals to lonely teenage boys and certainly doesn’t intersect with the Catholic Church in the Venn diagram of life in the United States.
So, what is the FBI to do about those pesky Catholics and their rosary-praying ways? Infiltrate them, apparently. This:
The speculative increase in RMVE interactions with RTC leads the writer to suggest mitigation strategies, including recruiting Confidential Human Sources (“source development”), tripwire, and liaison contacts. Tripwires and liaisons are overt contacts with trusted members of a community or an industry. They can advise law enforcement about potentially illegal activity. Due to the fact that “white supremacy” is itself a First Amendment-protected belief, to say nothing of proponents of the most established Christian denomination in the world, the Bureau tries to cover documents like these with a caveat excusing their intrusion into the sacrosanct grounds of free exercise of religion and free association. In another typical intrusion into First Amendment concerns, the document implies a strategy of monitoring social media for RTC ideology in online posts.
I mean, the FBI is welcome to infiltrate the weekly Knights of Columbus meeting, but they’ll likely to be disappointed to find out that insurrection isn’t on the menu, but BBQ chicken and a planning meeting for a Toys for Tots drive. It’s just more of the same from the left, who are looking for any means necessary to attack Christians and conservatives. The compiler of this report is acting with a clear bias, which is not surprising in this day and age when the FBI is weaponized to act against every day Americans.
Super Devout Catholic (Just Ask Him) President Joe Biden, who’s been known to wield the FBI like a cudgel, was unavailable for comment.
#1
This is just fucking stupid. I would guess that Catholics who prefer the Latin mass are probably the least likely to start or support an insurrection.
But as the article says, this is just part of the government's war on Christians in general, and Catholics in particular.
My guess is that they don't like the Church's opposition to abortion, and the fact that it doesn't support the LGBQT+ agenda.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
02/09/2023 0:19 Comments ||
Top||
#5
The Bureau would tell us more about these threats, but we would have to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) similar to that signed by their former Twitter agents of disinformation.
All for the sake of transparency and freedom of information of course.
Thank you E. Musk for outing these Goebbelesque 'Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (RMVP)' SOB's.
Yes, RMVP. How's that for a steaming hot acronym ?
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
02/09/2023 9:02 Comments ||
Top||
#9
So let's recap: FBI announces construction of monstrous new fortress twice the size of Pentagon, then announces it has ID'd and fixed a target. We know what comes next.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
02/09/2023 9:16 Comments ||
Top||
#10
#8 - you beat me to it. Let me digress anyway. If "Bureau" comes from the corresponding French word (which is masculine), then the corresponding sentence should read: "FBI delendus est"
#18
Just reported that FBI has been forced to rescind the report on Racical Catholic Extremists after it was revealed that they had ONCE AGAIN, relied on "reporting" from SPLC, The Atlantic, and Salon to compile this report. Bastids!
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
02/09/2023 17:21 Comments ||
Top||
#20
I'm wondering if this is less about threats to America, and more about a jobs program for the Feebs. The shine has certainly rubbed off FBI's crime fighting reputation in the last few years, but pretty much every time there is an 'incident', it turns out the perp was a known wolf. Lots of paper, diligently maintained. The Tsarnaev brothers, for example. So they are good at that.
Recently, the FBI has gone expeditionary, finding small 'threats' (aka a bunch of guys talking shit in a bar), encouraging them with money and support, and eventually creating a plot they can stop. Consider the Governor Gretchen Whitmer affair where roughly half of the 14 or so plotters were on the payroll, including one of the master minds providing money and travel arrangements. The final plot they settled on was to set the Governor adrift in a boat in Lake Michigan. In shipping lanes. During fishing season. With a nearby Coast Guard station.
So Special Agent Bob goes to the weekly K of C meeting, chats up some folks, maybe finds somebody disgruntled or not, but that only means Agent Bob needs more time and money to hunt up the food change. Agent Bob's boss decides to add addition agents to the project and away we go! Call it the FBI Full Employment Program.
#21
^ I'm at the point where I don't talk to strangers in bars. Not worth it.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/09/2023 18:36 Comments ||
Top||
#22
For crying out loud. If some GOP man with actual balls gets in the White House he is going to have to pledge to arrest the entire 7th floor management to get my vote.
[BB] WASHINGTON, D.C. — During a tense Congressional Hearing, deductive polymath Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put a widespread conspiracy theory to rest when she vocally insisted that there were no hysterectomies being performed on minors because most of them are too busy working in the mines anyway.
The truth-filled gavel drop utterly destroyed the claim by conservatives that the Boston Children's Hospital was performing the irreparable surgeries on minors.
"How can minors find the time to travel via minecart to far-away Boston when they're busy mining for coal, iron, and lapis lazuli," explained Ocasio-Cortez to an awestruck chamber. "And it's not just minors who aren't getting hysterectomies; neither are lumberjacks, farmers, nor blacksmiths."
The phenom of reason and intellect then adjusted her smart-looking glasses and conceded that yes, some villagers did receive hysterectomies, but only if they had enough emeralds, which were hard to come by because they were "even more rarer than diamonds."
At publishing time, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez had stunned all by pointing out hysterectomies weren't even real because no one had hysters in their bodies in the first place.
#3
And I believe the classified documents were 'Key Word' or country selected and couriered to Delaware by a person (or assigned team) on a weekly basis via thumb drive.
The documents were then likely printed with selected portions then cut & pasted from the laptop to outgoing Hunter email.
#5
^ Uh, yeah. Fortunately they didn't hold high office in the government but I've had neighbors who were quite unstable.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/09/2023 12:04 Comments ||
Top||
#6
ref #3 ...or some variant of transmission/delivery has the feel of high confidence for me. Keyword/Codeword/FAO assessments for exploitation and access confirmation, but I am sure that path had cutouts and unknowing players. You can't blow the whistle if you didn't know you were in the game!
[BB] WASHINGTON, DC — People across the nation breathed a sigh of relief as President Joe Biden used his State of the Union address to assure the American people that Ukraine is making tremendous progress and is stronger than it has ever been before.
"These are uncertain times," Biden said to the assembled members of Congress and other national leaders. "While many people struggle to make ends meet due to inflation, the price of basic goods like eggs has skyrocketed, and crime is running rampant in our streets, I want the American people to know that Ukraine is in a tremendous position of strength. Unicycle."
Amidst growing economic instability, public unrest, and controversy surrounding international incidents such as China floating a spy balloon across the country, the Biden administration is dedicated to putting Americans' minds at ease by continuing to shuttle tens of billions of taxpayer dollars overseas to keep the Ukrainian government running and fuel its war effort against Russia.
"President Biden is committed to putting the needs and concerns of American families first," said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a statement following the State of the Union. "That is why our administration will continue to send our citizens' money and billions of dollars' worth of advanced military weaponry to Ukraine."
At publishing time, President Biden was in talks with congressional lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to further uphold his promise to protect and defend the United States by implementing state-of-the-art security measures along the Ukrainian border.
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.
Have they learned NOTHING about the downside of visitor logs ? 
[War Zone] The U.S. Air Force's U-2S Dragon Lady spy planes were among the assets tapped to monitor and collect intelligence on a Chinese government surveillance balloon during its recent trip across parts of the continental United States and Canada. An F-22 Raptor stealth fighter finally shot down the balloon with an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday, and efforts are now underway to recover the wreckage from the Atlantic Ocean. Readers of The War Zone can first get up to speed on what we already know about this incident, and its conclusion, in our past reporting here.
[RedState] At a time when the rate of attacks on Catholic churches is increasing–a study found 278 such attacks since 2020 alone–the FBI has decided now is the time to label traditional Catholics as purveyors of anti-Semitism and white supremacy. A so-called “intelligence analyst” at the Richmond Field Office authored a recently-released report that warns the nation apparently faces a serious threat from Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass. The analyst also coined two fancy new acronyms: Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists (RMVEs) and Radical-Traditionalist Catholics (RTCs).
