[Asia Times via Zero] Andrei Martyanov is in a class by himself. A third wave baby boomer, born in the early 1960s in Baku, in the Caucasus, then part of the former USSR, he’s arguably the foremost military analyst in the Russian sphere, living and working in the US, writing in English for a global audience, and always excelling in his Reminiscence of the Future blog.
I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing Martyanov’s previous two books. In Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning, nearly three years ago he conclusively proved, among other things, how the missile gap between the US and Russia was a "technological abyss", and how the Khinzal was "a complete game-changer geopolitically, strategically, operationally, tactically and psychologically".
He extensively mapped "the final arrival of a completely new paradigm" in warfare and military technology. This review is included in my own Asia Times e-book Shadow play.
Then came The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs, where he went one step beyond, explaining how this "revolution", introduced at the Pentagon by the late Andrew Marshall, a.k.a. Yoda, the de facto inventor of the "pivot to Asia" concept, was in fact designed by Soviet military theoreticians way back in the 1970s, as MTR (Military-Technological Revolution).
His new book, Disintegration, completes a trilogy. And it’s a stunning departure.
[American Thinker] If you want to know what's going on in the world, don't (really, don't) look at the New York Times or Washington Post. From them, you get only Democrat partisan spin. Instead, check out the Daily Mail, an enlivening mix of news and gossip that, despite grammatically awful writing, manages to get a lot of information (and dreck) across. What it succeeded in doing on Friday was to reveal the mental damage that affects so many of the celebrities who opine about and dangerously affect America's values.
AppleTV+ has released a series of interviews between Oprah and Harry (the prince formerly known as Prince) in which we are given a pathetic insight into the mind of a marginally intelligent, minimally informed man who tragically lost his mother in the most explosive way. It shouldn't surprise anyone that he has emotional issues or that he married a woman who knows how to manipulate all of them.
Harry's mental fragility shouldn't make him a cultural icon. In addition, he really shouldn't have a platform from which he can display not only his mental issues, but emotional revelations from Oprah herself, Glenn Close, and Lady Gaga.
Rather than write at any length about any of this, I thought I'd simply copy here the titles of the many Daily Mail articles about the show and the heartbreak of celebrity-itis. By the way, I'm not denigrating the tragedies these people suffered, everything from Oprah's being raped to Harry losing his mother in a world-shattering car accident. I'm just making a point that these are deeply damaged people, yet we keep giving them the keys to the kingdom when it comes to setting the tone in America:
#1
They are different. Most never finished high school or college and yet are super-wealthy and surrounded by toadies that tell them they are so clever. That has to add huge doses of unearned super-confidence to the mix.
[Red State] Sometimes you hear a claim that is so ludicrous and improbable that it requires taking an immediate pause. That happened today in regards to a claim about Michelle Obama made by her "lead" Secret Service Agent.
According to Mike Sington, who claims to be formerly of NBC, Michelle Obama’s life as First Lady was so terrible that she could go "nowhere in public" without having racial slurs hurled at her. "I'll take 'Things that didn't happen' for $600, Alex"
Allow me to suggest that this is not only improbable but obviously nonsensical. One, the Obamas were largely adored by a segment of the American public, with screaming, fawning crowds everywhere they went. Now, are we truly supposed to believe that every single time Michelle Obama left the White House that rabid racists were yelling obscenities at her and not once was it ever 1) caught on video or 2) reported on by eyewitnesses? Further, are we to believe that Michelle Obama herself didn’t see fit to ever mention this while they were in office?
To put this lightly, give me a break. This is not a thing that happened, in my opinion. That’s not to eschew the possibility that at one singular point in time something inappropriate was said to the former First Lady, but there is no evidence that she was assailed by racist insults to the point where she could go "nowhere" in public. And to be clear, that’s the claim being made.
Of course, this all fits a broader narrative Michelle Obama has been pushing since her husband left office, which is that America is systemically racist and that she has been plagued with hardships instead of the obvious privilege she’s enjoyed throughout her life (see Michelle Obama Has One Heck of a Skewed Opinion of America and BLM). That doesn’t mean her life has been perfect (whose has?), but there comes a point where playing victim devolves firmly into gaslighting and ridiculousness.
In short, claims like this should be substantiated, not thrown out as authoritative. This thing politicians and the media do where they cast a dark cloud of racism over entire populations without providing any evidence is gross. Michelle Obama is, objectively, one of the most privileged people to ever exist in the United States, and that privilege was apparent long before she became First Lady. Michelle Obama should be the first person in line to extol the greatness of the American system instead of pretending she’s been oppressed by it even as she resided in the White House for eight years. It’s unseemly and insults the intelligence of everyone involved.
I doubt everything in the NEWS and deeper fact check it.
But when it come to Liberals/Socialists/Dumocrats and Elitists running to a Camera or Mic for a Headline. I just discard it as Political Self Serving Hype for Incitement or profit.
Why waste the limited remaining life cycles I have.
#3
I couldn't resist a slur or two myself if she were within shouting distance, she's so shit ugly.
So totally understandable, if it were true. Someone probably figured this Smollettian boo hoo would become more credible if the 'secret service' tag was attached to it.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/23/2021 11:25 Comments ||
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#10
Hmmmm...I'm not First Lady anymore, and Kamala and Fauci are getting all the attention on the news networks. How can I get back in the spotlight? How can I convince everyone that I am still important and that I still matter and that they should pay attention to me?
Posted by: Tom ||
05/23/2021 14:27 Comments ||
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#11
"Two crackers wearing MAGA hats ran up to me and punched me in the nuts!"
I doubt if Big Mike is big enough to admit it but that's funny.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
05/23/2021 22:06 Comments ||
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#2
From the CDC source article:
Hospitalized or fatal vaccine breakthrough cases reported to CDC 1,949
Female 980 (50%)
People aged ≥65 years 1,539 (79%)
Asymptomatic infections 354 (18%)
Hospitalizations* 1,811 (93%)
Deaths† 353 (18%)
*443 (25%) of 1,811 hospitalizations reported as asymptomatic or not related to COVID-19.
†63 (18%) of 353 fatal cases reported as asymptomatic or not related to COVID-19.
? "asymptomatic" deaths - when the corpse says s/he is "just fine, nothing wrong with me!" The definition of terms in the source article leaves a lot to be desired. 353 fatal cases -- out of more than 123 million total vaccine recipients so far, 353 deaths seems rather small compared to the expected death rate in such a large population.
Posted by: Bubba Lover of the Faeries8843 ||
05/23/2021 14:01 Comments ||
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[Rutherford Institute] "There is now the capacity to make tyranny total in America."― James Bamford
It never fails.
Just as we get a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, there might be a chance of crawling out of this totalitarian cesspool in which we’ve been mired, we get kicked down again.
In the same week that the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declared that police cannot carry out warrantless home invasions in order to seize guns under the pretext of their "community caretaking" duties, the Biden Administration announced its plans for a "precrime" crime prevention agency.
Talk about taking one step forward and two steps back.
Precrime, straight out of the realm of dystopian science fiction movies such as Minority Report, aims to prevent crimes before they happen by combining widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, precognitive technology, and neighborhood and family snitch programs to enable police to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage.
This particular precrime division will fall under the Department of Homeland Security, the agency notorious for militarizing the police and SWAT teams; spying on activists, dissidents and veterans; stockpiling ammunition; distributing license plate readers; contracting to build detention camps; tracking cell-phones with Stingray devices; carrying out military drills and lockdowns in American cities; using the TSA as an advance guard; conducting virtual strip searches with full-body scanners; carrying out soft target checkpoints; directing government workers to spy on Americans; conducting widespread spying networks using fusion centers; carrying out Constitution-free border control searches; funding city-wide surveillance cameras; and utilizing drones and other spybots.
The intent, of course, is for the government to be all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful in its preemptive efforts to combat domestic extremism.
#3
The Celts who were around when the Romans showed up had already displaced any of the original inhabitants. Then the Romans arrived (insert Monty Python's "What have the Romans ever done for us"). They left as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes decided to move in and take up shop. They, in turn, were followed by fellow travelers the Danes and Vikings. After they all sorted themselves out, some former Vikings, aka Norsemen aka Normans, who had settled in Northern France in a place now called Normandy, decided to come in and set up house. Don't give me crap about colonization and victimhood. The history of Britain is one big story of someone moving in and bumping everyone else up, down, left and right.
[Daily Caller] Republican Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called Democratic New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a "terrorist" and said she was "responsible for attacks on Jewish people" in a tweet Saturday.
".@AOC you’re responsible for attacks on Jewish people bc of your hate-Israel stance against Israel’s right to defend itself from terrorists Hamas, calling Israel an apartheid state, & supporting terrorists groups. Aligning yourself with terrorists means your a terrorist," said Green in a tweet.
This isn’t the first time that Green and Ocasio-Cortez have been caught in a feud. Green previously issued a "direct challenge" to debate Ocasio-Cortez on the Green New Deal and Ocasio-Cortez has previously stated that Green is "deeply unwell."
[Babylon Bee] CHICAGO, IL—Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was seen running for her life this afternoon. Observers said that Lightfoot exploded into a frantic sprint after she saw Thomas Sowell approaching to interview her. According to sources, Lightfoot had recently said she "would only grant one-on-one interviews to journalists of color." Moments later Thomas Sowell crashed through a nearby wall in a fashion reminiscent of the Kool-Aid Man. Lightfoot, living up to her name, went into a mad dash and has not been seen since.
People at the scene said Sowell brushed the drywall dust off of his corduroy jacket and said, "It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong." He shrugged and most of the people present nodded in agreement. "Well, guess I'll go," he said. He then burst through another unbroken portion of wall and left.
Lightfoot was last seen on a traffic camera charging down Canal Street like a Japanese man in a Godzilla film.
#3
"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."
Chisel that over the entrance to every government building!
#5
"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."
Skin in the game, man. It totally changes your perspective.
[ARABNEWS] Mass public gatherings have been rare in Iraq since security forces and militia groups stifled anti-government protests last year and amid regular government curfews to combat the spread of COVID-19.
Nevertheless, thousands hit the streets last week to denounce Israeli military action in Gazoo ...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamaswith about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... despite government calls for Iraqis to stay at home during the extended Eid break. Such a gathering en masse, flouting government restrictions, and anti-imperialist in its sentiment, could have come at the behest of only one man — Moqtada Tater al-Sadr
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
05/23/2021 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11132 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran Proxies
#1
why is this POS still breathing?
Posted by: Chris ||
05/23/2021 8:53 Comments ||
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[Babylon Bee] GAZA STRIP—A member of militant terror group Hamas who had been attempting to breach the Israeli border after the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem confessed he was surprised to hear dozens of U.S. media outlets describe him as a "peaceful protester," sources confirmed.
The aggressive "soldier of Allah," who has declared he will not rest until Israel has been wiped off the face of the earth, admitted he wasn’t quite sure how to take the news that Western media had labeled him an innocent family man and unwitting victim of Israeli aggression.
"Frankly, I want to get in there and kill as many of the evil occupiers as I can," he told reporters as he hid among women and children after hurling rocks and rolling burning tires toward Israeli soldiers stationed at the border. "So to be called a ’peaceful demonstrator’ was a little off-putting. Don’t I deserve more credit for my efforts?"
"It’s kind of embarrassing, really. What if my family sees that?" he added.
At publishing time, the Hamas terrorist had been surprised to learn the media had called him an "unarmed" demonstrator, in spite of the fact that he had clearly been armed with several weapons during the protest.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/23/2021 08:17 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11125 views]
Top|| File under: Hamas
"The Paleostinians are always coming here and saying to me, ’You expelled the French and the Americans. How do we expel the Jews?’"
The Israeli generals were intrigued. "And what do you tell them?"
"I tell them that the French went back to La Belle France and the Americans to America. But the Jews have nowhere to go. You will not expel them."
— General Vo Nguyen Giap
[IsraelTimes] Why Hamas, the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®, promises another war soon, and another and another. And why it won’t work
Hamas just concluded eleven long and painful days of war that inflicted on it enormous damage.
Many have noted how it successfully used its surprise May 10 rocket bombardment of Israeli cities to position itself as the undisputed leader of the Paleostinian cause in place of decrepit old Fatah.
Continued on Page 49
#1
Israel's secret weapon: It has nowhere else to go - comment Golda Meir’s words are as relevant as ever today, and the past weeks of another mini-war with Hamas and the accompanying spike of antisemitism have only further proven her point.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/23/2021 12:25 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.
[Asia Times via Zero] Andrei Martyanov is in a class by himself. A third wave baby boomer, born in the early 1960s in Baku, in the Caucasus, then part of the former USSR, he’s arguably the foremost military analyst in the Russian sphere, living and working in the US, writing in English for a global audience, and always excelling in his Reminiscence of the Future blog.
[American Thinker] If you want to know what's going on in the world, don't (really, don't) look at the New York Times or Washington Post. From them, you get only Democrat partisan spin. Instead, check out the Daily Mail, an enlivening mix of news and gossip that, despite grammatically awful writing, manages to get a lot of information (and dreck) across. What it succeeded in doing on Friday was to reveal the mental damage that affects so many of the celebrities who opine about and dangerously affect America's values.
[Red State] Sometimes you hear a claim that is so ludicrous and improbable that it requires taking an immediate pause. That happened today in regards to a claim about Michelle Obama made by her "lead" Secret Service Agent.
[Rutherford Institute] "There is now the capacity to make tyranny total in America."― James Bamford
[Daily Caller] Republican Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called Democratic New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a "terrorist" and said she was "responsible for attacks on Jewish people" in a tweet Saturday.
[Babylon Bee] CHICAGO, IL—Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was seen running for her life this afternoon. Observers said that Lightfoot exploded into a frantic sprint after she saw Thomas Sowell approaching to interview her. According to sources, Lightfoot had recently said she "would only grant one-on-one interviews to journalists of color." Moments later Thomas Sowell crashed through a nearby wall in a fashion reminiscent of the Kool-Aid Man. Lightfoot, living up to her name, went into a mad dash and has not been seen since.
[Babylon Bee] GAZA STRIP—A member of militant terror group Hamas who had been attempting to breach the Israeli border after the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem confessed he was surprised to hear dozens of U.S. media outlets describe him as a "peaceful protester," sources confirmed.
