korrespondent.net and lb.ua, my two main go to sources of information for the Russo-Ukrainian War, have gone completely black on providing their daily summaries. This all started nearly ten days ago.
#3
#2 I just tried booth links, and thery both opened up just fine for me.
you might want to use a different DNS or perhaps use TOR to get around whatever is blocking your access.
Links to korrespodent.net and lb.ua do work just fine and they did at the time. But lb.ua stories and korrespondent.net summaries/text broadcasts could not be found anywhere.
[RedState] Besides having people on his own staff working against him in his first term, Donald Trump ...His ancestors didn't own any slaves... also contended with those who deemed themselves the "resistance." Various left-wing groups and organizations intent on thwarting his agenda. But this is not 2016, and Trump has had a hardcore education in how the Swamp works. In 2024, those groups are still around, but they may have a much rougher time mounting the new "resistance" they would like. The reason is that potential donors do not think they will get the resistance bang for the buck they once did and are, therefore, not ponying up.
The usual suspects from 2016, like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), are getting less than enthusiastic responses from liberal donors after Trump and the Republican's crushing landslide in the November 5 election. Trump has yet to be sworn in, but already, many of these groups are ready to file lawsuits on day one of the new Trump administration. Because the donations are drying up, the heads of these groups are starting to sweat.
Vincent Warren is the Executive Director of the CCR. He said of their donation rate, "The response from donors has been shock, anger and depression, sprinkled in with a few checks. It’s not been a flood." CCR was instrumental in a lawsuit during the first Trump administration over the immigration ban from some Moslem-majority countries and could also be a participant in fighting any new Trump-era immigration policy.
Another group that plans on opposing the Trump agenda is the Center for Biological Diversity. Executive Director Kieran Suckling wants to hire 12 new attorneys to be ready to start the avalanche of lawsuits on January 21, Trump's first full day in office. Right now, however, he does not have the money to hire those attorneys, saying, "We can’t wait for the money to come in. We have to be prepared immediately." The organization filed roughly 266 lawsuits during Trump's first term, primarily to block the building of the border wall for environmental reasons. NILC Executive Director Kica Matos has also seen a drop in donations. She said, "Thus far, we have not seen the same levels of giving we experienced as compared to this time in 2016." She added that they did see an increase in donations after Trump took office in 2017.
So, what do all these groups need donations for exactly? Well, for starters, the ACLU plans to challenge mass deportation plans by the Trump administration on constitutional grounds. They plan to work with members of Congress to block funding and urge restrictions on where Customs and Border Protection officials can operate. The NILC is amassing volunteers to go across the nation to document immigration raids and intervene if they believe any illegalities are occurring.
All of these groups have had help from grants from George Soros ...either Ernst Stavro Blofeld or Auric Goldfinger come true... ' Open Society Foundation, but they also need the grassroots left-wing activists to keep things humming. Another problem facing Red Guardsliberal groups that plan on fighting the Trump administration is the fact that the Kamala Harris once a marijuana-busting Caliphornia DA campaign continues to ask for donations as well. My colleague Sister Toldjah reported that after racking up a $1 billion price tag on a four-month-long campaign in which Kamala Harris lost badly, the campaign now finds itself a whopping $20 million in debt. This was the woman who was going to "fix" the economy.
Help could be on the way for all of these leftists. A group called the Democracy Alliance, a group of liberal donors, will meet next week in Washington to strategize the next anti-Trump resistance movement. Not only is the left still in the grips of post-election depression, but they also have to deal with the fact that the Biden-Harris economy has even affected the high cost of "resistance."
Will Karma come full circle?
How long before the "Thomas Matthew Crooks" types start seeking out the Left Wing Mega Donors over their lies, promoted perversions, social manipulations, induced murder/suicides, and anti-USA actions?
[News With Views] A recent article in the U.K’s left wing newspaper The Guardian caught my eye when its author, Peter Hyman, put his finger on something important.
Many American conservatives, he said, didn’t vote for Trump because they thought he was a savior. They voted for Trump [because] they despise his most visible enemy: the organized left. They see leftists as both dishonest and power-hungry, and think you’d have to be blind to miss it.
Another article on the same site actually put it that way, calling it a "simple, inescapable message" that many people despise the left.
I probably have to count myself in that category, however uncomfortable I am saying so.
I don’t despise leftists as individuals. If they talk respectfully to me, I’ll talk respectfully to them. But as a group?
A major reason we despise leftists as a group: their air of moral superiority (epistemic superiority as well) wrapped in arrogance and virtue-signaling, all alongside an almost-unbelievable lack of self-awareness.
The resounding Trump victory has motivated at least some self-awareness, and may shatter other delusions, given time. Hence Hyman’s article. And Harris’s. We’re seeing more than a few leftists groping towards something like an examination of their assumptions.
Hyman quoted Tucker Carlson who provided a clear statement of what probably motivated a lot of Trump voters:
"They tell you, the people who can actually change a tire, who pay your taxes and work 40 hours a week, that you are somehow immoral. We have a message for them: you are not better than us, you are not smarter than us."
Despite using the smug word "swagger" to describe Carlson’s demeanor, what Hyman says next is worthy of comment:
"To dismiss this as the politics of grievance is to dismiss what it feels like to be disrespected, to feel ’a stranger in your own land.’ To feel as though the college-educated are looking down at the non-college-educated."
Hyman thus puts his finger on the meat of what I want to discuss here: this presumption that only "the non-college-educated" support Trump. Only the deluded, those confused by "misinformation" and "conspiracy theories" (two of leftists’ favorite words).
I have three advanced degrees, and I voted for Trump.
I know many other exceptions to the simple-minded dichotomy between the credentialed who fancy themselves "too smart," versus the non-credentialed who are presumed too stupid to direct their own lives.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/17/2024 10:15 Comments ||
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#6
Indoctrinated and credentialed is not educated.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
11/17/2024 10:39 Comments ||
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#7
/\ THIS!!! OMG, this. My two cents worth.
MIT and Harvard here (pretty much done with the administrations though). I recall perfectly nice, normalish-to-bright people getting degrees in Celtic Mythology. While interesting, how does that help the state of the general populace? The world?
I got a degree in Chemistry, Class of 1981, Harvard, married then with three kids (missed physics and chemistry by one credit. Still hurts. But still learning.) That after 10 years in the Airborne Infantry (E6, 11B4P 3/503rd 173rd Abn (Sep) RVN and 1st Bde 2/508th 82nd Abn Div). Still alive, though TBH diminished. Still a pain in the ass.
The difference between 'credentialed' and 'degreed' is stark.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
11/17/2024 16:55 Comments ||
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[AmericanThinker] This November 28th, when America counts its blessings, the top of my list will be Donald J. Trump, Jr. He is really the guy who made the success of 2024 possible.
If you think back to 2016, the whole Trump effort, it was not just unlikely, it was ridiculous. The campaign consisted mostly of Donald Trump ...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party... ’s stream-of-consciousness Tweets and phone calls to various talk shows. Volunteers from around the country organized their own events for him because there was no real traditional campaign organization. Some went very well. Others, not so much, like the March 2016 rally at the University of Illinois, reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown ...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel... . Smack in the middle of one of America’s premier left-wing neighborhoods, it turned into an ANTIFA-style riot.
When he got to the White House, President Trump was immediately handicapped by poor organization and some awful hires. Most Trump people came in one of three flavors -- loyal but incompetent, like Mike Flynn. The just plain incompetent, like Coats and Sessions. And worst of all, the incompetent and outright perfidious, like Generals Kelly, Mattis, and McMaster.
Most of that last category seems to be people Ivanka and Jared wanted.
Unsurprisingly, this team of scrubs was no match for the D.C. Swamp. Much of the anger and frustration of Trump and his supporters on Jan 6, 2021, was fueled by the realization of just how badly they were served by people who were supposed to be on their side.
If you are somebody like Rudy Giuliani, tirelessly working with President Trump to save the country, and you see him get impeached for properly trying to investigate the Biden bribery scandals or have the Deep State run a game to falsely impugn the Hunter Biden laptop, or worst of all, see the Deep State’s outrageous Russiagate scandal, which was cooked up by Crooked Hillary Clinton ...former first lady, former secretary of state, former presidential candidate, Conqueror of Benghazi, Heroine of Tuzla, formerly described by her supporters as the smartest woman in the world, usually described by the rest of us as The Thing That Wouldn't Go Away. Politix is not one of her talents, but it's something she keeps trying to do... 's people. Then yes, you may even start to think the voting machines in Georgia could be rigged.
After the disappointing 2022 midterms, most people (including me) gave Donald Trump no chance. DeSantis even passed by him in the betting odds.
Behind the scenes, however, it was Don who started to bring some order to the chaos of Trump world. Until then, he had been the second banana in the family behind Ivanka and Jared. But they were bored with the whole political scene after 2020 and moved on. Especially after Jared got Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... to bail him out of his high-rise real estate disaster.
Don (and his brother Eric) had spent most of the first Trump term in New York, ably running the Trump business, even as they had to meet a make-or-break deadline to refinance their holdings. Then, it was finally Don’s turn to help assist his father’s political operation and did he ever.
Don began by hiring Susie Wiles to run the national campaign. Wiles got her start with Jack Kemp, then worked for Ronald Reagan all eight years. She has a marvelous record of running campaigns. When she became available after a falling out with Ron DeSantis, she was welcomed into the 2020 campaign and then tapped to run the whole 2024 effort. This was a great move. She has a whole ecosystem of competent people around her, and she got Trump organized and focused on the issues.
The unprecedented lawfare attack by the Biden administration in 2023 was met calmly and became a rallying point for people who had seen enough of the Democrats ...every time you hear the phrase white people, white supremacy,white anything but paint, you're listening to a Democrat. Ask him/her/it to reimagine something for you; they do that a lot, though not well. They can hear a dog whistle a mile or two away. They invented the spoils system and Tammany Hall, and inspired the addition of the word (Thomas) Nasty to the English language. They want to stop continental drift and repeal the law of unintended side effects... ’ dirty tricks.
Don was also the talent scout, bringing in fresh new faces who could make a difference. He was the one who got Ronna McDaniel ousted from the RNC and brought in Charlie Kirk to implement more modern election tactics. Whereas in 2020, President Trump decried early voting; in 2024, Don was convinced those were now the rules and we had to outdo the Democrats.
It was Don who befriended JD Vance, seeing he was a budding star and had his father endorse him in a crowded Senate primary. Don also lobbied for him as VP pick, which proved an inspired choice, as he connected with younger voters.
Remember, it was Jared and Ivanka who kept attaching President Trump to ridiculous celebrities like Kanye West and the Kardashians. While it was Don who built a network of serious people to help the country, like Peter Theil.
The first days of the Trump transition are now going like the last days of the Trump campaign -- focused, efficient, and smooth. I suspect that’s in large measure due again to Don and he is likely the one recommending all the solid cabinet picks.
Thanks to Donald J. Trump, Jr., I think Trump 47 is going to be a far more successful experience than Trump 45.
#1
Reference your note: Qardawi is dead. He was a resident of Doha, but born in Egypt.
Posted by: Albert Pelosi3459 ||
11/17/2024 8:21 Comments ||
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#2
This looks more organized and effective. If they are able to put us back in charge so that the government works for the people again, this will be the watershed that we need.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
11/17/2024 10:37 Comments ||
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[IsraelTimes] A US-backed private Trust may be the least bad option for protecting operations essential to post-war relief and recovery
Could private security companies — known as PSCs — play a role in defeating Hamas ..a regional Iranian catspaw,... and kick-starting the transition to a better "day after" 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 a rusty iron fist by Hamas with 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 PSCs having a checkered history, reports suggest that several key stakeholders, including Israel and the United Arab Emirates, are considering using them to help protect operations essential to Gaza’s relief and recovery — and to breaking Hamas’s grip on power. While perhaps no one’s first choice for securing a new administration in Gaza, PSCs may end up being the most realistic option for finally getting the "day after" started.
That was the conclusion of a bipartisan task force that I chaired earlier this year, supported by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America and The Vandenberg Coalition. Before reaching it, the task force closely examined the most frequently discussed options for securing a post-Hamas transition and found them all wanting.
Israel’s Defense Forces, the IDF, have their hands full crushing Hamas militarily — not to mention dealing with threats from Leb ...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... and Iran. The IDF doesn’t have the resources, manpower, or legitimacy to also secure key civilian missions like delivering aid, clearing rubble, restoring essential services, and recruiting new Paleostinian leaders.
US forces, though capable, are also a non-starter. There’s no political appetite in Washington for committing US troops to nation-building in Gaza.
For many reasons, a UN force also seems out of the question. Most importantly, given the abject failure of UN peacekeepers since 2006 to keep Hezbollah at bay in Lebanon, it’s hard to imagine Israelis relying on them to help secure Gaza.
As for the Paleostinian Authority (PA), Israel’s right-wing government has rejected allowing it to play any role in Gaza. But even if Israel was willing, the reality is that the PA can’t secure its West Bank stronghold. It’s fanciful to believe that 17 years after being thrown out of Gaza by Hamas, PA police could now return with greater success.
By far, the most popular proposal for securing the "day after" involves deploying troops from Arab states. But there’s no indication they would sign on while the IDF is still active inside Gaza fighting Hamas remnants. Even harder to fathom: Arab troops killing Paleostinians, fellow Moslems, who violent mostly peacefully resist efforts to undermine Hamas’s control.
After dismissing the most frequently proposed security models, our task force offered the practical, but controversial option of hiring PSCs to help protect any new civilian administration in Gaza — whether it be led by the PA, some inter-Arab stabilization authority, or (as our task force recommended) a private multinational Trust backed by Washington and its regional partners.
Many PSCs have long records supporting the operations of the US military during the war on terror. Their ranks are filled with well-trained professionals who served at elite levels in their nation’s military. They have ample experience conducting the kinds of missions that would be critical in Gaza’s war-torn landscape, including protecting humanitarian convoys, guarding critical infrastructure, and securing VIPS. PSCs are also well acquainted with the imperative of coordinating their activities with a national army in control of the overall battlespace — in Gaza’s case, the IDF.
Without question, high-profile cases of abuse have tarnished PSCs in many eyes. Most notoriously, in Iraq in 2007, employees of the US company Blackwater protecting a convoy killed 17 civilians in the Nisour Square Massacre.
Less well-known is that after Nisour Square, the US military imposed a comprehensive oversight regime for PSCs, including strict rules of engagement, monitoring, and accountability. The US commanders responsible told our task force that it worked extremely well. They believed that with a similar regime in Gaza, PSCs could also make important contributions there.
Of course, concerns about abuse aren’t unique to PSCs. Absent good leadership and real accountability, even the best militaries in the world, including the US military, are susceptible to misbehavior. As for UN peacekeepers, their missions over the years have been repeatedly plagued by corruption, mismanagement, and sex crimes.
In fact, there’s a strong argument that when things do go wrong, as they inevitably will in a place like Gaza where the enemy observes no laws of armed conflict, PSC wrongdoing will be easier to manage than that of a national military. The latter invariably implicates diplomatic sensitivities surrounding national honor and saving face. If a PSC misbehaves, in contrast, its personnel can be quickly disciplined and expelled from the battlespace with far less political blowback.
The transition to a better "day after" in Gaza will never get off the ground unless it can be secured. As Winston Churchill famously underscored about democracies versus other systems of government, PSCs may be the worst option for establishing a post-Hamas administration except for all the other options proposed.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Scientists have uncovered an unlikely event that led to the eastern Roman Empire's collapse 1,500 years ago.
They discovered that the Romans miscalculated their Persian opponents which caused their downward spiral, leaving them weak and allowing Islam to rise in a manner that essentially wiped out the once-powerful civilization.
The two groups were at war from 54 BC to 628 for control of territories, but the Persians and Sassanians took over Roman trade routes that were critical to their victory.
Without access to trade, the economy quickly collapsed and forced people in the Roman Empire to flee to other regions like Constantinople, the researchers said.
The team analyzed shipwrecks throughout the Mediterranean from multiple sites, such as Marseille, Naples, Carthage, eastern Spain and Alexandria, to better understand what caused the fall.
They identified a timeline for when Roman ships, which lined the shores by the hundreds at their peak, began to disappear and dwindled down to just dozens by the second half of the 7th century.
Roman goods were also analyzed from tens of thousands of sites between numerous regions: Israel, Tunisia, Jordan, Cyprus, Turkey, Egypt, and Greece.
Researchers said that rather than a decline, there was an increase in prosperity and demography in the second half of the 6th century CE.
The information 'led us to conclude that the eastern Roman Empire started to decline... after a [disruption in trade] and military failures,' authors Lev Cosijns from the University of Oxford and Haggai Olshanetsky told DailyMail.com.
Previous research had suggested that a plague decimated the Roman Empire in 543 AD or a climate shift that peaked in the mid-6th century.
But the new study found the civilization was at the height of its power, economic output and population.
'So, it seems that 536 CE was not the worst year to be alive,' said Cosijns. 'At least, not for most people who lived during that time.
'It was a terrible period for people living in Scandinavia, but for people who lived in the eastern Roman Empire, there were limited effects, and so life went on as usual.'
The researchers began their investigation by dating pottery uncovered at archaeology sites.
They discovered more than 16,000 pieces of pottery uncovered in Nessana - a city located in the southwest Negev desert in Israel, close to the Egyptian border.
The pottery was traded by the Roman Empire during the late 6th and early 7th centuries, confirming the civilization was still thriving.
The team found a 'stark increase' in the total number of pottery shards dating to after 550 AD, which they believed indicated 'increase in the industrial capacity and prosperity of the region.'
This is especially noticeable in Nessana, which was dated to 550 to 700 AD, where a total of 16,148 sherds were found, a larger number than all the other areas and contexts from all the sites combined,' they shared in the study.
The team then pulled from the shipwreck database of Harvard University and and the Oxford Roman Economy Project (OXREP) database to identify a timeline for when Romans ships flourished in the Mediterranean.
These databases aggregated data on shipwrecks from antiquity, including their dates, site/shipwreck name, GPS location, and cargo.
'The use of this type of data implements a method that has recently been applied in different studies,' researcher wrote in the study published in the academic journal Klio.
'This method assumes that the number of shipwrecks has statistical significance, and greater amounts of maritime traffic are reflected in higher numbers of shipwrecks in certain periods.'
The researchers said during the 2nd century AD, the number of Roman shipwrecks stayed consistent with between 200 and 300 occurring every 50 years.
'Then, at the very end of the 5th century, there is a sharp decline of almost fifty percent in shipwreck numbers,' the team shared.
'The reason for such a severe reduction was most probably due to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century.
'The fall of the west also symbolized the decline of the city of Rome and other western trade cities and their hinterlands, and their subsequent reduction in population.'
The data also showed the number of vessels dropped to just 67 by the second half of the 7th century, signifying that their trade routes were cut off.
'This decline was most probably an outcome of the Persian war, and the Islamic conquest shortly after, which deprived Constantinople of most of the territories that were previously under the rule of the Eastern Roman Empire,' said the researchers.
The Roman and Persian Empires fought to control territories to expand their influence throughout Armenia, Mesopotamia and northern Syria.
These territories were strategically important because they offered more border protection and access to vital trade routes.
The Roman Empire won the war under the leadership of Emperor Heraclius who launched a counterattack deep into Persian territory, catching the army off guard and forcing them into a decisive battle near the ruins of Nineveh.
But the disrupted trade route slowly weakened the Roman Empire, leading to their demise.
The researchers said their findings go against other people who minimize the current climate crisis today by linking the mini ice age that occurred in the 6th century to the fall of the Roman Empire, claiming that it has always occurred and therefore is nothing to be concerned about.
'We think that looking for climate change and plague as the cause for every significant change in history is problematic,' Olshanetsky and Cosijns said.
'This approach can especially harm the current climate change debate when claiming that past climate change caused catastrophic disruptions in society, in cases when there were none or limited effects,' they continued.
'Such claims may inadvertently support arguments that state since climate change has always occurred, the current man-made one is not a serious issue.'
#3
It didn't help that Justinian wasted the resources and manpower of the Eastern Empire trying to resurrect the old Roman Empire in the West*. That and offing your best generals because he was paranoid about his position on the throne.
* some parallel with America and Western Europe there.
#6
They used the Dial of Destiny to travel to the future, saw Gladiator 2, and went back to tell the story.
They discovered that the Romans miscalculated their Persian opponents which caused their downward spiral, leaving them weak and allowing Islam to rise in a manner that essentially wiped out the once-powerful civilization.
The two groups were at war from 54 BC to 628 for control of territories, but the Persians and Sassanians took over Roman trade routes that were critical to their victory.
Posted by: N. Ambrosia ||
11/17/2024 21:25 Comments ||
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#8
Think AND, my dear ACA Joe, not OR. The issue is never a single problem that could have been recovered from, but a bunch of problems, all more or less at the same time.
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.
once a marijuana-busting Caliphornia DA
...every time you hear the phrase 
[JPost] 
..a regional Iranian catspaw,...
