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US raids kill 15 militants in Yemen
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Page 4: Opinion
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15 22:11 USN, Ret. [8] 
13 23:06 JosephMendiola [6] 
1 11:47 Mike Ramsey [1] 
7 00:00 JosephMendiola [7] 
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Page 1: WoT Operations
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Page 2: WoT Background
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1 18:06 Paul D [1]
4 11:15 Bright Pebbles [2]
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1 11:04 Bill Clinton [1]
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Page 3: Non-WoT
5 23:06 Lonzo the Lesser4370 [6]
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2 19:18 Thealet Phearong5452 [5]
8 11:18 Bright Pebbles [2]
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Page 6: Politix
1 21:28 Bright Pebbles [4]
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1 17:18 Chenter Barnsmell9450 [1]
1 15:58 gorb [2]
24 23:52 Lonzo the Lesser4370 [4]
-Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
Um, Got it Wrong - Not Global Warming, But Acid Seas. No, Really
Here we go, again.
It's a resilient religion. When one god is brought down another is raised up...
How long until this particular computer model is inspected and found wanting? Or will that effort be preempted by the observation that the oceans have been more acidic in the past, at times when coral reefs did just fine...
Posted by: Mercutio || 02/01/2012 11:50 || Comments || Link || [6 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Seas are moving from Alkali towards more neutral.

It's Pure spin to say seas are getting acidic.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 02/01/2012 12:20 Comments || Top||

#2  A long article with no actual pH data.

Per elsewhere, between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.25 to 8.14 with the arctic acidification greater and the tropical acidification less so
Posted by: Lord Garth || 02/01/2012 12:31 Comments || Top||

#3  Alkaline seas, even worse.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 02/01/2012 12:50 Comments || Top||

#4  Don't drink the water Kool-aid.
Posted by: Mercutio || 02/01/2012 12:59 Comments || Top||

#5  They have been trying everything since the 70s to convince us that CO2 is evil and we need to stop using fossil fuels to keep whatever disaster they predict from happening.

I am almost to the point that if someone whines about "greenhouse" gasses and the damage man has done with them I will punch the dumb fuck in the face.
Posted by: DarthVader || 02/01/2012 13:47 Comments || Top||

#6  Check out The Ocean Is Not Getting Acidified
Posted by: Mike Ramsey || 02/01/2012 14:05 Comments || Top||

#7  Good article, Mike. And awfully fast off the mark!
Posted by: trailing wife || 02/01/2012 15:31 Comments || Top||

#8  Whatever factoids must be cherry-picked in order to preserve the grant money and the narrative WILL be cherry-picked.

Resistance is futile.
Posted by: no mo URL || 02/01/2012 15:44 Comments || Top||

#9  That's me. Foreign computer and speed typing. Bad combination.
Posted by: no mo uro || 02/01/2012 15:46 Comments || Top||

#10  "Nature Climate Change"? Please say it ain't so...the journal Nature now has a spin off journal devoted to climate change...please kill me...
Posted by: Chemist || 02/01/2012 18:08 Comments || Top||

#11  I'd rather kill them, Chemist....
Posted by: Barbara || 02/01/2012 18:11 Comments || Top||

#12  "PEAK TREES/WOOD/FORESTS" + "PEAK TUNA"

versus

THE MIGHTY "SLUSHY" = NEW ICE AGE/MINI-ICE AGE???

"Icy, but not Frozen", as James Bond 007 would paraph.

I say "slushy", in part, in remembrance of childhood dreams/visions where I seemingly dipped my hand + arm into what I preceived as "used to be" the former tropical Pacific.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 02/01/2012 19:31 Comments || Top||

#13  More ...

* WORLD NEWS > [Gizmodo] THIN WE'RE HEADED FOR A NEW ICE AGE? YOU'RE WRONG.

The alleged coming "Mini-Ice Age" may prove to be a SUN-DRIVEN GLOBAL HEAT WAVE/PERIOD THATS JUST NOT AS HOT AS IT SHOULD BE, thanks to minor cooling = icy conditions.

Yet another third-party affirmation of the "Great/Mighty Slushy".

* SAME > FOUR HUGE VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS [ancient]ARE TO BLAME FOR "LITTLE ICE AGE".

As per MADONNA + GUAM TAOTAMONAS, once again Virgina we learn why the "2012" Movie's scene of an Apocalyptic/Cataclysmic Tidal Wave crashing oer the Himalayas + bell-ringing, brave devout Tibetan/Buddhist Monk should had been VOLCANOES [East Asia REGION-WIDE ERUPTIONS = VOLCANISM].

D *** NG IT, YOU DID IT TO US AGAIN, DIDN'T YOU, PICARD/JEAN LUC - THE MONK WASN'T EVEN WEARING GLASSES, + EVEN MADONNA SAYS "NO NIPPLES" FOR THE SUPERBOWL!
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 02/01/2012 23:06 Comments || Top||


Afghanistan
Monbiot: US Fighting Cowardly War 'Cause it Uses Drones
Remember all those columns Monbiot write about the courage of our troops fighting house-to-house in Fallujah? Me Neither.
Remember all his columns denouncing cowardly terrorists who blew up girls' schools?
The ancient Greeks, unlike the Jews or the Christians, invested their gods with human failings. Divine judgment, they believed, was neither flawless nor dispassionate; it was warped by lust, vengeance and self-interest. In the hands of Zeus, the thunderbolt was both an instrument of justice and a weapon of jealousy and revenge.
Monbiot's lucky that the gods don't strike him down for terrible writing. This reads like a lazy high school essay.
Those now dispensing judgment from on high are not gods, though they must feel like it. The people striking mortals down with drones are doubtless as capable as anyone else of self-deception, denial and cognitive illusions. More so, perhaps, as the eminent fictions of the Bush years and the growing delusions of the current president suggest.
So, who's most evillest: W or BO? Clarify, please.
Barack Obama began last week's state of the union address by claiming that the troops who had fought the Iraq war had "made the United States safer and more respected around the world". Like Bush, like the gods, he has begun to create the world he wants to inhabit.
So Bush is like a Greek god and BO's a wannabe?
These power-damaged people have been granted the chance to fulfil one of humankind's abiding fantasies: to vaporise their enemies, as if with a curse or a prayer, effortlessly and from a safe distance.
Pistols at dawn, says Monbiot.
That these powers are already being abused is suggested by the mendacity of those who are deploying them. The CIA, which is running the undeclared and unacknowledged drone war in Pakistan, insists that there have been no recent civilian casualties. So does Obama's chief counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan. It is a blatant whitewash.
Of course if we really wanted to vaporize our enemies from afar, all we need is one Ohio skipper with a bad attitude.
Posted by: Matt || 02/01/2012 13:07 || Comments || Link || [8 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Cowardly, or smart?

Is it cowardly to blow terrorists into chum when the said terrorists would attack unarmed civilians?

Which party is the more cowardly?

Either way, I suspect Monboit is a cowardly fuck himself and a SEAL challenging him to a fistfight would cause the yellow bastard to soil himself and run like hell.
Posted by: DarthVader || 02/01/2012 13:49 Comments || Top||

#2  Actually, if not directly, it makes me wonder how R&D is going on other attack drones.

Even in 1961 a Coyote and Road Runner cartoon predicted how this might work, albeit in a crude and ineffective form.

Instead imagine a large drone aircraft that could deploy perhaps 20 individual guided bomblets, one at a time, perhaps with simple FM guidance, each bomblet designed as a small air burst, shrapnel munition.

Each one having about 4 times the amount of composition B of an M67 frag grenade (6.5oz), with a fragmentation exterior, it would pack a sizable punch to individuals in the open.

In a place like Afghanistan, where medical care is hard to get...
Posted by: Anonymoose || 02/01/2012 14:47 Comments || Top||

#3  That writing was whomever-you-call-god-aweful.

Is this how teh smaht people justify their continued support of Obama and disagreement with his drone policy? Mental diarrhea with corn bit? A D+ in junior high, at best.
Posted by: swksvolFF || 02/01/2012 15:00 Comments || Top||

#4  Oh, and in this context, whitewash is a racist term.
Posted by: swksvolFF || 02/01/2012 15:01 Comments || Top||

#5  It's a hell of a lot better than having 1/4 billion dollar planes shot down with their crews. Moonbat should go back to sucking infected eggs.
Posted by: Water Modem || 02/01/2012 15:03 Comments || Top||

#6  "Fair fights? They're for losers."
Posted by: mojo || 02/01/2012 15:04 Comments || Top||

#7  "monobat supports ground invasion of Pakistan shocker!"
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 02/01/2012 15:11 Comments || Top||

#8  If you look in the comments he believes (his words) that the people being attacked should be able to vote on if drones should be permitted to attack them?

What deranged world is he living in? One where citizens of the Axis voted to allow the allies to bomb them? This would include the cowardly night attacks by the British Landcasters that were cowardly painted black so they wouldn't be hit as much.

Posted by: Water Modem || 02/01/2012 15:16 Comments || Top||

#9  That's because it's not a war, George---it's deworming.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 02/01/2012 15:24 Comments || Top||

#10  Who?
Posted by: Barbara || 02/01/2012 15:36 Comments || Top||

#11  Moonbat Prime.

Unfortunately for all involved, he is paid to write.

Strangly, the Greeks did have what would be sort of fair where both sides would line up with their best on the left and worst on the right, and pound each other until one side's best defeated the other side's worst, and would take the field. That changed at Delium, Boatia vs Athens; Athens was pounding Boatia and Pagondas sent a couple groups of Boatian cavalry around a hill, Athens thought an entire new army was approaching and quit the field with victory in their grasp. Sure there were a number of Athenians talking about unfair tactics and lack of manhood...but from the loser's camp.

Also, the Greeks produced Taktike Theoria, outlining the basics of how to control the battlefield and use technology and training to defeat the enemy.

They may chalk a storm up to the gods, or treachory, but I also have the feeling that when it got down to killing the enemy they knew person, training, and advantage were quite important.
Posted by: swksvolFF || 02/01/2012 16:47 Comments || Top||

#12  Sorry, don't know the whiny bitch.
Am I supposed to?
Posted by: tu3031 || 02/01/2012 19:48 Comments || Top||

#13  ..I think he just volunteered to be point man.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 02/01/2012 20:05 Comments || Top||

#14  Well, they have their cowardly IED's and they care not who gets killed. We merely mounted a firecracker on a model airplane. We do care to try to keep innocents out of the way.
Posted by: newc || 02/01/2012 22:04 Comments || Top||

#15  After clicking on 'Moose's link, i finally made the connection: Bambi is really Wliy E. in the flesh. Think about it; every 'genius' thing he has touched blows up on him. Only difference is, his Acme bombs also splatter us.
Makes me almost wish for an anvil and an airplane.....
Posted by: USN, Ret. || 02/01/2012 22:11 Comments || Top||


Taliban Will Control Afghanistan With Support From Pakistan, Says Leaked Report
Posted by: tipper || 02/01/2012 08:52 || Comments || Link || [7 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Pakistan,Saudi and UAE will be happy again with the Taliban back in charge!
Posted by: Paul D || 02/01/2012 10:51 Comments || Top||

#2  Does it really take some big, long, expensive report to figure out that these barbarians will revert to their old ways as soon as US troops leave?
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 02/01/2012 11:35 Comments || Top||

#3  Had the US wanted a different outcome, it would have used a little extra effort at the very start to set up a new form of government, with an American administrator, MacArthur constitution, and trained every available orphan child with a secular upbringing in boarding schools, to be the next generation of leaders, with no tribal affiliations.

This would have affirmed the superior nature of the western world, and made Afghanistan permanently separate and apart from Pakistan, once we had closed the border between the two.

Putting Karzai in charge was as stupid as if we had put one of Saddam's Sunni lieutenants in charge of Iraq.

Afghanistan would have been far easier to fix because unlike Iraq, it had nothing. No government, no assets, few people left, miniscule wages, and no law only chaos. A 'tabula rasa', a blank slate, we could have rebuilt in any way we chose.

Instead, we tried to recreate their cluster-f*** of a failed semi-government tribal system that is even inferior to a royal government. A castle built of dog crap with a president who has no power beyond its stinky gates.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 02/01/2012 15:31 Comments || Top||

#4  'Moose, ever hear of silk purses etc...
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 02/01/2012 15:38 Comments || Top||

#5  99% Karzai's fault
Posted by: Fat Bob Unotch3711 || 02/01/2012 19:04 Comments || Top||

#6  Once again, TOPIX/WORLD NEWS > {Pak Tribune] PAKISTAN'S RUSH FOR MORE [nuclear] BOMBS - WHY?

Political Jihad = Election, Govt-sharing-happy Radical Islam should no doubt be happy iff Pakistan expands its nuclear arsenal for any reason.

Also, IIRC DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > US INTEL: INDIA PREPARING FOR LIMITED CONFLICT WID CHINA.

Pragmatically, any new SINO-INDIAN WAR will prolly be end outcome of antecendent AFGHAN-PAK or INDO-PAK WAR; or in altern a US-IRAN WAR as Iran has said it has no qualms using the sovereign territories of its neighbors as staging areas for asymmetric anti-US attacks, + wid or widout the consent of their neighbors' Govts.

IOW, THE SCENARIO EXISTS THAT A US-IRAN WAR MAY GO NUKULAAR WIDOUT IRAN PER SE NECESSAR HAVING TO HAVE ANY NUKES.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 02/01/2012 23:59 Comments || Top||

#7  Once again, TOPIX/WORLD NEWS > {Pak Tribune] PAKISTAN'S RUSH FOR MORE [nuclear] BOMBS - WHY?

Political Jihad = Election, Govt-sharing-happy Radical Islam should no doubt be happy iff Pakistan expands its nuclear arsenal for any reason.

Also, IIRC DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > US INTEL: INDIA PREPARING FOR LIMITED CONFLICT WID CHINA.

Pragmatically, any new SINO-INDIAN WAR will prolly be end outcome of antecendent AFGHAN-PAK or INDO-PAK WAR; or in altern a US-IRAN WAR as Iran has said it has no qualms using the sovereign territories of its neighbors as staging areas for asymmetric anti-US attacks, + wid or widout the consent of their neighbors' Govts.

IOW, THE SCENARIO EXISTS THAT A US-IRAN WAR MAY GO NUKULAAR WIDOUT IRAN PER SE NECESSAR HAVING TO HAVE ANY NUKES.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 02/02/2012 0:00 Comments || Top||


The Other Guy's Endgame - Part I
The first part of a long, thoroughly researched and well-written analysis by Wajahat S. Khan for The Friday Times, which weekly gives us the charming "Nuggets From the Urdu Press".
Intro: At Peace with War?

If countries were books, then airports would be their covers. Till the tarmac, Kabul's airport compares in size and dreariness levels with Quetta's. But once inside the terminal, elements of the decade-long war machine begin to glint and grind. The premise of Afghanistan's long conflict and the promise of a lingering peace reveal themselves simultaneously. At war with itself and others, Afghanistan greets its visitors not as an uncomplicated country.

Total and immediate evacuation at the minute the clock strikes 2014 is not an option... '2014 is a goal, not a deadline'
Unclear is whether the Afghans are perfectly comfortable with perpetual bellicosity or seething under occupation. One sees the hoarding for a hotel that promises blast-resistant windows and doors - always a good sign of adaptable hospitality, or hospitable adaptability. Also lurking is the prodigal son, a returned-from-Dubai immigrant lugging two flat-screen TVs, trimmed by his snazzy sunglasses and white imitation-snakeskin shoes. Most of the other passengers on the Safi Air flight are NGO types, but there are a few soldier/spy variants, though in civvies but still sporting their West Point and Annapolis rings. The police guards are randomly placed, shabbily uniformed and ill tempered. The transport C-130 spin-offs on the tarmac have their own coterie of better looking and fear inspiring protectors: armed contractors with blond manes, desert tans tans and angry tattoos that match their weaponry. The immigration officer is not amused by my Pak passport, but he's not interested to investigate much. Outside, kids are exchanging dollars and dinars out of hand-carried display cases. Some US Army, in battle fatigues but not wearing armour, are hanging by a Humvee smoking as they wait for a pick up, probably a buddy from their unit. I'm trying to capture everything, suppressing the panic of my lost luggage that a Safi staffer, in fractured Urdu, has promised will be on the next flight, when I make first contact
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife || 02/01/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:


Africa North
The Middle East, women, sex, and the awful double standard
Posted by: tipper || 02/01/2012 08:41 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:


-Election 2012
‘Islamist Firster’ president not what he claimed
Posted by: tipper || 02/01/2012 16:52 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Ouch.
Posted by: swksvolFF || 02/01/2012 16:59 Comments || Top||


Obama to the nation: Onward civilian soldiers
Posted by: Thretch Cletch3089 || 02/01/2012 10:08 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  "Like other progressive presidents fond of military metaphors, he [B. O.] rejects the patience of politics required by the Constitution he has sworn to uphold."

I thought that George hit the nail on the head.
Posted by: Mike Ramsey || 02/01/2012 11:47 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
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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.
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Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
tu3031
badanov
sherry
ryuge
GolfBravoUSMC
Bright Pebbles
trailing wife
Gloria
Fred
Besoeker
Glenmore
Frank G
3dc
Skidmark

Two weeks of WOT
Wed 2012-02-01
  US raids kill 15 militants in Yemen
Tue 2012-01-31
  12,000 BNP, Jamaat men charged with violence
Mon 2012-01-30
  Assad's family caught trying to escape the country, returned to Damascus
Sun 2012-01-29
  Nigerian military kills 11 militants in northeast
Sat 2012-01-28
  UN loses count on Syria killings
Fri 2012-01-27
  Sectarian clashes kill at least 22 in Yemen
Thu 2012-01-26
  Woman Dead as Bombs, Bullets Rain on Nigeria Police Station
Wed 2012-01-25
  SEALS Spring Two, Bag Nine
Tue 2012-01-24
  EU imposes sanctions on Iran oil
Mon 2012-01-23
  U.S. aircraft carrier goes through Strait of Hormuz without incident
Sun 2012-01-22
  Syrian Forces Kill More than 50 Civilian as Dissidents Clash with Troops
Sat 2012-01-21
  Terror attacks in Kano, Nigeria, kill at least 162
Fri 2012-01-20
  Aslam Awan of Abbottabad Dronezapped
Thu 2012-01-19
  Bangladesh army says plot to topple government foiled
Wed 2012-01-18
  Syria 'absolutely rejects' calls for Arab troops


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