[Aljazeera] For years, private armies have provided services to governments around the world. They are often secretive and operate in the shadows.
Blackwater - now known as Academi - is one of the most well-known private armies. It has provided troops and other services to the US government in different conflicts, including the Iraq war.
But it is not always clear how these private armies are formed, where they operate, or even what their missions consist of.
Eeben Barlow is chairman of 'Specialised Tasks, Training, Equipment and Protection International' - a private army that - according to Barlow - has operated throughout Africa and beyond. He was also behind another similar company that shut down in 1998 - called Executive Outcomes.
[The Hill] The U.S. Department of Transportation has fined Delta Air Lines $50,000 for "discriminatory conduct" related to two 2016 incidents in which three Muslim passengers were removed from flights.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) filed a consent order claiming Delta violated the law "when it removed and denied re-boarding" to the Muslim customers, according to NBC. The order also requires that all cabin crew members and service staff involved in the two incidents take cultural-sensitivity training.
Following these suspicions, the captain asked security to remove the passengers from the plane for additional vetting and they were later denied re-boarding, the DOT said.
If not for the couple's "perceived religion, Delta would not have removed or denied them re-boarding," the order said.
Five days later, the second incident happened when a Muslim man boarded a flight from Amsterdam to New York City.
According to DOT, the man removed was witnessed making "significant eye contact" with passengers at the gate and was seen to be given a small package by a man with a similar ethnicity who did not board the plane.
The first discriminatory occurrence was on July 26, 2016, when a Muslim married couple boarded a flight in Paris to return to their home in Cincinnati.
A passenger told a flight attendant that the couple made her uncomfortable, citing an instance where the Muslim husband allegedly inserted "something plastic into his watch" and did "something with it." The passenger described the couple as "fidgety, nervous, and sweating," according to the consent order.
Flight attendants claimed that the husband was texting on his phone and using the word 'Allah' several times. They also noted that he did not smile after making eye contact with the attendants.
#4
Sounds like Delta had reasonable cause to boot them off the plane in each case. If they (Delta) had established procedures for this stuff and followed them, I don't see the need for an investigation, much less a fine.
And if I ever was forced into one of these 'cultural sensitivity training' Clockwork Orange replays, I'd give them the hardest time possible every single minute of those lectures without getting tossed from the room. That's 'cause I walk the line...
#6
I remember taking some of these sensitivity training courses at work. The only way I could pass them was by giving the answers that I thought were wrong.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/27/2020 12:12 Comments ||
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h/t Instapundit
[Sultan Knish] - Call it a tale of two girls. And a tale of two Englands.
One is an actress who grew up to marry a prince, lavished with luxuries, amassing a fortune, before her tantrums and antics drove her to depart her newfound royal family for a Canadian billionaire’s manor.
The other was put into foster care when she was only 8, by the age of 13 she was being raped by a Muslim sex grooming gang, and by 15, Victoria Agoglia was already dead of a heroin overdose injected by the 50-year-old Muslim pedophile who had been abusing her. Today, she would have been a woman.
Unlike Meghan Markle, Victoria never got the opportunity to marry a prince or even grow up. And while the media weeps for Markle, who is departing for Canada because of some tabloid tales, the story of Victoria, once again in the news because of the release of an independent report on the sex grooming gangs of Manchester, shows what true social injustice looks like. It’s not bad publicity for a celebrity.
It’s a girl who was abandoned to the worst imaginable abuses because intervening would have been politically incorrect.
[Strat Culture Foundation] Since the end of the Cold War it seems almost like US/NATO forces have been looking for even the slightest casus belli to start a destabilizing conflict in a foreign nation. But these military actions have been exclusively focused on targets that are very far away from the homeland. Distant locations like the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria were all on the bad end of a "well intentioned" intervention with crippling results for the local population. However, now President Donald Trump is offering to intervene in Mexico to help them with their drug cartel problem, which is in many ways also America’s drug cartel problem. Naturally the answer from the Mexicans was negative, but Washington isn’t known to take "no" for an answer and if the US does take action in Mexico it will be a very different type of conflict due to its proximity.
A US military intervention in Mexico would mean three very important things for America’s near future.
#2
If we were to smash the cartels and establish an American protectorate over all regions north of the D.F. it would be a boon for Mexico and for us. Migrants would stay in the Protectorate zone. Employment would increase there. Both nations' GDP growth would be increased.
Nationalistic Mexicanos and the shitty Mexican elite could continue to stew in their corruption and still have their villas and could still hang out at their favorite Pacific and Caribbean resorts; we'd be taking over politically the dry and barren lands that we've already transformed economically.
#3
Tell them to clean it up or we are sending in the Cav.
Posted by: 49 pan ||
01/27/2020 11:43 Comments ||
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#4
Wait a minute, folks. This doesn't sound like a good idea to me. Chances are it'd be a costly guerrilla war with a lot more casualties that anybody would like and it'd drag on for years. Better to build the wall. We wouldn't need to declare war to just shoot anybody who tried to come over, under, around or through it.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/27/2020 12:20 Comments ||
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#5
Negotiating strategy: "Fund and build the wall, ASAP, or we're going in. Your choice...
... Democrats"
#7
Let them have all the natural, mineral, agricultural wealth. Anything to stop the migrants. They're killing this country's schools, ruining our health care system, destroying public safety and public budgets, undermining rule of law.
Just do what we were told, back in the days of Perot and Gore debates, NAFTA would achieve but in fact caused the opposite: stop the f---ing invasion.
[Red State] - In 2016, all the experts predicted economic disaster if candidate Donald Trump was elected president.
...Then there was Nobel laureate Paul Krugman’s prediction of "economic doom" in an opinion piece the day after the election.
...Of course, none of these people have acknowledged that they were wrong. To the contrary, they have been naysaying US economic growth for three years now and predicting a recession at every turn, but the state of the US economy is such that they have effectively been at least silenced if not shamed. President Trump’s economic accomplishments are unparalleled:
...The experts predicted economic doom after passed their first Brexit referendum in 2016, too.
...PWC’s global CEO survey found that European chief executives regard Britain as a key market for growth and investment.
...More than a thousand banks, asset managers, payments companies and insurers in the European Union plan to open offices in post-Brexit Britain so they can continue serving UK clients, regulatory consultancy Bovill said.
"These figures clearly show that many firms see the UK as Europe’s premier financial services hub," said Michael Johnson, a consultant at Bovill.
...Funny how unshackling economies from excessive regulations leads to economic growth, isn’t it? Getting out from under Brussels will be a boon to the Brits just as getting out from under Obama-era regulations worked wonders for the US economy. Capitalism works every time it is tried. It would appear that the "experts" are all Keynesian economists. It seems to me that they need to get right with the Austrian school of economics.
#3
If Trump had lowered their rent-seeking a bit more it would've been an economic disaster for them, and a boom for the rest of us.
I heard Trump talking about another round of tax cuts; I bet that's a second term priority, if not sooner. I'm sure he's got lots of other stuff ready to go, and I'd think your suggestion is in there somewhere, in one form or another.
My god - this newspaper's been half lefty for at least a decade now. I could never imaging William Loeb or even Nackey Loeb (former publishers back when it was the Manchester Union Leader) endorsing chumps from the Democratic party, especially someone as vapid and uninspiring as Captain Salad Comb.
[NH Union Leader, via Drudge] - If you are a New Hampshire voter who thinks Donald Trump is doing a good job, you can probably sleep in on primary day, Feb. 11. Try as they might, his Republican challengers have not made a dent in the President’s popularity within the party here.
If you are an independent or Democrat, however, yours may be one of the most consequential votes ever cast in a New Hampshire Primary. If there is to be any realistic challenge to Trump in November, the Democratic nominee needs to have a proven and substantial record of accomplishment across party lines, an ability to unite rather than divide, and the strength and stamina to go toe-to-toe with the Tweeter-in-Chief.
That would be U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. She is sharp and witty, with a commanding understanding of both history and the inner workings of Capitol Hill.
Trump doesn’t want to face her.
It won't matter who Trump faces; they're gonna get schlonged.
Ya, right Amy. Of course the Moscow on the Mississippi Twin Cities Pravda media won't report a shit thing your ass hat pie hole spouts.
Klobuchar, who launched her campaign in February, raised $5.2 million in the first quarter, nearly $4 million in the second quarter and $4.8 million in the third quarter.
#5
Why anybody thinks she's a feasible candidate for anything but a throat punch is beyond me. What a dislikeable POS
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/27/2020 11:11 Comments ||
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#6
Another Minnesota candidate. Pardon me if you're from Minnesota but I can't help remembering Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale, socialists in their hearts, all too willing to go along with the likes of Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter. The results were always regrettable.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/27/2020 12:32 Comments ||
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#7
My feeling on senators sitting on the jury of the impeachment is that any declared presidential candidate should have to recuse themselves from the trial. They clearly have a conflict of interest.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/27/2020 19:07 Comments ||
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[Free Beacon] Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D., Mass.) campaign warned the candidate's supporters Friday about potential "breathless media narratives" following the first caucus votes in Iowa, moving to dampen expectations about her electoral performance.
In a fundraising memo to supporters, campaign manager Roger Lau highlighted the Warren team's "robust staff footprint" in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, while noting in a graphic that the states' combined 155 delegates represented just 3.9 percent of the total.
"For the last 13 months we have built and executed our plan to win," Lau wrote. "We expect this to be a long nomination fight and have built our campaign to sustain well past Super Tuesday and stay resilient no matter what breathless media narratives come when voting begins."
#1
No doubt focusing her warpath on the Trail of Tears states.
Which have maybe 0.9% of the total delegates.
If/when she drops out and goes back to the wigwam, wonder how many of her supporters will go over to Bernie-Squeaky... he just might win the nomination.
[American Thinker] - I am not suggesting that we not remain alert, nor am I suggesting that we cast caution to the winds, but this present coronavirus will probably be nowhere near as deadly as many Chicken Littles are predicting.
Why?
Because, quite often, it is not the virus itself, but the secondary infections that are so deadly.
The majority of deaths during the influenza pandemic of 1918‐1919 were not caused by the influenza virus acting alone, report researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. Instead, most victims succumbed to bacterial pneumonia following influenza virus infection. The pneumonia was caused when bacteria that normally inhabit the nose and throat invaded the lungs along a pathway created when the virus destroyed the cells that line the bronchial tubes and lungs.
Did you catch that? It was bacteria, piggybacking on top of viral damage, that caused the fatalities.
However, unlike 1918, today, medicine has an arsenal of antibiotics available to fight such bacteria ‐ antibiotics that were not available in 1918. And yes, some bacteria have developed resistance, but not all. In plain terms, medicine has a better fighting chance.
In many cases, a course of antibiotics and acetaminophen (Tylenol) to control the fever might prove sufficient. However, there will be worse cases.
The 1918 flu also caused a cytokine storm, where the body's immune system over-reacted.
[T]he 1918 strain seems to trigger a particularly intense response from the immune system, including a 'cytokine storm' ‐ the rapid release of immune cells and inflammatory molecules. Although a robust immune response should help us fight infection, an over-reaction of this kind can overload the body, leading to severe inflammation and a build-up of fluid in the lungs that could increase the chance of secondary infections.
Can you say...steroids? Prednisolone was discovered in the 1950s. Variations such as prednisone, Solu-Medrol, etc. are quite common today.
Such steroids are quite powerful and work fast. They can bring down inflammation at miraculous speeds. Anyone who has had shock, an auto-immune disease, a severe arthritis flare-up, or severe asthma knows that an injection of steroids (Solu-Medrol) can often clear up the situation in a matter of minutes. Anyone who has had a transplant knows how steroids can prevent the body from rejecting a new organ.
[Solu-Medrol] is usually given by slow injection into a vein or directly into a muscle, as directed by your doctor. The dosage is based on your medical condition and response to treatment.
Today, doctors might give a patient dosages of steroids during the worst of the flu to control inflammation, swollen bronchial tubes, etc. After the initial intravenous delivery of steroids, the doctors will slowly reduce the patient down to oral prednisone, and then ideally off the steroids for good.
However, the astute will caution that steroids have side-effects. Which we know how to deal with
As I understand it, steroids like prednisone don’t cause problems unless used long term — irritability and increased appetite are certainly manageable in the short term... and my house always ends up cleaner thanks to the energy burst when I’m on a prednisone taper, which nobody around here complains about. Short term use sounds an awful lot less risky than letting the disease run its course.
...Between antibiotics and steroids, the fatalities that come with flu should drastically decrease. The fatalities that come with murder ‐ a wife who kills her husband in a fit of roid rage, after he asks why she put on so much weight ‐ might see a temporary spike.
The point is that whatever this coronavirus is, it will probably not be anywhere near as deadly as former plagues were. Hospitals in the West come stocked with antibiotics and steroids. While some of the newer antibiotics are in short supply, they might not even be needed, as older antibiotics may prove sufficient.
Do not panic, not matter how much the media hypes this.
#1
Thank you for putting the source in square brackets at the top of the article, g(r)omgoru. Because you did, I was able to find the URL you forgot to paste into the source box. <3
#2
Did you catch that? It was bacteria, piggybacking on top of viral damage, that caused the fatalities.
I'm sure it was a great consolation to the people that died to know they died from complications and not the flu itself.
An interesting bit about the 1918 flu was that a great many of the deaths were in the 20-40 year old range, not just the usual very young and very old. This was a result of immune system overreaction, the cytokine storm article mentions.
Prediction: Lots of deaths in the developing world with high populations and fewer health care resources. It won't be a big deal in 1st World countries with better health care and sanitation.
Any time there is a problem, it is important to make a distinction between over-blown media hysteria and the actual problem. Y2K was a fine example. According to the media, it was the end of the civilization. In the real world, there was a lot of software and hardware that needed attention, but nothing that couldn't be fixed. It took time and money, but we did it. Apocalypse averted! Now go wash your hands.
#6
I believe patient confidentiality has allowed things to go on that people should be aware of. Many times I have been made aware of health issues not public knowledge. In the last two weeks hospital admissions of individuals 2 specifically with stomach flu causing bilateral paralysis of arms and legs. 40 year old men. 2 others admitted with similar problems. The first two shipped out to major hospitals due to inability to manage patients issues. I hope to be contacted by mother of one of the men for answers. She is a highly skilled Nurse frustrated by lack of results. Perhaps I will never know as this sort of thing is not likely to be published. Managed as in China.
#8
The incubation period (reportedly up to two weeks) makes quarantining travel from Wuhan difficult, but not insurmountable
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/27/2020 11:09 Comments ||
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#9
My wife is on steroids (prednisone 5 mg day) for long term maintenance of vasculitis..which can be deadly...she has not had any flare ups (inflammation) since April 2015..
[Aspen Beat] To the fun-loving bureaucrats running Harvard, personality is measurable by your skin color and your sex life. They believe that good personalities are found in blacks, Hispanics, gays, transgenders, whites and just about everyone else, in roughly that order.
Except Asians. Harvard says Asians have bad personalities. And so to be admitted, Asians need an SAT score about 140 points higher than whites and about 450 points higher than blacks.
Ah geez, just call me racist. If you don’t like what I’m saying, you will anyway.
Posted by: mercutio ||
01/27/2020 07:40 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
#1
I wouldn't say Asians have bad personalities. I will say, however, in my vast experience being near and around Asians nearly every day for twenty years, is that a lot of the recent 'off the boat' immigrants lack manners and / or behave rudely (my emphasis on the former) with a healthy dose of inconsideration thrown in. The ones born here aren't as bad but do exhibit those same attributes.
#2
As if by magic, the Asian applicants to Harvard scored more than two standard deviations lower on the Admissions Committee's "Personal[ity]" assessment - despite being highly rated by the alumni who interviewed them.
Wonder of wonders, the Afr-American applicants to Harvard scored more than two standard deviations higher on the Admissions Committee's "Personal[ity]" assessment.
[Powerline] - From early in our nation’s history, America’s intellectuals have mostly looked down on their own country and yearned for it to be like someplace else‐someplace more sophisticated, and more in tune with "modern" intellectual currents, whatever they might be at the moment. That is a long history, which I will skip over. In our own time, American intellectuals have claimed that Soviet Russia, Germany and Japan were harbingers of the future that the U.S. needed to imitate. In each case, the point was that we had to shed our archaic freedoms and enter the brave new world of central planning under the control‐benign, of course!‐of intellectuals and bureaucrats. Strangely, however, American free enterprise has managed to outlast and surpass all of those supposedly more advanced challengers.
Most recently, China has been the favored nation of the future. It has the advantage over Germany and Japan of being straightforwardly authoritarian (if no longer exactly Communist), which endeared it to anti-democratic liberals like Tom Friedman. Thus, liberals have eagerly calculated the future time when China’s GDP‐or alleged GDP, as dictatorships have always been better at producing statistics than goods and services‐would surpass ours. Given that China has three times our population, that would not seem to be a signal accomplishment. Nevertheless, liberals looked forward to it.
...I could be wrong; it has happened once or twice. But I suspect that the current public health crisis spells the end of China envy among American intellectuals. The context, of course, is the Trump administration’s standing up to China’s dictators. Like Toto, Trump has pulled back the curtain on the Chinese fraud. To coin a phrase, one might say that China’s economic "juggernaut" is in fact a paper tiger.
#5
Of all the moronic policies foisted on this nation by our shitty Global-Grifter Uniparty these last 30 years, tying our economy tightly to China and fueling their rise from basket-case to superpower was without question the stupidest.
The China Free-Trade El Dorado has been the wet dream of every Yankee trader, Protestant missionary and English imperialist for 200 years.
In 1971 Kissinger and Nixon stepped in and introduced a very different, coolly realpolitik game: play the China card vs Brezhnev's USSR.
After this smashing success, and Nixon's resignation and the Ford Ditherment, Nixon and Kissinger left the scene and the Grifters and cookie-pushers took over. They hihacked a very sensible foreign policy and perverted it, setting us on the road to ruin.
First the missionary impulse (Jimmuh) and the Yankee trader impulse (Reagan & his successors) took over. At that point, Kissinger-- old cynic that he is-- went along for the (consulting) ride, I think...
In short Kissinger isn't blameless but his contribution was mixed, as much positive (during the Cold War) as negative (going along with post-Cold War grifting). Primary blame belongs elsewhere: plenty to go round, including shitty tech industry CEOs and VCs especially.
#9
Xi isn't so much worried about the virus it self but that the Chinese and other Asians will take it as meaning he has lost "The Mandate of Heaven " . When that happens things will get very ugly.
#11
Astonishing, and depressing, to think of what extraordinary opportunities this nation had thirty years go when the Soviet Bloc collapsed and China was a basket case economy if no consequence to anyone.
A thought experiment: Imagine if we had had a Jacksonian administration throughout the 1990s. We likely would not have expanded NATO beyond maybe Poland at most. Unlikely that in 2002-03 we would have launched a two-decades long land war in Asia, instead maybe stomping the p!ss out of the talibs, deposing Saddam and leaving the Ba'athists in power (outside of Kurdistan). And faking our troops OUT.
A Jacksonian would likely not have allowed the Wall St Grifters to dominate our economy as they did (and are beginning to do again)-- maybe we could have avoided their tanking the world's economy in 2008. And we could have prevented the whole Zero nightmare, the Iran Grift, BLM and MeToo madness... Sigh.
#13
#11 Yes. Continuing your thought experiment: Jacksonians would never have gone into Somalia. And without the subsequent "Blackhawk Down" withdrawal fish food would never have gotten the idea for 9/11 in the first place.
#14
Also no Bosnian intervention. Possibly no backlash against us by nearly the entire Russian population, and possibly friendly relations now with Russia.
IOW, a Jacksonian would have kept China DOWN and allowed us and the Russians to collaborate on containing China and suppressing Islamists.
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.
[The Hill] The U.S. Department of Transportation has fined Delta Air Lines $50,000 for "discriminatory conduct" related to two 2016 incidents in which three Muslim passengers were removed from flights.
[Aspen Beat] To the fun-loving bureaucrats running Harvard, personality is measurable by your skin color and your sex life. They believe that good personalities are found in blacks, Hispanics, gays, transgenders, whites and just about everyone else, in roughly that order.
