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Hillary and the MSM (main stream media) are blaming Russian hack of DNC and Podesta email for Trump's election win. Obama pledged retaliation for Russian hackers. Chinese Navy captured an unmanned underwater drone lost by US Navy in international waters in China Sea. Gold surged on news. Effort to twist electors arms and throw 2016 presidential selection into the House still going strong. I think the Democrats led by Obama have decided to "poison the well" before Trump takes office, by creating New Cold War with Russia and China, creating crisis to kneecap Trump's first 100 days. Not implausible that CIA feels imperiled by Trump policy of business-friendly foreign policy. http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/12/elite-coup.html

Wikileaks and the CIA I'm putting this thread here in the Politics section because this story shows excellent potential for prompting philosophical discussion about government. Wikileaks made a major data dump today: Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed William mentioned today's Wikileaks dump elsewhere: Milo has a great breakdown of what's in it: Here is Milo's list: I have some preliminary ideas, but I'll mention them as we go along. This one looks like it's going to be fun. At least all hell is breaking loose. Michael

I've already demonstrated that the consulate in Benghazi was a CIA operation, buying looted Libyan weapons and delivering them to "moderate" US-trained Syrian mercenaries who joined ISIS for better wages offered by Saudis and Qataris. That's why Hillary had to erase half of her emails and promote silly NSA disinformation about spontaneous Benghazi protests because a YouTube video insulted the Prophet. Today I'd like to talk about another goofy cover-up. This time it's the Russians. "One can unequivocally say that it [the Sinai A321 crash] was a terrorist act," Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia's FSB security service, told a meeting chaired by President Vladimir Putin, according to a transcript published on the Kremlin's web site. Bortnikov added that during the flight, a homemade device with the power of 1.5 kilograms of TNT was detonated. "As a result, the plane fell apart in the air, which can be explained by the huge scattering of the fuselage parts of the plane." ISIS took credit for it, had jihadis right there to film it while it happened. Pretty straightforward, huh? -- except that it's all rubbish. Let's start with the ISIS video, analyzed frame by frame on the Professional Pilots Rumour Network [PPrune.org], a highly credible international forum that reports and discusses every aircraft incident worldwide: [multiple comments, Nov. 6-8] The perspective seems to be wrong for a plane that is at 33,000 ft filmed from the ground... The angles are all wrong for that height, the poor quality is telling of a CGI mock up, the explosion is totally bizarre in its nature, smoke a bit strange how it starts straight away so thickly (think about it) and going by the debris alone, no way it would be such a large fireball, it would show up on any rear part of the aircraft in fire damage and soot. It looks like an iPhone filming a tv screen... Video game footage filmed from a tv screen with a phone camera... Not characteristic of footage taken with a long lens of a subject at least 7 miles away... Lighting is all wrong; it should be coming from the right and below... the alleged ISIS video shows what appears to be an explosion at the centre fuel tank followed by a trail of black smoke as the plane flies on with the tail still attached, no sign of any large parts detaching from aircraft. The VS [vertical stabilizer] section debris on the ground shows no sign of the heavy sooting I would expect if the video were genuine... Smoke drifts back 37 pixels, or 116 ft/sec (80mph) if the plane was directly above the camera, or 232 ft/sec (160 mph) if the plane was only 30 degrees above the horizon. We know that the plane was going far faster than that... Blackness of the smoke at a distance of many miles, and the slow speed of the smoke relative to the airplane lead me to believe that this is shoddy visual effects work. It could easily have been done by anybody during the 24 hours between the crash and the release of the video. Same thing happened with the Paris shooting massacre. ISIS propaganda geeks saw internet news stories and then claimed credit for something that was planned by freelance jihadis in Belgium. No connection with any "mastermind" or paymaster in Raqqa. Let's move on to the question of whether the Russian charter A321 was blown up by a bomb. Nov. 17 - Egyptian authorities have detained two employees of Sharm al-Sheikh airport in connection with the downing of a Russian jet on Oct. 31, killing all 224 people on board, security officials said on Tuesday. "Seventeen people are being held, two of them are suspected of helping whoever planted the bomb on the plane at Sharm al-Sheikh airport," one of the officials said. Gee. That settles it, huh? Somebody at the airport put a bomb on the plane. [multiple PPrune comments, Nov. 6-8] No clear evidence of high velocity fragments or blast or flash on the outside of components and parts of the plane that are visible on pictures in the public domain, and certainly not many ‘possibles’ in this respect. Amazingly clean wreckage. Break-up fracture lines include quite a few that are along what I call "production breaks," where with an explosion you would expect multiple more ragged edges... RUS and EGY experts officially stated earlier that no traces of explosives have been found on any of the examined victims... Last recorded airspeed was 281 knots IAS, no drastic speed drop on flight data recorders, means tail separation was before speed drop... It seems likely that aerodynamic forces were the cause of the failure at the aft bulkhead, as opposed to a result of the failure... CVR recording apparently ended with a bang right at the point of the failure or tenths of a second later which would be explained by failure of the horizontal stabilizer, the fracture of the fuselage, and the resultant departure of the tail -- all of which would have happened in a few moments at the longest... The posit that the explosion took out a wiring loom is impractical for a huge variety or reasons. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, just that it is extremely, extremely unlikely. It seems evident that the [flight data and cockpit voice] boxes were separated from the aircraft nearly instantly from the moment of failure... There is far more evidence to support a structurally catastrophic failure as opposed to a bomb. Wait a minute. How could structural failure happen all of a sudden with no bomb? [PPrune comments, Nov. 6] I find it impossible to believe that a bomb could be placed in the cargo hold and not damage any luggage/suitcases etc. The pictures we have seen so far, they have looked in pretty good condition despite what's happened. A bomb on the upper deck would surely demonstrate more shrapnel damage and/or leave behind a trace that any fully trained investigator would be able to spot. My money is still on the tail strike incident... A charter plane would be treated in a similar manner as a courtesy car would be. Maintained to the bare minimum/legal requirement and slightly lax care/consideration for it... When leasing out an aircraft the lessor will indeed only do the absolute bare minimum required, using the cheapest maintenance facilities and cheapest parts. Maintenance standards mean nothing to them, its all about stamps on paper to show legal compliance. If the aircraft does crash, the airline takes the rap, and the lessor gets a big fat insurance cheque for the value of the lost asset and lost future rent... The plane had a 3 month repair period after a severe tailstrike in Cairo 2001. What do we know about that repair, who did it, were they qualified etc (remember JAL123 had her tail repaired by Boeing in Haneda in 1978 only for that "official" repair to fail in 1985). Tailstrike: banging the tail of the aircraft hard on concrete while landing Tailstrike damage, supposedly repaired, crashed China 747 Flight 611: "After repeated cycles of depressurization and pressurization during flight, the weakened hull gradually started to crack and finally broke open in mid-flight on 25 May 2002, coincidentally 22 years to the day after the faulty repair was made on the damaged tail. An explosive decompression of the aircraft occurred once the crack opened up, causing the complete disintegration of the aircraft in mid-air. This was not the first time that a plane had crashed because of a faulty repair following a tailstrike. On 12 August 1985, 17 years before the Flight 611 crash and 7 years after the accident aircraft's repair, Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashed when the vertical stabilizer was torn off and the hydraulic systems severed by explosive decompression, killing 520 of the 524 people on board. That crash had been attributed to a faulty repair to the rear pressure bulkhead, which had been damaged in 1978 in a tailstrike incident. In both crashes, the faulty repair had been an incorrectly installed doubler plate that was not installed according to Boeing standards." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_611 Putin likes the ISIS bomb, gives him international political standing to destroy ISIS and save Assad, to keep and expand his Russian naval base in Syria. He can't fess up about sloppy aircraft maintenance. ISIS claims credit for bombing the aircraft over Sinai, to drum up more jihadis and keep the money rolling in from Wahhabi fundamentalist patrons. In reality "this is 30% aircraft investigation and 70% political intrigue" [PPrune comment]

Evidently the United States federal government is now monitoring every American bank and financial transaction whatsoever, while tapping every phone call, and reading every email. Our state Overlords know our phone, electricity, t'v', and internet bills inside out, while also being aware of every book, record, or video we borrow or buy. And, courtesy of mobile phone location transmitters, the Surveillance State now knows practically every physical step we take, and records it all in a giant, privacy-shattering databank forever. You have to wonder: Does Big Brother now also know all our favorite radio and t'v' shows, plus movies and concerts, plus clubs and bars, plus porn videos and sex clubs? Government spying on innocent American citizens currently seems to be almost without limit. It's also essentially without reason or oversight. Our personal sphere has been just about totally invaded and violated. And all of this unprecedented and fathomless evil is done to keep us "safe," and "help" us. What's ineffably sad about all this is none of these governmental Constitution-destroyers, criminals, tyrants, and traitors is going to jail. And most Americans -- mentally beaten down and spiritually crushed -- actually favor this. Evidently the popularly accepted philosophy in the US is "Bend over and take it, slaveboys!" If Jefferson or Madison were alive today they'd probably hate America. They'd do everything in their power to destroy her. They certainly wouldn't seek to somehow radically reform our wayward social system. Their goal would be to terminate it utterly -- and start over from scratch. On the one hand, Muslims are our enemy. And they're everywhere -- abroad and at home. No-one can deny this. Al Qaida, the Taliban, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. all seek to destroy the United States, and they have allies and supporters everywhere. This includes the vast majority of America's roughly six million Muslims. These guys basically love jihad (holy war) and sharia (legal slavery). And they ruthlessly seek to bring these Islamic political goals to a naive and poorly self-defending America. These guys also love shahada (religious martyrdom) and taqiyya (lying about Islam). Such concepts and behaviors advance their jihadi and shariaist ideals. America's Muslims give huge intellectual and moral support to the activists of their philosophy, while also donating billions of dollars a year to groups seeking to nuke America and commit genocide against us. All these foreign and domestic Islamics are true enemies of the American people, and they desperately need to be stopped. The federal government should try to prevent them from doing their Muslim thing. But on the other hand, the freedom-hating, freedom-eviscerating Executive, NSA, DHS, CIA, and FBI are also America's enemies. They seek the termination of the American Constitution, and the institution of a fascist dictatorship, as soon as humanly possible. So the question arises: How do we balance these two monsters -- the muzzies and the feds -- and keep them at each others' throats, but not at ours? There are several good answers to this, but the most important one is this: We need to recognize each side's respective natures and powers. The fact is the Muslims of today are overwhelmingly weak. They're a poor, ignorant, disorganized, and temporary menace, which mostly comes from outside. They have neither the money, nor the weaponry, nor the intellectual underpinnings, nor the moral stature to mount a credible assault. They're easily defeated thru countless simple techniques, such as philosophical refutation, moral condemnation, foreign propaganda, domestic profiling, mass deportation, retaking our Mideast oil, overthrowing the Mideast dictatorships, declaring war on the jihadi groups, etc. So the enemy Muslims aren't really a problem. But today's United States government agents are very different. They're massively strong. The American federal government is a rich, highly-informed, well-organized, and permanent menace, of seeming philosophical and moral legitimacy, which comes from within. Both groups are virulently anti-American and wildly immoral. Both hate our freedom -- what's left of it -- and work hard to savage it. But only one group is an immense danger to our privacy, liberty, way of life, personal greatness, and ultimate happiness. Only one group constitutes an existential threat.