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The Syria and Turkey Mess I just came across this and it made my day. One president. Not a ruling class. Well, there's this, too. Watching the Neocons and other anti-Trumpers melt down is lots of fun. On another OL thread where President Trump's current change in Syrian policy is being discussed, I recently wrote this. Let's see how things develop. I expect discussion and trade with the threat of guns will speak louder than guns and crony profits to resolve this thing. For example, President Trump first announced the carrot saying US troops are getting out of Syria, then the stick: Trump Threatens to ‘Destroy’ Turkey’s Economy if It Does Anything ‘Off Limits’ in Syria Wanna bet there's a lot of trade deals being made as this thing unfolds? You know, the kind where the citizens of each country prosper, not just the industrial military complex cronies. And nobody gets shot or blown up so someone else can increase their income. Michael

Is Reality Imitating Spin? The phrase should be "art imitating reality," but just like wag the dog, we have reality imitating propaganda (with a spin of its own). 1. Here is the spin. Look at the recent campaign ad against candidate for Virginia governor, Ed Gillespie. It was pulled yesterday (Oct. 31). (Incidentally, I had to use DuckDuckGo to find the video in search results. The search functions of YouTube and Google itself are getting impossible...) This video is also featured on Real Clear Politics Video: 'Latino Victory Fund' Ad Depicts Ed Gillespie Supporter Terrorizing Minority Children. From the text: 2. Here is Reality. This happened yesterday (Oct. 31). Carnage on the bike path: How truck driver mowed down cyclists and pedestrians over 17 blocks in tourist hotspot in a matter of minutes before smashing into a school bus Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, an ISIS-affiliated terrorist killed 8 people and injured a bunch more by running them over with a rented Home Depot truck. He yelled, "Allahu Akbar," after he smashed into the school bus and jumped from the truck. From the article: And then there's this from today: NYC terror suspect Sayfullo Saipov brags about attack from hospital bed There we have it. Two stories. One spin. And one reality. It looks like reality imitated the spin with a twist... Michael

I looked and don't see any recent articles about Ed Cline on this forum, so I'm assuming that his plight has not been discussed. I'm assuming most people know who he is. He has contributed to this forum in the past. At any rate, I'm very concerned about his current situation. The short version of the back story is this: Ed has written articles on his Rule of Reason blog that are critical of ISIS. ISIS put him on a hit list. Consequently, the FBI visited him to warn him about the hit list. He made the mistake of telling his landlord why the FBI visited him and his landlord has told him that he must leave. A friend of Ed's set up a GoFundMe page to help Ed raise the money that he needs to move. You can visit it to learn more about his situation and to donate if you feel like it. Recently, Front Page Magazine wrote an article about Ed's plight. Based on that article, I decided to write a letter (in the form of an email message) to Ed's landlord expressing my displeasure over their actions. Here is a copy of my letter and I encourage others to also contact his landlord. Perhaps if they realize that their move is generating negative publicity, they will relent. To office@lawsonenterprisesinc.com Hi, I don't know you and you don't know me, however I am very disturbed by some of the reports I have heard about your company. In particular, I have heard that you plan to evict one of your tenants as a result of a threat that he received from a foreign terrorist organization. I find that offensive. I know that man that you intend to evict. I don't know him personally, but I have long followed his career and I know him to be a man of courage and principle. I also know that he is getting old and is not a man of means. He has continued his entire life to fight the good fight, to support himself, to defend American values, and to conduct himself with virtue and integrity. And for that, you have decided to kick him to the street. I don't know what kinds of values you have or pretend to have, but there can be little excuse for treating an honest hard working American in the manner that you apparently intend. ISIS may have threatened him, but to pretend that you are evicting him for the safety of your other tenants is tantamount to hiding behind the skirts of women. ISIS is not an immediate threat to anyone on American soil and to pretend that it is begs the question of your actual motives. Though I don't know you, I can only imagine what values you must secretly support when you so easily turn your back on a virtuous and patriotic American. I simply ask that you reconsider your proposed action. Perhaps some soul searching is in order. What do you truly believe and why? Do you consider yourself a patriotic American? Or are you secretly an enemy of the values that made this country great? I intend to publish this note as an open letter and to encourage others to contact you. If you have no character, at least consider your reputation. Sincerely, Darrell Hougen

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]

More upcoming Horror from Islam: http://www.city-journal.org/2015/eon0526mt.html#.VWUVCriRqwc.facebook. Why the hell can't America, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, NATO, or some other semi-decent nation land a few troops there, and protect the priceless and irreplaceable heritage of mankind? Must Raw Evil triumph so clearly and loudly in the face of the impotent and feckless West?