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A Website of Alternative Thinkers & Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

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THE STEAMPUNK SCRAPBOOK: BIGBOY AND 8444 DOUBLE-HEAD

Regular readers here know I have this fascination for three things that I suppose could fall under the category of "steampunk." Those are: (1) artillery (the bigger the better); (2) roller coasters; and (3) steam locomotives, which are I suppose the very essence of "steampunk": clanking, snorting, hissing beasts of valves, tubes, and pressures all bolted together, and dreamed up by engineers doing things the old-fashioned way, on drafting tables, using pencils, and slide rules. When you stop and think what the steam locomotive represents in terms of its engineering achievement, it really is breathtaking.

Well, all that's a bit of context for a story I've followed and blogged about on this website occasionally, and that is the Union Pacific Railroad's purchase and restoration of old steam locomotives to fully functional operations, and their conversion to burn oil, not coal. This effort began in the 1990s, and the railroad restored a 4-6-6-4 "Challenger" articulated locomotive, which you can watch the sheer muscle of this locomotive pulling 143 freight cars over the mountain passes in California, and doing the work of several diesels:

And if you've ever been driving around Wyoming, you might have seen engine 844 chugging along and 75 mph or better (you can find many videos by Skip Weythman on youtube with engine 844; check them out, they're fun to watch).

But a few years ago, Union Pacific brought the largest steam locomotive ever built to its "steam shop" in Cheyenne to begin the process of restoration and conversion, the 4-8-8-4 "Big Boy" articulated locomotive, even bigger than the Challenger in the first video above.

Well, that restoration work has been concluded, and the Big Boy has not only had its first "steam up" and trial run, but has joined engine 844 in a "double-header" expedition to Ogden, Utah:

 

Now, pardon me for cramming so many locomotive videos into one blog. As I say, I can't help it; I have a "thing" for these old beauties and marvels of engineering skill and ingenuity, all done without a scrap of "computer-aided design" in their day, just drafting paper, pencils, triangles, French curves, erasers, and slide rules.

There is, however, method to my madness, and I have blogged about this before, and now, with Big Boy's and 844's double-header to Ogden, it's time for a "revision and extension" of my previous high-octane speculations. As I've mentioned before, the restoration work on these old locomotives has been extensive: fireboxes and boilers needed to be rebuilt, many complex parts needed to be completely manufactured anew. In effect, the process of these restorations has meant - I have argued - that Union Pacific probably now has (re-)acquired the knowledge to manufacture a steam locomotive from the bottom up, from scratch. Additionally, it has had to train engineers to operate and run the monsters, and has had to build out the infrastructure to allow them to operate on the company's track, after all, steam locomotives need fuel and water.

What all this means (as I've also previously argued) is that the railroad is laying out a considerable amount of money, so much, in fact, that I highly doubt it's just because it wants to provide photo opportunities for local "railways heritage days" clubs. Something else is definitely involved, and as I've also speculated, that something may be "EMP," electromagnetic pulse. A conventional diesel electric locomotive will be taken down in a heartbeat; so too, will your automobile (unless, perhaps, it is a model T, but that's another story); likewise most aircraft. But a steam locomotive - all valves and gears and levers - will chug along quite nicely. Hence, behind this "steam locomotive restoration" effort I've suspected a much bigger national security agenda, one to reacquire the know-how to build, repair and maintain, and operate these locomotives. (Since I first blogged about this subject, people both in Australia and in the United Kingdom have written me informing me that similar restoration efforts of steam locomotives are under way in those countries as well.)

Which brings us to the last video above, the one showing engine 844 and the Big Boy "double-heading." Now, if you don't know railroad parlance, double-heading is when two or more locomotives are used to pull a train. You see it all the time with several diesels coupled together at the head (and sometimes the middle and ends) of very long trains. Double-heading is relatively easy to do with diesels, since they are built to be able to do so, with the rates of acceleration and deceleration being controlled from one cab via electronic links to the others so that all the engines are acting in an identical fashion, under unitary control.

But double-heading with steam locomotives is a considerably more complicated business, since these are all analog technologies, and no centralized automated electronic control of the engines is possible (and, if my EMP national-security hypothesis is what lies behind this restoration effort, one wouldn't want to devise such a method anyway since it would be vulnerable to EMP interdiction). Double-heading with steam locomotives requires a great deal of experience from the engineers in the cabs of each locomotive. Yet, double-heading was done in the age of steam, and particularly during the American Civil war when both the Confederacy and the Union used railroads to move massive amounts of troops, supplies, ordnance and so on. And it was done with no means of remote or automated radio communication between cabs.

So what I suspect we're now looking at once again (and under the guise of a "railroad heritage days" event) is a bit of trial and practice, a training exercise on how to double-head with steam locomotives, should the occasion ever arise that it would be necessary to do so.

It does make one wonder, especially since President Trump also recently issued an executive order regarding electromagnetic pulse.

See you on the flip side...

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THE RED MERCURY SAGA: RUSSIANS SAY LITHIUM-6 WAS RED MERCURY

OK... I had to do at least one "fun" blog this week, and T.M. sent this article along, and I couldn't resist. And it's appropriate that the article is based on a report from those always-byzantine-never-to-be-trusted-Russians and their evil-super-genius-criminal-mastermind-martial-arts-expert-who-is-behind-all-conspiracies-of-all-the-ages Dr. Fu Manchu Vladimir Putin.

So what has Mr. Putin and his evil minions and lackeys been up to lately? Why, they now claim that all that red mercury scare that was the favored Nuclear Nightmare of the 1990s, and which occasionally resurfaces in a variety of contexts (most recently as the "culprit" behind those strange bridge fires in Atlanta a few years ago) was really simply a "code" for Lithium-6. But, as you might imagine, there's a bit more to this story than meets the eye. Here's the article, which, you'll note, is really the abstract to an article:

'Red Mercury' is Lithium-6, Russian Weaponsmiths Say

And here's the problematical part:

The name 'red mercury' is a code word used in the USSR nuclear weapons program since the 1950s to describe enriched lithium-6.

Well, that's not really the only problematical part. There's also this:

Lithium-6 has two nuclear weapons uses: as a reactor target for production of tritium, and in the form of lithium-6 deuteride as a thermonuclear weapon material. The most common production process uses large amounts of mercury as chemical agents. The code name originated because mercuric impurities contaminate the lithium- 6 during production, giving it a red color. 'Red mercury' has been identified by many European media reports as 'any of several simple mercuric compounds and tinctures offered for sale by Russian and European agents,' but none of these had any nuclear value. The uses for lithium-6 are consistent with claims about the uses of 'red mercury.' The USSR built a large complex in the early days of their nuclear weapon program to produce and stockpile lithium- 6. Some was also supplied to China in the 1950s. Russian and Western officials have both stated that no lithium-6 from Russian or Chinese inventories has been diverted since the disintegration of the USSR. (Emphasis added)

Well, what's so problematical about that? To answer that question, we'll have to take a short trip around Harvey's Barn. In 2009 I published my book The Nazi International, in which I review the post-World War Two nuclear fusion research of Dr. Ronald Richter, which he was ostensibly conducting for Argentinian dictator Juan Peron. In 1951, Peron gave a press conference where he introduced Dr. Richter, and then made the extraordinary claim that Argentina had discovered the secret to the hydrogen bomb. The world's press denounced Richter as a fraud, and so vociferous was the press response that Peron appointed a young Argentine nuclear physicist, Dr. Jose Balseiro, to head a commission to investigate Richter's claims. Richter was indeed claiming to do the impossible - at least, by the lights at the time. He was claiming to obtain fusion reactions in a compound of lithium-6 (the rest of the compound was unspecified, but may have involved mercury) under extreme rotation and stress, and at temperatures far below that the standard thermonuclear chemistry of the period thought possible. In effect, Richter was making cold fusion claims some decades before Pons and Fleischman would do so.

Dr. Balseiro filed his report, basically pointing all this out, Richter was denounced as a fraud and placed under house arrest by Peron, and that was that.

Until the USA's infamous Castle-Bravo h-bomb test, which ran away to a reaction of about 15 megatons's yield, after a pre-detonation calculation of "only" 7-8 megatons. As I pointed out in The Nazi International, suddenly people in the USA became interested - very secretly interested - in Richter and his work again, and the US Air Force dispatched people to interview him. Meanwhile, the "cover story" of Castle Bravo was put out: the American thermonuclear bomb engineers had not factored in that the lithium-6 would burn in the reaction.

Woops.

Except, that Richter had made this prior claim, and now, the Russians are also implying that they too knew lithium-6 would burn in a thermonuclear reaction as early as the 1950s. Which means either the American story about Castle Bravo's  engineers being incompetent is probably yet another one of those narratives that has to be questioned, because it implies they fully knew and concocted a nonsensical explanation for it. And now we're learning that mercury was used as a chemical agent in some unknown process involving the lithium-6.

It's the presence of Richter in this mix that makes me wonder, once again, if there is not some truth in the red mercury legend, particularly in this current incarnation; it makes me wonder if some mercury "salted" with lithium-6-deuteride and then put into plasma form might not, in fact, under the right conditions, do what was always claimed for "red mercury": detonate with enormous "quasi-nuclear" force.

Finally, most importantly, if this latest admission from Russia is to be believed, then it means one very important thing: the substance called "red mercury" was, and is, real.

See you on the flip side...

 

 

 

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THE NOTRE DAME “REBUILD”: MACRON’S ...

There is already talk of re-building Notre Dame, but the question is, as what? We'll get back to that, but before we do, there is already talk of using the new technology of additive manufacturing or 3D printing to rebuild the cathedral, a process which, incidentally, could conceivably restore the structure more or less to its pre-fire state, according to this article shared by M.W.:

Can Notre-Dame rise from the ashes with 3D printing?

Speaking to FRANCE 24, Eric Geboers, co-founder of Concr3de, said, “As the extent of the damage is becoming clear, it is time to think about how to rebuild this sacred monument that has seen so much history. We propose a strategy to rebuild Notre-Dame in a modern way that maintains the soul and layered history of the building.

“Why not reuse what is left? What if we take the remains of Notre-Dame and use them to build her up again? What if we take the stone that has seen so much history and use that to maintain the soul of the building?”

Rebuilding with the remnants

Concr3de suggests combining old materials with new technologies. They will collect the ash, dust and damaged stone remnants in the nave of the cathedral and turn that into a 3D printable powder. “This powder will have the yellowish grey colour of Parisian stone and will be mixed with the charred remains of the wood. We can use this powder and directly 3D print the destroyed parts of Notre-Dame.

“The ash and limestone that remain would probably make up about half of the required materials. Then we would bind them together. But we would not use any plastics or resins. It would be a much more natural and pure procedure than that.”

“It is impossible to say at this stage exactly how long the work would take, but it would certainly be finished within five years,” said Geboers. “Working with our technique is at least five times faster than cutting stone.

“Of course it will take a lot of work but it is possible. With one large printer, you can produce two cubic metres of material in a day.”

OK, that makes sense, especially if, as Geboers states, one wants to preserve the "soul" of the cathedral, which would seem to imply a restoration of its traditional art-work.

Unfortunately, it would appear that the little popinjay Emanuel Macron's globaloneyist multi-cultural stupidity and hubris knows no bounds, for what he has in mind for the structure is of the same order as his "there's no such thing as French culture" statement that he made at the Verdun memorial, surrounded by the graves of thousands of his countrymen who died in that battle to preserve precisely the culture that Macron said didn't exist. Many people spotted these articles and passed them along:

CHRISLAM RISING: French President Macron Says The Roman Catholic Notre Dame Cathedral In Paris Should Be Rebuilt With Muslim Minarets To ‘Reflect Diversity’ Of France

Macron says Notre Dame should be rebuilt consistent with the modern, diverse France – and architects suggest a glass roof, steel spire and minaret

Now, in case you missed it, the proposals for Notre Dame include (1) turning the top part of it into a greenhouse, and (2) replacing the spire or steeple with a minaret:

Macron’s initial promise to restore the magnificent cathedral to its former glory has been shoved aside. Now he says it will be rebuilt “consistent with our modern, diverse nation”, and at the same time the French Government has announced an international competition to redesign the Notre Dame spire.
After the announcement designers haven’t missed the opportunity to respond with their ideas, proposing that it should not be faithfully restored, but rebuilt with “contemporary” features such as a glass roof, steel spire, or even a minaret.
The Telegraph published an article claiming it would be a “travesty” to restore Notre Dame, while Rolling Stone quoted a Harvard architecture historian as saying that the burning of a building “so overburdened with meaning… feels like an act of liberation.”
Lord Norman Foster, arguably Britain’s most famous modern architect, has unveiled a design topping the ancient cathedral with a glass and steel canopy with a featureless glass and steel spire, which he describes as “a work of art about light” which would be “contemporary and very spiritual and capture the confident spirit of the time”.
...
Perhaps most controversial is a proposal in Domus, the architecture magazine, by Tom Wilkinson, for the fallen spire to be replaced with an Islamic minaret, to memorialize Algerians who protested the French government in the 1960s.
“These victims of the state could be memorialized by replacing the spire with – why not? – a graceful minaret”, Wilkinson insisted.
Yes, by all means, let us rebuild Notre Dame as a multicultural hothouse dedicated to the bland and glittering generalities of globaloneyism such as "the confident spirit of the time" as a "work of art about light." Forget all that Christ and Mary stuff; that's so yesterday. Let us rebuild it as a temple to plants and a shrine to yet another glittering abstraction called "diversity" and "inclusion", and just so everyone feels "included" let us top the whole thing with a minaret (and for good measure, hire a mouezzin to sing the Angelus and call to mass call to prayer). For good measure, we can fill it with Muslim prayer rugs, and have automated Buddhist prayer wheels circling endlessly in front of a tabernacle for the reserved sacrament, which will have an appropriately ecumenical Masonic compass and square on it, and we can put Jewish menorahs on the high altar so everyone will feel "included."
How perfectly wonderful this wonderful vision is. Need I remind you that it will be wonderful? You should feel wonderful about it, because it is wonderful.
Seriously, though, wonderful it may be, but not in the way that Mr. Globaloney intends, for no pious Muslim, nor Roman Catholic, nor Jew would be at home in such a monstrosity, nor want to be near it. Such an agenda - such a twisted vision - requires all of them to commit a kind of apostasy which the "planners" rub their faces in.
The long and short of it is that such plans are not a restoration at all; they are a deliberate mutilation and desecration of a tradition, and let it be noted, the core tradition of this civilization. It is thus a deliberate mutilation of the civilization itself. It is the continuation of what the fire itself was unable to complete.
And that should tell us something about the current "leadership" of the West: they care nothing - absolutely nothing - for the central core of this culture and civilization (or for that matter, the core of the cultures they want to "include"). In fact, they hate it, and will stop at nothing to mar it, mutilate it, desecrate it, and in the process, mar, mutilate, and desecrate the other cultures they've brought into this one in the name of "diversity" and "inclusion," for what they plan to do to Notre Dame today, they can do to the Grand Mosque at Mecca, to the Dome of the Rock, to Lhasa Asa, to Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow tomorrow (you know, the one that Stalin dynamited to make room for some ridiculous Soviet "temple" to the "new man"). The Russians, at least, had the right idea: they rebuilt the cathedral, on its original location, in its original form, and put it to its original use.
But the western leadership, Mr. Globaloney and his allies, Ms. Diversity and Ms. Inclusion, are about nothing; they are about nihilism. Nothing more, nothing less; just nothing.
OK, rant over.
See you on ...  oh, by the way, if you think for a moment that that business in the second article about the creation of "Chrislam" and the Vatican saying that Islam is part of "the plan of salvation" is made up, think again, for that little quotation is lifted straight from one of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes. And the idea of the "merger" of Christianity and Islam has been detailed by Jeff Sharlett's two eye-opening books, C Street and The Family.
As I've said before, they're following a template, an interpretation, and "the fulfillment is the deception."
OK, now my rant is over.
See you on the flip side...

3D PRINTING SCRAPBOOK: FIRST HUMAN HEART 3D PRINTED

If you've been following the three-d printing/additive manufacturing story, and the genetic engineering story, you'll be interested in this one. Frankly, I view it with a mixture of ambivalence, as being something that could be profoundly good, and profoundly bad. The story, as you can guess from the headline, is about the fact that some scientists have now 3-d printed the first artificial human heart. But there's a catch here, and it's a profound one, in this article shared by V.T.:

Major Medical Breakthrough: 3D Heart Printed Using Patient’s Own Cells and Materials

The engineered heart completely matches the immunological, cellular, biochemical and anatomical properties of the patient

In a major medical breakthrough, Tel Aviv University researchers have "printed" the world's first 3D vascularised engineered heart using a patient's own cells and biological materials. Their findings were published on April 15 in a study in Advanced Science.

Until now, scientists in regenerative medicine — a field positioned at the crossroads of biology and technology — have been successful in printing only simple tissues without blood vessels.

I was struck by the fact that apparently, no babies were aborted, ground up, and fetal stem cell tissue harvested to accomplish the feat, which seems all but par for the course for similar developments elsewhere in the world. And the utility of the accomplishment, using a patient's own cells, is rather obvious, as the article points out:

For the research, a biopsy of fatty tissue was taken from patients. The cellular and a-cellular materials of the tissue were then separated. While the cells were reprogrammed to become pluripotent stem cells, the extracellular matrix (ECM), a three-dimensional network of extracellular macromolecules such as collagen and glycoproteins, were processed into a personalized hydrogel that served as the printing "ink."

After being mixed with the hydrogel, the cells were efficiently differentiated to cardiac or endothelial cells to create patient-specific, immune-compatible cardiac patches with blood vessels and, subsequently, an entire heart.

According to Prof. Dvir, the use of "native" patient-specific materials is crucial to successfully engineering tissues and organs.

"The biocompatibility of engineered materials is crucial to eliminating the risk of implant rejection, which jeopardizes the success of such treatments," Prof. Dvir says. "Ideally, the biomaterial should possess the same biochemical, mechanical and topographical properties of the patient's own tissues. Here, we can report a simple approach to 3D-printed thick, vascularized and perfusable cardiac tissues that completely match the immunological, cellular, biochemical and anatomical properties of the patient."

The researchers are now planning on culturing the printed hearts in the lab and "teaching them to behave" like hearts, Prof. Dvir says. They then plan to transplant the 3D-printed heart in animal models.

Of course, the implication here is obvious: if one can do this with hearts, one can do it for almost any organ in the body once they "wear out" and need replacement: "Maybe, in ten years," the article concludes, "there will be organ printers in the finest hospitals around the world, and these procedures will be conducted routinely."

Probably so. One can even envision a time or circumstance that the technology becomes so commonplace that the procedure becomes cheap, affordable, and can be done by "licensed organ printers" rather than doctors, in a kind of out patient procedure. And while we're indulging in all this high octane speculation, one my even envision a kind of "organ dealership" or "Jiffy Lube," a kind of drive-through organ replacement "garage," complete with warranties and expiration dates, and so on.

Now, on the one hand, I can see that this developing technology is a good thing, because it extends life, and life is a good thing. Call me old fashioned, but I believe ardently in the sanctity of life. But it's that, precisely, that also bothers me here, with the article's own admission that one can envision a whole new branch of medicine emerging: organ-printing and replacement, and with it, a cheapening of life, a view that our bodies are so many collections of organs to be replaced when "worn out." I wrote about this years ago, at the very end of my first "foray" into this strange alternative research field, in The Giza Death Star. I wrote about it in the context of a view of those ancient texts which record extraordinarily long life spans for our early ancestors. The biblical texts have humans living in some cases from half a millennium to almost a thousand years. In the Mesopotamian and Egyptian king's lists, these life spans stretch tens of thousands and sometimes even hundreds of thousands of years.

And with the advent of this new "organ-printing and replacement" branch of medicine, once again modern science is providing a context from which to view those ancient claims as perhaps having a basis in a similar technological reality. But as I put it at the end of The Giza Death Star, the danger of viewing organs as so many replaceable "body parts" is what it does to the human spirit. As I warned then, the danger of becoming bored with life to the point of a kind of nihilistic anomie or antinomianism emerges, and one can imagine the emergence of a Hitler or a Stalin with thousands of years to perfect the evil in their souls. On can, of course, imagine a Francis of Assisi or Seraphim of Sarov perfecting their sanctity as well. It's that potentiality that raises another high octane speculation: imagine also a "board" which must "approve" people to be recipients of such medical-technological boons. To be "approved," one will have to have demonstrated holding the "correct opinions." And given the fact that certain state legislatures are openly applauding the passage of full term abortion laws, and that certain state governors in this country are openly and calmly talking about "post-birth abortions" - infanticide - on television, one can fairly guess that people like Seraphim of Sarov or Francis of Assisi won't be on the list of "acceptable recipients."

See you on the flip side...

 

 

CABINET COUP AGAINST MAY? (WITH LATE UPDATE)

Well, it's finally happening... supposedly. According to news coming out of the United Kingdom and the following story in Zero Hedge, Prime Minister Theresa May is facing an open revolt of her cabinet against her leadership of the Tory party and the government, and it's all over Brexit:

UK Coup Erupts: Theresa May Cabinet In Revolt, Plotting Her Imminent Overthrow

This says it all:

Theresa May may have days, if not hours, left as prime minister of the UK following a full-blown cabinet coup on Saturday night as senior ministers moved to oust the UK prime minister and replace her with her deputy, David Lidington.

According to the Sunday Times, following a "frantic series of private telephone calls", senior ministers agreed the prime minister must announce she is standing down, warning that she has become a toxic and “erratic” figure whose judgment has "gone haywire."

The plotters reportedly plan to confront May at a cabinet meeting on Sunday and demand that she announces she is quitting. If she refuses, they will threaten mass resignations or publicly demand her head. The "conspirators" were locked in talks late on Saturday to try reach a consensus deal on a new prime minister so there does not have to be a protracted leadership contest. (Italicized emphasis added)

Chief among the causes of May's losing her cabinet's confidence is the sudden turn-abouts in her positions within the last week:

As the Times details, the coup erupted "after a week of mistakes" by May, who delivered a television statement that alienated the MPs whose support she needs for her Brexit deal and then flirted with backing a no deal before performing a U-turn.

One cabinet minister said: “The end is nigh. She won’t be prime minister in 10 days’ time.”

A second said: “Her judgment has started to go haywire. You can’t be a member of the cabinet who just puts your head in the sand.”

Similar to recurring mentions of the 25th Amendment in the US, concerns about May’s mental and physical resilience are widely shared. Officials in parliament were so concerned about May’s welfare they drew up a protocol to extract her from the Commons if she collapsed at the dispatch box.

For now May has refused to comply with the coup's demands, and the Times sources at Downing Street say May has not yet come to the conclusion that she should resign and is still being encouraged by her husband Philip to fight on. But she has also lost the confidence of key allies whose job it is to maintain party discipline. Whether she remains or quits, the current Brexit process remains irreparably broken: Julian Smith, the chief whip, believes there is no prospect of the prime minister winning support for her deal unless she announces that she is standing down so the second phase of Brexit negotiations can be conducted by a new leader.

So in other words, May was flirting with a hard "no deal" Brexit, then reneged on that, while the coup planners are banking on a second round of negotiations, and that from a position that can only be perceived as weak after a leadership contest!

It's difficult not to lay the blame for the whole fiasco at Prime Minister May's feet, since her performance has been one of stellar weakness at a time when the Euroskeptic parties on the continent are also bucking the dictats coming from the Brussels-Berlin axis; she has been unable to capitalize on that politically at a time when the Big Two of the European Union, France and Germany, have their own weak governments and are increasingly under fire, in France's case, almost literally. To botch an opportunity like that takes real talent that can only be learned at the Angela Merkel school of politics.

The solution, as the article points out, is a temporary premiership under Deputy Prime Minister David Lidington, who would take over the premiership after a May resignation, conduct negotiations, and then (hopefully) turn over the party leadership to a more permanent leader after that.

There's two flies in that ointment, and they're major ones. One of those flies is former cabinet member Boris Johnson whom this author well-remembers from his Oxford days, the other is Jacob Rees-Mogg.

The sad part of all of this is, Britain was warned by a previous Prime Minister who was also a woman, that the European Union scheme would ultimately dilute British sovereignty. No one listened, and she was ousted by a similar cabinet coup and a globalist was put into her place.

And now the lessons that were ignored back then have come home to roost.

So what's my prediction? That will all depend on what happens on the up-coming meeting on Sunday. If May's leadership is successfully challenged, or even if it is not and mass cabinet resignations occur, then one will have to watch Mr. Johnson and Mr. Rees-Mogg very carefully. Both men have been quietly drawing attention to the problems in Ms. May's "deal", and both, if one has been watching them, have been carefully stumping and speaking around the country in classic political stumping style, and a party leadership contest could see them emerge as contenders, though efforts have been made to stop Johnson's leadership ambitions (see MPs plot to stop Boris Johnson ever becoming Tory leader – 'There is NO chance'). Just as a personal note, having been distantly acquainted with Mr. Johnson and watching him campaign in the Oxford Union society, it's never a safe bet to count him out...

Either way, May's days, like Merkel's and Macron's, seem to be numbered.

See you on the flip side...

(There was an update after I composed the above blog: Parliament has voted to take control of the Brexit process from PM MAY:

Parliament Seizes Control Of Brexit From Theresa May)

And yet another update: apparently Commons has another vote coming up tomorrow concerning an extension and approximately one half of May's Brexit deal.... it's getting impossible to keep up with!)

NOT TO WORRY, SAYS JUDGE, CA FIRES CAUSED BY UNINSULATED WIRES

NBC carried this story which Mr. G.L. spotted and passed along, and yes, the conclusion of the judge is as bad as this blog's headlines: U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup in San Franfreakshow, Nuttyfornia, has ruled that the single overriding cause of all those fires in Cali...er...Nuttyfornia were caused by uninsulated power wires, which, we're also told, started fires when powerlines blew into each other during high wind storms, and caused shorts and electrical sparks to fall on dry vegetation:

Judge says uninsulated power conductors caused California fires

Ok... that may be one possible source, but I doubt it's the only one, for I find it extremely curious that the article itself begins with a picture of a burned-to-the-gound home, while in the background trees and vegetation can clearly be seen, some burned, but most not. Moreover, most regular readers here have seen those strange pictures from California, showing burned out homes and businesses, surrounded by unburned vegetation. A few weeks ago, I even blogged about the latest theory being discussed in the alternative research field: electrical meters. Some readers may recall that one woman, mystified by the pattern evident in the fires, took pictures of some fire-damaged, but not totaled, houses where very clear indications were shown that fires started in or around the electrical meters. Other pictures and videos showed buckling, melting bridges, next to bushes and shrubs that were clearly unburned.

So what's going on? I have to wonder if the judge who issued this ruling isn't blind. Or, failing blindness, if he was even permitted to see the photographic and video evidence of the strange anomalous patterns of fire damage in these past fires. (That, too, wouldn't surprise me.)

Seriously, though, what's the purpose of the finding? Needless to say, my Suspicion Meter is in the red zone on this one, and it requires a bit of explaining on the end of the High Octane Speculation twig to show why. The purpose of the ruling, it seems to me, is to sustain the narrative that there's nothing anomalous about these fires; there is no reason to entertain any of the other theories out there, from electrical meters, to exotic energy technologies in space, nor even my own theory that perhaps the power grid is being deliberately used as a broadcast grid to create targeted fires, perhaps in conjunction with the other two major theories. By making it all about "uninsulated power lines" and "high winds" in a formal court ruling, the window is opened to make PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric) the fall guy. No need to look anywhere else.

And of course, if one makes it all about uninsulated electrical power lines, that opens the door to tons of lawsuits, and closes the door (a bit) on any process of discovery in any litigation that might reveal other mechanisms and technologies in play.

And then, of course, there's the insurance angle...

Bottom line? While I've certainly crawled to the end of the speculation twig again, I cannot help but think that this is about sustaining the narrative: "nothing to see here, move along..."

See you on the flip side...

 

 

PRIVATIZING (CORPORATIZING) WARFARE

Mr. G.P. spotted this important story from Russia's RT site, and passed it on. As you might have guessed from the title of today's blog, it has my high octane speculation motor running in overdrive, for earlier this week I blogged about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s interview with Fox Network personality Tucker Carlson on the legal immunities afforded to the vaccine industry/Big Pharma, speculating on the possibility that some of his remarks during that interview might indicate that some sort of quiet "mafia war" might be taking place in the mafia mobocracy that is Globaloneyism.

There's another indicator that such might be taking place, and it's this:

‘We are coming’: Chilling Blackwater ad triggers fears of Trump seeking to privatize Mideast wars

In a nutshell, the article speculates that the recent resignation of General Mattis from the Trump administration might not be quite the harbinger of a policy change in Syria that many think it to be. The policy may indeed have changed, according to the article, but not necessarily in such a fashion that the USA is getting out of Syria, but rather, turning over operations to a corporate proxy and actor:

The resurrection within the military contractors’ market of notorious Blackwater, which, after numerous scandals and several rebrandings, is now known as Academi, has analysts looking deeper into US intent to withdraw from the wars in the Middle East. The advertisement in Recoil, made public after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis announced his resignation, prompted concerns that president Donald Trump might be seeking to privatize ongoing American engagements in Afghanistan and Syria, following the declared troops' withdrawal from the region.

The main supporter of the idea of privatizing the US fighting in the Middle East has been Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater. The longtime Republican sold the company in 2010 but has maintained communications with Trump, reportedly trying to lobby his inner circle to replace the US military presence in the region with mercenaries. Mattis, who served in the Persian Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq, firmly rejected the idea.

“With Mattis now gone it is conceivable that Trump now may reevaluate” Prince's proposal, Michael Maloof, former Pentagon security analyst, told RT.

But whether or not Mr. Trump eventually green lights Mr. Prince's proposal to "privatize" (and thus, in my opinion, to piratize) middle eastern conflict, I suspect the real story here is that we're getting a first major-media public glimpse at a trend that is bound to increase, regardless of what Mr. Trump may or may not decide to do. Mr. Globaloney has been preaching about the need to turn over global governance to corporations and big banks for a long, long time. Think only of vowel-less Zbgnw Brznsk's books The Technotronic Era and The Global Chessboard or David Rockefailure's Memoirs where he openly boasts about advocating treasonous views. Think, also, of Mad Madam Merkel's recent pronouncements about giving up national sovereignty, and ignoring the clear and express wishes of national citizenries, all to inaugurate the New World Order. Or, conversely, think only of Russian President Putin's remarks against the globaloneyist dogmas.

Any way one slices it, corporations and banks, if they're truly going to "run" things, will have to have militaries in order to enforce their will. Thus far, they have hidden behind national militaries. But indeed, with corporate (defense contractor) control of advanced technologies and the increased reliance of governments on such corporations for their communications, record-keeping, security and so on, there's really no reason to prevent corporations from announcing their de facto sovereignty by recruiting their own security and mercenary forces.  (And besides, if my speculation about the Middle Eastern wars being as much about acquiring and holding ancient records and technologies and archeological sites be true, privatizing the whole enterprise puts yet another veil of security around the operation). And there's another reason perhaps pressuring the move to military corporatization: what if corporation X is unsatisfied with the result, say, of a recent government contract bid, or, indeed, if a government contract has been awarded without any competition at all, to corporation Y? Corporation X feels it has been slighted, that the scales are deliberately tipped against it. How will it enforce its interests against corporation Y?

In other words, and to put it country simple, we might be looking at a future when wars are fought, not just between countries, but between counties like Russia (clearly not interested in being a player in Mr. Globaloney's vision of a tyrannical corporate future), and corporations, or for that matter, between corporations themselves.

And corporations, unlike countries, are not signatories to things like the Geneva convention or treaties outlawing the use of certain types of weapons. Their corporate charters do not enshrine, nor are they required to enshrine, any statements of recognition of human rights such as are enshrined in the Bill of Rights. They do not subscribe to "rules of engagement."

There is one thing that might stand in the way of such a grizzly future, besides Russian hypersonic thermonuclear cruise missiles, but I'll let you figure that one out for yourself...

See you on the flip side...

WORLD WAR ONE: THE ELEVENTH HOUR OF THE ELEVENTH DAY OF THE ELEVENTH ...

Yesterday, Sunday Nov. 11, 2018, was the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, when the guns on the Western Front finally fell silent, and the German armies de-mobilized back into Germany, into a shattered economy, food shortages, unemployment, and as the Allied armies, exhausted, breathed a collective sigh of relief as they had narrowly dodged a bullet. I was tempted, yesterday, to write about World War One, and the armistice, but I thought better of it; best to allow some quiet reflection.

My paternal grandfather had fought in World War One, and my maternal grandfather avoided doing so, only because he had already fought with General Pershing against Pancho Villa in Mexico. But it's a lesson in how quickly time flies: just two generations separated me from the unbelievable carnage of that war. Kaiser Wilhelm, who fled into exile into Holland at the end of the war, died in June of 1941, only 16 years before I was born. Though very small and young, two of my older sisters were alive when he was still alive.

It had indeed gone down "right to the wire," for after the surrender of Russia earlier that year in March 1918 to the Central Powers - the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire - Russia, which as it would do in the Second World War, suffered enormous casualties, was plunged into the Bolshevik revolution and the terror which always comes with any form of radical socialism, and into civil war. The Central powers demanded, and got, a huge chunk of European Russia to occupy, creating puppet states in the Baltic States, and (here it comes), the Ukraine. Worse, for the beleaguered Western Allies Britain and France, which had born the brunt of the fighting on the Western Front, four years of fighting had gained them... nothing. Nothing but massive casualties after failed offensive after failed offensive. Think of Paschendale, the Somme, the Nivelle Offensive of 1917 which nearly broke the French armies and created mass mutinies within the French military.

1918 would be the decisive year; everyone knew it. America had entered the war, and as everyone also knew, by the end of 1918 American forces would arrive in force, and sheer numbers would tip the war to the Allies. The Germans would have to strike first, and hard, and fast.

They did. Operation Michael, the first major German offensive of 1918, began on March 21, 1918, after a horrendous artillery barrage. General Erich Ludendorff, virtual military dictator of Germany at the time, had chosen the place for the offensive himself, at the junction of the French and British armies along the Somme river. The British armies would bear the brunt of the attack, which came very close, but ultimately failed, to splitting the armies apart. War colleges have fought and re-fought that offensive - What if Ludendorff or von Hutier had done this? What if General Gough or Field Marshal Haig had done that? and so on - we won't do so here. The war had started with tactics that were modifications of Napoleonic tactics. Four short years later it had ended with the armies of World War One resembling more the armies of World War Two, than the armies with which it began: machine guns, tanks, long range artillery, aircraft... and the first weapons of mass destruction: poison gas. British, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Americans, French, Italians, Greeks, Serbs, Hungarians, Austrians, Germans, Turks, Arabs, and Russians had died in the millions.

In September of 1914, after the war had begun, the German Chancellor, Theobald von Bettmann-Hollweg circulated a memorandum of German war aims, which were to create a European "common market" in central Europe, dominated by the Reichsmark, with France and the Low Countries in a special "most favored nation" trading status. (Sound familiar?) Britain, which by some revisionist lights had engineered the war during the machinations of Edward VII, fought to eliminate a powerful rival, not across the ocean of the Atlantic, but much closer to home across the North Sea. Serbia wanted "greater Serbia" at Austria-Hungary's expense, and was rewarded by being occupied by the Central Powers until "Yugoslavia"(whatever that was) was created by the Versailles system, only to crack up decades later. Romania wanted Transylvania from Hungary, was invaded and occupied in short order, until it too gained it in the post-war settlement, only to lose it to Hungary briefly again during World War Two. It managed to regain Transylvania, but as a rump state of Stalin's Soviet Empire.

The war which had been fought to break German power, failed to do so. That would take another war. And the result of that war was the European Union, with Germany firmly in the driver's seat, dictating disastrous refugee policies to the rest of Europe (Italy, France, Austria, the Netherlands... the list goes on and on). After the Versailles Treaty was signed, Germany immediately began secret rearmament, and Clemenceau's France, determined to "surround" Germany, created the cordon sanitaire with a system of alliances with Czechoslovakia (another Versailles creation like Yugoslavia), Poland, Romania, and so on. In recent years, the idea has revived as the USA is rebasing eastward into Poland and Romania, and has been instrumental in the installation of another puppet government in the Ukraine hearkening back to the Ukrainian Hetmanate, the puppet state created by the treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March of 1918 that ended the First World War on the Eastern Front. The current President of France says there's no such thing as French culture, while invoking the memory of Marshal Petain, hero of Verdun, and collaborationist of Vichy. Turkey fought to retain its crumbling empire and hold over Muslim holy sites; the British to dismantle it. And as a direct consequence of these machinations, the rise of the abominable (out)house of Saud...

So what have we learned?

Sadly, it seems to me we've learned exactly nothing.

See you on the flip side...

 

 

AMAIRIKUHN EDGYKAYSHUN: THANK YOU, STANDARDIZED TESTS

Mr. C.S. found this one, and it's more bad news for Amairkuhn edgykayshun: the latest ACT test scores are in for 2018, and the results are... well, disastrous, disappointing, and entirely to be expected:

Thanks, Common Core: ACT Scores for Class of 2018 Worst in Decades

There were two things that occurred to me as I read this latest in a long litany of bad edgykayshunal nooz. Here's what sparked my first observation:

The creators of the ACT test announced on Wednesday that scores for the class of 2018 are the worst reported in decades. Math scores, in fact, are in freefall among ACT-tested U.S. high school graduates, falling to their lowest mark in 14 years, according to The Condition of College and Career Readiness 2018, the ACT’s annual report.

The report includes ACT test results from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

"The percentage of ACT-tested graduates who met or surpassed the ACT College Readiness Benchmark in math—suggesting they are ready to succeed in a first-year college algebra class—fell to its lowest level since 2004," the report declared, with only 40 percent of 2018 graduates meeting the benchmark, "down from a high of 46% in 2012." (Emphasis added)

"Wait a minute," I thought. Algebra?!?  In college? That one stunned me, because when I had algebra, I had it in the 8th grade, geometry in the 9th, algebra II and linear algebra in the 10th grade, and so on. And at the time, that program was more or less required of everyone. And that requirement was more or less common in the region of the country I came from. Now, of course, it is always erroneous to extrapolate general patterns from a "sample of one," especially when that sample is oneself, but I cannot help but do so, for if this is indicative of a general trend, it now means that what used to be done in junior high school, or middle school, is now pushed back into college, and our students are still not prepared for it. In short, not only has there been "grade inflation," but college is no longer genuinely college.

So what, then, are they doing in all that time leading up to college? Well, to get to that we have to take a short trip around Harvey's Barn.

The rest of the article is the usual lament about Common Core, the increasing "one size fits all" federalization of edgykayshun, and so on. We've all heard it before, so there's no need to rehearse it here. If you're interested in the ins and outs of federalization, including the link between standardized testing and the surveillance state, MK-Ultra mind control projects, and so on, see my book with co-author Gary Lawrence Rotten to the (Common) Core.

What were they doing? The answer is hinted at in the following three paragraphs:

"The percentage of ACT-tested graduates who met or surpassed the ACT College Readiness Benchmark in math—suggesting they are ready to succeed in a first-year college algebra class—fell to its lowest level since 2004," the report declared, with only 40 percent of 2018 graduates meeting the benchmark, "down from a high of 46% in 2012."

The average score on the ACT math test dropped to its lowest level in 20 years — 20.5 on a scale of 1 to 36. American students scored 21.1 in 2012 and 20.7 last year.

...

"Readiness in English has also been trending down over the past several years, dropping from 64% in 2015 to 60% this year, the lowest level since the benchmarks were introduced," according to the report." Readiness levels in reading (46%) and science (36%) were both down one percentage point from last year but are showing no long-term trends either upward or downward. Science remains the subject area in which students are least likely to be prepared for college coursework." (Emphasis added)

It's that "showing no long-term trends either upward or downward" that caught my attention, when considered in the context of the overall trend downward. One might indeed argue that there is no trend since the Common Core standards are relatively new.

But standardized tests are not new, and since their successful mass introduction after World War Two, the overall trend is downward. One need only look at the disjointed, fourth grade level thinking (if that), and the illegible scrawls (which might as well be Mandarin ideograms) in a modern Amairikuhn high school term paper - the inability to think, analyze, synthesize, and then write in an adult, coherent and reasoning way - and one sees the trend immediately. I know, I used to teach at the college level (and that was in the 1990s!), and it was obvious and evident. So the answer to the question "what were they doing all that time?" seems perfectly clear and self-evident to anyone with a modicum of common sense: teachers were forced to teach to the tests which, with but few exceptions, required no thought, analysis, synthesis, and writing and arguing a case. Teachers were being separated from their own students, and the disciplines they were expected to teach.

John Taylor Gatto recently died, but it's worth recalling what he said, and why after a lifetime of trying to teach in this system, he finally threw up his hands, and quit: the system is not fixable. No amount of money, of tinkering, or of "education" or "certification" courses will fix it. No amount of federal involvement will fix it. More administrators and standardized tests will fix it. It is irretrievably broken. As Mr. Lawrence and I pointed out in our book, there's a long list of people in western cultural history who never attended a modern Amairkuhn school, nor ever sat for a "standardized test"; they're familiar names: William Shakespeare, Virginia Wolfe, Jane Austin, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, and so on.

This abominable system has, however, had one success: it has dumbed down most of the population.

Just like it was designed to do.

See you on the flip side...

 

 

 

US GOOBERNMENT LOSES VACCINE LAWSUIT

Robert Kennedy Jr., who helped win the recent lawsuit against Mon(ster)santo, has also won another landmark lawsuit, and this one is good news for those of you, who like me, have some major concerns about that industry and the safety of their products. This article was shared by Mr. V.T., and I'm passing it along because we'll soon be bombarded with the usual seasonal  "get your flu shot" campaigns. And if you're one of those who are perhaps unaware of the debate that has been occurring in recent years on the safety of vaccines, or of the possible autism-vaccine link, then I urge you to consider carefully the implications of this article:

Rebecca Campbell: US Government Loses Vaccine Lawsuit — Has Lied to the Public for Decades — Vaccines NOT Tested — Autism Will Drop If Parents Use This Case to Legally Challenge Mandated Vaccinations

The opening paragraph here says it all:

…Vaccine injury lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Del Bigtree, producer of the suppressed anti-vaccine documentary, Vaxxed and the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) are credited with this victory. They demanded the relevant government documents proving that all federally approved vaccines had been tested for quality over the past 32 years — and there were none. (Emphasis added)

Now, before I go on with this article, pause and ponder the implications just of this one paragraph, for their are three main possibilities: (1) there were no records ever kept, and the goobernment, and its agencies- the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institute of Health and so on - have been deliberately lying to the public; or (2) there were records, but they were all destroyed, either through incompetence of some sort, which doesn't speak very highly of any results that might have been obtained,; or (3) there were records, and they were all destroyed because they contained information contraindicating the publicly claimed safety of said vaccines. In turn, this means that the same corporate-goobernment "revolving door" that is so evident between the FDA and the GMO corporations like Mon(ster)santo is also in play in the case of vaccines, and possibly (and I think probably) pharmaceuticals at large. If that seems like a stretch(and I've pointed this out before), just recall all those "miracle drug" commercials on television which end by listing all the potential side effects: take this drug and you might go blind, or die of a heart attack, stroke, petrification, or terminal flatulence.

Ok, I exaggerate, but you get the idea.

But wait! There's more!

This means that vaccine makers have been fraudulently exempt from what all other pharmaceutical drug makers have been forced to do concerning biannual recertification for quality and effectiveness — meaning that that their vaccines have never been tested for quality and have had no proven safety or effectiveness for over 30 years;

o This case can now be legally cited by all parents fraudulently mandated by any government/organizational regulation/requirements that they must vaccinate their children for school or any other activity to stop
the forced vaccination of their children;

o This case can now be legally cited by all employees being mandated by their employers to be vaccinated in order to retain their jobs...

And that, of course, is good news. But the biggest implication - and it's a whopper doozie - is this:

This means that the US Department of Health and Human Services and all vaccine makers have been lying to the American people for over 30 years about the effectiveness and safety of vaccines; this may ultimately mean that continuing the existence — at least in their current form — of five US “healthcare” agencies are now in doubt: the CDC, the FDA, the IOM, the NIH and the “Health” part of DHHS itself; this may also threaten the existence of state medical boards and exclusive medical guilds like the AMA... (Emphasis added)

And it's high time, too. In effect, your tax dollars have been funding agencies which, thanks to Mr. Kennedy's vaccine win, have not just not been doing their jobs, but from all appearances, have been criminally complicit and negligent in the performance of their duties... and quite possibly in collusion with the vaccine manufacturers in so (not) doing.

Now, I'm not a lawyer like Mr. Kennedy, but I cannot resist tossing in my amateurish two cents of high octane (legal) speculation here: why not start serving writs of mandemus on those government and elected officials who have been either complicit or negligent in their duties, and do so at all levels, from cities, counties, states and all the way up the ladder to the federal level.  And of course, that would work for corporations too: serve writs that demand they quit saying their products are safe, since there's no corroborating evidence. That, I suspect, would get their attention (and get the attention of the corporate media which profits so much from their advertizing. Of course, the corporations might respond by serving up their "internal studies" on product safety.

But that didn't turn out too well for Mon(ster)santo...

Bayer beware.

See you on the flip side...

 

 

JAPAN’S GLIDING GUIDED MISSILE PLANS

Over the years, ever since Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe successfully rid Japan of its constitutional restraints on defense spending, I've been arguing that Japan has fundamentally changed its geopolitical and defense posture and is a "country to watch" in the Pacific. Central to my thesis is the hypothesis that Japan's rearmament has been based on a long-term assessment that the US Empire is failing, and is thus motivated by a double agenda: (1) convincing the US that Japan is willing to bear its "fair share" of its own defense burden, while (2) realizing that the US is, as the Russians put it, "not agreement capable," and that reliance upon such an untrustworthy ally is in the long-term just plain folly. Under such circumstances, Japanese re-armament, or rather, expanded armament is in my opinion inevitably designed to cut all military cords with Washington, and to restore it to equal negotiating status.

This assessment appears to be corroborated by Mr. Abe's recent negotiating strategies, particularly as far as Russia is concerned. In an unprecedented step, Mr. Abe agreed to set aside Japanese postwar claims on the Kurile Islands to arrive at understandings with Mr. Putin about the creation of a kind of "free trade" zone in those islands, and for his part, Mr. Putin agreed to allow more Japanese settlement in the Russian-occupied islands provided that it is understood that they are subject to Russian, and not Japanese, law. As a result, Russia and Japan have also negotiated lucrative deals, and as I blogged recently, the Japanese have conducted tests on portions of Russia's Trans-Siberian railway. As I speculated at the time, these tests I suspect are to gain Japanese expertise and experience (not to mention capital) to transform the line into high speed rail. The Japanese after all have been building high speed rail longer than just about anyone else. Geopolitically, it makes sense for both nations, for a Russo-Japanese rapprochement gives Japan a source of energy much closer to Japan, and not subject either to Chinese or American interdiction (and lest we forget, it was American interdiction of those energy supplies in 1941 that let to the outbreak of the war between the USA and Japan), and it gives Russia a counter-balance to growing Chinese power in the region. As if to drive that point home, Japan recently indicated to Australia that if France has difficulty completing a submarine order for the Australian navy, Japan would be only too happy to do so.

With that background, consider this important find from Mr. J.T.:

Defense Ministry aims for FY2026 introduction of 'high-speed gliding missiles'

What's crucial here are the first two paragraphs:

TOKYO -- The Ministry of Defense has decided on a plan to introduce a new type of "high-speed gliding missiles" with small wings attached to the payload to guide it to its target by fiscal 2026 for use by the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF), an individual close to the matter has disclosed.

The development of the missiles will be divided into two stages, and the projectiles designated for use in protecting Japan's remote islands are expected to have a range of around 300 to 500 kilometers. However, this would mean an increase in the missile range of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), and there is a possibility that the addition's compliance with Japan's policy of being exclusively defense-oriented will be questioned. (Emphasis added)

The fact that the article itself questions the rationale behind the development is an indicator of what is really happening. As Mr. J.T. put it in his email, it would appear that the real purpose here is to develop an operational and ultimately strategic offensive capability. Increasing ranges of missiles to 500 kilometers may not seem to be a big deal, except that when one adds the staging of missiles to employ guided gliding payloads to Japan's already-possessed heavy space payload launch capability, and what is in a few short years an operational offensive capability could become, in those same short years, a strategic offensive capability. China, Russia, USA (and Korea) take note (and I'm sure they already have).

Like it or not, all this means that Japan will increasingly become part of the geopolitical and military calculation of the Pacific rim, and it also means, I suspect, that my speculation that Japan's rearmament is about more than just doing its "fair share" in Pacific security. Even if that is all it is about, I strongly suspect that that "fair share" will only increase over time.

See you on the flip side...

THE FITZGERALD AND MCCAIN INCIDENTS, APPLE, GOOGLE, & CHINA

Before we get to today's blog topic, I want to extend some remarks of thanks to all of you who've been so patient as this never-ending saga of delays never ends. This has played havoc with my ability to schedule anything for almost a year and a half, and hence this month I have not yet scheduled any vidchats nor been able to schedule any interviews. Needless to say, this is not easy to deal with, and I truly appreciate everyone's patience. I am exhausted and dog tired from constantly getting things ready, and then having the schedule collapse once again. So thank you for understanding and for your patience.  This means, also, that blogs and News and Views are up in the air this week as well, but I will try to keep everyone apprised.  Some components have arrived, which now sit uselessly in big boxes in my living room.

In any case, by way of context to introduce today's blog, regular readers here will recall that when the USS Fitzgerald and USS John McCain had their respective collisions off the coasts of Japan and Singapore, I was suspicious. The US Navy wanted us, at the time, to write this all off to incompetence and poor training. Indeed, a few military or former military that I am familiar with, also tried to convince me that this was, indeed, the reason. I remain, however, skeptical of it. At the time, it seemed to me that perhaps some sort of exotic hacking - remote or otherwise - might have occurred, not only to the American ships, but also to the ships which collided with them. My suspicions fell on Russia, even though regular readers here know I'm not a "blame-Russia-for-everything" person. The reason for that was the two suspicious incidents involving Russian aircraft, and the shutdown of electrical systems on the USS Donald Cook, first in the Black Sea, then again in the Baltic. The Russians demonstrated similar electronic warfare capability when they first intervened in Syria, so it was a reasonable guess to make at the time.

But there is another story that has recently come to light that may have some bearing on all of this, and indeed, so many people sent versions of it that I was positively overwhelmed; almost the entire list of people - and then some - who share articles on a regular basis did so here. If I were to make a simple "guesstimate" of the percentage of that list who did so, I'd say it was easily around 80 percent. In any case, it was a record, and thank you to all of you who passed along various versions of the story.

The story is that the Chinese have been planting tiny microchips, in effect, hacking the hardware, and that this hardware has infected major American corporations such as Apple, Google, and even the Central Intelligence Agency. (Gee, go figure! Who would have thought the Chinese would do that after farming out the tech industry to them?) Here are two versions of the story:

The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies

Explosive Report Details Chinese Infiltration Of Apple, Amazon And The CIA

There's something in the Zero Hedge article that caught my eye, as it did the many people who passed it along:

One week ago, President Trump stood up at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council and accused China of attempting to tamper with US elections - mimicking some of the same allegations that had first been levied against Russia nearly two years prior. In his speech, Trump claimed that China was working to undermine Republicans, and even the president himself, warning that "it's not just Russia, it's China and Russia." While the media largely shrugged off this proclamation as more presidential bombast probably inspired by the burgeoning US-China trade beef, the administration continued to insist that it was taking a harder line against Chinese efforts to subvert American companies to aide the Communist Party's sprawling intelligence apparatus. As if to underline Trump's point, the FBI had arrested a Taiwanese national in Chicago the day before Trump's speech, accusing the 27-year-old suspect of trying to help China flip eight defense contractors who could have provided crucial intelligence on sensitive defense-related technology.

But in a game-changing report published Thursday morning, Bloomberg Businessweek exposed a sprawling multi-year investigation into China's infiltration of US corporate and defense infrastructure.Most notably, it confirmed that, in addition to efforts designed to sway US elections, China's intelligence community orchestrated a pervasive infiltration of servers used to power everything from MRI machines to the drones used by the CIA and army. They accomplished this using a tiny microchip no bigger than a grain of rice.

BBG published the report just hours before Vice President Mike Pence was expected to "string together a narrative of Chinese aggression" during a speech at the Hudson Institute in Washington. According to excerpts leaked to the New York Times, his speech was expected to focus on examples of China's "aggressive moves against American warships, of predatory behavior against their neighbors, and of a sophisticated influence campaign to tilt the midterms and 2020 elections against President Trump". His speech is also expected to focus on how China leverages debt and its capital markets to force foreign governments to submit to its will (something that has happened in Bangladesh and the Czech Republic.  (Italicized emphasis added, boldface emphasis in the original)

Let that sink in for a moment: small computer chips hidden in hardware that is used by major American corporations, American intelligence, and military equipment from drones to warships, giving the Chinese the ability to monitor, and one may presume, alter or direct remotely the behavior of American equipment, from warships to voting machines.

Now, anyone with common sense could have predicted (and did predict) that this would be the result of farming out the American technical industry to China. The key here is that this story may be, and I suspect is, the real context for the rapid efforts being made to "reshore" American industry, and particularly its technical industry, to North America, and particular, to the region in and around Silicon Valley. That will not, of course, make American systems one hundred percent secure, but it will at least close a very open door and set of windows. What soldier, pilot, or warship skipper wants to go into battle thinking that at any moment his decisions and equipment can be overridden by Beijing? What broker or banker wants to place orders for trades, again, knowing that the systems which execute them could be overridden by Beijing? The temporary answer is to reshore, but even with reshoring however, the problem is not solved, because America has also been hollowing out its education while awarding "gender studies" degrees at home to create a cadre of truly useless idiots whose only talent seems to be that they can scream well. Reshoring only goes so far to address the problem. The other problem is stepping up information and engineering education, and making both it and the chip industry "native" once again. It is, in short, now a major national security issue. By sheer numbers, China can produce much more engineering and technology graduates than can the USA, and has been investing mightily in its human capital, while the USA has been... well, need I mention the screaming "gender studies" graduates again?

The bottom line here is that while everyone has been focused on Russia as "the big problem," the real "big problem" has been China. As the USA has been pushing ipads and cell phones and Apple trade and so on world wide to shore up the dollar's reserve status, China has been piggybacking on that effort, since the vast majority of those platforms is made in - you guessed it - China.

The story thus puts the USS Fitzgerald and USS John McCain incidents into stark relief, and gives a bit more credence to those of you out there who speculated that they were the result of faulty equipment and Chinese cyber-warfare capability.

But there's another implication here, and it's going to have the midnight oil burning not just in Washington, but in Moscow, Berlin, Rome, Paris, London, New Delhi and Madrid and any other major capital as well, because the implication of this story is that those nation's military equipment, trading markets, and intelligence communities are also infiltrated, and it means, like it or not, that they too will have to massively expand their own independent capability in computer chip production.

The world just changed, because this story has massive and seismic geopolitical implications. And in the long term, it does not benefit China, whom no one really trusts to begin with. The fallout from this story will be with us, and China, for years, if not decades.  And in the midterm, it benefits certain other countries who are a bit "higher" on the trust list...

... Japan, and South Korea, for example...

Already some nations are having second thoughts about China's "one belt, one road initiative," and this story is not going to help China, at least, not as currently configured under Emperor Xi Jinping. Everyone will now have to rethink everything, including China...

See you on the flip side...