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UPDATE: OPTICAL PHASE CONJUGATION, BIOLOGICAL TISSUE, AND THERANOS

A few weeks ago I blogged about a story that fascinates me, that of Elizabeth Holmes and her one-time rocking-and-rolling multi-billion-dollar Silicon Valley start-up biotech company, Theranos. Her company managed to get several big names on her board before her fall from "grace" and indictment for various types of fraudulent activity. The names included George Schultz, General Mattis, and Riley Bechtel, among many others. So how did someone like Elizabeth Holmes - allegedly a charlatan - manage to con some of the biggest names in the country?

That is, indeed, the question. And thus far, I'm not buying the public narrative, particularly when one compares what Holmes claimed to be up to, and some recent papers. What Holmes wanted to do was to place a unit no bigger than a desktop computer into every home, and into retail outlets, to do on the spot blood analysis able to test for the widest possible panel of diseases, say from blood cholesterol measurements to leukemia and so on, and all this from a very small sample of blood, a couple of drops, and not the endless syringes used now.  As I noted in a recent blog (see https://gizadeathstar.com/2019/09/update-that-strange-theranos-story-and-its-optical-patents/), my curiosity was piqued by this claim, for it meant that to be successful, Holmes would have to have in mind a whole new electromagnetic or optical means of spectroscopy to pull off this feat. The device which she claimed to be developing to do this was called the "Edison", and though Theranos took out a number of intriguing patents, what was inside it was described in vague and general terms, remaining essentially a "black box." Ultimately, she could not deliver on her idea, and the rest is history.

But as I noted in the previous blog on this subject linked above, the idea itself was probably responsible for attracting the likes of the Bechtel corporation (Riley Bechtel and George Schultz), and the U.S. military (General Mattis). Imagine, for a moment, being able to do quick and accurate triage on the battlefield using the device, and obviously, the whole concept of a new kind of optical spectroscopy for blood paneling also implied more sinister uses. As I noted in that previous blog, a recent paper in optics had discovered a new kind of light wave that emerges when light is traveling from a crystal to a liquid, and emerges in the boundary transition between the two mediums. Interestingly enough, one of the patents Theranos took out involved the use of a prism in its Edison device.

Well, there may me more to this story, because one of this site's regular readers, T.M., spotted this very intriguing paper:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2688902/

Notably, this paper appeared in 2009, approximately five years after Holmes founded Theranos. What the abstract says is quite intriguing for our purposes:

Elastic optical scattering, the dominant light interaction process in biological tissues, prevents tissues from being transparent. While scattering may appear stochastic, it is in fact deterministic in nature. We show that, despite experimental imperfections, optical phase conjugation (λ = 532 nm) can force a transmitted light field to retrace its trajectory through a biological target and recover the original light field. For a 0.69 mm thick chicken breast tissue section, we can enhance point source light return by ∼5×103 times and achieve a light transmission enhancement factor of 3.8 within a collection angle of 29°. Additionally, we find that the reconstruction's quality, measured by the width of the reconstructed point source, is independent of tissue thickness (up to 0.69 mm thick). This phenomenon may be used to enhance light transmission through tissue, enable measurement of small tissue movements, and form the basis of new tissue imaging techniques. (Emphasis added)

In other words, as cells move the movement itself distorts the light they emit, but this original signature may be recovered through the phenomenon of phase conjugation. The latter bears a little explanation. Phase conjugation emerged as a major phenomenon of interest from the super-secret work being done in the 1980s during the Reagan administration's Strategic Defense Initiative or "Star Wars" program, and as we shall see in a moment, emerged in quite a different context in the secret Soviet biophysics research of the 1960s and 1970s. Simply put, as a light wave moves through a medium such as the atmosphere, it undergoes scattering that distorts the original "shape" it had when emitted from its source. Thus, pointing a laser at, say, a missile or an aircraft moving through the atmosphere meant that the cohered beam of laser light would be subject to scattering, and lose much of the energy coming from the source of the emission. A way had to be found to mitigate this effect, and the means was phase conjugation, which (to be very crude about it) took a "picture" of the distortion or scattering effects themselves, and then used that distortion itself as a template to reconfigure the laser beam at the source in the opposite pattern or phase, thus allowing the beam to maintain its coherence and energy over much greater distances.  In some cases in the literature, this phase conjugation effect was even called "time reserved waves" because the effect of phase conjugation was to reverse the normal inverse square law of light scattering. Theoretically, the phenomenon meant that energy could be concentrated at the target, since the inverse square law was "reversed."

Thus, in this paper, the claim is to have used the same phenomenon to view the the light emitted from cells. This in itself is very intriguing, because if you've been following the work of U.S. Army Lt. Col. Tom Bearden (retired) over the years, you'll recall that the Soviet Union did a great deal of very classified research in biophysics, trying to discover the electromagnetic "templates" of specific diseases in cells, and of healthy "templates" in cells, and then allegedly used those templates to irradiate biological tissue to create, or cure, various diseases including cancer. And there as well, the phenomenon of phase conjugation entered the picture, though as in the above paper, in a biological rather than missile defense context.

Could this phenomenon be coupled to that of the recent discovery of a new kind of light wave emerging in the boundary transition between crystals and liquids that I blogged about in the above-linked blog? My high octane speculative guess is yes, and that those light waves will differ depending on the relative health of the liquid they transition into. But even if that is not the case, I strongly suspect that this paper about bio-optical phase conjugation is yet another indicator that Holmes was on to something, and something very big at that, and that we have not heard the last of the story.

See you on the ...

... oh, one more thought. Imagine applying such procedures to compare and contrast the signatures of GMO crops, versus their natural counterparts. What do you suppose they'll find? My bet is that they'll find subtle and important differences.

Ok, speculation over.

See you on the flip side...

 

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TIDBITS: THIS WEEKS HONORABLE MENTIONS

Many thanks to all of you who once again shared your time, the articles you found, and your thoughts about them. This week's honorable mentions were submitted by R.M., C.M., V.T., J.K., R.D., G.B., and K.M.:

German probe opens into suspected internal spying at Airbus

“Our duty is to obey the United Nations,” Says Pope Francis — What Kind Of New World Order Thinking Is That?

Robopriest: Catholic church could ordain sophisticated AI ROBOTS as priests, Franciscan Sister proposes, with the church moving towards a 'post-human priesthood'

The Pope proudly says that the Koran is a book of peace because Islam is not a violent religion

Terrorist Groups, Artificial Intelligence, and Killer Drones

Saudi Arabia executes 134 people including six kids as brutal crucifixions spike'

SURPRISE! The Official Escort for 16-Year-Old Global Warming ‘Expert’ Greta Thunberg Is a Leftist Hack Funded by George Soros Org.

Mysterious magnetic pulses discovered on Mars

Same media that once deemed chemtrails a conspiracy theory now openly promotes chemtrailing the entire planet to “end climate change”

C. S. Lewis Warned of Globalist Endgame 70 Years Ago, Spiritual Battle Gripping the Planet

 

MORE EXPLOSIONS IN RUSSIA, THIS TIME AT A BIOTECH LAB

OK folks, there's clearly something going on, at least in Russia. Over the past few weeks, we've seen (1) two munitions plant explosions, (2) the explosion of a nuclear test rocket, (3) the sinking of a Russian submarine somewhere off of Alaska, with the cryptic announcement from the Russian Defense Ministry that the crew died heroes. If one wants, throw in those fires in Siberia too. Well, there's been another explosion, this time at a Russian biotech laboratory in Novosibirsk, a major city along the Trans-Siberian railway. In fact, many of you noticed this story, and many of you are wondering the same thing as I.  Here's RT's and Zero Hedge's versions:

Blast & fire hits major virus lab in Russia, where HIV, Ebola & anthrax strains are stored

Explosion Hits Russia's Largest Virus Lab Which Houses Plague, Smallpox, Ebola And Other Deadly Viruses

Both articles are essentially the same, with Zero Hedge echoing and copying the RT article, but on something like this it doesn't hurt to check. The RT article states that the explosion occurred at a major Russian virology research facility called the Vector Institute. It's what it was researching that's rather intriguing:

The laboratory is known for having developed vaccines for Ebola and hepatitis, as well as for studying epidemics and general issues surrounding immunology. During the Cold War, it was thought to be part of now-defunct Soviet biological weapons program, meaning that some of the most dangerous strains – including that of smallpox, Ebola, anthrax and certain plagues – are still being kept inside the Institute’s building.

So we're led to believe that the Vector Institute had once been a bioweapons laboratory, which was converted to an immunology facility. But it doesn't take much imagination to see that the two are intimately related, and that the bioweapons component may still have been going on. But then there's an even more curious statement. At the beginning of the article we're informed that the facility we engulfed in flames after an explosion. Then, after being informed that the facility was once a bioweapons laboratory, we're told this:

The fire was located and quickly extinguished on the fourth floor where some “construction works” were being carried out.

...

Reports by local authorities were conspicuously light on detail, with various sources suggesting it was a gas blast that had triggered a fire at the construction site. One construction worker suffered burns to his legs and was taken to hospital for trauma care.

Most of you who shared this story expressed some skepticism about the mundane speculation, and frankly, I share it too. If the story were standing alone, all by itself, the explanation would be plausible. It was just an unfortunate accident perhaps caused by human error, or an undetected accident due to the construction. But put into the context of two munitions plant explosions (both in Siberia, incidentally), a nuclear test rocket explosion, and the curious submarine incident, the complexion and character of the incident changes completely, for it would appear that someone seems to be targeting Russian research facilities or research institutions. If this were the sole potential context from which to view these incidents, then the culprits would seem to be rather obvious: someone in the West, or its allies.  Then there were those strange Chinese chemical plant explosions, beginning with the one in Tianjin that left the suspiciously narrow and deep crater. To my mind, there's simply been too much of these types of events lately to write them all off to human error, accident or any other mundane explanation.

But cast the net of suspicion a bit wider, and the picture becomes puzzling. Consider the anomalies associated with the California fires, and one has a confusing picture, for "someone" would clearly seem to be targeting real estate in the USA as well. Perhaps one may even add the fires in Saudi Arabia's oil production facilities; perhaps that event was some sort of "pay back". If one assumes that all these things are related - and that's a big assumption - then the question of who, why, and how becomes both crucial and pressing.

But even without that context, we've now seen no less than five major incidents involving Russian defense or research facilities, and if one counts the Chinese chemical plant explosions, two additional incidents. And if we can at least suspect that there may be more pattern than coincidence in all this, you can bet the Russian and Chinese intelligence services are all over it.

See you on the flip side...

 

THOSE “SUPERWEAPONS” AND WHAT I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT

There's something in the news that I'm not going to talk about, because quite frankly, I'm sick of politics. And that's the attack on the oilfield in the (out)House of Saud. I'm not going to talk about it because while driving around yesterday morning and listening to the news, most of the consensus emerging was pointing the finger to Iran. Now, I'm not surprised, but I'm not going to talk about the nut cases running that country, nor about how I wouldn't put it past them. Nor am I going to talk about my profound distrust of the American creep state, which would do just about anything to create false flags to get us into another war, nor am I going to talk about the problems of such a strike raising the price of oil, and therefore not only putting the West in a crimp, but also Tehran's close ally China.  I'm not going to talk about that being a reason to question the "logic" behind the attack. As I say, I put nothing past the nutcases in Tehran, nor in Swampington, D.C. Yosemite Sam Bolton (and thanks to K.M. for that comparision!) may be gone, but there's plenty more cartoon characters to draw from in the neocon stable of cartoon characters.

What I do want to talk about is that strange comment Mr. Trump made recently (on the anniversary of 9/11, in fact, a little point of timing that may be significant) about the USA having some sort of "superweapons" in its arsenal that means we don't even need to use nukes to wreak nuclear-level destruction on an opponent. This story was shared by a lot of people, so thank you to all who passed it along:

Trump says the US military has super weapons that are even bigger and better than its nuclear arsenal

Now, before I crawl once again to the end of the twig of high octane speculation, I want to pose a question, or rather, a difficulty for what I'm not talking about. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Mr. Trump's statement is true. Personally, I think it probably is true; after all, a missing $21,000,000,000,000 dollars can by a lot of exotic toys. But even if one is inclined not to believe it, the President's statement pose a difficulty for this whole Iran attacking the (out)House of Saud thing that seems to be the latest in the push for some sort of direct action against Tehran: if, indeed, such capabilities exist, then why are we so exercised over Iran getting nuclear weapons? Recently, the President tweeted his "condolences" to Tehran after satellite photos showed a burned out Iranian rocket launch site. The message was "clear:, namely, that the site had been "taken out" somehow. There are, of course, other ways to deliver nuclear weapons than rockets: breifcases, cargo containers, packages, ships, and so on will do. The problem with such methods is that they're even more subject to interdiction than rockets, and hence riskier to a country with relatively few warheads to spare. Then there was that strange comment made some months back when an American general was asked, in regard to North Korea, if "all the options" that were being considered included "kinetic weapons". The reporter who asked this asked it very loudly, so that the question could not be missed. And the general's answer was "Yes."

In reading the article, however, the possibility of kinetic "rod of God" weapons is not even mentioned, and the narrative is steered once again to conventional weapons:

Nuclear arms control expert Jon Wolfsthal, who served as a special assistant to former President Barack Obama from 2014 to 2017, raised the possibility that Trump does not know what he is talking about.

"Nuclear weapons remain the most powerful weapons in the US military arsenal," Wolfsthal told Task & Purpose on Wednesday. "While we have a vast array of conventional military weapons and many means of delivery, none come even close to the explosive or destructive power associated with our nuclear arsenal."

"I will assume that this is consistent with the president consistent effort to say anything he does is better, smarter, stronger, bigger than anyone else, but is not based on any facts or real world assessment," Wolfstahl continued.

Trump has been known for making bellicose statements. Before his rapprochement with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, the president had threatened to subject the rogue communist regime to "fire and fury."

So we can all relax: there's no such thing as other kinds of weapons. It's all Mr. Trump just sounding off once again.

But I doubt that very much; it wasn't just Mr. Trump hinting at "something else", it was also that general in response to the reporter. And that raises another possibility that I'm not going to talk about, namely, the possibility that Mr. Wolfsthal is telling the truth, at least as far as he (and possibly President Obama) were made aware of it: no such things existed in the US arsenal. And that might mean that they were kept deliberately out of the loop, while Mr. Trump was kept in that loop. And let's not forget the Chinese chemical plant explosion at Tianjin, and the suspiciously narrow and deep crater left by that event, which led me and others to speculate that perhaps one was looking at a "rod of God" attack.

Oh, and while we're not talking about stuff, I also don't want to talk about other means of interference, like some sort of possible electro-acoustic means of detonating all those ammo dumps and munitions works that seem to be exploding lately (along with the Iranian rocket site). And, while we're not talking about stuff, there's always the possibility that they're bluffing, too.

They simply don't exist. After all, someone in the government said so. But wait, they do, because someone in the government said so.

See you on the flip side...

UPDATE: THAT STRANGE THERANOS STORY, AND ITS OPTICAL PATENTS

During last week's News and Views from the Nefarium (Sept. 5, 2019), I had to resist temptation to talk about the "easy" story (BREXIT), to talk about a story that had caught my eyes thanks to an astute reader of this website who brought it to my attention. The story was one of those short and, at a surface level, "dull" science pieces about the latest discovery. But when I read it, I immediately thought about its possible connection to another story. What caught my attention was that scientists have observed a new kind of light wave that emerges in the boundary conditions when light traveling through crystals transitions into a very different medium, say, a liquid, producing a kind of spectroscopic response. The article went on to mention that the discovery had all sorts of potential applications, including in the medical and biotech fields.

That little statement gave me pause, and made me immediately think of the whole saga of Elizabeth Holmes and her once much-vaunted multi-billion-dollar start-up Silicon Valley company sensation, Theranos. For many years Ms. Holmes was the darling of the talk shows and magazines: a smart, articulate, attractive, young and determined business woman with a bright idea. Her bright idea, essentially, was to place small portable blood testing units - about the size of a desktop computer - in homes and businesses, that would be able to test your blood for a multitude of diseases and potential health issues, all from just a couple drops of blood, and then be able to deliver the results right there and then. No big syringes full of blood to be sent off to distant laboratories for analysis with several days' waiting time, and more hours in the lobby of perpetually-late-to-their-appointments doctors, who bill you for their time, but have no regard for your time. All that: gone. And with just a couple small drops of blood and a portable "home testing unit." Say what one will about Ms. Holmes, she at least had the guts to dream big.

When I first learned about this story from former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Catherine Austin Fitts, I was intrigued, and began to research the story just for my own personal interest, even buying and reading Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou's book about the story, Bad Blood, the only book-length study of the subject, and based on Carreyrou's serialized articles for the newspaper. What intrigued me about the story, and Ms. Holmes' claims, was the sheer impossibility of doing what she claimed Theranos would be able to do based on ordinary laboratory chemical (or even ordinary spectroscopic) methods. Indeed, as I pointed out in the Sept. 5th News and Views, and according to Carreyrou, attempts to get Theranos' technology to peer review were thwarted by Holmes and the senior management at Theranos. Attempts to get Theranos to disclose its technology led to vague statements. Effectively, it was a black box that no one else was permitted to peer inside and see what made it work.

But the story disturbed me, and disturbs me still, because in the final analysis we're being asked to believe that Holmes and Theranos were essentially and totally fraudulent. Don't get me wrong; massive fraud can and has been committed and run for years before anyone is the wiser, think only of Bernie Madoff (or the federal budget for that matter). But on something like this, there had to have been something genuine at the core, otherwise Theranos and Ms. Holmes would not have been able to attract the sorts of people they attracted to her board, people like George Schultz, or Riley Bechtel, or General James Mattis. We'll get back to my high octane speculation of the day on that score shortly. But for the moment, my reasoning was that for Ms. Holmes to be able to claim to do what she wanted to do, some sort of very different and advanced optical technology and spectroscopy would have to be involved. Hence, my interest in the story about the discovery of a new form of light wave emerging from crystals at the boundary with another medium, a liquid medium, like blood, and that story's own statement that it had great potential for the medical and biotech industries, like testing. As I mused in my News and Views commentary that day, perhaps we're looking at part of the real story behind Theranos being let out into the public eye.

All this rambling "around Harvey's Barn" (as my mother used to say) has been for a purpose, for it brings us to today's story, shared by a regular reader, G.L.R., who had very sharp eyes:

Patents Assigned to Theranos, Inc.

When scrolling through this list of Theranos patents, one comes across Patent number 9835548, the abstract of which reads as follows The full patent text is  here: Theranos Patent 9835548):

Patent number: 9835548
Abstract: The devices and systems disclosed herein provide multiple optical capabilities in a single device or system. Methods for using these devices and systems are provided. These devices and systems are configurable for operation in each of a spectroscopy mode, a fluorescence mode, and a luminescence mode, and are capable of performing spectroscopic, fluorescence, and luminescence observations, measurements, and analyzes when operated in the corresponding spectroscopy mode, fluorescence mode, or luminescence mode. These devices and systems include mirror dispersion elements having multiple faces including an optical dispersion element on one face (e.g., a diffraction grating or a prism) and a reflective element on another face (e.g., a mirror). These multiple capabilities eliminate the need to move or load a sample in multiple devices when subjecting a sample to multiple analyzes, and thus provide greater accuracy, precision, and speed while reducing complexity and cost of sample analysis.
Type: Grant
Filed: May 20, 2016
Date of Patent: December 5, 2017 (Italicized and boldface emphases added)
Now, I don't know about you, but I think this is a little more than coincidental; prisms equal crystals of some sort, and that was the subject of the new form of light wave at boundary conditions where light is traveling through a crystal and then transitions into a different medium. Indeed, like all patents, there is an extensive reference list at the end of the patent to the "prior art", and one might indeed add the story I talked about in my Sept 5th, 2019 News and Views to that list.
So where's the high octane speculation here? For starters, Elizabeth Holmes, as I mentioned in the News and Views, is under indictment for fraud. Indeed, no one can come away from reading Carreyrou's book without the distinct impression that there not only was a massive amount of that going on, but that the delaying and stalling tactics of Theranos simply ran out of time; or to put it much differently, Theranos promised to deliver on something within a certain time frame, and was unable to do so, and Walgreen's corporation pulled out of its marketing arrangement with Theranos. But if nothing else, this patent indicates that my initial hunch about how Ms. Holmes intended to deliver on her promises, and Theranos' own research directions, were more or less aligned, whatever Ms. Holmes' alleged character faults may or may not be. One gets the sense that being the bright individual she clearly is, she researched the "prior art" and came up with her bright idea.
So why the effort, after the list of luminaries on the Theranos board, to take her and her company down? I suspect there might be two, possibly three, explanations here. The first is, given the defense presence on the Theranos board, one might be dealing with a corporate front designed to roll out a new technology. The problem was, they selected the wrong spokesman - Holmes - to bring it out. They needed, according to the adage, a better "team player" and someone "more stable." The second is that "optical diagnosis and testing" implies also electromagnetic - not pharmaceutical - means of therapy; and the diagnostic technology itself would certainly put a crimp in several medical laboratories' and physicians' bottom line. Indeed, anyone who has investigated the various claims to electromagnetic medicine (so to speak) will encounter the effort over the past few decades, going all the way back to Dr. Royal Raymond Rife, to shut down, ostracize, and even imprison and ruin any one making such claims. Big Pharma, like Big Agra, has long and powerful arms. The third possibility is, to me, the most intriguing. And also the most speculative. Perhaps Ms. Holmes, with her statements to deliver the technology in functioning form years ago, was acting under orders from more hidden masters, who either pulled the plug on her ambitious schedule, or via that same ambitious schedule set her up to take a fall, once they had determined they needed a different face for the roll out, or once they bowed to pressure from elsewhere in the multi-billion-dollar health care field, like Big Pharma..
In any case, I suspect there is still much more to the Theranos story, and that we're just getting started.
See you on the flip side...

MORE STRANGE SEA STUFF…

Yesterday I blogged about that case of the disappearing underwater German laboratory, and suggested that something may be "up" on the oceans and seaways of the world. Well, there are a couple more strange sea stories out there to add to the mix, if indeed it is a "mix." To be sure, all this could just be amazing coincidence, and hence, great data for those who might want to probe into the structure and architecture of coincidence theory.  But you know me, I have to indulge in some high octane speculation along the lines of "what if it is not just all coincidence?" Then we're left with some disturbing questions.

For example, consider this story found by C.M. on Zero Hedge concerning a capsized cargo ship off of the coast of the American state of Georgia:

Large Cargo Ship Capsizes Off Georgia Coast; Crew Members Still Missing

Doing a little digging brought up a few interesting things, like a map of ship accidents and capsizes around the world. It's certainly not a common occurrence, but happens more often than one might think. Admittedly, I'm certainly not the slightest bit familiar with naval or maritime architecture, but the design of modern cruise ships and cargo ships has always disturbed me; with their very high freeboards and very shallow keels they seem, well, "top heavy" and therefore prone to capsizing. Or to put it into maritime architecture terms: the metacentric height of these ships looks like it would be very low, and hence the ships prone to capsizing. But that's just a guess based on what my eyes tell me.

A further check into this story revealed that the lack of details in the Zero Hedge article is pretty much the standard fare; not much is being said in other articles either. The ship left port, then, for some reason - we're offered nothing in most articles by way of any data or speculation - the ship just capsized, and then caught fire. Again, not much information on where on the ship the fire was, nor how it started. In all the pictures in all the articles that I examined, the waters appeared calm, and hurricane Dorian had long since moved out of the area. One article noted that this incident occurred shortly after that diving boat caught fire off the coast of California and killed 34 people.

And speaking of cargo ships and strange incidents, remember that collision of an oil tanker (the Sola)  with a Norwegian navy frigate (HNoMS[His Royal Norwegian Majesty's Ship] Helga Ingstad)? Well, the transcript of the minutes prior to the collision were leaked to the press, and they're somewhat - disturbingly - revealing (thanks to P.A.I. for spotting and sharing this one):

Radar Images & Audio Log of KNM Helge Ingstad Frigate — Sola TS Oil Tanker Collision

I can't help but think of the similarities implied by this transcript and the USS Fitzgerald and USS John McCain incidents, where two American naval vessels collided with large cargo ships in busy sea lanes. Consider this:

0:19 —Sola TS: I didn’t get the name, do you know which boat is coming here?
0:25 — Sola TS: I have it on port side.

— 10 seconds silence. At this point Sola TS starts to accelerate and maneuver starboard probably to avoid a possible collision. But the tanker is big and slow to do both, it will reach 7.2 knots at around 2:07 in 42 seconds .

0:37 — Fedje VTS: No, it’s eh… I’ve not received any information about it.
0:43 — Fedje VTS: This wasn’t reported to me.

0:45 —Sola TS: I just see it on the screen here.

Well, Fedje VTS command should also be seeing the approaching unknown ship on their screens, but they don’t seem to bother at all. (Emphasis in the original)

This seems uncomfortably like the Fitzgerald incident in the waters of Japan; the bridge crew of the Fitzgerald should have been able to see the approaching ship, not only visually from its running lights but also on radar. In this case, one has to ask why the Norwegian traffic control was not seeing their own frigate on radar. Was the radar being interferred with? or was its crew being interfered with? We'll get back to that possibility in a moment, because P.A.I. spotted the same thing in the transcript. The author of the article accompanying the leaked transcript comments as follows, ending with his own speculation:

We know that the AIS tracking of Helge Ingstad was turned of only until after the accident. Also, until the 47th second of the video (0:54) the unknown ship doesn’t have a speed vector on the radar. Only then, it appears at 0.0 knots, gradually shifting up to 17.4 knots by 1:30. The unknown ship was clearly not accelerating — it was already moving before the speed vector appeared — only that its speed became fully visible in the radar within these 36 seconds (probably a stealth navigating feature turned off).(Emphasis in the original)

After a short exchange between the tanker and traffic control, there is a 43 second gap of silence, which means

The unknown ship cruising at 17.4 knots, Sola TS now at 6.4 knots and accelerating. So the two ships are approaching each other at 23.8 knots or 44km/h. So a 43 seconds silence meant they were now around 500 meters closer to each other. (Emphasis in the original)

In other words, both ships are accelerating, and are now half a kilometer nearer each other. By one minute and fifty-three seconds into the transcript, the two ships are a kilometer apart. They should be able to see each other. By two minutes and fourteen seconds, for whatever reason, the bridge crew on the tanker Sola become aware of something, and can be heard telling the Norwegian frigate directly to turn to starboard to the Norwegian naval frigate, the Helge Ingstad:

2:14 — Sola TS: Take starboard now! [Turn right in maritime jargon.]

2:17 — Helge Ingstad: Than we go to the nearest blocks. [Shore, reef? Here in the VG video the subtitle says “Da går vi for nærme blokkene” some other sources report it as “Da går vi for nærme båkene” båkene meaning boats, it doesn’t change the substance tough, as Helge Ingstad perceives a near obstacle on its starboard side.]

The collision occurs about three minutes and nineteen seconds into the transcript, at 4:01 AM Norwegian time. But then there is a remarkable exchange a few minutes after the collision by the crew of the frigate, Helge Ingstad:

7:50 — Helge Ingstad: We’ve a situation, we ran into an unknown object.

4 minutes 30 seconds after the collision Helge Ingstad’s command is still unaware that they hit the oil tanker, Sola TS. Where exactly they think they were?

7:56 — Helge Ingstad: We’ve no propulsion.
8:22— Helge Ingstad: Still not clear here, but we need immediate assistance. (Emphasis in the original)

Now, this is beyond exceedingly strange. P.A.I. wondered the same thing in the original email accompanying the article. I don't know about you, but how does one, even at night, miss the presence of a large oil tanker within a few meters of one's own ship? I've seen cargo ships of all shapes and sizes personally - including oil tankers - and seen them both at day and night, at distance and up close and personal. I've driven, for example, years ago, across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-tunnel, and passed through Norfolk, Virginia, and done both during the day and night, and the size of these ships, miles away, is clear and unmistakable, even at night. I've seen then at night, at distance, silhouetted against the lights of shore installations and cities, with their running lights. They're hard to miss, even for a land-lubber like me. So I have to wonder: how does a Norwegian navy crew miss an oil tanker that, in maritime terms, is more or less "right next to" them? The Norwegians have been plying the seas longer than the British, French or Spanish, so it's not as if they lack experience.

Even more intriguing is that the frigate apparently turned to port, not starboard:

Now this is weird. I’m not a navigator, but simply superimposing radar course traces for both ships at 1:45 and 3:19 from the video, we see that in those 94 seconds Sola TS turns 5 degrees starboard, whereas Helge Ingstad turns 6 degrees port, instead of starboard as instructed!

...

Damage to the frigate being on the starboard back side corroborates to this theory. If the frigate maneuvered starboard and still collided, the damage would be on the port side.

How could this be possible? Navigation training gone bad? Seriously? Turning port instead of starboard? Or thinking they could turn port faster (didn’t accelerate) and avoid both the collision and the shore? Or were they simply blinded somehow, by something?

Even the author of the article is wondering the same thing as I, and I entertained the theory, you'll recall, way back when I was blogging about the USS Fitzgerald incident: had "something" clouded the minds of the crew of the Hegle Ingstad, making them turn to port rather than starboard? The fact that the traffic control was initially not showing the frigate on their radar does suggest that perhaps some sort of electro-magnetic interference (or cyber-attack) may have momentarily blinded them. The Wikipedia article on the incident maintains that the Helge Ingstad's crew thought the running lights on the Sola were shore installations. But I'm not buying that, because at a certain point, probably sooner rather than later, the Sola would have been apparent as a ship. Indeed, like the US Navy after the Fitzgerald and McCain incidents, the crew is being blamed by the board of inquiry, which recommended "good bridge and and sailor management practices" according to Wikipedia. But notably, there's no explanation as to why the frigate turned to port, rather than starboard. No matter how poor Norwegian naval training may have been (and I'm having difficulty believing that because the Helge Ingstad had just returned from NATO naval exercises!), I just cannot swallow that Norwegian sailors don't know the difference between starboard and port. Was the slow reaction time due to the use of digital systems, which the US Navy recently determined to replace with the "more intuitive" analogue systems, precisely because of incidents like the Fitzgerald? Maybe.

But to me, reading these transcripts, it looks like the crew of the Ingstad were, for whatever reason, in some sort of mental fog. How does one not see, either visually or on radar or both, a looming big cargo ship and do the obvious thing and steer away? How does one not see the cargo ships that slammed into the Fitzgerald, the John McCain, or the Helga Ingstad? Why does a freighter just capsize in calm waters, and then catch fire? The common element in these "weirdnesses" seems to be the crews, which seem to be responding to situations with less-than-optimal performance, as if they're in some sort of "fog of the mind".

I don't know about you folks, but it seems to me that something strange may be going on in the world's oceans. So for the moment, to all my Navy friends who are telling me that it's all just poor training or whatever, I'm sticking with my electromagnetic mind manipulation explanation. Indeed, I'm going to crawl out on the twig even further here and suggest that with all the electro-magnetic soup that a crew of a modern warship lives in, that perhaps we're looking at unintended interference or consequences of those systems to the human brain. Maybe. Perhaps. Or perhaps this is something much more deliberate going on, some sort of mind manipulation of ocean-going vessels' crews. If that be so, then who might be behind it and why?

See you on the flip side...

THE INCREDIBLE DISAPPEARING UNDERWATER OBSERVATORY

So many people shared this article that - up front - I want to say thank you for doing so. And I understand their reasons for doing so. We'll get back to that.

But first, the story: it seems that an automated underwater observatory has gone completely missing off the coast of Germany in the Baltic Sea:

Large Underwater Observatory Disappears Without a Trace, Baffling Scientists

The story is rather simple: the observatory was there one day, and wasn't the next:

A large monitoring station used to gather important scientific data in the Baltic Sea has mysteriously vanished.

The underwater observatory, which had been on the seafloor since December 2016, is managed by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel and the Helmholtz Center Geesthacht (HZG). On August 21 at 8:15 p.m. local time, transmissions from the €300,000 ($330,000) station came to a sudden halt. Divers were dispatched to the site, only to find—much to their astonishment—that the entire structure was gone, save for a shredded transmission cable, according to a GEOMAR statement.

The observatory was in a restricted area off the northern coast of Germany. Boats, including fishing vessels, are not allowed into the area, the BBC reported. That somebody, or a group of individuals, removed the observatory remains the most plausible explanation. Other factors, such as a massive storm, heavy currents, or even marine animals, were ruled out as potential causes owing to the weight of the instrument. Who or what removed the science station, and why, is a complete mystery. German police were alerted to the incident and are now investigating, according to GEOMAR.

...

“[At] first we thought of a transmission error,” Hermann Bange, project coordinator for the Boknis Eck Observatory, said in the GEOMAR statement. This prompted a diving mission to the site, revealing the disappearance. “The devices were gone, the divers could not find them anymore,” he said. “When the divers reached the bottom of the sea last week at the observatory’s location, they found only the torn off land cable. It was completely shredded.”

The missing observatory consists of two racks, one weighing 250 kilograms (550 pounds) and the other 100 kilograms (220 pounds) each. The racks include a frame holding the power supply (along with a heavy cable connecting the station to the coast) and a frame to hold the sensors. Both racks were “removed with great force from their position,” according to the GEOMAR statement. (Emphasis added)

And that's it.

Now, in and of itself, the story is not all that unusual, and the explanation - "that somebody, or a group of individuals, removed the observatory" - is, as the article says, "the most plausible explanation." And taken by itself, I readily agree.

But here comes the high octane speculation: in case you haven't noticed, there's been an awful lot of "strange stuff" going on in (or over... or under) the world's oceans in the past few years: hurricanes that are making a beeline for Texas through the Gulf of Mexico that then do a nearly perfect ninety-degree turn to slam into New Orleans (Katrina); then we had the case of Malaysia Air flight 370 whose disappearance has more theories and little by way of evidence for any of them, the USS Donald Cook incident in the Black Sea, and then a similar episode with the same ship in the Baltic Sea, and the USS Fitzgerald and USS John McCain incidents, all of which I've blogged about previously on this website. More recently I reported on the strange "electrical malfunction" on the USS Harry Truman, and the equally strange refitting of US aircraft carriers. Add to this missing Russian submarines, and the context around this latest story takes on a rather more somber appearance. Given the weight of the two racks of equipment comprising the observatory, and the statement by the observatory's owner, GEOMAR, that they were "removed with great force from their position," one has to entertain the possibility that perhaps, just perhaps, this latest strange story might somehow be related to all the rest. It's almost as if all the world's oceans and seas are now a part of the Bermuda Triangle, buzzing with strangeness.

If indeed, as the article speculates, the observatory was removed by someone, the question is why? What possible use would anyone have for such equipment, much less the expense and risk of stealing it? Or conversely, did "they" simply want the observatory shut down? If so, why? And to walk right off the end of the speculation twig here: assuming that somehow all these events are related, then that would imply that "someone" is messing around both with American and Russian naval vessels, and now an underwater German observatory. And perhaps all this strangeness is somehow related to the alleged refitting of American aircraft carriers with electronic counter-measures equipment. In any case, viewed in this wider and admittedly very speculative context, this little story may not be so little, and may bear watching.

See you on the flip side...

SOMETHING STRANGE IS GOING ON WITH THE US NAVY’S AIRCRAFT ...

Something very strange is going on with the USA's aircraft carriers, and today's blog is about that, and about two articles shared by K.M. and F.L.M., to whom many thanks! So first up, the article sent by F.L.M.:

USS Harry S. Truman Suffers Major Electrical Malfunction, Raising Questions About Upcoming Deployment

Now, as F.L.M. pointed out, when one reads between the lines a bit and connects some dots, many if not most of the U.S. Navy's fleet carriers are not operationally deployed, but rather, undergoing some sort of refurbishment, refit, or training. In the case of the USS Harry Truman, this is due to "electrical malfunctions":

“USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) has experienced an electrical malfunction within the ship’s electrical distribution system requiring analysis and repair. The ship is working closely with technicians from Norfolk Naval Shipyard to determine the cause and scope of the issue. The safety of the ship’s crew and reactor plants are not affected,” U.S. Fleet Forces Command spokesman Capt. Scott Miller told USNI News Friday night. 

USNI News understands a similar announcement went out to lawmakers on Friday evening.

A source told USNI News that it is too early to understand what this electrical malfunction means for the upcoming deployment plans.

Miller said, “it is Navy policy to not disclose future operations.”

In the email accompanying the article, F.L.M. speculated and connected some dots, which are well worth pondering:

At first glance several of our carriers are in maintenance cycles or being refueled and that is an 18-24 month procedure. I cant help but to think or speculate that there is more to this story than meets the eye. Especially after seeing The drive’s article about the 7th Fleets new counter measures being installed at forward deployed naval bases in and of itself is very odd. Usually upgrades to defensive weapons happen in home ports not at forward bases unless it is an emergency situation. So I am curious as to the entire carrier force is in home ports including our forward deployed carrier USS Ronald Reagan in Japan. She too is in Osaka and her deployment ended abruptly. I may be reading into this but over the past two years we have NOT deployed our carrier forces as normal. Prior to those collisions we usually deployed one battle group in each ocean to show the flag. About the time of the USS Donald Cooke incident we began scaling down operations and our carriers were absent from the oceans of earth which is very strange. Then this below article which states the entire force is grounded. Me thinks there is something rotten in these words! I am wondering if the threat assessment is of such a grave threat that we have been keeping our most prized possessions in home waters close to land based aircraft support and a friendly tow home. This leads me to the next question… who is behind this threat and why? The usual suspects pop up,  those to blame it all are  those Rooskies, the Chicoms, Japan, Israel, Germans etc.…. or is it an off world threat? Something has the US Navy scared ****less! There has also been a sacking of flag officers from both the US Navy and Marine Corp including Mad Dog Mattis at Secdef…. Why again? One field commander killed himself as well… Something here is oddly strange. Over time a larger picture is emerging and still too early to tell what that picture is to be. There have been other strange naval oddities as well. The missing of the Argentine submarine which was found sunk almost a year later. The Norwegian frigate collisions. The fire on board the Russian submarine killing and injuring a large part of her crew.  Missing sailors. I would like to also point out that missing flight 300 which happened over the ocean as well. Perhaps I may be all wet in these other incidents but they seem to be very strange indeed.

Viewed whole, F.L.M.'s speculation certainly seems worth entertaining. Something strange certainly appears to be going on. What may be going on might be what this article, shared by K.M., alleges: the carriers are being extensively refitted with special electromagnetic counter-measures suites:

Are US Aircraft Carriers secretly protected by electromagnetic "Tesla" shields?

Firstly, what's interesting to note is that this article confirms F.L.M.'s observations on the number of carriers that are operational, but pushes this back a couple of years, to 2017. This article, however, adds a reason for the recall and refit: the advent of Russian hyper-sonic missiles has changed the balance of power equation, and thus it became necessary to install special counter-measures to protect the missile magnets known as aircraft carriers. But as the article points out, this may be a rather special type of counter-measure, a kind of "shield" designed to scramble the electronics of inbound missiles, a "Tesla" shield, after a 2018 patent by the US Navy. Now, while I am ordinarily very skeptical of this particular source, it is true that such ideas have been around for some time, and it is true that they were proposed by Nikola Tesla in the 1930s, if not before. Equally true is that such force field methods have also been proposed for deflecting asteroids from impact trajectories with the Earth, a principle equally applicable to missiles. And in an era of hyper-sonic missiles, such measures would be a logical choice, and would explain the absence of carriers in operational readiness, and also explain the US Navy's continuing construction and deployment of the behemoths.  The problem with both a deflection mode of operation for any such countermeasure is the vast amount of power that would be required for it to work. Perhaps this is behind the "electrical malfunctions" of the USS Harry Truman.

But this may be a case of "you tell me," as these explanations do not seem to explain the wider scenario of F.L.M. and the many dots it connects. If one grants that this wider scenario/speculation is true for the sake of argument, then the counter-measures might be being installed for deeper reasons ultimately very different from Russian hyper-sonic missile threats or their own sophisticated electronic warfare capabilities. So, you tell me, what's going on here?

See you on the flip side...

 

WELL IT’S HAPPENED: ROBOTS ARE BEING TAXED…

Just last year, former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban development Catherine Austin Fitts said a truly astounding and insightful thing during a recording session of one of her Solari report quarterly wrap ups. When she said it, I had to do a (very) quick mental "calculation" of what she had said and why she had said it, as we always record those conversations live, with little to know preparation other than going over points she wants to talk about. The conversations themselves are always ad libitum, and they're a great deal of fun because ... well, because they keep one on one's toes!

What she stated was that she thought that the whole push to recognize transgenderism was not about transgendered people at all; the real goal, she said, was so that they could tax robots. It was one of those statements that often just gets "tossed out there" during those conversations that really make one stop to do that quick "mental calculation." In this case, those few seconds of mental calculation showed that she was on to something, for how would one "sneak in" a taxing capability of a robot? After all, robots are (1) sexless (unless  you're in Japan and having "sex" with them) and (2) they don't reproduce "in the conventional way." So if one wants to sneak in yet another legal fiction (like corporate personhood), in this case, the implied personhood of a robot for tax purposes, how would one do it? One might design robots that can reproduce "in the conventional way", but that might take too long and cost too much money. The other way would be to blur society's implied cultural norms by blurring one of the traditional features of actual human personhood itself: the sex of an individual, first by renaming it "gender," and then once that linguistic characteristic has been substituted for the "sex" of the person, by pretending to manipulate sexuality and hence the sex of the individual, by manipulations of language. Regardless of whether one agrees with it (or even my analysis of it), it's awfully clever. The door is kicked open to the eventual de facto recognition of robots as "persons" regardless of whether or not one of them, or a group of them, actually "wake up" and start showing the signs of actual personhood.

Well, it's already happened, according to this article spotted and shared by V.T. (and a big thank you for sending it along!):

Brave New World: Uncle Sam is taxing robots as companies invest in advanced tech

Now, as the article points out, we've not come to the point of direct taxation of robots, but already indirect taxation is being levied:

Uncle Sam is padding the Treasury with millions of dollars to assess bots at the same time that corporations invest more in advanced technology and labor-saving machinery, according to experts.

New “robot” taxes are expected to multiply in the coming decades as millions of Americans see their jobs automated away.

“Yes, governments already tax robots because they tax virtually everything that goes into developing and making robots,” economist and author Mark Thornton told The Post. “In a few cases, there are subsidies such as government grants for robot development. But that still means they are taxing you and me to provide the subsidies.”

But wait, here's the loophole:

Taxing robots — a proposal first suggested by Microsoft founder Bill Gates in 2017 as a way for government to tame the inexorable ascent of machines, and to finance new programs like elder care and education — is back on the front burner.

A robot that replaces a factory worker who produces say, $50,000 of work annually, should be taxed at the same level to offset losses in income and Social Security taxes, Gates calculates.

For many, it’s a total pain in the bot. “Anytime employers hear this talk, they cringe because they feel they’re already paying enough in taxes,” said Greg Fritsky, national director of robotics, AI and data analytics at EisnerAmper.

So let's read between the lines a bit with some high octane speculation, though in this instance we're not at the end of the twig, but more over toward the trunk of the tree. As intimated in the article, corporations are already complaining about their rate of taxation. If robots become part of the assets that corporations will be taxed upon, an intriguing scenario could result, whereby it becomes more profitable for a corporation to move its plant to a sweat shop overseas employing humans, than to "employ" robots in country "x" which it will have to pay taxes upon. A possible solution is - here it comes - to spin the robots loose from the corporation itself, and to recognize them as employees, that is to say, as persons, who are taxed directly.  Since no one can make any sense of this country's tax code (not even your standard employee robot), whole new businesses will open with robot tax preparers specializing in robot taxation and... well, I exaggerate but you get the idea.

Still, we're a long ways from Isaac Asimov's all-but-human robots, but it is a fact that more and more jobs that humans now perform could eventually be done by robots. And with that comes the Asimovian prediction: eventually, so many things will be done by robots that society will break down, because the humans who used to perform certain tasks no longer know  how to do so, and the robots that repair other robots have themselves - like all machines - broken down. Already we have robo-trains roaming the rails, robo trucks plying the highways, and I suspect eventually robo-pilots flying you to France, and so on. Why bother to learn how to be a pilot, or a locomotive engineer, or drive a car, when a robot will do it for you? Many automobile companies 's assembly lines are largely robotized. But what happens when the system goes down, and you still need to build cars? Who knows how?

I don't know about you, but to me the robotized future - complete with robots-as-taxable-persons - doesn't look so bright. Maybe it's time to reconsider the rush to robotization: why have robots do anything that humans can do, especially if the dangers of a system-collapse, as Asimov warned decades ago, seem to be inherent in it? Humans are error prone, to be sure... so why multiply the problems by having error-prone humans designing robots? Or to put it differently, maybe Asimov was on to something...

See you on the flip side...

 

THE WORLD’S FORESTS AND JUNGLES ARE ON FIRE… WHY?

This week's "inbox" was full of articles that people sent to me about all the fires raging in the world's forests and jungles, and the narratives accompanying them, from the forests of Siberia and California to the jungles of Brazil and the Congo. The real question is ... why? We'll get back to that, but first, here's a sampling of just some of the articles I've received. For example, G.B. sent this one along:

Bolsonaro Admits Farmers May Have Started Amazon Wildfires, Warns World Not To Interfere

And in case you missed it, get a load of the "narrative" here:

As the outcry over the wildfires currently tearing through the Amazon intensifies, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro admitted on Thursday that farmers might be illegally setting fires to clear land for pasture, after previously blaming NGOs for the the 85% spike in wildfires, compared to 2018 Reuters reports.

...

But he warned outsiders not to interfere, as French President Emmanuel Macron insisted that the situation in Brazil should be discussed by the G-7 in Biarritz this weekend, while UN Secretary General Antonio Gutterres expressed concern about the fires via Twitter. Macron called the fires "an international crisis" in a tweet.

As the article goes on to note, there was even an amount of encouragement from the Brazilian government for farmers to initiate controlled burns as a part of a plan to utilize the Amazon basin for mining and agriculture.  But as G.B. pointed out in the email accompanying the article, farmers do controlled burns all the time without starting major conflagrations, though sometimes accidents do happen. Rather, what's more intriguing is President Bolsonaro's warning to the rest of the world not to "interfere." It's rather as if he does not want anyone looking too closely at whatever is going on. We'll get back to that "whatever" in a moment too. For the record, however, I too thought the same thing as G.B. when I first heard about these fires, coming so quickly after the fires started in Siberia, due to lightning strikes.

G.B. and several others people also sent along this article:

The "Lungs Of The Earth" Are Being Burned Away As Unprecedented Wildfires Absolutely Ravage The Planet

One comment in this article sums it up very aptly:

I know that this number is hard to believe, but there have been more than 72,000 wildfires in Brazil so far in 2019, and most of those fires are happening in the Amazon rainforest.  I understand that many of you may not care what happens in Brazil, but you should.  Approximately 60 percent of the entire Amazon rainforest is in Brazilian territory, and that rainforest produces approximately 20 percent of all the oxygen in our atmosphere.  So essentially the “lungs of the Earth” are being burned away right in front of our eyes…

The fires are burning at the highest rate since the country’s space research center, the National Institute for Space Research (known by the abbreviation INPE), began tracking them in 2013, the center said Tuesday.

There have been 72,843 fires in Brazil this year, with more than half in the Amazon region, INPE said. That’s more than an 80% increase compared with the same period last year.

The Amazon is often referred to as the planet’s lungs, producing 20% of the oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere.

An eighty percent increase of fires in the Amazon basin this year over last year? In addition to being very suspect, we're to blame "the little guy", the farmers, for this? If that's the case, then why didn't controlled burns by farmers ignite a conflagration much earlier? Like G.B., I suspect that the finger pointing is meant to deflect attention from something else. Again, we'll get back to that. The second article goes on to note the burning of forests in Alaska, Greenland(!), and elsewhere. You can add Canada, the Congo, to that list. Indeed, C.M. spotted this article about Angola and the Congo, and the fires there and the areas affected are larger than in Brazil!

More Wildfires Are Burning In Angola & Congo Than Brazil

Make no mistake about it, this is an environmental crisis, for with far fewer plants cycling carbon dioxide back into oxygen, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases, yielding the standard global warming paradigm.

So, add it all up, in the last year or so we've seen major fires in: (1) Russia (Siberia), (2) Brazil (the Amazon basin), (3) Canada, (4) Alaska, (5) Greenland(!), (6) Angola, (7) The Congo, and of course (8) Nuttyfornia. Can fires start by lightning strikes or controlled burns that run amok? Absolutely they can.  But what I'm not buying - call me crazy as I head toward the end of the twig of high octane speculation once again - is the idea that all these fires, within more or less a short period of time, and covering such vast swaths of land, are all due to "the little guy" or mere accident. When one has been spraying heavy metal particulates into the atmosphere for years, then that in itself becomes an addition of combustible material to land all over the world, and the lightning strike can start a fire which will quickly get out of control. Indeed, I've speculated previously that weather - which would include lightning - has been weaponized, and we might be looking at something far more sinister than just controlled burns by farmers. We might, in short, be looking at geophysical warfare taking place right before our eyes, and hence President Bolsonaro's warning to the rest of the world not to "interfere." Indeed, if my speculation is the case, then the last thing Mr. Globaloney would want are people going to Angola, The Congo, or the Amazon Basin and talking to eyewitnesses about what they've seen and experienced. It might lead to evidence of "anomalies" of a very unnatural character that accompanied the fires in Nuttyfornia.

But there is one bright spot in all this smoky darkness, because judging from the comments from people in their emails who sent me these and similar articles, more and more people are waking up to the possibility that these conflagrations might not be entirely natural.

See you on the flip side...

 

 

MORE EPSTEIN MISCELLANY…

It's been a long time since I actually blogged on the weekend, but with all the Epstein news and speculation out there, I simply had to do so, sort of as a "bonus" this week. To be frank, I had thought about doing this blog during the weekdays, but as this website as a more or less international audience, I thought that it would be better to do so as a kind of "extra" rather than fixate on it during the week.  But make no mistake, the Epstein case is significant, precisely because of its international nature. As no other case or individual, Mr. Epstein was connected. In the apt words of one American commentator, he was the most important prisoner in the world.

The case is significant also for an almost philosophical reason, because according to polls in America, the vast majority of people are simply not buying the suicide narrative, and of those who do, the outrage factor is in the red zone. Epstein has crystallized the sense of outrage so much that his case symbolizes a cultural and epistemological crisis that the country is in. Virtually every aspect of the narrative that we're being told has already been questioned, and virtually every detail can be interpreted from a variety of points of view and in the absence of trust in any narrative put out by the government, speculations and theories abound, many of which make much more sense than the narrative we're being asked to accept. In short, Epstein has created a kind of epistemological crisis: so deep is the cynicism now that - as I remarked in a private conversation to a friend - if the government investigation initiated by Attorney General Barr were to be completely transparent and tell the absolute truth, no one is going to believe it, and you can put me in that category. The institutions of government have lied to the American people for so long, and so deeply, the double standard application of law has become so apparent, that the cynicism runs so deep no one will believe them any more. That's an epistemological crisis, a cultural one, and ultimately, a crisis of governance. At this stage, some big name people are going to have to appear in orange jump suits - and soon - or government regardless of who is running it is going to lose what tiny little shards of credibility it has left.

As a case in point to illustrate this "epistemological crisis", consider the following article:

FBI agents swarm Jeffrey Epstein's private Caribbean island

In the aftermath of Epstein's suicide-Arkancide-substitution or whatever-it-was-that-happened last weekend, one school of thought quickly expressed itself, namely, that with Epstein officially out of the way, nothing could prevent the government from going in and seizing all sorts of stuff from his various properties and estates. Et voila! That's what the article here states has happened, and in jig time too. Nothing suspicious about that (heavy cough). On the internet, a certain segment of people have commented that this is all "according to the plan worked out in detail years in advance" and so on, and that all is well. Trust the plan. I view this group with the same jaundiced skepticism as I do the whole Epstein whatever-happened story, and in the same sort of mood as I view the Inter-galactic Blue Chickens Disclosure group. In effect, they're saying, "See? The FBI is on top of this, and they're gathering more evidence! The arrests are about to begin!"

Really?!? Why couldn't they be destroying evidence? After all, this was the same government that: (1) lied about JFK with its magic bullet-lone nut theory; (2) destroyed evidence at Waco, (3) destroyed evidence at Oklahoma City, and (4) repeated the performance on 9/11, and on and on we could go. The FBI, which was clearly politicized and weaponized by one political group against another - think Ohr, Stzrok, McCabe, Comey &c - is all of a sudden trustworthy? My point here is, that one may interpret each detail in a variety of ways, often mutually contradictory.

And that's what I mean by an epistemological crisis. With so many reasonably articulated theories out there, with so little forthcoming, and with trust at an all time low and skepticism at an all time high, why should one believe anything the government or the media - and let us never forget the Clowns In America's penetration of that media - says? One famous American tv talk show host, I've noticed, has been repeatedly stating in his broadcasts that the FBI is the world's greatest investigative organization. Why would he be doing this? Because trust and respect are earned, not commanded, and the FBI has lost both. Don't feed me the line that there are many good people in the organization, for an organization that can be so easily subverted and perverted by a few at the top is not an organization to be trusted. What holds true for a few popes and cardinals in the Middle Ages (or for that matter, more recently) holds true here. Penance requires the perp walks in this instance, and things are so bad that unless people start seeing the orange jump suits, no one is going to believe them any more.

But I had to do this blog for a very different reason, because there is a template in the case that no one - to my knowledge - has noticed. I noticed, but didn't want to comment on it, lest people think that once again I've fallen off the end of the twig, hit my head, and become loonier than the usual high octane speculation. I decided to blog about this template when I received an email, or a comment - I don't remember which - from someone whose initials I forget, who also noticed that same strange template, a template which may point a finger at whoever may have been behind his suicide, substitution, abduction, or whatever-it-was-that-actually-happened-last-weekend.

And that is, have you noticed the very strange and detailed parallels between the Epstein whatever-happened-last-weekend story, and that of Rudolf Hess? While there's obviously much to distinguish the two, consider the following strange parallels:

(1) Both men were, at the time of their alleged suicides, the most important prisoners in the world, each having an international significance;

(2) Both men were under heavy guard and being watched constantly, and in maximum security prisons - the "tombs" in Epstein's case, and Spandau in Hess's;

(3) Both men allegedly committed suicide under circumstances that made their doing so next to physically impossible;

(4) Both men's alleged suicides also invoked theories of substitutions and doubles, which theories included close examination of their physical appearance: World War One wounds suffered by Hess and the apparent lack thereof on Spandau Hess, and different nose and ear shapes between Epstein and the pictures of the body being we've been shown (always remembering that the mockingbird media might be deliberately obfuscating that data precisely in order to create a bit of "Epstein" theater to distract attention);

(5) Both men had strong ties to the British royal family;

(6) Both men stated prior to their deaths that someone would try to kill them;

(7) Both men had an international network of connections and knew "secrets" which if exposed could damage many reputations and operations;

(8) Both men were deeply connected to intelligence agencies;

(9) Both men had some sort of connection to Jewish interests, Epstein being Jewish, and connected to suspected Mossad interests, the Bronfmans, &c., and Hess being connected to the Haushofers (and let's not forget Menachim Begin's alleged warning to Carter about Hess);

(10) In the case of both men, governments moved quickly to seize papers and other evidence, and to obfuscate evidence, in Epstein's case, as was seen above, by quick raids shortly after the whatever-it-was-that-happened last weekend, and in Hess's case, both the UK and Nazi governments moved quickly to seize compounds and papers after his flight to Scotland, and then again, after his death when significant files in the UK went conveniently missing.

And on and on we could go.

It's that template, here, in other words, that disturbs, particularly in Epstein's case, for it suggests that an old playbook was dusted off, and reused.

See you on the flip side...

ANOTHER EXPLODING AMMO DUMP, THIS TIME IN IRAQ

G.B. spotted this one, and I have to wonder, as did G.B. in the email which included this article, whether or not we're looking at something "large" going on, in the wake of the  two Russian munitions plant explosions in the past few weeks. This article is from The Times of Israel:

Blast at pro-Iranian militia base weapons depot rocks Baghdad

The article alleges that the munitions dump was an Iranian-backed militia dump, and implies, though does not explicitly state, that the explosion was caused by an Israeli air strike inside that country:

A massive explosion in a weapons depot on a pro-Iranian militia base rocked Baghdad on Monday evening, local media reported.

The blast appeared to have triggered some of the munitions stored on the base, sending projectiles into surrounding neighborhoods.

Sky News Arabia reported that incoming mortar shells set off sirens in the area around the US embassy in Baghdad, known as the Green Zone.

Local media reported that the weapons storehouse was controlled by the Sayyid of Martyrs Battalions, an Iraqi Shiite militia supported by Israel’s nemesis Iran.

Explosions seen at a base south of Baghdad on August 12, 2019. (screen capture: Twitter)

A massive explosion in a weapons depot on a pro-Iranian militia base rocked Baghdad on Monday evening, local media reported.

The blast appeared to have triggered some of the munitions stored on the base, sending projectiles into surrounding neighborhoods.

Sky News Arabia reported that incoming mortar shells set off sirens in the area around the US embassy in Baghdad, known as the Green Zone.

Local media reported that the weapons storehouse was controlled by the Sayyid of Martyrs Battalions, an Iraqi Shiite militia supported by Israel’s nemesis Iran.

“An explosion occurred because of the piling up of munitions inside the Saqr military base in southern Baghdad,” Iraq’s joint military-police Baghdad Operations Command wrote on its Facebook page.

The blast came amid reports that Israel has been increasingly carrying out airstrikes against Iran-backed militias in Iraq.

Last month, Asharq Al-Awsat, an Arabic-language newspaper published in London, cited Western diplomatic sources as saying an Israeli F-35 plane was behind a July 19 strike on a rocket depot in a Shiite militia base north of Baghdad.

The Saudi-based al-Arabiya network reported at the time that members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps and Hezbollah had been killed in the strike. It said the base had shortly before the strike received Iranian ballistic missiles, which were hidden inside trucks.

Now before we get to today's high octane speculation, which, for the record, I share with G.B. who originally sent the article to me, let me state for the record that I have no difficulty believing that Israel has, and is probably continuing, to conduct air strikes inside of Iraq against Iranian or Iranian-backed targets. It certainly has the capability, and more importantly the will and motivation to do so, as the article subsequently makes clear.

But what leads me to my high octane speculation of the day is that under normal circumstances, Israel has seldom denied specific airstrikes against specific targets. Normally, it admits it has done so after the fact. This, however, has not been done in this case, it has only been implied, which leaves the door open that this explosion may have been brought about by different means: agents in place on the ground in an act of sabotage, or perhaps by more exotic means, and it's these latter possibilities I want to explore in my high octane speculation, and in the context not only of those curious Russian explosions, but also in the context of those Chinese chemical plant explosions a few years ago. The Tianjin chemical plant explosion in China continues to occupy my mind, because as I have pointed out in previous blogs about that story, the crater left by that explosion was both narrow and very deep. In other words, it is not the type of crater signature that one would normally associate with chemical explosions, which would normally be both wider and shallower. At the time, this odd signature prompted me and others to conclude that perhaps a space-based "rod of God" kinetic weapon might have been used. This speculation gained some credence when, during a press conference, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff stated that "all options were on the table" regarding North Korea. A reporter asked him if that included "kinetic weapons" and his response was "yes."

All this to say that it's been my suspicion that we are looking perhaps at some form of exotic warfare taking place with these munitions plants/dumps/chemical plant explosions, perhaps cyber warfare, or the use of other more exotic technologies. Thus far, those events have included facilities in China and Russia, the "big two" in the Shanghai accords nations, but with this event, the pattern - if indeed it is that - has now reached out to include another major player in that bloc: Iran. if this speculation has any merit, then one should expect that the pattern will eventually encompass similar types of facilities inside Iran itself.

The problem, of course, is something I've often mentioned with this type of covert warfare: "covert operations" is a game that two can play. So if munitions plants or ammo dumps suddenly start exploding in the West, then in my opinion it's a sure bet that my covert warfare model is true. But even without that, if similar events suddenly start to happen in Iran, then in my opinion it's also an equally sure bet.

See you on the flip side...