Open thread. I planned to write something. But I tutor in 2 minutes. 🙂
477 thoughts on “Open thread: Jan 22!”
Tom Scharf,
“…this is basically more stenography from the DNC.”
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Sure. Biden kept those documents willfully, knowing that he was prohibited by law from doing so. He used the documents for personal gain. There was nothing unintentional in his taking of the documents. He is and has always been a crook and a creep.
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The NYTs is still only good for disposal of fish guts; sadly, the useful paper version is becoming harder to find when you need to clean fish.
Russia’s biggest failure was not militarily but in the Ukrainians the FSB was supposed to have bought. It worked in Kherson, but they expected it to work all across the country. If that had worked as planned the limitations of the RAF wouldn’t have been made as apparent as it has been.
Russia seems to be expecting a major escalation in the coming weeks. Russia was craning pantsir onto high rise roofs in Moscow yesterday and there are active systems running at Putin’s residences. This seems to point to an expectation that NATO will be striking Russia territory as Ukraine hasn’t shown that they have the range to strike that far into russia. That’s worrisome as the only way that NATO crosses that line is if he uses a Nuke or attacks a western country directly.
Hunter Biden’s longtime business partner Eric Schwerin visited the White House at least eight times in 2016 …
Those eight additional visits, in addition to 19 previously known Schwerin visits, bring his total number of White House visits during the Obama-Biden administration to 27.
Schwerin definitely met with members of Biden’s staff, but it is “unclear” if he met with the Big Guy himself.
Tom Scharf (Comment #217944),
For once the New York Times gets something right, although they avoided the word “coverup”. It is not a coincidence that Garland took action just a few days after the leak.
Mike M,
I meant the visitor logs for Biden’s personal residences, which surely exist for the 8 years he was vice president, and the last two years as president.
Ukraine forces are coming close to a full collapse. If Ukraine does not come to its senses and fully capitulate, Ukraine faces total dismemberment as Russia will not leave a hostile Ukraine to rearm and be able to fight another day.
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https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/01/ukraine-russian-army-activates-southern-front.html
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“….. The long expected Russian offensive in Ukraine has begun.
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The Ukrainian army, egged on by its U.S. controllers, had put most of its resource into the static defense of the Bakhmut (Artyomovsk) – Soledar sector of the eastern front. An insane number of Ukrainian brigades, though many partially depleted, were concentrated on that 50 kilometer long front. This left other sectors nearly empty of Ukrainian troops.”
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“ The big Ukrainian concentration in Bakhmut is now in an operational encirclement. The Russian forces have progressed north and south of the city and their artillery can easily control the western exit roads of Bakhmut. ”
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“ The Military Land Deployment map, sympathetic to the Ukrainian side, shows just three Territorial Defense brigades covering a 100 kilometer long southern defense line. These brigades are infantry rich but not mobile.”
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The first probing Russian attacks in the area were launched two days ago. The Ukrainian lines immediately broke down and the Russian forces advanced some 5 kilometer on the very first day. Yesterday they advanced further.”
Did they look under the bed?
In a shock news flash DOJ shows shocking photo of Hunter Biden shooed and feet under a bed in the Wilmington house during a search today.
“Nothing to see here” he is reported to have said.
In view of this report DOJ and Biden lawyers agreed not to search under any other beds as well.
“We are not his mother” said special counsel Ben Hur to the Praesidian Guard Press.
“When federal authorities last August discovered classified documents at former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, President Joe Biden said he couldn’t understand “how anyone could be that irresponsible.”” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CjzgWJZmtY
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Well, he certainly understands that now, ha ha. The DOJ executes a 10 hour search and even more documents found, some going back to his Senate days. What an embarrassment. The “cases are different” narrative is now in complete collapse. I’m pretty sure Biden was trying to sell nuclear secrets to the highest bidder in Saudi Arabia!!!!!! Very serious people need to address this very, very seriously. Call in the CNN panels to discuss with many a furrowed brow.
Tom Scharf,
That Biden has been pilfering classified documents since his days in the Senate comes as no surprise; he is a lifelong creature of Washington DC, and like all such creatures, acts as if inconvenient laws do not apply to him. Now that we are up to maybe 30 or 40 classified documents, stolen over decades, maybe Biden will (finally) get pushed into not running again.
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This latest disclosure makes charging Trump appear even less likely, and were it to happen, it would be incredibly destructive of the county’s social fabric….. and respect for the rule of law. Add to it all the fact Trump had plenary power to declassify any document he wanted at any time he wanted, while Biden never did, and moving legally against Trump, but not Biden, would be farcical. The DOJ needs to think very carefully about how to abandon this charade and quietly end both investigations.
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But I am not sure a partisan clown like Merrick Garland can appreciate the potential damage he can do to the country. Pray that enough people at the DOJ have the good sense to explain it to him.
SteveF
This latest disclosure makes charging Trump appear even less likely, and were it to happen, it would be incredibly destructive of the county’s social fabric…..
Well.. yes. They really can’t charge Trump and not charge Biden. To get that to fly they have to argue Trump’s infraction was somehow “worse”. And they have to get people to believe that is the reason for charging one and not the other. But they have no way to do that.
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Because this involves documents marked classified (whether they should be or not), they can’t just show everyone the documents to explain how some are “more important” than others. And because Biden has been doing it for freakin’ ever that makes Biden look “worse”.
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Now Trump did act like an asshole alpha gorilla thumping his chest, (because he always acts like an asshole). But that’s not really an element of the crime.
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SteveF (Comment #217955): “This latest disclosure makes charging Trump appear even less likely, and were it to happen, it would be incredibly destructive of the county’s social fabric”.
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Indeed. Unless the plan is to take out BOTH Biden and Trump.
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Secrecy as a weapon of partisan warfare (would be a better article without the first few paragraphs): https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/secrecy-is-for-losers-jacob-siegel
Wherever the truth lies in the Biden case, it’s obvious that administrative secrecy is routinely used as a veto on democracy and the rule of law. The same opaque network of bureaucrats and security officials who still have not explained to the public why they raided Trump’s compound can’t be expected to play it straight now. Being transparent with the public might put them out of business.
New thread. 🙂
The classified documents fiascos point to several conclusions one of which is there is way too much secrecy in government. Given that we know there have been high level Russian and Chinese moles in most of the intelligence agencies, our countries adversaries have much more knowledge about our elected officials histories of corruption than our voters have.
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Would the US have better foreign relations and domestic security having one tenth the security state?
Ron-
I don’t think it necessarily means there is too much secrecy. It does mean that Senators, VPs and Presidents and their offices are allowed to be pretty sloppy with these documents. That could be because many are over classified or it could be because personal involved in the system (usually ‘little guys’) can’t effectively push back and enforce the rules. And no one wants to follow up after these politicians leave office (or are approaching the time of leaving.)
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On the one hand, we do need elected officials to be able to gain knowledge of things that are classified. However, at some point, classified materials need to be collected and tracked. Certainly the papers Biden had when in the Senate should have been collected long ago.
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Taking tracking seriously might actually motivate people to not-over classify. (Or not.) But whether or not things are over classified, the location of these materials ought to be tracked at least as well as my local lending library tracks things. My local lending library knows if I haven’t returned something!!
Lucia,
“My local lending library knows if I haven’t returned something!!”
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Yup. And the fact that classified documents remain unaccounted for (for decades!) tells me that 1) the system for controlling state secrets is woefully inadequate, and 2) it is very likely that most “classified” documents should never have been classified in the first place. As I noted in the last thread, IMO, classification should be explicitly limited in time except under the most extreme of circumstances, and classification practiced as routine CYA (which is what it usually seems to be) should lead to immediate firing of any bureaucrat, or prosecution in cases of serial abuse.
Steve and Lucia, I hear you pretty much agreeing that over classification has problems. Let me add to your list.
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Keeping the people, press and congress, from being fully and accurately informed dulls policy. If public debates are robust from the outset there will be greater acceptance of the sacrifices that are realized in implementation. The counter-argument is that the public does not have the time to process complex topics and thus can easily be swayed in a shortsighted direction. In practice it seems the public is more longsighted than our intelligence state on most foreign policy examples.
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Secrecy also undermines diplomacy. Nations do not have a lot of trust in other nations that are run by an elite bureaucracy rather than by the people at large. Wars are ultimately the result of an escalation of distrust.
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As far as military technology, this should be in the shared hands of private vendors, all of whom need to be aided in maintaining secrecy. But all private businesses should be supported in some ways to protect their intellectual properties.
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I support a strong cyber security agencies as long as we repeal the patriot act and there is strong oversight to protect the 4th Amendment against government snooping.
Ron Graf
The counter-argument is that the public does not have the time to process complex topics and thus can easily be swayed in a shortsighted direction.
It may be true that “the public” doesn’t have time to process complex topics. It certainly is if by “the public” doesn’t have time to do that you mean most people aren’t going to be reading everything printed.
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That’s not a good reason to classify things. The entire public doesn’t need to be read or process everything.
. Some things are best kept secret for some amount of time. But the reason isn’t because the public doesn’t have time to process complex things. It’s because some information, if available, is not all that hard to process and can be used for ill.
The trade off between security and ability to function effectively is enormous.
A simple lesson in medical school on bacteria 50 years ago to illustrate.
A simple bacteria, staph albus, sensitive to all antibiotics flourishes widely as it does not damage its hosts.
Staph aureus builds up genes carrying resistance to antibiotics and causes a lot of damage.
The more genes it attracts or acquires to fight off the more antibiotic used against it the less able it is to compete with staph albus in the non hospital world.
It becomes a superbug but only capable of surviving in a hostile environment, not the normal environment.
One of the reasons not to worry about superbugs in general, only if you are unlucky to go to hospital, especially a very good hospital!
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Back to documents and security the Tom Cruise movie MI 1996 showed the highest security disc under lock and vault and lasers, who could possibly access it at all for use?
When trying to monitor people in real time it requires 40 people minimum to monitor 1 person effectively over 24 hours.
There are not enough people, yawn to monitor everyone in the world.
Third the spy industry already know most important secrets
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In Australia we have both freedom of information laws [might cost you 20 dollars a page , so much for freedom and privacy laws [provided you give the company you deal with all your information] which basically meant no-one could communicate important information to anyone else when needed.
Disastrous for the medical profession and patients when introduced and worse now.
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Exactly the same as your security listed documents problem.
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How do people cope?
By ignoring the restrictions where practicable and hoping no officious nong [Australian slang] lodges complaints.
Works except when someone wants to use the laws to their own, usually financial gain.
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Should I care if Biden had Ukraine documents when his son was being paid for by the Ukrainians.
No.
He obtained the documents legitimately.
He was free to [illegally]photocopy them on a photocopier if he wished and keep them forever if no one blabbed.
As someone else in his position said, you cannot unsee documents.
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His crime and the crime of the security services, which should not be the National archives but the forwarding agencies, secret service CIA FBI etc was in his case to keep the originals and theirs in not seeking to recover them to cross off against their records.
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This only applies to the Biden case.
Trump’s possession was known at all times[they kept those records]
and the only element was his refusal to give them back in a timely fashion which could have been quietly and legally worked through.
Did Hilary Clinton knowingly admit to willfully destroying classified documents?
If she got a pass then common sense suggests all Presidents and possibly vice presidents should just get the same admonishment, not punishment.
Angech, you added another cost to over classification that I omitted: poorer access creates poorer functionality.
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Each mishandling case is different. For Clinton she exposed the documents to online hackers. She presumably deleted copies, not originals, likely inadvertently in order to destroy other incriminating emails regarding selling influence through the Clinton Foundation.
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In Biden’s case it seems like he had originals but we don’t know if other copies existed. We don’t know why he kept them except that returning them may have exposed his theft, if that was how they were obtained. That issue is not even addressed yet.
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You accurately summarized Trump’s case. There was no reason to raid unless they had some reason to believe that Trump was going to leak or destroy the documents. They may have had to do with Russiagate some have guessed.
Thanks Ron.
There is a need for secrecy.
Witness the execution of the [alleged] British spy in the Iranian Government recently.
Exposure has costs.
But nuclear secrets? 80 years after 10 countries [?] have the bomb.
No big deal.
angech,
Exposure has costs.
But nuclear secrets? 80 years after 10 countries [?] have the bomb.
No big deal.
Uhhmmm… You clearly don’t know what might be kept secret about nuclear related weapons, tactics or strategies.
Angech, regarding secrecy to protect spies within foreign governments, doesn’t spying erode trust among nations? How would you feel if your news showed the discovery of a CIA mole in the Australian government? Wouldn’t make you less likely to trust the US should the time come to join in Taiwan’s defense, for example?
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If we didn’t scheme against or spy on other nations what do we need to keep secret? I agree that industry, especially for weapons technologies need to be kept secret. But there are few in the government who would have any need to know the workings of an atomic switch anyway.
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I support counter-intelligence to prevent others spying. I guess you could argue that we need spies to infiltrate foreign spy agencies to help out their spies. But if that is the bulk of the purpose it seems a bit circular.
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What was the last national security secret that was compromised by spying that was not technology related? We left an awful lot of technology behind in Afghanistan just because we wrongly thought it could help them. I am sure that part of the hesitancy in shipping front line weapons to Ukraine is for the concern of handing Russians the technology.
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The only technology that we can keep without using it is nuclear weapons technology. And I think that is why the press leaked that is what Trump’s documents had (because they couldn’t think of anything else legitimate).
Lucia,
You clearly don’t know what might be kept secret about nuclear related weapons, tactics or strategies.
Absolutely. A consequence of this is, you don’t know what else has to be kept secret as a result. Some things might seem silly to keep secret or classified, except that not keeping them secret or classified might permit an adversary to deduce other things that actually are important to keep secret or classified. It’s not as straightforward as it might look at a glance.
Ummmm…. most classified documents have nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
Almost all government documents are restricted from the public. FOIA is a process that if you know a document exists through some other reference then you can begin to request. There is no guarantee that you will get anything, even if you sue the government, which is standard practice for FOIA.
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Congress had to make a special law compelling the CIA to release their last JFK assassination documents by 2017. First, the CIA shouldn’t have had any withheld documents in the first place. Second, the ones they coughed up were mostly duplicates of files that had been in other databases. New files were all inconsequential. But the CIA protested to Pompeo to get Trump to use executive power to halt the releases anyway. It is utterly ridiculous. The CIA might as well come out and admit that they were the culprits by their over the top suspicious behavior. They would be better to release all documents and just deny what they implicate. They do that with a straight face all the time. That’s how all the media, Faucis, Schiffs and George Santoses learned it.
One of the most fun facts about the JFK assassination is that Lee Harvey Oswald’s friend right before the assassination, George de Mohrenschildt, was a CIA informant. Here
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Even more bizarre, he also was an uncle to George HW Bush’s college roomate and worked for his father, Prescott Bush in 1940s. And, at about that same time he was known to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy as “Uncle George” when she was a little girl on his knee. Here.
Today:
Ex-FBI official arrested for alleged money laundering, Russia sanctions, taking money from former foreign agent
Charles McGonigal allegedly took $225,000 in cash from a former foreign agent while still working for the FBI. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/ex-counterintel-head-fbi-new-york-mcgonigal-arrested-rcna66995
“Federal prosecutors say the former head of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York office laundered money, violated sanctions against Russia while working with a Russian oligarch and while still at the FBI took hundreds of thousands of dollars from a foreign national and former foreign intelligence official.”
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One thing for sure, the US reeling in their operations isn’t going to stop others. The Russians stole our nuclear weapons designs and probably cut off a decade from their program, not that it makes a lot of difference now. A lot of this “doesn’t really matter” until the day it does, and then it matters a great deal.
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If the Chinese/Russians have compromised our communications or military capability then ho-hum … until the missiles start flying in a hot war (or vice versa). People are going to care an awful lot on that day.
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Knowing how to effectively jam a missile sensor or being well versed on its operational capabilities can be worth billions when 200 Chinese missiles are fired at an aircraft carrier group in the Taiwan strait.
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So you just cannot afford to not do this stuff. I totally agree there are better uses of this effort of mankind’s engineering than this circus, but I also don’t want to be rendering my services for Putin or Xi.
mark bofill,
Also, some things might likely need to be kept secret for a time. But it’s hard to go through and check that the reason is no longer valid.
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I mean… suppose one did an analysis to identify current vulnerabilities at a major event. ( Inauguration, Bowl game, March Madness, Boston Marathon, whatever.) Or you do a red-team, blue-team game to see if one team can break into somewhere. From that you learn certain things need to be protected against.
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Almost by definition there will be a window of time between when you learn the vulnerability and when you fix things to protect against it. During that time you don’t want that document circulating!!
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If the document got out, some reading it might say, “Oh. Ho hum… It’s not the nuclear launch codes.” But other people know this needs to be kept secret for a while.
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Now perhaps it should be declassified at some point. But reviewing every so often ain’t a snap either.
“If the document got out, some reading it might say, “Oh. Ho hum… It’s not the nuclear launch codes.” But other people know this needs to be kept secret for a while.”
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This is exactly the reason that the JFK assassination files have been locked up. As an example of what one can do when they collect up fragments over time one should read my second link on George de Mohrenschildt. By they time one is done with reading that page the picture is very clear what happened. But no one piece of the chronicle gives a concrete picture.
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Another example is when Lindsey Graham released the FBI 302 report interviewing Christopher Steele’s secret primary subsource. Immediately Stephen McIntyre and his band of cronies on Twitter went to work trying to fit names into the redacted blacked out area identifying the interviewee. The FBI report was thorough enough that they gave his whole history. So there were multiple blacked out names of organizations and city of birth and so on that made the job do-able. The main clue was his birth city in Russia. It was only four letters. Perm was the winner.
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I watched them crack it in less than two days.
I read a book once of the true story of the German assistant air attaché working in the DC German embassy before Pearl Harbor. He meticulously collected all the military trade publications and government reports and combined them with local news paper stories in the towns of aircraft factories to produce a perfect picture of US air production capacity. His only problem was that his superior, the attaché, did not want to give alarming or unwanted news to Berlin, so he watered it all down.
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After Pearl Harbor, when they were all deported back to Germany, that same assistant, then a captain, tried to take his intelligence to others in the German air intelligence and ran into the same problem again. He then went to his contacts in the German aircraft manufacturing and was advised to be quiet or he would be labeled a defeatist.
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Knowing it would be a matter of months before bombs would be falling on Germany he got himself transferred to Sweden, a neutral country, where he fled into the countryside after learning he had been betrayed by his girlfriend’s friend, whose husband wanted his job. He learned later that had he complied with his recall to Berlin he would have been arrested and likely sent to a camp.
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Happy ending. He made his way to Spain, a man without a country, got arrested with a fake passport, spent a year in jail and then escaped to Venezuela and eventually to the US, where he died in 1998. Peter Reidel.
Ron Graf,
Gerald Posner, Case Closed.
DeWitt,
Way too obscure.
SteveF,
I had a longer post that I managed to delete before sending. In short, it’s related to Ron’s bringing up the supposed involvement of the CIA in the JFK assassination. Posner’s book, IMO, is the definitive work on Oswald being the sole assassin. The CIA managed to bungle multiple attempts to kill Castro. That they could engineer an assassination using an obvious nut case and not be found out by someone actually rational is beyond belief.
Found something worth watching. A full movie by the Wagner group on urban warfare. Well done.
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I was expecting a propaganda film, but nothing of the sort. The only way to tell the difference between the 2 sides is by the color of their armbands. It is a typical Russian film though in that almost everyone on both sides dies. Death and destruction is the main theme in the close combat scenes with neither side giving, or asking, for quarter and that nothing changes much day after day.
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Best in Hell w/English subtitles
. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4ZxWaRHhnQ
The top security document process is obviously broken and probably has been for some time if not always. We tend to give great importance and seriousness to government agencies that were never considered during the founding time. Further, agencies that are deemed to need great secrecy are relieved of the need of oversight or voter scrutiny. Whatever their purpose is said to be they cannot be said to be a part of a democratic/constitutional republic.
Being an extraneous part of government one would expect more attention would be paid to what little we know of their operations. We do know that the classification of documents is often such that it has nothing to do with secrecy but probably to cover government blunders and incompetence. How easily the Trump and Biden admistrations, and no doubt other administrations, were able to obtain and loosely store confidential documents without any system alarms tells us the system is far from a serious one.
The reactions to recent developments have been limited to political oneupsmanship and a few oh mys how did this happen which in total are void of any serious analyses.
Ken: “We do know that the classification of documents is often such that it has nothing to do with secrecy but probably to cover government blunders and incompetence.”
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DeWitt: “The CIA managed to bungle multiple attempts to kill Castro.”
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It seems the Occam’s razor default is that incompetency can explain everything. At the same time Ken argues that these agencies are extra-constitutional and lack checks. DeWitt acknowledges that the CIA secretly attempted assassination of a foreign leader multiple times. We are allowed to know this now because the CIA was told by congress they are not allowed to do assassinations any more unless there is a presidential order.
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So we are to believe that this extra-constitutional community within the government that has an extraordinary record of incompetence at national intelligence, counterintelligence or even illegal assassinations, is a necessary evil that is providing the US and the world security. I would have to ask that this at least be debated a little more. And if we are afraid to debate that topic are they really providing the type of security that we desire? Real question.
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“Case Closed.”
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That is what people that work within the community would like the rule to be on assassination. In reality there has been research on the Lincoln assassination for over 150 years.
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One does not even need to read one author’s definitive book. For those who trust themselves to have open minds the web has a lot of information. Most people are just afraid to look. Edit: Or, they have what I would say is an unreasonable lack of curiosity, considering what is known today.
Ron Graf (Comment #217971)
“Angech, regarding secrecy to protect spies within foreign governments, doesn’t spying erode trust among nations?”
No.
It is a foolish nation that trusts another to do the right thing.
If a nation is foreign almost by definition it should and is kept under surveillance.
“How would you feel if your news showed the discovery of a CIA mole in the Australian government?”
Australians are naturally lazy and trusting and generally appreciate the Americans and work with them.
I expect the CIA has at least a dozen moles in the Australian Government as a matter of self preservation, more so since we elected a left wing government.
Why should Australia be special?
Wouldn’t make you less likely to trust the US should the time come to join in Taiwan’s defense, for example?
Our Government is big on talk and small on action, I have even less faith in the Biden Administration supporting Taiwan.
The economic harm to their own economy is the only reason for China not to invade Taiwan
“If we didn’t scheme against or spy on other nations what do we need to keep secret? ”
But we do spy and need to spy.
Hence secrets like the names of American spies in the Chinese, Ukrainian and Russian Governments are high priority.
“I agree that industry, especially for weapons technologies need to be kept secret.”
Theirs or ours?
You see the conundrum of course.
The thing is we send troops to die armed with increasingly lethal weapons as a game.
Robotic soldiers and unmanned vehicles including but not limited to drones could be unleashed at any time by 5 of the top countries.
Viruses , botulinum, Hyper sonic sound waves and the Australian designed machine gun capable of leveling a city in minutes already exist but like Nuclear weapons are not used as the consequences are too severe.
Instead we send people to die in war games. Sad.
“What was the last national security secret that was compromised by spying that was not technology related?”
There is an American now naturalized Russian who could answer that.
” We left an awful lot of technology behind in Afghanistan just because we wrongly thought it could help them. I am sure that part of the hesitancy in shipping front line weapons to Ukraine is for the concern of handing Russians the technology. ”
Worried about a gas stove ban? Here are alternatives
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“Natural gas stoves do emit air pollutants at levels the World Health Organization and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have deemed unsafe. A peer-reviewed study published last month found that more than 12% of current childhood asthma cases in the U.S. can be attributed to use of the common kitchen appliance.”
. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/environment/gas-stove-ban-20230119-7pt7sa4kkbgrzlxc3injx72zca-story.html
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Math education discriminates against queer, trans students, prof argues
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“Luis Leyva, an assistant professor of mathematics education at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, delivered a lecture titled “Undergraduate Mathematics Education as a White, Cisheteropatriarchal Space and Opportunities for Structural Disruption to Advance Queer of Color Justice” on Jan. 4 as part of the Joint Mathematics Meetings, according to the website. Leyva argued that the mathematics field is predominantly white and heterosexual and limits opportunities for queer and trans students.”
. https://dailycaller.com/2023/01/20/professor-math-white-cisheteropatriarchal-space-conference/
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Aretha Franklin song ‘A Natural Woman’ blasted by transgender ‘activists’
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“One alleged activist group in Norway is calling for Aretha Franklin’s hit 1968 song “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” to be removed from both Apple Music and Spotify after they deemed its lyrics offensive.
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The Trans Cultural Mindfulness Alliance took to Twitter last week to condemn the ballad, citing that it has ignited harm against transgender women.”
. https://nypost.com/2023/01/23/aretha-franklin-song-natural-woman-blasted-by-trans-group/
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Jackson School Board calls for unity after trustee’s ‘whiteness’ remarks reveal division
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“Hamilton tweeted on Dec. 18, saying” Whiteness is so evil. it manipulates then says, I won’t apologize for my dishonesty and trauma inducing practices and thinks you should applaud it for being honest about its ability to manipulate and be dishonest.”
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A common thread among board members seemed to be an acknowledgement that the board’s own disagreements in the past year haven’t set a good tone for the district to properly address complex issues of diversity, equity and inclusion.”
. https://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/2023/01/jackson-school-board-calls-for-unity-after-trustees-whiteness-remarks-reveal-division.html
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Jacinda Ardern’s successor as New Zealand PM urges men to call out misogyny after ‘utterly abhorrent’ treatment she faced
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“Ardern has said that the abuse she endured as prime minister didn’t play a role in her shock resignation last week, citing instead a lack of energy after five grueling years leading the country through crisis after crisis. However, former prime minister Helen Clark said Ardern faced an unprecedented level of hatred and vitriol.
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Anti-government protesters often brandished placards calling her things such as “Jabcinda” and “a pretty communist,” and she received increasing numbers of threats from the public.”
. https://fortune.com/2023/01/22/jacinda-ardern-successor-chris-hipkins-urges-men-to-call-out-misogyny-new-zealand-leadership/
Angech: “It is a foolish nation that trusts another to do the right thing.”
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We all have to trust. We can’t travel out of our countries otherwise. Heck, we can’t go to the grocery store or dance hall. Not being able to trust is a mutual surrender of freedom.
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“If a nation is foreign almost by definition it should and is kept under surveillance.”
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I never said to put one’s head in the sand. Diplomatic corps are legitimately tasked with gathering public information, as well as building relationships with foreign leaders, both within and outside the governments. There was nothing illegal or even immoral about Peter Reidel gathering aircraft production capacity information, for example.
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We are trusting Russia not to use nuclear weapons or hyperbaric weapons while we supply light armor and debate whether we can extend that trust to supplying heavy armor.
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So, trust at some level is always present. People trust their dogs not to bite. A well socialized dog trusts people enough not to bite them. Our whole culture is built around the hope that we can build trust amongst one another. The twelve points of the Boy Scout Law are all virtues that support the first point: A scout is trustworthy.
Ron: “I agree that industry, especially for weapons technologies need to be kept secret.”
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Anchech: “Theirs or ours?”
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I think you are saying that we typically give ourselves a pass to spy on others, and don’t see it as the same offense as them spying on us. The rationale is that they are dangerous and untrustworthy, unlike us. I would then agree that even whole nations have difficulty remembering the golden rule. That really is the core of all my points.
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“There is an American now naturalized Russian who could answer that.”
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Snowden was not a spy. What he witnessed as a technical contractor alarmed him as a breach of ethics and constitutional guarantees. He did what he thought was right to expose it. I did not see Snowden or Assange’s massive releases of classified information as harming the US except in lowering their own trustworthiness amongst their people and fellow nations. The USIC blame Snowden for that. On the debate of labeling Snowden a whistleblower versus a spy I come down on the former.
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“The thing is we send troops to die armed with increasingly lethal weapons as a game.”
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There was a debate among the world’s elite after the horrors of the Great War of whether modern industrial warfare made the battlefield obsolete. It was essentially the sprouting of the MAD concept. Their answer was the League of Nations and the Council on Foreign Relations. But also they set up the Geneva Convention so that we trust there would be some limitations to the horror. How we balance trust with building trustworthiness is definitely is an important question for the future of humanity. I would venture to say it’s the most existential one.
…A semi-automatic handgun was found in his car…
…”Even as we await further details on these shootings, we know the scourge of gun violence across America requires stronger action,” he said, calling on Congress to reintroduce a federal assault weapons ban…
Regarding Tran’s weapon:
The sheriff added the suspect was carrying a semi-automatic pistol with an extended magazine, and a second handgun was discovered in the van where Tran was found dead.
Obviously, California needs to pass some common sense gun control legislation.
Oh wait…
“Common sense gun control” is another motte and bailey. The aim is obviously a total ban on all firearms, but they still pretend it isn’t. Recently, the CDC decided to remove a report on defensive shooting stats. It used to read:
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“Estimates of defensive gun use vary depending on the questions asked, populations studied, timeframe, and other factors related to the design of studies. The report Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence indicates a range of 60,000 to 2.5 million defensive gun uses each year.”
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Now says:
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“Estimates of defensive gun use vary depending on the questions asked, populations studied, timeframe, and other factors related to study design. Given the wide variability in estimates, additional research is necessary to understand defensive gun use prevalence, frequency, circumstances, and outcomes.”
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I doubt any effort will be put into deriving a new figure. I suspect the main problem is the answer is not insignificant, which ever way you fudge it. The police likely already have stats which would provide a good baseline.
our interpretation of the PAF as the proportion of preventable disease rests on the assumptions that (1) exposure to gas cooking among children is orthogonal to other risk factors such as exposure to tobacco smoke and (2) that we can conceive of a broad-based public health intervention to reduce the disease risk in children exposed to gas cooking to that of the unexposed, while holding all other risk factors equal.
I think that assumption (1) is unlikely to be valid.
DaveJR (Comment #217994): “The police likely already have stats which would provide a good baseline.”
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The police only have stats for those cases where somebody gets shot. Overwhelmingly, successful defensive gun use results in nobody getting shot. Turns out that criminals don’t want to mess with people who are armed.
There are a huge number of academic papers that count excess deaths for their own pet causes over and over and over. The cause of death on a death certificate never says gas stove, air pollution, second hand smoke, long term exposure to lead, radon, long covid, high blood pressure, etc. etc. etc. etc.
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They all produce a model that compares reality with what their “but for” model says, which is quite dynamic in nature. Ultimately what you end up with is people’s deaths being overcounted multiple times. Some of these papers may be a legitimate best effort but my feeling is most are nothing more than paid propaganda. The media amplifies these things to fill a slow news day.
“What was the last national security secret that was compromised by spying that was not technology related?”
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NYT 2017: Killing C.I.A. Informants, China Crippled U.S. Spying Operations https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spies-espionage.html
“The Chinese government systematically dismantled C.I.A. spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward.
Current and former American officials described the intelligence breach as one of the worst in decades. It set off a scramble in Washington’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies to contain the fallout, but investigators were bitterly divided over the cause. Some were convinced that a mole within the C.I.A. had betrayed the United States. Others believed that the Chinese had hacked the covert system the C.I.A. used to communicate with its foreign sources. Years later, that debate remains unresolved.
But there was no disagreement about the damage. From the final weeks of 2010 through the end of 2012, according to former American officials, the Chinese killed at least a dozen of the C.I.A.’s sources. “
Giving small numbers of tanks to Ukraine isn’t likely to make any difference at all. These actually require real expertise to operate unlike artillery and some of the armored vehicles. At some point you just have to allow Ukraine to lose if that is what is in the cards. I’m not sure I see what the point is here.
Tom, I just recently read an article where they caught the Chinese national mole within the CIA. Hansen was the big one before that. That is why I wrote: “I support counter-intelligence to prevent others spying. I guess you could argue that we need spies to infiltrate foreign spy agencies to help out their spies. But if that is the bulk of the purpose it seems a bit circular.”
Another Crossfire Hurricane agent is indicted. If this head of the NY counterintelligence FBI office get’s convicted it will be the highest ranking official ever since McCabe was let go. This guy retired from the FBI to go to work for Oleg Deripaska, the same Russian oligarch that Bruce Ohr was working with in January 2015 and the same one that hired Steele to investigate Manafort when he came back to America to volunteer to lead the Trump campaign while secretly emailing Konstantine Kilimnick “how do we use this to get whole” with Deripaska, whom Manafort owed $19MM to. Manafort was later convicted my Mueller on charges of fraud surrounding that unpaid-back loan. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jan/23/fbi-official-trump-russia-probe-now-charged-illega/
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Who watches the watcher? I’m sure GOP house will investigate Durham’s investigation of the FBI, DOJ and Mueller to see how they missed investigating themselves. Hopefully the scope will include Hillary, the DNC, Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS, Steele, Ohr, DoJ, FBI, CIA, NSA, Obama WH, Ukraine, Biden, Mueller, Comey, Rosenstein, Baker, Schiff, Warner, CNN, NYT, WaPo.
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If the top FBI officials are working for Russia and the press doesn’t care that Hunter Biden is working for China what exactly is our confidence in the USIC to be an unaccountable secret authority protecting us? I am saying we might really be safer with more openness than less in world where secrecy is to the advantage of our adversaries.
Tom Scharf (Comment #217998): “What was the last national security secret that was compromised by spying that was not technology related?”
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Afghanistan, after we bugged out. We left behind lots of info on the Afghani’s who helped us. Some got out, some are in hiding, and no doubt many have endured very unpleasant deaths.
WRT confidence in the USIC, having 51 former IC leaders publish an open letter claiming that Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation didn’t do what little confidence I had much good. But then lying is the way of life for spies.
One of the oddities of Biden’s classified document mess is why lawyers were packing up his old office. Here is a plausible theory.
As many big-time East Coast lawyers now routinely charge $1,000 an hour, it’s an awfully expensive packing crew – unless the intent wasn’t truly to “pack” but rather to purge.
The timing here is suspicious as well. Apparently, this moving crew was at Biden’s University of Pennsylvania office a week before midterm elections that were widely anticipated to turn control of the House over to the Republicans. As Republicans had signaled that they were going to be spending considerable time wearing out the subpoena powers of various House committees to investigate Biden and his family, it would be an auspicious time to get rid of anything damaging. By using lawyers to carry out the document purge, Biden would be able to attach attorney-client privilege to their efforts, thereby avoiding damaging testimony about the contents of any shredded documents.
I saw a familiar name in today’s WSJ: Steven Mosher.
One example: In 1983, Stanford dismissed student Steven Mosher from its doctoral program after Beijing threatened to close its doors to the university’s scholars. Mr. Mosher, who now heads the Population Research Institute, was doing research in a rural Chinese village when he published photos of pregnant Chinese women, some in their seventh or eighth months, being led off for forced abortions. As a Journal editorial noted about Stanford’s decision, “no one has ever raised significant objections to the veracity of Mr. Mosher’s revelations on this subject.”
I don’t think attorney-client privilege would cover becoming an accessory to a crime. Lawyers are also officers of the court. Of course that doesn’t explain how Biden’s lawyers could be involved while Trump’s lawyers couldn’t.
I don’t know the specifics, but everyone who lost control of classified documents under their control has likely violated the law, with stiffer penalties for those who willfully allow others not cleared to see the information. Petraeus was guilty of this. The media goes on and on about intent but that is only part of the law. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/23/david-petraeus-sentenced-sharing-classified-information
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Lawyers who aren’t cleared shouldn’t be looking at found documents, and they probably didn’t, or at least would never admit to such.
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What this series of events (HRC, Trump, Biden, Pence) is showing is how sloppily the system is constructed with minimal traceability and little consequences for violations. There are of course many people throwing rocks in their glass houses. What’s the DOJ going to do now, another special prosecutor?
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It’s probably a good time to declare general amnesty and everyone agree to build a better system. But that isn’t likely to happen if anyone thinks there is even minimal political points to be scored.
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If the DOJ charged Trump, and not Biden, I would foresee a very quick impeachment process to follow.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #218008): “I don’t think attorney-client privilege would cover becoming an accessory to a crime.”
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I don’t think it make the lawyer an accessory. But it could be tampering with evidence.
Sounds like the Biden stories prompted Pence to bother to look. That was the responsible thing to do.
But we still have the situation where it’s clear there is no tracking. There should be some record of who has what that is better than a small town lending library!
Attorney client privilege is no longer acknowledged for Republicans. It remains to be seen if that will be reciprocated ever for Democrats.
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Mike M, you have a good theory. Mine is that aids were moving the files and then came upon the documents at the Penn-Biden Center and lawyers were called in. Since the aides likely did not have security clearances the lawyers realized that another foul had been committed, a foul that could be reversed by the lawyers claiming to be the ones acting.
Lucia “Sounds like the Biden stories prompted Pence to bother to look.”
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Tom: “It’s probably a good time to declare general amnesty and everyone agree to build a better system.”
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I think chief legal counsels are advising clients to take advantage of the circumstantial amnesty window before consequences are placed in precedent.
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BTW, Trump is still beating Biden and DeSantis in RCP polling for 2024. I predict DeSantis will rise to overtake him though.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218009)
“What this series of events (HRC, Trump, Biden, Pence) is showing is how sloppily the system is constructed with minimal traceability and little consequences for violations.”
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Good if true.
On thinking about it ,it is obvious that highly secret documents of the type described must have a recording and collecting system much better than a small town lending library.
The system is in place but the people in charge deferred, wrongly in my opinion, to their political bosses.
The Secret service knew exactly how many documents Trump had at all times.
That is why they should not have charged him, their problem if they let him keep them, not his.
Biden and Pence?
A lot of people in charge of these records in big trouble.
Ron Graf (Comment #217990)
” I never said to put one’s head in the sand.”
yet when I said
Angech: “It is a foolish nation that trusts another to do the right thing.”
you replied
“We all have to trust.”
Several points.
Firstly your two replies were generally excellent.
Secondly from bitter experience my motto is never trust.
How does one get by in life then?
I practice a surface view of trust people until that trust is abused.
Plus, where necessary, trust but verify.
All the important people in my life I give complete trust to, but remember the motto.
Nations are not friends or family and cannot , on principle, ever be trusted.
They have completely conflicting competitive desires.
The proof of this is of course they all have armies when they can.
If we followed the dictum of trusting them the we would all disband our armies, John Lennon and all.
Since you believe in having armies [presumptive of me] you cannot support having trust as nations at the same time.
But we still have the situation where it’s clear there is no tracking. There should be some record of who has what that is better than a small town lending library!
Tech in me wants to know why there are still using paper over a secure device that automates deletion and retrieval. If they are using paper they need to record the creation, distribution, return, and destruction. Page by page with bates stamps. It’s clear they don’t.
angech
The Secret service knew exactly how many documents Trump had at all times.
Uhmm…. no. Almost certainly not. You need to stop imagining every theory you dream up is ground truth.
Lucia “You need to stop imagining every theory you dream up is ground truth.”
I know I go overboard a lot of the time.
Still.
Q. In a chain of command and information who does initiate the giving of classified information to a President, highly classified information?
A. The intelligence agencies.
The Pentagon.
The Treasury Department.
Not the Tax Office.
Q. What is the procedure, once initiated by those departments and others to record what they collate and put it in a folder marked Highly Classified and who does it?
A. Not the bellboy or junior staff. The heads of department and their top staffers who have security clearance.
Q. who records it?
A. The same people.
Q. who delivers it.
The same people
Q. Is it paper or electronic.
A. Electronic.
Q. who recovers it after use?
A. the same people [note Not the National Archives].
Despite all the commentary the National Archives should have no authority to have or keep highly classified documents while they are still in a highly classified state. They are not a SKIP.
Now the interesting part.
Q. who is responsible for the supervision of the highly classified documents in their SKIP at the White House or Mar del Lago?
A. The secret service branches supplied to the President to make sure no one unauthorized gets access. Presumably the FBI?
They are recorded every time they go out of or back into the SKIP.
After the end of his presidency the FBI etc helped surveil his SKIP at Mar del Lago with full knowledge of what was in there as they put it in there or recorded who put it in there.
When the problems arose Trump had no need to tell these Services he had these documents. They were sitting on them trying to get them back.
Hence they already knew every important highly classified document including ones the National Archives are unauthorized he did not return. He did have personal papers as well the Archive was to receive but this was a matter for negotiation only, not a criminal offense.
Garland conflated the two issues to ensure he could charge Trump.
“The Secret service knew exactly how many documents Trump had at all times.”
“Uhmm…. no.”
My comment would be that if they did not know, exactly, then they are a pretty useless secret service and should be sacked.
They did know, that is the basis for the warrants to search Trump’s establishment knowing the documents were there to find and exactly where to find them.
I have a vivid imagination at times. Sorry.
Angech
Q. In a chain of command and information who does initiate the giving of classified information to a President, highly classified information?
A. The intelligence agencies.
The Pentagon.
The Treasury Department.
Not the Tax Office.
First– since it’s most relevant to the issue of whether or not the Secret Service has a list: None of these are the secret service.
But you also left someone out: The president can ask for what he wants. He’s the top of the chain of command for all of those groups.
There are other agencies too.
Q. who records it?
A. The same people.
Q. who delivers it.
The same people
Well…. the secret service was not on your list of those who might supply the president. So by your logic not the secret service.
Q. Is it paper or electronic.
A. Electronic.
Uhmmm…. Nope. They are recovering paper documents.
Q. who is responsible for the supervision of the highly classified documents in their SKIP at the White House or Mar del Lago?
A. The secret service branches supplied to the President to make sure no one unauthorized gets access. Presumably the FBI?
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I now need to ask you a real question: Do you know the difference between the Secret Service and the FBI? Do you know what either actually do?
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I mean, there is nothing shameful in you not knowing. After all you are Australian. But you need to accept that you know practically nothing about which agency does what and how security documents are handled or by whom! Your guesses are totally wrong because you have no idea what agencies do what. Heck, I don’t think you know what agencies exist. Have you heard of DOD? DOE? (Either of them) HUD? NSA?
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My comment would be that if they did not know, exactly, then they are a pretty useless secret service and should be sacked.
Well, that might be true if it was the secret service’s job to track classified info. It’s not.
AndrewP
Tech in me wants to know why there are still using paper over a secure device that automates deletion and retrieval.
Well according to angech’s analysis, they are all electronic. 🙂
Angech, I think you are generally correct that the National Archive (NARA) had a good idea of what Trump had. And with the FBI’s visit they certainly had the opportunity to inventory what was there, except for documents that may have been upstairs. The Secret Service, which used to have a couple functions when it was in the Treasury Dept., now solely has the job of protecting high government officials and retired presidents. They would not be involved with classified documents except in relation to travel location’s security. But since they are under the DHS they are within the USIC and could have some level of security clearance to be tasked by the current administration to do a special task. If so, it wouldn’t be a new experience for Trump to be spied on.
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“If we followed the dictum of trusting them the we would all disband our armies, John Lennon and all.”
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Yes, in the 1980s we had the flower children grown up and demanding the Cold War be ended by unilateral disarmament -“No Nukes”. At a time when France had a socialist president and the USSR was still full strength Reagan came into office and kindly stood tall and called out the Soviet Union as evil (and illegitimate). He went on a huge re-armament campaign at the same time he negotiated mutual strategic arms reductions, starting with medium range nukes. He struck the perfect balance of toughness and trustworthiness to build toward peace. “Trust but verify” – Ronald Reagan. Just imagine if he hadn’t been battling pre-dementia. Biden just has the last part down.
Dewitt Payne, that’s not the climate Steven Mosher. It’s another dude.
lucia (Comments #218019)
the Secret Service is part of an Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland security
They are responsible for the protection of the President plus facilitating investigation of electronic computer crime plus helping coordinate other intelligence agencies.
There are approximately 18 known organizations in the Intelligence Community.
The President can ask for classified information.
He does not give himself classified information.
Yes, there are other agencies.
I mentioned important ones where most of the top secret classified documents come from.
The Secret Service has to be au fait with all classified information the President receives. That is its remit to carry out its function.
That means they must have lists.
” Q. Is it paper or electronic. A. Electronic.
Uhmmm…. Nope. They are recovering paper documents.”
You are quite right they are only talking about paper documents…
It is 2023. It is an electronic age. The documents are printed out on paper for ease of reading and ease of tracing [they all have special markings to identify who had that particular copy] and reducing the risk of photocopying or phone camera recording and transmission.
I find the distinction between where it came from [electronic] and how it was presented [we are told paper] to the recipients to be a non issue.
Anything top secret is recorded electronically these days.
It is interesting that despite the HC computers and the famous laptop no one mentions searching Biden’s computers, laptops or USB sticks [am I too old fashioned] at his home or office in this day and age.
Or did they take the Biden’s lawyers words on trust?
“I now need to ask you a real question: Do you know the difference between the Secret Service and the FBI? Do you know what either actually do?”
What with Lucy and Quantico and Jack Reacher I have at least the average person’s understanding of the agencies and what they do.
I have been following US politics with special interest for the last 6 years.
I do not know the 18 different members of the intelligence Community and their overlapping roles in great detail.
I hope I never have that privilege.
I was putting forward an outline of how I thought Intelligence would be gathered and presented to a President and others from the various agencies
“Your guesses are totally wrong because you have no idea what agencies do what”
My suppositions are possibly right regardless of which agency is protecting the President, investigating the President or spying on the President.
They are based on a commonsense approach to how I think it would work and presumably most people would think the information is put together and supplied.
I was not trying to build up a theory, If other people feel it does not work the way I said they could always explain the way they think it works.
I am comfortable either way.
Angech,
the Secret Service is part of an Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland security
They are responsible for the protection of the President plus facilitating investigation of electronic computer crime plus helping coordinate other intelligence agencies.
Ok. So why do you think the agency responsible for protecting the President is supposed to track documents?!
The President can ask for classified information.
He does not give himself classified information.
Yes, there are other agencies.
Of course he doesn’t give it to himself. That doesn’t mean the secret service does. The Secret Service has to be au fait with all classified information the President receives. That is its remit to carry out its function.
The problem is it is not part of it’s function to be the only conduit to convey classified information to the President. So it is not in it’s remit to know this stuff.
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I have been following US politics with special interest for the last 6 years.
Perhaps. But presumably self taught with no one external to you checking if you know what each agency really does.
I was not trying to build up a theory, If other people feel it does not work the way
It is not a “feeling” about how things work. You have built a theory that the only conduit for the President to receive info is through the Secret Service. That is neither the only conduit nor the main one.
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I mean…. my husband wrote some things that ended up classified and had to read some things that were classified. The Secret Service had nothing to do with conveying it to people. I would never go so far as to say they never convey material to the President. But material simply does not need to pass through the Secret Service to get to the president!
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The President and Vice President are cleared for all classified information, but often see only a small number of documents due to their intense schedules. The National Security Adviser usually selects the most important reports for the President.
When the CIA briefer delivers the PDB (President’s Daily Brief) each morning to the Oval Office or wherever the president is, the National Security Adviser’s office is responsible for retrieving it at the end of the day and securing it in their SCIF in the West Wing or in the Situation Room. If the President or VP write a question or comment in the book it goes back to Langley for a response. In my experience the President did not keep classified material, if he wanted to have it available then the Situation Room held onto it.
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The CIA is not the “Secret Service”. The NSA is not the “Secret Service”. The Secret Service is part of HomeLandSecurity (not NSA).
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There is no need to have a CIA person with an appropriate clearnace hand off the documents to someone in the Secret Service to then hand off the materials to the president. And keeping secret documents safe is best done by keeping the number of people who handle things as small as possible. So given there is no need for the presidents security detail to handle the documents, the system is not going to be designed to insist this entirely unncessary hand off.
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You have made up a fantasy about how these things work.
. Someone may be tracking every secret document the president (and vice president) receives. But it is not the Secret Service– an agency whose principle job wrt to the president is to keep the him physically safe. As in: Keep people from shooting him, kidnapping him, blowing up the place and so on.
. Other agencies have the job of keeping track of classified documents.
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You can read what the secret service agency does here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secret_Service
It’s not “tracking documents” or “keeping the president informed about classified information” and so on. The definition of “protect” is not “keeping track of documents he reads”.
Angech, I think it’s great to have your interest in US governmental affairs. It gives us in the USA a better international point of view input to discussions here. I am sorry that our government agency diagram is so out of control complex. Eighteen intelligence agencies, none of which were contemplated in our constitution, is a lot to follow. However, if they could just be checks on one another rather than either be compartmentalized and clueless or cooperative but colluding then I would be fine with any number.
. Here is a list:
Air Force Intelligence
Army Intelligence
Central Intelligence Agency
Coast Guard Intelligence
Defense Intelligence Agency
Department of Energy
Department of Homeland Security
Department of State
Department of the Treasury
Drug Enforcement Administration
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Marine Corps Intelligence
Office of Director of National Intelligence
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
National Reconnaissance Office
National Security Agency
Navy Intelligence
Space Force Intelligence
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They don’t list the NSC, National Security Council, which is run out of the White House. I believe the National Security Advisor sits on top of that and advises the president.
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Did I mention our president has signs of dementia? Is it obvious to the world too? Do people wonder who is running the US?
Nobody ever talks about the tracking systems. I’d speculate that a lot of the documents are simply destroyed after use and then reported as such. The thinness of the reporting on this area just shows how shallow our interests are, endless baying about politic opponents and nearly zero on how to fix the broken system. People love drama, not shredder traceability.
One of the conclusions of the 9/11 investigation was these agencies reluctance to share information. Some of that got fixed via the creation of yet another agency, DHS.
Although I have to admit. It seems a little over the top for the DOE to have their own intelligence and counterintelligence people. I mean, I know the DOE denies that they employ evil scientists who mess with monsters and explore other dimensions, and maybe that’s so. But even setting these ideas aside, it’s hard for me to grasp why existing [traditional] intelligence and counterintelligence can’t protect … whatever secrets DOE is protecting.
mark
In the show, Hawkins National Laboratory is a tightly secured Energy Department facility in the middle of a deep, dark forest. The truth is Hawkins National Laboratory — just like the fictional town of Hawkins — doesn’t exist.
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Of course, Hawkins National Laboratory must be Argonne National Laboratory.
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Hawkins is in Indiana, Argonne next door in Illinois.
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When the guys from Hawkins drive to the big city, it’s Chicago. Which is evidently pretty close to Hawkins.
Argonne is pretty well surrounded by a forest preserve and has a big fence around it. That’s the “light” security. Inside, the have a more secure place.
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The Physics Fossils claim they are doing physics research. But who knows what really goes on there.
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The name of the lab must have been changed to protect …. the….
Notice the article you link even admits the similarities…. https://www.energy.gov/articles/what-stranger-things-didn-t-get-quite-so-right-about-energy-department
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He’s an Argonne scientist. Look how he treated his employee at the “car wash”? Not so nice.
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(Actually, Marius was Jim’s boss for a brief time. He is nice.)
~grins~
A very good analysis of the current Ukraine situation
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“… Bakhmut is an operationally critical keystone position in the Ukrainian defense, and Russia has transformed it into a death pit which compels the Ukrainians to sacrifice exorbitant numbers of men in order to hold the position as long as possible. In fact, the insistence that Bakhmut is not operationally significant is mildly insulting to the audience, both because a quick glance at a map clearly shows it at the heart of the regional road network, and because Ukraine has thrown a huge number of units into the front there.….”
With secrecy and no final regrets, there goes accountability. Over sight has to maintain secrecy as do, I suspect, any legal actions. Otherwise the secrecy is broken in this chain. This is a fundamental problem once a government operation depends on secrecy.
The system is obviously broken, but as much as we talk around the problem, the question remains: how do you fix a system that depends on secrecy. It will depend on a plea to good intentions without much of the accountability made or maintained to the public. Even with a vast majority of the people involved in the secrecy process operating with good faith it only takes a few not so operating or misusing the system to eventually cause great damage and doing it because good faith is assumed over accountability.
There are fundamental issues involved here that I do not see being discussed by the public. I am not surprised that the politicians are not doing so.
The most sensitive documents are Top Secret Codeword documents. Almost every product of the National Security Agency is Top Secret because the Agency engages in intercepting and decoding sensitive communications of foreign countries and individuals.
So it sounds like the bit lucia quoted may be referring to the handling of Top Secret documents.
TS (Top Secret) material must be stored in a SCIF office which stands for (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility).
That implies that procedures are less strict for lower levels of classification. Which would make sense.
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But none of the bloviating about ‘Trump this’ and ‘Biden that’ ever makes distinctions between types of classification. I’d be very surprised if the government can not track Top Secret documents as well as a lending library tracks its books. Or if it were possible for a Top Secret document to get accidentally misfiled and end up in a box in someone’s garage. Such things would not much surprise me for Confidential documents. But all the commentary acts as if “classified” means only the most sensitive, super critical information.
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And then there is
Routine cables that deal with travel arrangements and personnel issues are often classified Limited Official Use for short periods of time so that once the travel is complete the cables are declassified.
I doubt that the markings automatically disappear. And I can readily imagine that people are not fanatical about removing the markings.
MikeM, Trump had the highest level Top Secret documents at Maralago. We do not know what Biden or Pence or other yet to be identified politicians possessed. Biden as a Senator should not have had any secret documents outside of an authorized reading place.
Tom Scharf,
“It’s probably a good time to declare general amnesty and everyone agree to build a better system. But that isn’t likely to happen if anyone thinks there is even minimal political points to be scored.
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If the DOJ charged Trump, and not Biden, I would foresee a very quick impeachment process to follow.”
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Yes and yes. Which is why I very much doubt even a political hack like Garland will press charges against Trump over having those documents.
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What he might do, with his odd combination of political motivation and apparent stupidity, is charge Trump over his fight with bureaucrats (eg “obstruction of justice”), at which point all hell would break loose. I truly hope Garland allows the special prosecutors to make their recommendations and then just drops the issue completely; I am just not sure he can muster enough common sense to do that.
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In fairness to Garland, he is not as nakedly political and utterly dishonest as Eric Holder, just considerably dumber than Holder.
Looks like the RU-486 (abortion pill) legal fight will be making its way to the Supreme Court. The Biden administration is claiming it can ignore any state law banning abortion and allow mail order sales of RU-486 to women everywhere in the USA.
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The SC doesn’t usually like its rulings circumvented, so I suspect in the end the SC will insist the Federal government has no authority to over-rule the states on a question it has just declared the Federal government has no jurisdiction over. But the SC probably won’t even hear the case until dueling Federal judges/circuit courts of appeal issue conflicting orders and the need for a resolution becomes even more obvious than it already is. That may take a year or two.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #218035): “Trump had the highest level Top Secret documents at Maralago.”
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How do you know that? Real question. There was hyperventilating about “nuclear secrets”, but I am no aware of a reliable report of what was present.
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Also, Trump says that he declassified the documents.
Kenneth,
“Biden as a Senator should not have had any secret documents outside of an authorized reading place.”
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Maybe that’s true, but he clearly did have them outside of an authorized reading place. It falls under the general heading of ‘theft’; Petraeus went to prison for this. Biden won’t.
Mike M,
” There was hyperventilating about “nuclear secrets”, but I am not aware of a reliable report of what was present.”
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That is the beauty of secret documents: leaks about secret documents can be made to hammer those you disagree with, and those people have no way to ever fight back. Its even better that Adam Schiff’s endless lies about “secret evidence” of Trump being a Russian asset. Unless a Republican President declassifies all the documents in question and releases all of them to the public, we will never know what documents/secrets any of the three politicians actually had. Think the “twitter files” were interesting? Imagine the public release of (obviously idiotic) secret documents.
Former Democratic President Jimmy Carter once found classified government documents at his home that he then turned over to the National Archives, according to a new report.
The mishandling of classified documents is a chronic problem at the highest levels of the U.S. government, one person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press. At least several times a year, documents are located where they are not supposed to be and turned over to the National Archives.
The first paragraph is mildly amusing. The second, if true, is very concerning.
Kenneth Fritsch,
That is leaked information that is designed to damage Trump. That is not credible, and tells us essentially nothing.
Lucia
Thanks for the research on protocol
Information is “Delivered to the National Security Adviser [who] usually selects the most important reports for the President.”
“CIA briefer delivers the PDB (President’s Daily Brief) each morning to the Oval Office or wherever the president is.”
Since 2012 this has typically been on an I Pad or tablet.
Note it is not and has not been paper for 10 years.
Does the National Archive store the tablets and the information on the tablets or is it the CIA?
How does the Secret Service do this?
They have to and do put the PDB in the SKIF, the situation room.
Is it piled high with tablets and I Pads?
Do they transfer it to the I Pad held by the NSA guy in charge for the President who keeps it in the SKIF?
Is the NSA guy the Secret Service guy?
Since there is no paper book it is impossible for the President to write a message on it to go back to Langley.
Or did he mean there is a separate paper book that goes back and forwards to Langley?
Or does he deface a Top Secret classified document by writing on it and putting his stamp on it?
Do then then photocopy it and put the photocopy in the SKIF in a manila folder marked Top Secret?
How many of the documents are actually photocopies in this case?
If they are photocopies could the originals already be back with the CIA or illegally in my opinion in the National Archives collection?
Where are Mcintosh and Mosher when you need them?
I hope the contradictions mentioned pique your interest
SteveF (Comment #218043): “That is leaked information that is designed to damage Trump”.
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No, it is from the inventory of materials taken in the raid, which was made public with Trump’s permission. Also, it turns out that the famous photo shows folders labelled “Top Secret”, although they could have been empty, which some of them were.
Opinion: Mr. President, it’s time to go digital
Opinion by Beth Sanner
Updated 12:47 AM EST, Sun January 22, 2023
Source: CNN
Editor’s Note: Beth Sanner is a former deputy director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration, a position where she oversaw the elements that coordinate and lead collection, analysis, and program oversight throughout the Intelligence Community. In this role she also served as the president’s intelligence briefer. She is a professor-of-practice at the Applied Research Lab for Intelligence and Security at the University of Maryland and a CNN national security analyst.
No. The secret service is part of Homeland Security, not NSA.
I have no idea what most of your questions (ending with ?) relate to.
I didn’t see any contradictions in what you wrote. So…. no. They didn’t pique my interest.
It just seems mindboggling how misguided government funding can be. It’s taken three years for there to be an inspector general to report on the Eco Health Alliance contract. And surprise — the EHA failed to oversee and also failed to report the dangerous activities outlined in their funding agreement because they were getting the funding regardless of what they did under the agreement. And, they continue to get funding to this day. Sen (R) Joni Ernst is trying to stop it.
Since the start of the pandemic, EcoHealth has continued to win contracts from Uncle Sam, Ernst said — including a new $3 million award from the Pentagon last month.
The audit revealed bizarre levels of bureaucratic bungling.
EcoHealth was supposed to submit a progress report each year. In 2019, the fifth year of the five-year grant, EcoHealth said it tried to upload a report to NIH’s system but was locked out of the file apparently because NIH had already approved a new five-year renewal.
NIH didn’t flag the unfiled report and EcoHealth didn’t alert NIH to the problem, figuring that the renewal signaled NIH’s ongoing satisfaction with what the outfit was doing.
Hey, a footnote to add to my remarks above on the California shooting:
Apparently the primary gun used was an old MAC-10 pistol. These guns were considered assault weapons, as even the semi-auto versions were open bolt guns derived from the original fully automatic design. Apparently the guy had the semi-automatic variant. STILL- the gun was already illegal in CA.
mark
STILL- the gun was already illegal in CA.
Is this the dance hall shooting? or the later one?
But yes, LA has stiff gun laws.
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My pro and his wife knew the dead Studio Owner.
The fact that in the posts here there remains much uncertainty about the secrecy levels of the documents that are known to be outside the standard purview of the system, lends to my previous suggestion that government secrecy breeds more secrecy and allows for the system to be broken for a long time.
There was an article above that presented a rather benign view of his personal experience with secret documents and Presidents. A further look showed him as a long time employee of the CIA. He has a background in foreign policy and has a few publications, but when some question here the reliability of sources, I would have to question it further when the commentator comes from the world ruled by near total secrecy.
SteveF, makes a good point about government secrecy that can be leaked without repercussions and arbitrarily to fit a political agenda. This part of the secrecy system needs fundamental discussion and analysis. Unfortunately much of the Republican party has some lasting effects of a previous love affair with the likes of CIA and the FBI. In the mean time the Democrat party has initiated a love affair with these agencies because apparently the recent politicization has come down on their side.
Heal thyself sure as hell has no meaning with reference to current government problems.
It seems that in addition to levels of classification, there is also a category called “Sensitive Compartmentalized Information”, SCI. It seems that SCI can apply at any level of classification. SCI documents require special facilities, called SCIF’s. They do not leave a SCIF except under limited circumstances, usually for the use of top officials in the executive branch. I have no idea what fraction of classified documents are SCI or if all Top Secret documents are SCI.
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Given the massive number of documents that are classified and the cumbersome nature of accessing SCI, it strikes me as likely that SCI might be just a small fraction of classified documents, perhaps even of Top Secret documents. I have no idea if that is true. If is is, then it might be that what really matters is not whether something is classified, but if it is SCI.
Mike M: “I have no idea what fraction of classified documents are SCI or if all Top Secret documents are SCI.”
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Knowledge of how these things work, or even that they exist, must all be carefully guarded. Even voicing the term SCI or SCIF makes me very nervous. I’m being facetious to make the point that secrecy comes at great cost.
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Government secrecy is intrinsically anti-American and anti-constitutional. The only legitimate reasons for secrecy or deception per se are to prevent bodily harm, in the government’s case to protect individual privacy and the nation from attack. But in a broader perspective one can argue that bodily harm chances are enhanced by environments of secrecy, the opportunities for abuse it presents, and the distrust it promotes.
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This is a similar dynamic to the unintended attendant harms caused by the lockdowns designed to protect from a virus.
There has been a lot of back and forth on the current casualty ratios in the ongoing attritional battles between Ukraine and Russia.
One typical comment:
“ In military history terms the defender does not lose in an 8:1 ratio in an attritional fight. Any such claim must be treated with much suspicion.”
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My response to these is:
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“Iraq losses defending vs the US was many time higher than 8:1. Training, stockpiles, quality, and logistics all play major roles in combat loss ratios. Artillery has historically been a major strength of Russian armies going back centuries. The US relies on air power to deliver high explosives where the Russians use artillery defended by the most sophisticated air defenses in the world.
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The Ukraine battlefield is being dominated by artillery. Ukraine has been reduced to firing about 1500 rounds per day vs 20,000 rounds per day by the Russians. The west has given up on trying to match the volume of Russian artillery fire as their stockpiles have been burned up and they are reduced to only being able to supply from their very weak ( compared to Russia ) monthly artillery production amounts.
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Russian battlefield tactics is to recon enemy positions, call in heavy and prolonged artillery strikes on the spotted enemy positions, and then move in to attacked the reduced defenses.
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Almost no casualties on either side are from small arms in these attrition battles. Due to the disparity in artillery between the two sides, I would not be surprised that the loss ratio now exceeds 8:1.
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I expect the loss ratio to greatly expand as Russian counter battery continues to destroy Ukraine artillery and artillery ammunition stockpiles, making the artillery imbalance even greater over time.”
Given the massive number of documents that are classified and the cumbersome nature of accessing SCI, it strikes me as likely that SCI might be just a small fraction of classified documents, perhaps even of Top Secret documents. I have no idea if that is true. If is is, then it might be that what really matters is not whether something is classified, but if it is SCI.
MikeM, your post could be used to make an argument for much less classification. Your “no idea” points to the secrecy of the secrecy where there is trust but no verify.
Ed.
For the love of heaven. You have been saying the same things for the past six months or more:
June 21 (212853) The Ukraine defense in the eastern pocket is starting to unravel.
June 23 (212923) …If this war continues to be an artillery war, Ukraine is in trouble.
June 28 (213113) …If Ukraine does not find a counter this Russian strategy, they will lose their army and then the war.
July 1 (213177) …Ukraine cannot sustain its current losses of manpower and its army units are continuously being degraded with replacements given extremely short amounts of training.
Sept 12 (214794) …The Ukraine army in the east is now almost entirely at the mercy of the Russian army.
Oct 14 (215485) Time is a major issue for Ukraine. The critical point to the war will be this winter, not a year from now. Time also is an issue for NATO.
Dec 1 (216766) Russia will win with the destruction of the Ukraine army, not taking ground as such. With the coming exhaustion of western artillery ammunition, the loss ratios will continue to worsen for Ukraine.
Jan 19 (217939) The Ukraine eastern defense is starting to unravel.
Jan 21 (217952) Ukraine forces are coming close to a full collapse.
Jan 23 (217970) Ukraine lines are getting stretched and starting to crack.
Nobody knows. Ukraine might fall tomorrow, and Ukraine might still be holding out a year and a half from now. You can go on posting every step of the way that the end is nigh if you like. I don’t see what you hope to accomplish that you haven’t already accomplished though.
Mark Bofill #218052)
Your comment brings up an interesting ethnic and nationalist issue. I attended a Fourth of July Celebration this summer that was given by a Vietnamese businessperson and attended mostly by Vietnamese people. My half-Chinese son (now 21) when he was younger was a very good friend of the businessperson’s son.
We got talking about a visit to Vietnam, and the Vietnamese friends of my son unequivocally told him not to say he was partially Chinese if he visited Vietnam. The Vietnamese said there was a strong animus against Chinese people. I wonder if there was some sort of anti-Chinese animus at work here by the Vietnamese shooter. Also, classifying Vietnamese and Chinese together as Asians is roughly equivalent to lumping English and Russians together as Europeans.
Another interesting tidbit is the Vietnamese language has 6 tones and Mandarin has 4 tones.
MikeM #217995)
January 24th, 2023 at 9:56 am
“I decided to go looking for the gas-stoves-cause-asthma paper. Here it is (not paywalled): https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/1/75”
I haven’t bothered to read the paper, but in my past workers’ compensation practice, I had an informal sub specialty in lung diseases. I came across workers exposed to highly dangerous airborne chemicals. Not once did I see an instance of a clear lung injury where there was substantial ventilation. Very hard for me to imagine that gas stoves, which are used sporadically and not continuously, would give off enough pollutants in the comparatively large area of people’s homes to cause lung disease.
Hi JD, good to hear from you again.
What makes you think Tran was Vietnamese? The NY Post at least thinks he was Chinese:
…The two married soon after, but the marriage fell apart by 2005, when Tran, a Chinese immigrant, filed for divorce, said the ex, who spoke on condition of anonymity…
Well… or at least that he was a Chinese immigrant anyway.
Mark Bofill ; “What makes you think Tran was Vietnamese?
Maybe he is Chinese, but I have known a lot of “Trans” who are Vietnamese “Tr?n (?) or Tran is a common Vietnamese surname. More than 10% of all Vietnamese people share this surname. It is derived from the common Chinese surname Chen.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr%E1%BA%A7n
Mark Bofill on Monterey Dance Club shooter. I think this article proves the shooter was Vietnamese. Would also add that I am pretty familiar with many Chinese first names and have never heard of “Hu Can” In the middle of article, his immigration papers referred to his Vietnamese ethnicity.
Thanks JD! I didn’t catch that the first time through.
What drives me bananas is all the very serious lectures by very serious people in the intelligence community on secret documents who proceed to selectively leak secret information (Trump selling nuclear secrets!) for partisan purposes. Where are the selective Biden leaks? It’s gotten to the point where I think the media should be compelled to give up anonymous sources of secret information in this type of situation. These IC people (or people who were entrusted to keep this info safe) are being protected while spreading unverifiable misinformation in many cases.
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Sometimes I wonder if the IC has become the 4th branch of government. The community has serious responsibilities that are being betrayed by bad actors IMO.
Apparently Ed was never read The Boy Who Cried Wolf as a child. The updated version is apparently The Man Who Cried Big Bad Bear.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218066): “The Man Who Cried Big Bad Bear”.
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🙂
Tom Scharf: “Sometimes I wonder if the IC has become the 4th branch of government. The community has serious responsibilities that are being betrayed by bad actors IMO.”
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Where could we draw the line and more importantly how would we enforce it? I would suggest to cut 10% from each agency and spend half of it on expanding the office of the IC IG. Also, there needs to be accelerated removals and prosecutions by a standing IC special counsel. An out of control IC is an existential threat to the country.
Ron Graf (Comment #218055)
“Mike M: “I have no idea what fraction of classified documents are SCI or if all Top Secret documents are SCI.”
Even voicing the term SCI or SCIF makes me very nervous.”
me too.
We can talk about it a bit, which is good in a free society.
It also means we do not really understand what is happening.
I guess I hope a lot of people read the comments here because it should make people think about the society they want and how to achieve some sort of fair balance.
Funny how it works. News comes out such and such is considering a ban on something ridiculous. Immediately issues a correction. Just a mistake. Media mostly laugh, call BS, and chide people for taking it seriously. Then begins a drip drip effect, maybe a ban is justified. Look, this convenient research released just a few weeks before “the mistake” proves we need to ban these things. Won’t you think of the children and all the queer people of color?
The only real motive for banning gas stoves is to stop people from burning natural gas. There is no credible reason based on health. Gas has ALREADY been banded in several (lefty controlled) cities, and the motivation has until now always been clear: deduce the use of fossil fuels. The dishonesty of the green left is obvious and shameless.
Regarding the SCI thing, I’m getting confused. I thought we were being facetious before. Sensitive Compartmentalized Information is a standard term that I’m quite sure was covered in the insanely boring mandatory security training I have to sit through every year and that hundreds of thousands (might even be millions) of perfectly ordinary people just like me are exposed to. I could talk intelligently about it if only I’d turned off autopilot and paid the slightest bit of attention to the material, but. It’s not an esoteric hush hush thing that nobody knows about. It’s just ..obscure by virtue of being extremely uninteresting I think. Pretty sure anyway.
Shrug.
A big problem is as James Comey would put it … the “Higher Calling” problem. People with access to certain information such as Snowden believe they have a noble cause that exceeds their previously signed up for responsibilities. My view is that if you think you might be subject to the higher calling exception, then you need to not have access to high level information. Many people in the IC obviously thought stopping Trump was an exception to their responsibilities, and soon enough it has morphed into anyone who disagrees with their political ideology.
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As for engineering it is entirely possible to build very complex platforms (satellites, ships, planes, etc.) with 99.8% of everyone on the program not understanding their true capabilities. You get handed a low level spec. The Chinese have basically infiltrated most defense companies by simply sending huge numbers of students over and getting them hired into defense agencies. A long term infiltration program will have multiple generations, forged documents, etc. that allow better access. The Russians are serious, but the Chinese are very serious and much more committed to long term exploitation.
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Not to put too fine a point to it, but the Chinese steal everything, everything. Shared IP is basically part of their culture, they don’t even think it is wrong for the most part. They just suck up everything they can put their hands on and worry about specific exploitations later. The CIA is more targeted. It’s a different game as there isn’t currently a whole lot the US needs to steal from China, but those days may very well come in the future. We do want to know how well the Chinese systems work and what their vulnerabilities are.
Mark, I was being facetious. An article in Wa Po says that it’s estimated that 90% of classified material does not need to be, this despite a 2010 Reducing Over-Classification Act. Over classification is the clearest metric of the CYA doctrine.
NPR discusses potential restrictions to GOF research.
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When is it OK to make germs worse in a lab? It’s a more relevant question than ever https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/01/27/1151867224/virologists-science-oversight-risky-experiments
“Over 150 virologists have signed on to a commentary that says all the evidence to date indicates that the coronavirus pandemic started naturally, and it wasn’t the result of some kind of lab accident or malicious attack.
They worry that continued speculation about a lab in China is fueling calls for more regulation of experiments with pathogens, and that this will stifle the basic research needed to prepare for future pandemics.
The virologists issued their statement just ahead of a key meeting Friday held by outside advisors to the federal government. That group is set to wrap up a recent review of the existing oversight system for experiments that are controversial because they could create new potential threats.
The advisors’ draft recommendations call for expanding a special decision-making process that currently weighs the risks and benefits of experiments that might make “potential pandemic pathogens” more dangerous.”
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I’m triggered by the use of the “no evidence” canard every time I see it now, what follows that phrase is usually a distortion. Open letters are almost always an attempt to make an unpopular opinion seem like it is supported.
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After seeing this BS for years, you can now just easily read between the lines.
“Felicia Goodrum, a virologist at the University of Arizona, says that open-minded experts have investigated the origins of the pandemic. The available evidence, she says, supports the notion that the virus emerged from nature
“The evidence that we have to date suggests that SARS-CoV-2 entered the human population by that route,” says Goodrum. “There is no evidence to the contrary or in support of a lab leak, nothing credible.” (anyone who disagrees is by definition close minded, and there is evidence to the contrary, and they have never found the alleged animal source)
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“Basic research on viruses, she says, is what led to the swift development of vaccines and drugs to fight the pandemic.” (but not GOF research)
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The good news here is that it looks like there may be more oversight, but I’d prefer this area of research gets globally banned.
Tom, the constitution is a legitimate higher calling. If not then the Nuremburg prosecutions for people “just following orders” were wrong.
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Snowden should have been able to safely blow the whistle on wrongdoing. But when the entire top of most federal departments are captured by political corruption then there is no place to blow the whistle to but the public.
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The higher calling of a foreign entities interest is never legitimate unless one’s whole government is corrupt, which is every citizens job to combat from happening.
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In order to fight corruption we need transparency, which is direct conflict with government secrecy. As I said before, IP is a separate matter and is mainly the private domain’s responsibility to protect.
The problem is you can’t have a bunch of individuals making independent decisions on publicly releasing secret information that they disagree with. Half of these people are legitimately crazy to start with so you end up with a non-functioning system. There needs to be penalties.
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Snowden is an interesting case, there was some legitimate wrongdoing here but I don’t think he tried very hard to handle it internally as I recall. Snowden ending up as a guest of Russia didn’t help his case much. I would respect Snowden more if his upright morals had him taking a jail term for his exposures. That’s believing in your own noble cause. He would likely have been released or pardoned by now if he would have stayed.
That Project Veritas video was nuts. That guy absolutely panicked and lost composure. I do actually feel kind of sorry for him because he was targeted in a sting operation, but he did not handle it well and it looks like a parody of eleven different culture issues all at once.
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Pfizer is going to need to make a statement to clarify this, and I’m guessing his future at the company isn’t too rosy. “Directed evolution” is not GOF, ha ha.
mark bofill (Comment #218079): “I don’t think there is much ‘there’ there.”
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Indeed. A guy exaggerating in order to try to impress a date. I am pretty sure that has happened before.
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If what he said was not mostly BS, then his career at Pfizer is probably over. If it was mostly BS, then his career at Pfizer is probably over.
If what he said was not mostly BS, then his career at Pfizer is probably over. If it was mostly BS, then his career at Pfizer is probably over.
Yup. If he had shrugged and walked away it’d likely have been a whole lot better. That was quite a spectacular meltdown he had. I can think of several ways of looking at it and none of them bode well for the guy’s continued employment.
I’m not going to pretend to tell Memphis how to run their city, but to basically advertise and then release that video of an alleged police beating on Friday night doesn’t seem wise to me. It may be normal to dump bad political news at Friday COB but I don’t think this falls into that category. Also the police force isn’t likely to want to defend against a riot if they view their own were just thrown under the bus, hope they have the National Guard on speed dial. It may very well be that the officers deserve to be charged, we shall see.
Yeah. We know the cops were black. But it was still racism. But even though it was definitely still racism, other things. But: racism.
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For anyone who still has any brains in their heads and needs those brains dissolved and drained out through their nostrils, this article will definitely get the job done.
Now excuse me, I gotta go clean up the dissolved brains that dripped onto my shirt…
The Twitter Files this weeks uncovers the source for a lot of “Russian Disinformation” media stories, a Twitter account called Hamilton68 that used a secret algorithm to detect what was Russian linked misinformation. Twitter (to their credit) reverse engineered it and found that the accounts they used were mostly just ordinary accounts that were just right leaning or people with hardly any followers. Basically it was a political site to shmear right leaning themes as Russian propaganda. https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029772977455105
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Interestingly they tried telling reporters off the record the account’s algorithms were completely bogus but the reporters were not interested. Twitter tried to force Hamilton68 to release their sources but they never did, and Twitter never released them although they considered it.
Tom Scharf,
I rather suspect Matt Taibbi is going to become a top target for attack from the lunatic left.
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The weird thing is: he is an absolutely mainstream (Clinton/Obama) liberal. If a mainstream liberal is no longer allowed under the Democrat tent, then that tent is in danger of housing only crazies and totalitarians…. which sadly, seems in fact to be the case.
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Musk spent his $44 billion to control Twitter, most of which I expect he will ultimately lose. We’ll see if that was a worthwhile price for a measure of honesty. One thing is clear: nobody in the MSM is going to report on the abuses that went on at Twitter (and no doubt the other social media sites), any more than the MSM is going to report on the blatant corruption/influence peddling of the Biden family.
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I think we have reached a ‘watershed moment’, and it is not clear if the public will or will not continue to accept the lies/distortions/misrepresentations of the MSM over the political corruption of the ‘intelligence agencies’. The pleadings of folks like Taibbi, Shellenberger, and Greenwald help, but it may not be enough to be heard above the left’s ‘megaphone’ of the MSM.
It makes no sense that the Memphis video would cause riots. Unless of course people just want to riot. The cops are getting the book thrown at them.
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Memphis PD would seem to have no choice but to release the video. So scheduling it (sometime tomorrow, I think) might be the best option. I think they are trying to get pastors and other community leaders to get out in front to keep things peaceful. The dead guy’s mom is publicly asking for no violence.
I’m only commenting on the timing, Monday morning would be better IMO. The media will be there in force waiting for the riots tonight. It will be interesting to see if they do riot, is it about race, police abuse, police accountability, just opportunistic mob hooligans, all of the above? I find this situation hard to predict.
Tom Scharf: “I would respect Snowden more if his upright morals had him taking a jail term for his exposures. That’s believing in your own noble cause. He would likely have been released or pardoned by now if he would have stayed.”
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I thought that from the beginning, but after the degree of USIC corruption we witnessed since then I don’t really blame him that much. The guy who pepper sprayed Officer Brian Sicknick just got 80 months in jail. Many people without criminal records get less than that for 2nd degree murder.
After the IG report that blasted NIH’s oversight of the Eco Health grant they just passed an expanded definition of the prohibition on GOF research.
Thank goodness.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218089): “is it about race, police abuse, police accountability, just opportunistic mob hooligans, all of the above? I find this situation hard to predict.”
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It is about insurrection. Antifa is organizing riots in cities across the country.
The pole camera here shows most of it clearly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn-J94qXAqY
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It was definitely an unnecessary and malicious beating. Clearly job termination behavior. The kicks at 2:18, 4:06 and striking with the baton at 3:00 are just ridiculous, it boggles my mind that they would do that with bodycams on. Really? For a traffic stop? They could have just cuffed him and put him in the car.
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I’m not sure I really see where there is intent to murder here, it was more of an unintentional homicide during an unprovoked beatdown IMO, but it is without a doubt criminal behavior from the cops if I’m on the jury. The ones who struck him when he was defenseless are going to go to jail, the others I’m not so sure about. They definitely didn’t stop it.
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This was shameful.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218093): “Really? For a traffic stop? They could have just cuffed him and put him in the car.”
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It was not just a traffic stop. The cops pulled him out of the car, as if they had reason to believe that he was dangerous. Why has not been disclosed. They tried to cuff him, he put up a fight, got away, and led the cops on a chase. It seems they then decided to wait for him to come back to the car, then another big struggle. Pepper spray seemed to be having little effect on him. Maybe a TASER also. The tox report might be interesting.
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None of that excuses a beat down after he was secured.
Thanks for the video link, Tom. I saw here what I didn’t see on TV, how they really cold cocked him a couple of times after he was cuffed. Those were heavy weight blows after he was already likely concussed. It’s also perplexing to see the white medic arrive at ~10:00 and set down his medical bag and just stand around for ten minutes talking with the officers as Nichols slowly fades. They are checking with him to see him conscious but that is not a medical check. Finally and ~20:00 the medic starts treating him with what might have been an injection after he fumbles putting on gloves for 2 minutes. Then the stretcher is wheeled over at ~26:00 and they still don’t put him on it. Then the ambulance seems to get impatient and pulls up right in front of him at 30:00 but we still never see them not load him before the video ends at 35:00.
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The picture from the hospital bed on TV looks like he had a burst jugular, as there was a massive bruising from his very swollen neck to up to his eyes on his face. He could have also died from brain bleeding or pressure from bleeding outside the brain in the dura. His death was just as much caused by poor medical attention imo than the beating. Of course, we don’t know the toxicology report, (if there was one).
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The cops responding to Paul Pelosi were not much better trained. But the medical treatment surely saved him.
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I give great credit to Nichols’s mother and step father imploring people to stay peaceful for Terry’s memory and for the community. Hope it works.
The four cops will all be convicted of 2nd degree murder. I doubt the DOJ will jump in with federal civil rights charges. The DOJ is a political enforcement arm for Democrats, and civil rights charges wouldn’t have the same political impact as in the George Floyd case, even though the cops’ behavior seems far more egregious in this case.
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My experience: young men who want to be cops are often pretty scary, and exactly the type of person you don’t want being cops. Beat-downs like this, and excessive police force in general, are the too frequent result.
My impression of those Memphis police who murdered Nickols were that they were poorly trained and probably badly selected. The responsibility there has to be with the police department and the city government. Until responsibity is correctly placed (which often would be on Democrat run cities) these incidents can continue.
The involved police should all be prosecuted to the limits of the law. With that many police involved in this incident there would appear to be a group mentality involved here. Memphis has a very high crime rate which again is typical of Democrat run cities. The emotional over reaction of those policeman is evidence of some larger underlying problem in Memphis law inforcement.
Typical of the understanding of these police incidents, and that includes the MSM, was shown in an ESPN interview with an NBA player who was touting the line that the “billionaire” team owners have the greatest responsibility in speaking out and resolving issues like these and much more so than the NBA players (who incidently are at least multi millionaires). He is probably a Democrat much like most of the media where partisan ignoring is a big part of the message.
Footnote: If Republicans ran big cities without political competion the cities problems could well be the same, but given the current partisan divide the situation would surely be reported differently and responsibility better assigned.
It is unclear why this kid was removed from the car in the middle of an intersection. I read it was reckless driving, but that doesn’t usually involve a dangerous extraction in traffic. No probable cause has been uncovered. There is probably more to the story here but they have had 3 weeks to make this look more justifiable and nothing has been reported. They may have thought he was somebody else or were executing a personal vendetta. I doubt they will get much sympathy from a jury.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218098): “It is unclear why this kid was removed from the car in the middle of an intersection.”
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We only have one side. That sure looks bad, but judgement should be suspended until the defense has had its say.
The media is heavily reporting/implying that the defendants responsible for Sicknick’s death were sentenced … ahem … fact check:
“(Judge) Hogan said Sicknick’s death was the “elephant in the room” but stressed that the coroner’s report didn’t give him any basis to use that as a sentencing factor against him.”
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As far as I know this autopsy has never been released, even during the trial which is a bit bizarre. The judge apparently has it. This continues to smell rather fishy as well and looks to be buried forever. My speculation has been that the toxicology report probably has something worth hiding. I’m seeing the ever present lack of media curiosity once a preferred narrative falls apart.
You normally don’t want to have a trial by public opinion before a criminal trial, this may be a case where that is warranted. Public perception is getting very hardened right now. The Ferguson case fell apart once the gentle giant was seen robbing the convenience store. Irrelevant of a future discovery of an initial justifiable stop it looks like the subsequent beating will never be seen as anything but criminal. Body cams and surveillance are good things.
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There could be some legitimate debate about how that beating ended up resulting in death. Apparently the guy had a cardiac arrest later. I’m no expert but I think that type of beating is survivable almost all the time. Perhaps that baton hit was to a critical area. The officer spent some time lining it up, pretty disgusting really.
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The taxpayers of Memphis will be paying dearly for this one.
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I would agree with Ken that this type of allowed behavior would show there is a culture of abuse in the department. If none of the cops had a problem with that in the first few days then it would seem a major overhaul is necessary in that department.
Tom Scharf: “As far as I know this autopsy has never been released”
It has, here are the pertinent findings by the medical examiner.
In an interview with Wash Post the examiner stated:
that “the autopsy found no evidence the 42-year-old officer suffered an allergic reaction to chemical irritants, which Diaz said would have caused Sicknick’s throat to quickly seize. Diaz also said there was no evidence of internal or external injuries. Diaz said Sicknick suffered two strokes at the base of the brain stem caused by a clot in an artery that supplies blood to that area of the body. ” https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca…b-afbe-9a11a127d146_story.htmlNotwithstanding this the federal judge stated that Sicknick’s death was “The elephant in the room” and noted that the Defendant didn’t apologize . [on advice of Attorney because he is being sued by Sicknick’s family]
Also, members of Sicknick’s family were at the sentencing falsely blaming the defendant for Sicknick’s death in line with their frivolous lawsuits. [that may succeed because of public opinion and ignorance] https://nypost.com/2023/01/27/julian-khater-sentenced-in-attack-of-capitol-cop-brian-sicknick/ Somewhat understandable that they might want to profit from the tide of leftie ignorance and prejudice, but wrong nonetheless.
Disgraceful that the federal judge ignorantly mentions any potential causal connection between the bear spray and Sicknick’s death. No relationship at all.
jd,
Yes, the autopsy results were paraphrased and the important conclusions were released, but my understanding is the official autopsy report is almost always available in criminal cases and it was withheld here for reasons unknown. I vaguely recall an FOI was made for it and was rejected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Brian_Sicknick
“It took more than 100 days to release these results from the January autopsy.[25] The full autopsy report was not released to the public.[31]”
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A more mundane justification for not releasing this report is the Capital Police’s desire to have Sicknick recognized as dying in the line of service for benefits, etc.
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The judge criticized the defendant for not apologizing to the officers (no remorse!) but the defendant said his lawyers told him not to because of the pending civil lawsuit. Catch-22.
When police beat a defenseless person it does not matter what the person is suspected of doing before the encounter. If that person dies it is murder. If we want to talk about a rush to judgment in these cases, the police actions were the fastest and worse rush to judgement I can imagine.
I looked up baton use guidelines for police, you aren’t supposed to target the head or neck area with a baton unless use of deadly force is necessary. I reviewed a few online and they all basically say something similar:
“Restrictions. Although batons are considered less-lethal weapons, they can cause serious injury or death. For the safety of everyone involved, the following additional restrictions apply:
1. Head and Neck Strikes. Members will not use batons to intentionally strike a subject in the head or neck except when deadly force is justified.”
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If you look at the video the cop is definitely intentionally targeting the neck. This guy is definitely going to jail for a long time. It does look like they were having a hard time getting cuffs on him.
Why we still need the Second Amendment, contd.:
Three Books on the Siege at Waco
The conflagration at the Branch Davidian compound is now three decades in the past. Have we learned anything from the tragedy?
The story of David Koresh and the siege of the Branch Davidians’ compound near Waco, Texas, is by turns gripping, harrowing and nauseating. The initial raid of the compound, called Mount Carmel by its residents, resulted in the deaths of six Davidians—two of them finished off by a fellow cultist after they were badly wounded—and four federal agents. After a 51-day standoff, the FBI tried to flush out Koresh and 85 remaining Davidians with tear gas. The compound, built haphazardly of plywood, caught fire. A government report later claimed that the fire had been set deliberately, though the few Davidians who fled in the final assault deny this. Seventy-six people died in the conflagration, some with bullet holes in their skulls. The dead included 25 children and two pregnant women.
The ATF staged the original raid in Waco to try to improve their image after murdering three innocent people and a dog at Ruby Ridge. And now we also have well armed DHS agents to complement the incompetent thugs at the FBI and the ATF.
But you can trust your government to protect you! /sarc
Tom Scharf 103 “A more mundane justification for not releasing this report is the Capital Police’s desire to have Sicknick recognized as dying in the line of service for benefits, etc.”
Didn’t realize that the actual report wasn’t released. Don’t know how it could possibly not be subject to FOIA. Should be released in the context of civil trials. I agree with your reasoning as to why not released. If it helped Sicknick family, it would have been done.
DeWitt,
Janet Reno was an incompetent fool, with the judgement of a six year old. She made all the decisions that ended up killing 26 children and 45+ adults at Waco. How she even stayed in office after that is something I never understood. That she was so shameless over the remainder of her years, even running for public office, in spite of killing all those people, describes her more clearly than anything else. What a horrible person.
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The problem with those who want to take guns from citizens is they are more than happy to have the Federal government use guns on those citizens. Control and power is what it is always about.
Ken, I agree with you, I can’t think of a scenario where any of the police’s actions were justified, from pulling him out of the car to hitting him. The fact that part of the abuse was knowingly recorded on body cam is puzzling as well, although I noticed that the worst abuses were only captured by the pole cam, which the officers apparently were not aware of.
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SteveF, I was no fan of Janet Reno, but I give the majority of the responsibility for the death to David Koresh. He stockpiled the arms, shot and killed the ATF agents outside and held non-combatant women and children in the standoff after the killings.
Never again: How a ‘lesson of 2011’ shaped Biden’s no-negotiation stance on debt limit
The Obama-Biden White House agreed to negotiate with Republicans on the debt ceiling. It brought the U.S. economy to the brink of disaster — and the president and vice president vowed to change their posture. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/debt-ceiling-deadline-biden-negotiate-2011-near-default-rcna67854
“They agreed that going forward, “Nobody can use the threat of default or not increasing the debt limit as a negotiating tool,” said a former Obama official involved in the fiscal discussions, who recounted the Oval Office meeting and the “lesson of 2011” they all discussed. “It made you hold your stomach. You couldn’t believe you were at this situation,” the official said.”
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Yes, well. We cannot allow another branch of government to use one of the only tools they have to force financial sanity into our system, the administrative branch are the kings after all. The balance of powers thing is so 2011.
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I think we have spent quite enough over the past few years. What is another permanent student debt relief, or endless rent relief? People need nice things! We can’t possibly actually negotiate with Congress on budget, that is literal insanity. What could possibly go wrong with infinite spending? Debt doesn’t matter, Nobel winning economists say so (at least when their preferred party is in charge). Can’t somebody write an open letter saying so?
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I’m inclined to let it burn down with this kind of attitude.
Someone tried to catfish me on facebook!
For several reasons, I knew they were probably a catfisher from the first “hey” in messenger. But I wanted to see how it would go if I responded.
It’s pretty funny
(a) to see how obvious the catfishing is provided you know there are people who catfish and
(b) google afterwards and find the very close matches some exact matches between things they say and a “Nigerian Scammer Playbook” script.
“Though I have some weird experiences with some woman, but I believe there’s a Good Woman out there for me, I have the courage that I will find the woman whom I which to spend the rest of my life with. I do believe in soul mates. I have seen people that have found theirs and live very happily with them and I have decided a while ago that I would never “settle” for anyone less than my soul mate.”
The playbook version is
Though I have some weird experiences with some woman, but I believe
there’s a Good Woman out there for me, I have the courage that I will
find the woman whom I which to spend the rest of my life with. I do
believe in soul mates. I have seen people that have found theirs and
live very happily with them and I have decided a while ago that I
would never “settle” for anyone less than my soul mate.
Quite a mouthful for an exact match, eh?
My catfisher
Truthfulness and respect. It really makes me get closer to a lady is the person inside,I do considers that more important because beauty fades with time but the person inside appreciates with time.
Scammer playbook version:
Truthfulness and respect. I’m not after physical apperance, but I
value good characters, It really makes me get closers to a person
inside; I do considers that more important because beauty fades with
time but the person inside appreciates with time.
And so on.
Notice how poor the grammar is. Initially this guy claimed he was with the Marines in Somalia. Later that changed to with the UN in Somalia.
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(For those wondering what is going on…. google “Romance Scams”. There has been an explosion. Usually these guys operate on dating sites. But for some reason, this one decided to send me a “hey” out of the blue. A friend of mine encountered a scammer during Covid. She caught on when he suddenly claimed to be stuck in another country and needed her to wire him $30K to get out of the clutches of some deluded authorities. . . At that point, she was like, “Whoa Nelly! This guy ain’t real!!!!” Unfortunately, some people send money.
Anyway, why this guy is operating by contacting people out of the blue on facebook messenger, I do not know. But perhaps the dating sites have begotten good at blocking them so they need new turf? Dunno….)
If you are wondering if he is still trying to scam me: Yep. If there is sufficient interest, I can post the whole discussion and his tweak in strategy.
The Memphis five were part of a special unit that was assigned to violent crime. The incident started with a traffic stop. I have not heard any explanation from the police department or the city government about this seeming puzzle.
I have heard that a group is being formed to investigate the incident and thus details of the incident can delayed with the hopes of disassociating the police from city government. And why not, these tactics have worked before.
Ron Graf (Comment #218110): “I can’t think of a scenario where any of the police’s actions were justified, from pulling him out of the car to hitting him.”
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The fact is that we don’t know. Why were there four cops at the traffic stop? I would guess it was because of something that happened prior. Maybe the cops had reason to believe he was a fugitive. Maybe his driving was so crazy that they thought he was wigged out on drugs; his subsequent behavior might support that. Maybe they stopped him and he drove off, then when they stopped him again they weren’t going to give him a chance to do that again. We don’t know.
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After they got him out of the car he fought like crazy and got away from four cops. It seems they tased him and maced him to little effect. If you try that, you will end up with a bunch of bruises (and maybe worse) by the time the cops get you under control. Again, we don’t know.
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The one thing that seems inexplicable is pounding on the guy after he was cuffed.
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Officer Sicknick was killed by a rioter who bashed him over the head with a fire extinguisher. Oh no, he wasn’t. There have been many such cases. So I will wait and see.
Ron Graf,
You are far more generous with mass murder than I. There were multiple options open Reno that didn’t involve killing people. Yes, Koresh was a psychopathic lunatic. In a sensible world, people would do their best to limit his harm. That was the opposite of what Reno did. She chose the wrong path at Waco every time. Instead of de-escalating, she chose escalating. Instead of simply waiting them out, she chose to precipitate the final confrontation that killed a bunch of kids.
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Were I a Christian, I would have the comfort of knowing that she suffers in Hell; but I am not. She got away with mass murder, and never suffered any significant consequence. At least the good people of Florida saw to it she was never elected to public office.
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IMHO, Janet Reno was an absolutely horrible person.
Lucia,
You should email him that you’re extremely interested in meeting, but that you’d need him to float you $800 bucks for a few days for a plane ticket.
I’m with Steve. I never forgave Janet Reno for Elian Gonzalez, either.
mark,
When he told me he was with the Marines in Somalia, I wrote
“I’m glad I’m not in Somalia!! Not enough sun screen in the world for me to ever want to go there.”
I think that’s true. Though right now, there are other reason to not visit Somalia.
I’ve batted around ideas for what to say if he does ask me for money. I told Jim I think I’ll say my deceased husband tied up all the money in a trust and my trustee won’t allow me control of my own money! I just send the bills and he pays them. I’ve used my small allowance of “mad money” up for the month. 🙂
But really, I think I exchanged enough with the guy.
Fair enough. My personal preference is to insist that they need to send me money to get whatever ball they want rolling in motion, but it’s not like I’ve ever collected a dime that way anyway.
mark,
Actually…. you don’t want to collect any significant money from the Nigerian scammers either. There ARE some scams that use the duped people to unwittingly launder money!
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Mind you, $800 is small potatoes in the money laundering biz. But if you send them your details, you never know what they might send you. ( So definitely don’t give them a bank number to deposit $$$$ into.)
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The main advice if you think they are a Nigerian (or similar) scammer is to stay away….. But when I got a message saying “hey”…. I wanted to see what they would write.
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The guys kinda sorta lost interest after a day.
I’d told him I was going out. He asked me where. The next morning I told him I’d gone dancing and asked him what dances he danced! I suspect someone with a decent social life may not be his target.
But I say “kinda sorta” because actually…. he set up an entirely new facebook page and THAT sock puppet has asked me to friend them. Not going to do that.
Similar?
The first page used to belong to Vito Magrone. But it got hacked away by ‘Victor Davis”. I did follow Vito Magrone — he owned a dance studio around here which closed during Covid. The fact that “victor davis” has a facebook url that contains the name vito.magrone.3 is sort of a big flag that he’s a hacker. (Other flags have happened since. Many.)
The second one…. well… that one has asked me to “friend it”. But it has the same dang profile pick.
Anyway, you don’t want these people sending you money either. Not. Safe.
LOL. That is awesome. Thanks Lucia!
…
And thanks for the warning. I’ve only been contacted by people wanting to run scams a couple times in my life and the idea of forwarding me money was a complete non starter for them. And embarrassingly I have to admit now that I’d likely have backed down if they agreed, now that I think it through. That’s no fun. :/
Mark
the idea of forwarding me money was a complete non starter for them.
I suspect if YOU suggest it, it’s a non-starter for them. But if they suggest it, watch out!!
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I had a friend who got chatted up by someone from a dating site. She wasn’t aware of these scams…. Fortunately, she had to good sense to say “whoa!” when asked for money. Of course she told me about it. So I then read up on the recent “romance scams” and so on.
People getting others to act as mules and launder is also a “thing”. But I suspect if a scammer latches on to you, they either want you to send them money or they want you to launder. So you asking the ones who are trying to get your money for money makes them stop dead.
It’s a little bit fun to egg them on…. but ultimately just at time waster. Nothing I’m going to do is going to get them arrested or stopped.
I’ve seen a few scam the scammers episodes on YouTube. It usually involves playing along as long as possible and sucking up as much of their time as you can. Go all the way and then tell them you are having problems with the money order. Make all kinds of incoherent statements like a clueless 75 year old with Alzheimer’s. Slowly ask them for lots of identifying information and make them evade, etc.
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One of the engineers I know almost fell for a “you owe taxes and must pay now” scam. He had a guy waiting to pick up some cash as the local tax authority but the cops were not even remotely interested in getting involved. They are getting more sophisticated.
Mark, Steve, I never said Janet Reno didn’t deserve disdain. I just said that in my mind Koresh held more control of the deaths there. I saw a documentary a long time ago on it and I am pretty sure the survivors pointed the finger at Koresh for starting the fire.
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I could be wrong but I don’t think the ATF and FBI were trying to burn them out. However, that may have been the tactic of the 1985 Philadelphia MOVE fire.
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I would think the MOVE catastrophe would be too fresh in their minds to plan a fire and repeat the same result.
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IIRC the Gonzalez kid’s father wanted him back in Cuba. That was a tough call.
What you can rightly blame Reno for is the senseless raid on a remote family mountain house called Ruby Ridge. The father was in the ATF cross hairs for taking a hacksaw to a shotgun to make a few dollars to feed his family. He didn’t know the order was being placed by an undercover ATF agent pretending to be another Idaho hillbilly. IIRC they killed his armed son coming up the driveway and then sniper shot his wife in the heart while aiming for him. Jerry Spence took his case pro bono and made the government look like buffoons. Reno was likely out of the loop. Even her deputy, who was hauled before the senate, claimed he was on vacation at the time. The key issue was the rules of engagement. The higher ups said they relied on the lower downs to use good judgment.
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After George Terwillager III, gave long long statement about everything but what was relevant Sen (R) Arlen Spector questioned him. By the end of the exchange it came down to what the definition of should is.
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SEN. SPECTER
“I know you’ve communicated with the staff that you had nothing to do with the rules of engagement, but I think for the record we need to ask you about that specifically. ”
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George J. Terwilliger III
United States Marshal Johnson testified that he overheard a conversation where FBI agents were apparently talking to the FBI in Washington and your…
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SEN. SPECTER
Mr. Terwilliger, back to the specifics on the rule of — rules of engagement, how can you possibly justify this rule, quote: “If any male adult is observed with a weapon prior to the announcement, deadly force can and should be employed if the shot can be taken without endangering any children.” How — how can you square that with the Supreme Court holding in Tennessee versus Garner (sp) where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so?
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George J. Terwilliger III
Well, first of all, Mr. Chairman, I’m not trying to justify the rules of engagement. I was trying to give the committee the benefit of my observation that I do not believe the rules of engagement were constitutionally unreasonable. That is different in my mind, at least, from trying to justify.
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SEN. SPECTER
Constitutionally unreasonable? The — the question is whether they comport with the Supreme Court decision which requires immediacy and requires a threat imperiling life or grievous bodily harm. And here the rule says that all you need to do is observe an adult male with a weapon and deadly force can and should be employed, which removes it on its face from even a discretionary judgment with the use of the word “should”. Show Less Text
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George J. Terwilliger III
Well, Mr. Chairman, I guess —
SEN. SPECTER
The director of the FBI, who defends the second shot which was fatal to Mrs. Weaver, says that the rules of engagement were unconstitutional. So my question to you is How can you square them with the Supreme Court decision?
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Well, as I tried to explain before, I do not, after reading the public version of the task force report and listening to the testimony here, I believe the “can and should” language, perhaps even the “can” language, would be unconstitutional if it were interpreted to be a direction to shoot on sight. I do not believe — media conclusions to the contrary at this point — that those rules were intended to be a “shoot on sight.”
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George J. Terwilliger III
However, Senator, I recognize that that’s —
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SEN. SPECTER
Well, what — whatever —
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George J. Terwilliger III
— my judgment, and others may disagree.
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SEN. SPECTER
Whatever the intent is, don’t they say that on their face?
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George J. Terwilliger III
I do not believe that they do.
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George J. Terwilliger III
I also — let me — permit me an observation, if I may, Mr. Chairman. I do not necessarily believe that the “can and should” language is necessarily determinative in these kinds of situations.
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George J. Terwilliger III
I was involved in the hostage rescue at Talladega. There were unarmed individuals inside of that facility, holding a number of innocent people hostage. The entry of the HRT into the prison facility to effectuate the release of the hostages was timed to occur during a period in which it was anticipated that the hostages and their captors would be physically separated, to minimize the danger to the hostages. I have no idea to this day what the rules of engagement were for that particular operation. But if they were instructions to the effect — to the members of the HRT going in — “if you see a — one of the subjects taking a hostage into physical custody at the time that we make the entrance” — thus someone that could be a shield — “deadly force can and should be used,” I would not think that that would be a constitutionally inappropriate instruction. https://www.c-span.org/video/?67290-1/ruby-ridge-investigation-day-10#!
IIRC the Gonzalez kid’s father wanted him back in Cuba. That was a tough call.
Nobody in Cuba was free to express what they wanted. You think that man could tell the government, ‘nah, he’s better off there, I want him to stay’?
More fool you, if so.
Tom
One of the engineers I know almost fell for a “you owe taxes and must pay now” scam. He had a guy waiting to pick up some cash as the local tax authority but the cops were not even remotely interested in getting involved. They are getting more sophisticated.
The cops not being remotely interested is why trying to scam the scammers doesn’t work.
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There are actually relatively good reasons the police don’t want to get involved.
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If the scam is only attempted, it is often not a crime. If it succeed, it might be a crime– but that depends on some details. And because it depends on details, it’s hard to prove it was a crime.
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I mean: sending a $$ to a boyfriend or friend or person you barely knew doesn’t mean they committed a crime. Them lying? Still not necessarily a crime. (I mean… suppose your cheating boyfriend told you he needed $$ because his car broke down in Indiana. So you wire him money. He really spends it on hookers at the Indian Casino in Indiana. Is his getting the money an actual crime according to a statute? Yes. He lied….. Even if it’s a crime, good luck getting the police to act. And which police? The ones in Illinois? Or Indiana? Or some police authority of the Indian Reservation?
But anyway, if that lie doesn’t make it a crime, maybe some other does. But it has to be some sort of special type of lie.)
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I think the scammers often know fairly precisely which sorts of deception are “crimes” and which are not, and which are ambiguous. And they also make sure there is confusion over jurisdiction. So the police know it’s likely hopeless.
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Even though this Vitto/Victor/Mark entity is clearly a scammer who is trying to lay the ground work to scam me (and likely others), I’m fairly sure he hasn’t violated any law vis-a-vis me. Probably Victor/Mark has violated a law on hacking– (into Vitto’s account). But good luck getting Facebook to help prove it. I can’t prove it– I only suspect. But if I look to Illinois law, impersonation can only be a crime if he got a “benefit”. And I doubt “gaining Vitto’s ‘friends'” fits the definition of “benefit”; that probably requires getting $$ or property (and possibly from Vitto who he is impersonating.) But either way, he hasn’t gotten any $$ or property from me.
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And as far as impersonating to get money from me– well he switched his screen name to “Victor”. So he’s not actually presenting himself as Vitto to me. He’s telling me he’s “Victor” a marine– and later UN something or other.
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So I don’t see how or why the police would get involved here. Because he probably hasn’t broken any law yet. Of if he has, I can’t give them evidence of that. And setting up a sting would likely be useless because he’s probably in Nigeria.
In the ongoing development of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer has not conducted gain of function or directed evolution research. Working with collaborators, we have conducted research where the original SARS-CoV-2 virus has been used to express the spike protein from new variants of concern. This work is undertaken once a new variant of concern has been identified by public health authorities. This research provides a way for us to rapidly assess the ability of an existing vaccine to induce antibodies that neutralize a newly identified variant of concern. We then make this data available through peer reviewed scientific journals and use it as one of the steps to determine whether a vaccine update is required.
In addition, to meet U.S. and global regulatory requirements for our oral treatment, PAXLOVID™, Pfizer undertakes in vitro work (e.g., in a laboratory culture dish) to identify potential resistance mutations to nirmatrelvir, one of PAXLOVID’s two components. With a naturally evolving virus, it is important to routinely assess the activity of an antiviral. Most of this work is conducted using computer simulations or mutations of the main protease–a non-infectious part of the virus. In a limited number of cases when a full virus does not contain any known gain of function mutations, such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells. In addition, in vitro resistance selection experiments are undertaken in cells incubated with SARS-CoV-2 and nirmatrelvir in our secure Biosafety level 3 (BSL3) laboratory to assess whether the main protease can mutate to yield resistant strains of the virus. It is important to note that these studies are required by U.S. and global regulators for all antiviral products and are carried out by many companies and academic institutions in the U.S. and around the world.”
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No denial that the guy works for them or stated his title correctly. No specific denials of things he said. This looks like a lot of hand waving. If it looks like GOF, smells like GOF, tastes like GOF … then it is not GOF because lots of big words!
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So the be clear, not GOF:
“In a limited number of cases when a full virus does not contain any known gain of function mutations, such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells. In addition, in vitro resistance selection experiments are undertaken … to assess whether the main protease can mutate to yield resistant strains of the virus.”
Tom Scharf,
Clearly Pfizer is doing GOF, and it’s clearly a significant hazard. I hope at some point Congress comes to it’s senses and makes all such research on pathogens unlawful. There is simply too much risk of escape…. do similar work in a hundred labs around the world and escape seems more likely than not. Add to that several already known, confirmed instances of pathogen escape from laboratories, and the (IMO) likely escape of covid from a lab in Wuhan, and allowing this kind of research borders on madness.
Ron Graf,
My recollection was that the fire was started by one of the tear-gas dispenser canisters the FBI lobbed into the structure. But what the hell was the FBI doing lobbing tear gas canisters into a structure housing 25 kids? As I said, Reno took every possible wrong choice, and steadfastly refused to prioritize the safety (and lives !) of people in the compound.
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WRT the Gonzales boy: what Mark said. The boy’s father (and other relatives in Cuba) would have faced the wrath of a violent police state had he not asked for his son back. Reno (and Bill Clinton) chose the wrong path… yet again. It wasn’t even a close call; it was an immoral decision. Which was a very common thread in Reno’s career
(and Bill Clinton’s).
The rumors on the grapevine are three of the cops were members of the Vice Lords gang and this was a gang sanctioned beating. Apparently not the first. This would certainly fit with all the facts. If true, I expect it won’t take long for this to come out.
Tom
such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells
What does “engineered” mean in this context? “To engineer” can mean a huge range of things. That’s a bad verb to pick if you are denying doing GOF because “engineering” could include GOF, though it need not.
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we have conducted research where the original SARS-CoV-2 virus has been used to express the spike protein from new variants of concern.
What does this mean? It doesn’t say what method is used to “express” the new spike. Is it just allowing mutations in the lab waiting to see what mutations spontaneously occur? That’s not GOF. I think that’s what they mean. But I need a biology person to tell me if that lingo specifically means that. Better copy editing is required to allow non-specialists to know.
SteveF (Comment #218132): “Clearly Pfizer is doing GOF”.
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Um, and how do you know that?
Although several of the surviving Branch Davidians insist that they did not start the fire, a panel of arson investigators concluded that the Davidians were responsible for igniting it, simultaneously, in at least three different areas of the compound. Unless they were deliberately set, the probability of the three fires starting almost simultaneously was highly unlikely, according to fire experts. Furthermore, the videotapes show the use of accelerants that strongly increased the spread of the fire. Although one Branch Davidian stated that a FBI tank had tipped over a lantern, videotapes show that the tank had struck the building a minute and a half before the fire began. Also some of the surviving Davidians’ clothing showed evidence of lighter fluid and other accelerants. In addition, FBI listening devices seemed to establish that the Davidians were overheard making statements such as, “Spread the fuel,” some six hours before the fires began. (Joint Hearing of the Crime Subcommittee July 1995.)
DaveJR (Comment #218134): “The rumors on the grapevine are three of the cops were members of the Vice Lords gang and this was a gang sanctioned beating.”
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Huh. That could explain why a traffic stop needed so many cops, from a special violent crime unit, no less. And why it was so aggressive from the start. But it raises other questions, like why that target and why the cops did not turn off their lapel cameras before committing a premeditated crime.
Steve F, Mark B, what about the chance that the father really wanted to raise his own child even if it was in Cuba? One can’t discount that. Clinton made a lot of bad decisions but even a broken clock can be right.
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The biotech jargon is not even clear to the biotech people, which is why the bio establishment are re-defining GOF currently to avoid more slippery Fauci moments.
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DaveR, the gang ordered beating makes the most sense of why they allowed him to resist handcuffs for so long and allowed him to run. They just didn’t know about the pole cam.
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Edit: It does not explain the lackadaisical medical response by the white guy. Of course he did not see or have a reason to know about the head traumas.
Ron,
Steve F, Mark B, what about the chance that the father really wanted to raise his own child even if it was in Cuba? One can’t discount that. Clinton made a lot of bad decisions but even a broken clock can be right.
Sure, it’s possible the dad was a fool and a jerk. The world is full of people like that. I think the odds favor my interpretation, but as we’ve discussed before I think being wrong is our natural state. So it’s not unlikely I’m wrong.
Shrug.
As someone who’s done a fair amount of “genetic engineering”, I would interpret this statement as:
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“In the ongoing development of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer has not conducted gain of function or directed evolution research.”
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The expected conclusion is presented up front for the lazy.
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“Working with collaborators, we have conducted research where the original SARS-CoV-2 virus has been used to express the spike protein from new variants of concern.”
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Taking the DNA sequence of the new spike protein and inserting it into to the “original” virus, most likely in the same position as the “original” spike protein. The recombinant virus would likely then be inserted into cells to allow it to create virus particles which can then be studied. This could result in “gain of function” by giving it a spike protein with enhanced properties. It is unclear if this “original virus” has been nerfed to make it less harmful in some way.
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“In a limited number of cases when a full virus does not contain any known gain of function mutations, such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells.”
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That seems like a rather candid admission that viruses are mutated to “add in” mutations known to increase function so the antivirals can be tested to see if they still work.
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“In addition, in vitro resistance selection experiments are undertaken in cells incubated with SARS-CoV-2 and nirmatrelvir in our secure Biosafety level 3 (BSL3) laboratory to assess whether the main protease can mutate to yield resistant strains of the virus.”
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Would suggest to me using “directed evolution” to see if COVID will mutate to overcome Paxlovid, which would result in “gain of function”, but that depends on semantics. Again, I would hope the virus has been nerfed.
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My conclusion is that the guy from Pfizer wasn’t lying about what they are doing. He was merely presenting it to a layman in terms they can understand. The rest is semantics. Unless these viruses have been neutered in some way to prevent transmission, the risk exists that a careless scientist could allow one of these viruses to escape into the wild with “enhanced capabilities”.
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The argument is whether the results of these experiments are necessary compared to the potential risk they pose. For example, is it necessary to know it’s possible that the virus can overcome paxlovid, by trying to force it to do so? From a purely scientific POV, this is probably a yes. To try and anticipate future mutations. From a safety POV, that you may end up creating and releasing a virus which may never have existed in nature, I doubt it.
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Again, the safety, IMO, depends on whether they are using some kind of nerfed virus backbone. The fact that they don’t say they are, when it would seem beneficial to do so, is suggestive that they aren’t :/.
MikeM wrote: “why the cops did not turn off their lapel cameras before committing a premeditated crime.”
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I suspect that wouldn’t have been an issue, and might have raised red flags, if the suspect had not died. Still, if this is true, it shouldn’t take too long to dig out, assuming anyone is bothered to try.
It is notable that Pfizer doesn’t bother defining GOF, only their conclusion that they aren’t doing it. This is just another round of master class equivocation. They tell all the vaccine evangelists and the media backers what they want to hear in simple terms and then proceed to say they basically do GOF in 11 syllable techno-speak that almost nobody understands but that that they can get an expert to say isn’t GOF later.
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Why the Star Trek worthy technobabble? Because they know if they made a blanket GOF denial and the stated activity came to light later it would be perceived as a coverup. So the actual admission is made for CYA. Sadly this is working.
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The industry knows GOF is now a toxic term in the public domain so they are trying to narrowly define it out of existence. Personally I think this is absolutely revolting. Revolting.
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To be clear I think this tactic is revolting. I can understand that Pfizer and others want to genetically engineer viruses to make their products better. There is a legitimate debate to be had on the risk / rewards tradeoff of this technology. I’m willing to lose that (honest) debate as a layman. Intentionally obscuring that you are engineering potentially more lethal versions of the virus for research to avoid having that debate is, well, revolting.
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Pfizer and Fauci are both pissing on me and telling me its raining.
Tom Scharf,
“Pfizer and Fauci are both pissing on me and telling me its raining.”
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Worthy of Ron DeSantis. 😉
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But yes, the semantic arm-waving reminds me of liberals talking about the “living Constitution”… AKA we will interpret the actual Constitution out of existence and substituting something essentially unrelated to the original intent.
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MikeM,
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Suppose Pfizer genetically modifies an existent covid strain and discovers that the modified strain easily by-passes the effect of Paxlovid, rendering that treatment useless. Should that modified virus escape the lab, how many people might die with the now Paxlovid resistant strain in circulation? I don’t know, but sounds like more than a handful. I mean, if some nut cake were trying to make bacterial pathogens which are resistant to all known antibiotics, how could that not be called GOF research? I don’t think it could not be GOF. Pfizer is being a lot less than honest and clear about this.
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Of course, if they have somehow weakened the strain so that it is much, much less infective, maybe the experiments can be justified. But I don’t think that is at all what they are describing.
In my view it is the public’s right to have a potentially irrational hissy fit over viral genetic engineering and ban it. The related science and industries do not have a blanket right to veto the public’s viewpoint because the industries have a self interest bias. They need to be candid and win the public debate. This issue has risen to a public decision level in my view, not a panel of insider technocrats.
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The power companies don’t get to decide what the emission levels are, they do get an opportunity for input. Curiously where is the EPA on this? There are 6 billion bioreactors walking around earth. I suppose it is mostly an NIH or FDA issue.
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I’m just surprised very few people who oversee this technology are publicly worried about this, maybe I read too many apocalyptic genre novels, ha ha.
The rot and dishonesty at Twitter was so deep that the House should conduct hearings: https://www.racket.news/p/move-over-jayson-blair-meet-hamilton
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Even when Twitter’s own investigations showed clearly the “Russian bot attack” meme was pure garbage being fed to every major MSM outlet, Twitter managers decided to make no public announcement, and the deception constantly fed to the MSM continued until Musk took over.
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I suspect the same rot is present at other social media companies.
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I hope Taibbi has plenty of paying subscribers for his outlet, because he will never be offered another job in the MSM.
It’s an open question whether the lab engineers have any useful ability to predict viral evolution even if they had a perfect genetic toolset. I haven’t seen any evidence yet that they could predict covid variants or their internal experiments actually resulted in more effective vaccines or treatments. If this is the case then engineering more lethal lab versions is mostly a downside.
For example, I used to use adenovirus to insert tagged proteins into cells. The adenovirus DNA vector had had its packaging proteins removed so it was incapable of creating more virus once it inserted the payload into a cell. To create more virus, it was necessary to insert the DNA back into a cell line which had been specially engineered to produce the required packaging proteins. Thus, if accidents occur and you end up infecting yourself, for example, it’s incapable of replication.
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I would have expected to see a semi-technical, supposedly reassuring, statement, highlight this kind of precaution if it existed. I guess the kinds of experiments might also preclude it.
DaveJR,
If you worked with adinoviruses, maybe you would find this of some interest: https://academic.oup.com/jimb/article-pdf/20/6/317/34749583/jimb0317.pdf
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The adenovirus based covid vaccine was produced by a company that used the size characterization technique the paper described for about 20 years before the covid vaccine was produced.
Interesting article on the rise and fall(?) of string theory:
Strings don’t even rise to the level of a theory. It’s never been more than a conjecture. They can’t even write the equations, much less solve them. And forget anything experimental. Mathturbation at it’s best.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #218150)
Interesting article on the rise and fall(?) of string theory: https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/requiem-for-a-string-charting-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-theory-of-everything/
“Strings don’t even rise to the level of a theory.”
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Well it has been a major theory for 54 years.
The essence of it is adding extra dimensions which helped lead to the discovery of particles which behave like impossible numbers.
Different spins etc.
Agreeing to it leads to an impossible for us to understand universe.
A bit like the astronomers working out the planets orbits round a stationary earth.
Very difficult.
What will probably happen is that the math kicks in with an easy to solve algorithm reducing the complexity of the other universes to something easier to comprehend.
Maybe.
The interesting thing as far as I can see is that as 4 or 5 dimensional creatures we actually are very close to the starting point of one dimension only conceptually.
Whereas with size for instance we are in the middle of the known or knowable levels.
It became rubbish once they insisted on a set number of strings which is not sensible.
If we are the building blocks of the wider universe possibilities it makes a little bit more significant in the scheme of things, or so one would like to think.
Hope I make sense.
angech,
“…..is that as 4 or 5 dimensional creatures we actually are very close to the starting point of one dimension only conceptually.”
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“Hope I make sense.”
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Nope. I have only seen we creatures moving about in 3 dimensions. 4 or 5 dimensions? ????
SteveF, we used density centrifugation for purification. I suspect our purified band contained all virus forms. We were using adenovirus in vitro to insert into cardiac cells, which weren’t amenable to other methods.
Angech,
Agreeing to it leads to an impossible for us to understand universe
“it”? Which string theory is “it”? The various different ones lead to various different universes all of which are quite different from each other. Take your pick!
DaveJR,
The people at Schering did density gradient purification as well. The issue they faced was the formation of permanent aggregates, which were identical in density to the individual virons. They needed a method to characterize the extent of aggregation so that they could optimize handling and storage to avoid aggregates. It was a fun project for me, because it forced us to improve sensitivity quite a lot.
angech,
I assume from your response that you didn’t read the article. A theory makes testable predictions. String ‘theory’ has never made it past speculation.
Unlike its quantum cousins, when it comes to string theory, we have no fundamental theory—we have only a set of approximation and perturbation methods. We’re not exactly sure if our approximations are good ones or if we’re way off the mark. We have perturbation techniques, but we’re not sure what we’re perturbing from. In other words, there’s no such thing as string theory, just approximations of what we hope string theory could be.[my emphasis]
This guy is NOT Trump in any way shape or form: https://youtu.be/keXtOuqx6b4
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He is a smart and tough politician.
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I hope he beats Trump in the primaries, although Trump’s threat of a third party run would doom the country to another 4 years of lunatic lefties in the White House. We can always hope for a bolt from on high. Trump is, IMHO, just horrible.
Me and Penny?
One of my regrets in life is not watching that show.
I hope DeWitt has a chuckle too.
Thanks.
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DeWitt,
Neither of us is enamoured with string theory.
I get where you are coming from.
But….
Princess Bride – Diego.
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The article about string theory, and its its existence or not, reminds me about arguments re the existence of god.
Both explain and are all possible universes as well.
Is god a string rather than a particle?
Penny!!!
angech,
“The article about string theory, and its its existence or not, reminds me about arguments re the existence of god.”
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And that, of course, is the problem. 50 years and no real progress?!?!? Usable science can be tested and proven false if it is false. String theory? Not so much. Non-disprovable scientific theories are WORSE than religion. They waste public resources for nothing.
I have found more recent seroprevalence data from the CDC estimating Covid-19 infection rates in the US and US states. It shows the rate seemingly reaching a plateau at 95% of the population. That rate agrees well with anecdotal evidence I have about infection rates for relatives and friends, assuming those appearing not infected where not infected so lightly to be unaware.
The death rate for infected person and allowing for multiple infections per person would be close to 0.003 which is a rate a model I used by extrapolation predicted.
I would be interested in getting tighter confidence interval on that 95% plateau and determine what factors that group might hold in common.
angech,
String theory is a bit like the theory of dark matter: Even though nobody has the slightest clue, and have not a bit of observational data, they wave their arms faster than the speed of light, and so gain credibility among the unknowing masses. Crap is, well, just crap. Arm waving crap doesn’t help.
SteveF,
String theory is a bit like the theory of dark matter: Even though nobody has the slightest clue, and have not a bit of observational data….
So gravitational lensing where there is no visible matter isn’t evidence? See, for example, the bullet cluster where two clusters of galaxies collided. We also know that hot dark matter exists in the form of neutrinos. But those we have been able to detect travel at relativistic velocities, making them easier (a relative term considering the extremely low probability of an interaction) to detect than cold (traveling at much less than relativistic velocities) dark matter. The tau neutrino, however, is only postulated to exist and has yet to be detected, unlike the electron and muon neutrinos.
“gravitational lensing where there is no visible matter isn’t evidence”
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It’s evidence that the current models or observations are wrong, it’s not necessarily evidence that dark matter is correct. Dark matter is like subtracting the observations from the current model and proclaiming that error as the correct theory, a circular theory without a foundation AFAICT.
Tom Scharf,
“Dark matter is like subtracting the observations from the current model and proclaiming that error as the correct theory, a circular theory without a foundation AFAICT.”
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Yup, that is the crux of it. it is like placing a band aid on a bullet wound and declaring all is well. A more fundamental understanding is missing. It will surely happen, just not with today’s astrophysicists; or as someone noted long ago, the scientific paradigm shifts only when the old guard dies off.
Kenneth,
The 0.003 rate model for deaths is a mixture of a relative handful of unvaccinated elderly with a large majority of vaccinated elderly. If you look at the death rates for Australia and New Zealand compared to the USA and most of Europe, where nearly everyone over age 40 was vaccinated before “letting it rip”, the death rates are MUCH lower, on the order of 0.001 or a bit less.
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If it were possible to separate deaths among the unvaccinated elderly from deaths among the vaccinated elderly, I suspect you would find the unvaccinated elderly account for a disproportionate fraction of deaths. After vaccination, covid looks to be a bit more feeble than seasonal flu.
SteveF (Comment #218153)
“…..is that as 4 or 5 dimensional creatures we actually are very close to the starting point of one dimension only conceptually.”
“Hope I make sense.”
.”Nope. I have only seen we creatures moving about in 3 dimensions. 4 or 5 dimensions? ????”
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We possess the ability to perceive objects because our mind functions outside of as well as inside 3 dimensions.
Part of this is because our mind can also detect the passage of time
( time is sometimes referred to as a fourth dimension) to think in .
However only a creature in a fourth or greater dimension can perceive and process third dimension structures.
Think of it this way, you can only truly perceive the box you are in if you can be outside the box.
Those decisions have produced an approach that disproportionately flags tax returns with potential errors in the claiming of certain tax credits, like the earned-income tax credit”
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The null model is that computer systems that intentionally have race removed from consideration are secretly biased (the IRS doesn’t even collect race data). Implicit computer bias. I guess we just need to send these computer programs to training seminars.
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It’s ironic that these programs are specifically used to avoid bias. Neither of these articles ponders whether perhaps the identity group is less qualified or makes more tax errors. It’s easy to see where this is going, race will need to be intentionally added to these programs to make them “fair”.
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The “AI discriminates and must be fixed” narrative has been around for a while now.
angech,
That is the kind of quality argument fundamentalist preachers use to ‘prove’ the existence of God.
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Neither argument is even remotely convincing.
Tom Scharf,
And young male drivers are stopped much more often for speeding because they are black? No, because, black or white, many young male drivers go much faster than everyone else. Blind auditions for symphony orchestras are similarly ‘prejudiced’ against black classical musicians, and track and field sprints are clearly ‘prejudiced’ against white sprinters. The entire concept of woke ‘equity’, where anything but proportional outcomes according to race proves racism, is so disconnected from reality, and itself so utterly racist, that it beggars belief.
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The rot in higher education is doing real social damage.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218168): “Black Americans Are Much More Likely to Face Tax Audits, Study Finds”.
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Of course, the reality is that *poor* people are more likely to get audited, along with small business owners.
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But the Biden administration wants us to believe that his army of new IRS agents (47K, if memory serves) are only going to go after the rich. An obvious lie, since if the IRS wants more resources to audit the rich, they could just shift agents from auditing poor people. Yellen has actually admitted that the poor and middle class will be targeted, while pretending otherwise.
DeSantis once again sees a slow underhanded softball pitch and knocks it out of the park.
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NYT: The College Board Strips Down Its A.P. Curriculum for African American Studies
After criticism from Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the official course looks different: No more critical race theory, and the study of contemporary topics — like Black Lives Matter — is optional. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/01/us/college-board-advanced-placement-african-american-studies.html
“In light of the politics, the College Board seemed to opt out of the politics. In its revised 234-page curriculum framework, the content on Africa, slavery, reconstruction and the civil rights movement remains largely the same. But the study of contemporary topics — including Black Lives Matter, affirmative action, queer life and the debate over reparations — is downgraded. The subjects are no longer part of the exam, and are simply offered on a list of options for a required research project.
And even that list, in a nod to local laws, “can be refined by local states and districts.””
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As much as the NYT’s wants to try to generate outrage here, the progressives got way too far over their skis with this effort. Another easy win for DeSantis and making the NYT dislike you so much they lose their minds is the path to victory.
Another NYT article today, ha ha:
““There’s this idea that Ron DeSantis thinks he and the Legislature have the right to tell Florida students what classes they can take and what degree programs,” said Dr. Gothard”
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For taxpayer funded education, yes. It is statements like this that are making his job pretty easy. Anyone who has stayed awake for the last 10 years knows academia has become conformist with progressive ideology. In theory they could still still provide an unbiased education for their students, but they keep demonstrating the exact opposite loudly and proudly. Self defeating.
SteveF, conventional thinking during the pandemic was that reported infections were much more under reported than deaths. Using sero prevalence as a proxy for cases in my judgment puts cases probably on a more objective path than deaths. We have the not completely resolved the issue of dying from or with Covid-19. A high percentage of Covid-19 deaths were people with one or more comorbidities.
Excess deaths are used to help resolve the uncertainty of Covid-19 deaths, but excess deaths being estimated from one time period to another has its own uncertainties due to various changing factors. In some nations the efforts to record causes of deaths is far from complete and is why better statistics have to come from the most developed nations. Even there differences in defining causes can cause problems in making comparisons.
Covid-19 death count estimates beyond what is officially reported have been politicized with reports of large under and over reported deaths.
My models for early pandemic reported deaths to reported cases showed the significant independent variables of age, overweight and genetic groupings that could explain much of the nation variation in death/cases ratio. Australia and New Zealand were very large outliers (on the low ratio side) in those models.
Mike M,
“Yellen has actually admitted that the poor and middle class will be targeted, while pretending otherwise.”
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Poor Yellen is in a difficult position: she wants to please the lefty nuts that run the Biden Administration, but is grounded enough in reality to know the whole “new IRS agents will target rich people” meme is pure garbage. Of COURSE people who make dubious claims are going to be targeted, and that will most often be over things like the earned income tax credit, and (mostly very) small businesses hiding income or overstating costs.
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Long ago, I worked weekends and evenings for one tax season as a paid tax return preparer. The lower the income level, the greater the chance of people suggesting to me the use of clearly improper credits/expenses/etc. I quit after just a few weeks, but it was an informative experience.
Tom,
No more critical race theory, and the study of contemporary topics — like Black Lives Matter — is optional.
I like that wording. #sarc.
For those who want those topics, it makes it sound like it “can be” in ther cals. But wrt to AP tests, anything not on the test is “not in the curriculum”. May teachers cover stuff not in the curriculum? Sure. One of the AP Physics 1 courses around here also wedges in optics. Which is “not on the test”. They just blaze through faster than many other schools so the kids get that. Teachers of any AP test can add all sorts of things that are not on the test. Wanna spend a week on “philosophy of science” in AP physics? Discuss Aristotle’s idea vs. Bacon etc? Wanna spend time having kids do a Python project? Knock yourself out. it’s not on the test.
And even that list, in a nod to local laws, “can be refined by local states and districts.””
What does that even mean? If a topic is on the test, students need to cover that to avoid losing points. If it’s not on the test, they don’t need to spend time on it. But if it’s guaranteed never tested, it’s really not in the AP curriculum.
Kenneth,
“Australia and New Zealand were very large outliers (on the low ratio side) in those models.”
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Sure, but Australia and New Zeland essentially closed their borders to travel, and what travel was allowed required physical isolation after arrival. In addition, they did aggressive contact tracing with required isolation of all contacts. With those procedures in place, they would catch ~100% of cases, and their deaths to cases ratio would be lower than elsewhere. To me, more convincing is the death/cases ratio after those countries “let it rip”, where total reported cases are likely to be under-reported, but total deaths more accurately reported.
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Population sero-prevalence data is better than reported cases, but it still misses the potentially large discrepancy between deaths among seronegative (unvaccinated) elderly and seropositive elderly, with a disproportionate number of deaths among the (relatively few) seronegative elderly.
Tom Scharf
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For taxpayer funded education, yes.
And we’ve had the state making rules for what is and is not taught of the public dime for a long, long, time. State standards saying kids need to learn to add, subtract, multiply, divide? Read books of a certain level of complexity? Take sex education? Not put Penthouse magazine on the shelves of an elementary school? That the state can make all sorts of rule, standards about what schools must teach and what they may not teach are either not remotely controversial or barely controversial. (And the controversial one is that some parents don’t want sex ed. And they pretty much lose out on that one. At best their kids can “opt out”. The school still teaches it– and the state mandates it be taught.)
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Yes. The State can write laws that says certain things will not be taught on the public dime. Want a elective bible reading class? One that is clearly evangelizing? Make all the kids memorize Apostles Creed? Nope. Can’t do that in a public school. State can prohibit schools from offering this elective.
Robert Patterson, a Georgetown University professor of African-American Studies and the co-chair of a committee that developed the course, the class still “offers an unparalleled breadth of content and depth of skills” that go beyond what’s taught even in first-year college courses, from ancient African kingdoms to Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement.
My view is that generally speaking, AP courses should NOT go beyond what is taught in first year college courses. And schools should not give AP credit for any course above introductory. This is because inevitably the actual level of mastery in high school is nearly always watered down.
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If College Board wants to grant their own Batchelors or Associates degrees, they should grant them. (And watch everyone else say those are not real degrees.) There have always been entities that “grant degrees”.
Students last week threatened legal action against the state’s rejection if DeSantis refused to work with the College Board, while Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) warned the state could also reject the course if College Board turns it into a “watered-down” version that lacks a “factual accounting of history.”
Not sure there is any viable legal action to force DeSantis to “work with” the College Board. Pritzker may, of course, also reject the reconstituted course. If it happens, that will be interesting.
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In a tweet, Sari Beth Rosenberg, host of PBS’ Newshour Extra Classroom Educator Series, argued the College Board had given into “bigoted politicians waging culture wars to mobilize their base,” while Benjamin Ryan, a New York Times contributor, said the College Board has “gone full anti-woke.”
Interesting they are slamming College Board. Heh.
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Look, I’m betting CB found lots of colleges were also not going to grant real credit for this elective. It probably didn’t over lap any of their offering. (And it costs them $$$ to grant too much college credt, and also degrades their degrees if students get credit for what is, in the end, somewhat inadequate as a college level course. Which these often are.)
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SteveF, I believe we agree to the factors that made Australia and New Zealand outliers in my models.
Antibodies tests can differentiate between infection and vaccinations that do not use the virus – which I believe is all of the current based ones. Again I agree with your conclusion here. Tests could account for what you indicate here, but I am unsure of any studies using test results in that way.
Lucia, as you note it is obvious that the claim that parents and/or parents through the state cannot control public school curriculum is not grounded in fact or accepted law and tradition.
I see this claim from the left as a misdirection play whereby the intent is to minimize family involvement with their children’s education which is to be replaced by the state. This is a well known and held Marxist concept.
Kenneth,
“This is a well known and held Marxist concept.”
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Yup, the left has always tried to reduce the ability of parents to teach their kids morals/values/beliefs which contradict the goals of the left. Since the left dominates teaching (and has since I was attending public schools!), the use of public schools to indoctrinate kids to be “good socialists” and reliable voters for the left is not going to change unless parents insist at the ballot box that it change.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218173): “It is statements like this that are making his job pretty easy.”
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Sure. But how many Republican governors took aim at the same easy target? Zero, I think. DeSantis is in a class by himself.
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The art does not consist of winning easy battles. It consists of recognizing which battles are winnable.
SteveF (Comment #218175): “Of COURSE people who make dubious claims are going to be targeted, and that will most often be over things like the earned income tax credit, and (mostly very) small businesses hiding income or overstating costs.”
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Indeed. But there is another factor. The lower income taxpayer or hard pressed small businessman does not have the resources to fight the IRS. So even if the IRS disallows something that should be allowed, the little guy will tend to just curse under his breath and pay up.
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We don’t need more IRS auditors. We need a simpler tax code so that fewer auditors are needed.
DeWitt, thanks for the Bullet Galaxy cluster evidence reference. I see the claim that dark matter does not interact with visible matter or itself. And this is proven by the aftermath of the collision of the two galaxy clusters where the gravitational lensing is out in front of the path of visible matter in each of the two post collision clusters. The non-interaction claim is supposedly confirmed by showing that the visible matter was slowed down by interaction, but not the dark matter.
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This type of evidence seems very prone to misinterpretation, especially when viewed from 3.8 billion light years distant in a 13.7 billion-year-old universe. I would think that since most of the a galaxy is empty space a galactic collision is mostly a gravitational interaction. For galaxy clusters there would be even less occurrences of actual collisions of matter per unit of space. If we are saying that dark matter only interacts gravitationally it should not be acting perceptually differently than visible matter on galactic scales. In other words why would dark matter be gravitationally attracted to galaxies and not individual stars and planets?
The NYT chooses which arguments to print, they can pretty much dial in anything they want as an expert opinion (aka expert laundering). It’s fascinating they choose to highlight an opinion that there should be no accountability by the electorate to what is taught in schools. I would surmise that they just know they are on the losing side here and this is the only path forward for that agenda.
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I don’t particularly like DeSantis’s approach here, it can easily be used in the opposite direction. It’s unclear if all other reasonable approaches were exhausted before this bare knuckles method was executed. Clearly political, but effective. It is quite arguable we don’t want the electorate micromanaging the education curriculum, but giving them veto power when the curriculum has gone off the rails is reasonable.
Tom,
It is quite arguable we don’t want the electorate micromanaging the education curriculum
Who is ‘we’ precisely here? Not the electorate. (a) right minded people everywhere, (b) ‘us’ here at the Blackboard, (c) the royal ‘We’? (d) someone else entirely.
I think the separation of the visible matter from the Bullet Galaxy cluster’s gravitational in the direction of its time path is more likely evidence of a variability of the speed of light as our universe aged. Or somehow there is an apparent less time lag is for the light beyond the cluster to reach us than the lag for the light from the cluster itself. Or something to this effect.
99% of the curriculum is nuts and bolts education. I don’t think we need voter referendums on how calculus is taught. Experts on teaching and math tyrannically setting that exact agenda is OK for most people. Hot button subjects like religion and culture trench warfare are different, with the wisest decision to usually leave it out. What is important is that there is a level of trust there, so going off into the weeds is a very bad idea for everyone involved. A few bureaucrats with a spine can solve the problem, but that seems to be in short supply.
Mike M,
“We don’t need more IRS auditors. We need a simpler tax code so that fewer auditors are needed.”
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Sure, but a great deal of the complexity is due to carve-outs to make the tax rate relatively more progressive, and to protect the interests of many influential businesses and influential individuals (like the carried interest tax rate for wealthy investment fund managers). Any attempted simplification will face very strong resistance from multiple special interests. I would like to fill out my taxes on a post-card, but the 25+ pages I summit each year is very likely to continue… or increase.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218189)
February 1st, 2023 at 12:22 pm
Obviously the problem with public schools is that they have come to want to teach students what to think and not how to think. Teaching that sticks to the fundamentals is not going to be controversial except for perhaps the teaching methods. But methods could be evaluated by good measures of the results.
Taxpayers and parents supporting public schools should not be left out of the process over even good intentioned bureaucrats and “experts”. I have little faith in democratic processes in these matters but the way the system is supposed to work is for voters to decide whether they are in agreement with the public administration of schools. Private schools can be more controlled by the demands of the free market. Parents and voters have been sold a bill of goods that they remain essentially out of the loop with the exception of occasional meetings with teachers and voting on funding.
While school choice is still under control of the state, it at least allows for some parent discretion and choice and competition amongst choices. I think choice is the way to go and regardless of whether it initially can create significant positive improvements over public schools. The key is that there is a choice and that requires needed parent involvement.
Kenneth
I see this claim from the left as a misdirection play whereby the intent is to minimize family involvement with their children’s education which is to be replaced by the state. This is a well known and held Marxist concept.
And ironically, they are trying to make the claim the state cannot state what can and cannot be taught in the state funded public schools while also claiming parents can’t. We are then left to ponder the question: “So who can or does decide what public schools teach?”
Sorry, but the answer can’t be “The College Board” or “The teachers union” or just every single individual teacher has 100% say.
Tom Sharf
99% of the curriculum is nuts and bolts education. I don’t think we need voter referendums on how calculus is taught.
But I think voters (taxpayers, parents) etc should have some way in whether it is taught in high school. I think it should be.
I don’t think saying high schools will required “N” years of math and will overs “N+n” years (including Calculus) is “micromanaging”. That’s precisely the level of management we’ve expected from the State when tax money is doled out.
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And DeSantis No Woke (or whatever) bill is about what can and can’t be taught. It’s not about how it’s taught.
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Some people are upset at the list of subjects the bill forbids schools to teach. Ok. But deciding what can, cannot and must be taught in schools has been something the State has been doing for as long as there have been public taxpayer funded schools! And schoolboards have been involved in more local decisions.
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There are some subjects that I would object to having the local taxpayer funded schools teach– if only because the budget is finite and picking those over other subjects strikes me as a waste of money. For example, I don’t think the local public school should be run an elective course in Oenology. Oenology is a great thing, but I think people who want to take a course in that can do it outside a public high school.
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Currently, it’s unnecessary to write any law. But if all the science and history classes were being taken over by diversions into oenology, the history of wine, and teachers were all pushing this, we very well might need a law that said: No. Stick to biology, chemistry, phyiscs…. etc.
I’m making no point in posting this. I was browsing related articles and was vastly entertained by this hypothetical (?) description and discussion of ‘Coastal Elite Theory’:
There’s a movement to teach students Coastal Elites Theory, a theory that various coastal elites (in national government, higher education, Wall Street, Hollywood, and other such institutions) have been wrongfully exploiting Heartland Americans in what some label “flyover country.” This has gone on, the theory goes, from the 1700s to now; “heartland” Americans have resisted it at various times throughout (note the echoes here, for instance, of complaints about New York financiers in Alexander Hamilton’s day), but the oppression continues.
There is also a countermovement that argues that, though there are some plausible arguments for some such complaints, the theory—especially when taught in K-12 schools—is (1) in various respects mistaken, (2) exaggerates the magnitude of the problem, (3) foments divisions both among Americans generally and within each school (since in all places some students and families may be more linked to supposed Coast Elites and some to Heartland Americans), and (4) counterproductively undermines the education even of the students it aims to benefit, by causing them to focus on grievances and obstacles rather than on opportunities. As a result, a state tells public schools that they can’t teach Coastal Elites Theory.
Lucia,
“But deciding what can, cannot and must be taught in schools has been something the State has been doing for as long as there have been public taxpayer funded schools!”
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Of course. The issue is that teachers (who are almost uniformly left to nutty-very-woke-left) hate having what subject matter they can use to indoctrinate students limited by the voters. As Tom Scharf says, it is hard to politicize trigonometry or introductory calculus, but even those subjects are being targeted by the nutty left: insisting that wrong answers in math or physics are actually “wrong” is considered ‘racist’ by the lunatics on the left.
Yes, some of the current trendy thinking needs fixed. The trend toward removing dual track, gifted classes, general merit rewards are way, way off in the weeds and if the current “feedback” isn’t enough then I say I’m all for the well deserved nuclear option. CRT is letting a bunch of activist crybullies set an agenda. We can pass laws to forbid CRT or we can figure out how to not let any activists set an unpopular agenda in education.
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Perhaps we are currently at a point where the education agenda is on probation and needs to be verified until they behave, but it is a bit of a moral panic. Nobody wants to sit on a committee to review math textbooks, and it is really weird that people think we need to do that.
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Ultimately the strange thing here is that bureaucrats currently think it is less risky for them to insert CRT and other progressive fantasies than tell the activist race baiters H*** NO. To the extent that DeSantis’s actions here are useful, it is notice that there will be a price to pay for inserting crazy ideological agendas into education. It is now risky to do that in Florida. Balance to the force has been restored.
Tom Scharf,
“Balance to the force has been restored.”
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Not in New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Rode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Minnesota, New Mexico, etc. In those places, the indoctrination of students in public schools continues apace.
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That could change in some places, but if so, it will be a slow, difficult slog. In other places, like California and Massachusetts, any potential change is very far in the future…. if ever. Crazy lefties are going to be crazy lefties after all.
Analysts estimate the “universal choice” plan backed by House Speaker Paul Renner could result in Florida steering $2.4 billion to private schools from public schools as early as next year, as even more students leave”
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Bifurcating the school system is less optimal than building a working state system. I think this stuff is currently mostly warning shots (specifically at the teachers union) to straighten up or suffer the consequences. DeSantis cleverly increased the education budget and installed these nuclear trip mines.
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This is what many people miss when they attempt ideological capture of an institution. They are pyrrhic victories many times. If the opposition completely abandons working within the system there are no trophies. Academia is going down this path as well and may face some institutions getting defunded, who wants to fund the social sciences at this point at state institutions? That is a referendum they may easily lose.
Tom Scharf,
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ONLY if parents insist upon it (at the ballot box) will some sanity be restored to public education.
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There was once a competitive entry high school in Massachusetts I am familiar with. Years ago, they abandoned all merit based admission. Now admission is based only on a lottery. Not surprisingly, this drove most very good students (if their families could afford it) to attend private schools. The idiocy, it burns.
Tom
They will lose the Asian vote pretty quickly with overt education equity policies.
And not gain anyone else’s vote in the process. The fact is: the group they want to “benefit” by introducing lottery admission mostly doesn’t value the benefit all that much. (Yes. Some African Americans do want in. But those African American’s who do care tend to fall in groups who might get in with testing anyway. If they can get in, they want their kids to be in a school that is competitive!! So they aren’t necessarily going to be all for someone eliminating competitive admissions. They want school choice!!)
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Mostly, there is no group of parents who really, really, really want the path to “equity” to be to dumb things down for the faster/brighter. What they want is the best for their kids– which is what they should want.
Lucia wrote: “And not gain anyone else’s vote in the process.”
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Don’t underestimate the power of virtue signaling. There are plenty of childless people who would think this is a great idea. Plenty of people with children who don’t partake in the system who would also agree for the “benefit” of others.
Mike M, thanks for the article on Nichols. I would agree that the medical examiner report is going to be important. I find it hard to place all the blame for the death on police if Nichols spent three days in the hospital before death. I think it’s likely that he was poorly monitored for cranial pressure and died needlessly from concussion or clot. Both are treatable.
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I disagree with the article that only one officer was mainly culpable for the head blows to attempt to knock him unconscious. There were other officers there wither holding Nichols or looking on that were duty bound to stop a crime in progress, unlike civilian onlookers.
Ron Graf (Comment #218205): “There were other officers there wither holding Nichols or looking on that were duty bound to stop a crime in progress, unlike civilian onlookers.”
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Police do not have a legal duty to intervene to stop a crime. For instance: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/parkland/florida-school-shooting/fl-ne-douglas-survivor-lawsuit-federal-judge-20181217-story.html
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In many states, Tennessee included, police have a duty to intervene in the behavior of other officers. But we do not know just what happened. Some of the officers had their hands full. Others may not have been in position to see what the offender was doing. Others may have told the guy to stop, which would have been the initial intervention.
Ron Graf
I find it hard to place all the blame for the death on police if Nichols spent three days in the hospital before death.
I’m pretty sure there is a principle at law that if the question is murder, you are still responsible if the victim was frail or in poor condition.
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That the person had a weak skull or other issue that made them more prone to injury of death does not absolve you if what you were doing what bashing their head into the ground.
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Outside of the five strikes to the head by one officer this was not,
Five strikes to the a head is a problem and the victim being especially delicate due to prior injury isn’t necessarily going to help.
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If I’m on the jury, the only thing that helps the cop who dealth the blow much is if the examiner said what look like five strikes to the head were so mild they left no injury at all.
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As for the other cops: It’s not going to be the examiners report that’s going to matter a lot. It’s going to be whether given the amount of time and access they had could have intervened to stop what is going on.
(Surprisingly perhaps, I haven’t watched the video. But video evidence matters– and it sounds like there is no dispute that there seem to be five blows to the head on the video.)
Everyone participating in a felony where a murder occurs can be charged with murder, and often are. This is used for things like armed robbery or a fatal beating where there aren’t any witnesses to see who actually killed the victim. They all say they didn’t do it and it is impossible to prove who pulled the trigger or who delivered a fatal blow. Typically at least one person will rat out another to get a reduced sentence. I’m not passing judgment on whether this policy is fair or not, but it is effective.
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The cops who kicked the victim and hit the victim with a baton after he was on the ground are likely going to jail for sure. The cops who engaged in the initial take down but didn’t engage in the beating may get lesser sentences, but won’t get much sympathy for not intervening. I haven’t sorted out who is who, at least one cop claims he didn’t participate at all.
“But we do not know just what happened”
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We have a video showing almost the entire beating, additionally several cop bodycams. We know what happened, there may yet be some evidence as to why the victim was pulled over, but the video is more than enough for criminal conviction. Almost all citizens are convicted of heinous crimes with less evidence than this.
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We also apparently have what appears to be a falsified account of the incident filed by the officers after the event. The victim was screaming for his mother who apparently lived 100 yards away from the final beating so the story he was running away from a cop beating to get to his mother might be true.
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The cop’s story (before they went silent) was reckless driving, a confrontation at the intersection (that did happen) and the victim ran way followed by another confrontation at the site of the beating. He was tased and pepper sprayed. From the video it appears the victim didn’t have a clue what was going on.
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It’s possible there may yet be some evidence that the victim had committed a crime and the initial stop and aggressive removal from the car was warranted. There is never, ever, going to be evidence that the later beating was warranted or non-criminal in my view. There may also be evidence that there was no intent for murder and that the victim died because of pre-existing conditions or medical incompetence.
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It’s also possible that some guy was just driving down the road, got misidentified, and was beaten to death by the police. This is negligent homicide at a minimum IMO. It must also be stressed the victim is never going to get to testify here. I don’t think he made a statement at the hospital(?).
Amazing takedown of the media’s behavior regarding Trump Russia Collusion, by of all places CJR (Columbia Journalism Review). This is an epic 4 part series that is quite unflattering to the profession. https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-president-ed-note.php
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TLDR, read the Afterword in Part 4.
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Example:
“On January 24, more Strzok texts were released. One was written shortly after Mueller’s appointment; the man leading the FBI inquiry was weighing whether to join him. Strzok was hesitant, he wrote, because “there’s no big there, there.” Other FBI documents, released in 2020, reflect the same assessment: the inquiry into possible ties between the campaign and Russia, according to one of the agents involved in the case, “seemed to be winding down” then.
Strzok’s message was cited dozens of times in news stories, including the lead of an article in the Wall Street Journal and further down in a piece by the Washington Post. The Times, however, did not mention the message in a story—that day, or in the coming years.
“We should have run it,” a former Times journalist who was involved in the Russia coverage said. In its statement, the Times said it had reported on the matter “thoroughly and in line with our editorial standards.””
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They also say Strzok (the one who can smell Trump supporters at Walmart) was a lead anonymous source for the NYT. Always nice to know the lead of the FBI investigation was selectively giving the NYT information who was more than happy to credulously parrot it. This story also notes many times what wasn’t reported in the major outlets.
Tom Scharf,
“They also say Strzok (the one who can smell Trump supporters at Walmart) was a lead anonymous source for the NYT.”
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Since leaking by FBI agents is a criminal offense, it is hard to understand how a dishonest political hack like Strzok is not sitting in a Federal Prison. The FBI needs to be largely de-funded.
Eastern Ukraine lines being outflanked and will either withdraw or be surrounded
Tom Scharf (Comment #218212)
February 2nd, 2023 at 12:24 pm
Tom, after reading the linked article I did see it as a take down of the press but rather a boring attempt at damage control. Too much written about Trump and how his actions could have caused the press to misinterpret. Too much about the back story where the press had reservations. Too little, or better, ignored, about how in a very partisan manner the press proceeded anyway and allowed innuendo and Democrat politicians to proceed unattended.
Does anyone here have any idea how the Chinese “spy balloon” can be maneuverable?
MikeM,
Nope. But I had a family friend who dated a guy who entered “balloon races”. So there seems to be some amount of manouverability. Perhaps the incline a hot air balloon by pulling strings and ejecting some gas? Dunno
You can change altitude with a hot air balloon. The wind direction varies with altitude in the lower atmosphere. So that provides some ability to control direction.
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But I think that stratospheric balloons, at least research always use helium (that is definitely the norm). So they can not ascend at will. And I think there is little vertical wind shear in the stratosphere.
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Of course, a bigger question is why we didn’t shoot the dang thing down.
MIkeM
Of course, a bigger question is why we didn’t shoot the dang thing down.
Supposedly they were worried about the falling pieces damaging stuff. Dunno….
I don’t get the falling pieces argument. Put a few rounds through the balloon and it comes down in one piece.
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The method of recovering payload from a stratospheric research balloon is (or at least used to be) to equip it with an explosive charge that could be commanded to rip a hole in the balloon. Then you chased down the descending payload to recover and reuse the equipment.
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Addition: I am not saying hit the payload with a missile. But I think our fighters are still equipped with this thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M61_Vulcan
And the balloon instead is a heck of a big target.
China launches large orbital rockets at a pace of about one a week. They built a space station last year. I have no idea why they would need to send a balloon over the US. This is more likely just crazy speculation that it is a spying exercise, it would be incredibly stupid to do this.
The time to fly such a balloon, for spying purposes, would be during the summer months, Antonio said. That’s because during the winter the winds throughout the stratosphere are much more uniform in the Northern Hemisphere. This means that raising and lowering the balloon would provide very little steering capability. “Controlled stratospheric flight is a thing, but it’s not something you can really do over the United States at this time of year,” Antonio said.
So that half answers my question, but does not really provide illumination.
MikeM
My husband also doesn’t get the falling pieces argument. Can’t say I do either, but then I don’t know much about it.
I think the best speculation is that this is a spying balloon, it was being tested in China, but it had a failure and drifted over the US. Possibly this is a backup for satellite surveillance if they are taken out. It is certainly easier to see things from 60,000 feet than from orbit. But they can also just ask one of their Chinese “students” in the US to get a drone and take some shots from a 1000 feet.
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This is too provocative to be anything but a mistake IMO.
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The US should take it out, examine it closely, and then return it to China. Maybe the US already knows exactly what it is so doesn’t feel the need.
It seems that the Chinese spy balloon is not unique except in getting a lot of public attention. If so, it is not a mistake.
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Provocation is likely at least part of the point, to see how we respond. It has been a brilliant success for the Chinese.
This is too provocative to be anything but a mistake IMO.
Well, it could be a mistake, for sure. Odd that I read that there is a second similar mistake over South America though. But maybe. Depends on what sort of mistake we think it was maybe.
One possibility is that the Chinese think our reaction to the balloon gambit tells them something they want to know that they didn’t already. Maybe our willingness or unwillingness to react aggressively was what was being measured. Maybe.
Maybe it was a distraction.
I don’t know, it really beats the heck out of me what this was all about.
Something is going on in the skies over Montana. An explosion has been reported but reports are contradictory so far. Nobody seems to know what the heck is actually going on, or if they do know they aren’t saying.
If the goal is to ramp up anti-Chinese sentiment in the US then it was very successful. Why one would want to do that is a bit of a mystery. About half of the Chinese rocket launches are carrying unknown (military) payloads and the other half seem to be “civilian” surveillance satellites of one kind or another.
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Another possibility is the US has been doing things like this to China for a while and they want to draw attention to US activity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident
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I still say this was just a major f*** up in China and somebody is likely going to pay dearly for it over there.
The suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that was found floating over sensitive military sites in the western United States had been tracked by Canada’s government since last weekend as it passed through Canadians airspace, sources tell CTV News.
Canadian officials have not publicly stated whether the massive high-altitude balloon entered Canadian airspace. But sources told CTV News it had passed over the Canadian Arctic, Alberta and Saskatchewan before it was spotted over Montana on Thursday, as it flew over a nuclear launch site. Sources told CTV News it was tracked the entire time it was in Canadian airspace.
After being flagged by Norad, the joint U.S.-Canadian agency responsible for air defence in both nations, U.S. fighter jets investigated the balloon and determined it wasn’t fitted with any weapons, but was equipped with high-resolutions cameras.
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A statement from the Defence Department also mentioned it was monitoring a “potential second incident” but did not elaborate further. Sources told CTV News that a smaller object may have been released from the balloon that might pose a risk to planes. A flight advisory was issued to pilots in Alberta and Saskatchewan in response.
Sources also told CTV News U.S. intelligence knows of a total of at least four of these balloons from China sent to other countries, beyond the one currently over the U.S. That includes the one the Pentagon confirmed late Friday night floating over Latin America.
Fox News Banner from Mark’s link: “Biden so weak he won’t even pop a balloon”. Hilarious, ouch.
We should absolutely take it out unless we are certain what it is and it won’t provide anything useful by doing so. Things are changing though with public pressure, Biden will likely need to do so with the usual suspects making him look ridiculous. At the least he will need to make a statement of why he isn’t doing it.
Just for you amateur satellite hunters: A .30-06 cartridge will go 10,000 feet high and take 58 seconds to come back down · A 9 mm will go 4000 feet and take 37 seconds to come back.
Maybe there is something of use to observing at 60,000 feet instead of 150 miles. I was thinking it could be the possibility of monitoring individual cell phone transmissions from 60,000 feet, which might not be possible from a satellite, since there would be too much cross-talk/band sharing from so far away.
We should shoot down the balloon for no other reason than that it is Chinese and in our air space.
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The supposed “explosion” over Billings seems to the greatly exaggerated.
The supposed “explosion” over Billings seems to the greatly exaggerated.
Yeah. I think that was fake. I was gulled by the casual sprinklings of references to residents (plural) having witnessed it. I’ve been looking and I can’t find anyone other than the woman who filmed it to substantiate it. Add to it that the video looks wrong – the ‘explosion’ looks like the phone’s auto contrast adjust to me. There are no other artifacts produced by the ‘explosion’ (no new smoke plume, no other visual indication of any explosion), and so on.
My bad.
About darn time.
I read here and in other places that we’ve shot down the balloon over the Atlantic.
Our adversaries quake in their boots. Let it be known that huge floating balloons can be taken out by the most advanced military on earth. Nice try Chinese! Better up your game!
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I feel so much safer now.
Like I have said before, the Chinese steal everything. The nefarious Japanese tried this sad old trick in WWII: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb
“A hydrogen balloon measuring 10 metres (33 ft) in diameter, it carried a payload of two 11-pound (5.0 kg) incendiary devices plus one 33-pound (15 kg) anti-personnel bomb (or alternatively one 26-pound (12 kg) incendiary bomb), and was intended to start large forest fires in the Pacific Northwest.
Between November 1944 and April 1945, the Imperial Japanese Army launched about 9,300 balloons from sites on Honshu, of which about 300 were found or observed in the U.S. and Canada, with some in Mexico.[1] The balloons traveled on high-altitude and high-speed currents over the Pacific Ocean, today known as the jet stream, and used a sophisticated sandbag ballast system to control altitude on their three- to four-day flight. The bombs were largely ineffective as fire starters due to damp winter conditions, causing only minor damage and six deaths (from a single civilian incident in Oregon in May 1945). The Fu-Go balloon bomb was the first weapon to possess intercontinental range, with its flights being the longest-ranged attacks in the history of warfare at the time.”
Jim and I were downstairs practicing. When I came up I said “I heard it was drifting over NC when I was working out (that was 10 or 11. Gotta go see if we shot that balloon down over the Atlantic.” He said, “Oh. Yeah, that would make sense”.
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Yep. Shot down.
Do any of you know if the missile took out the balloon or the payload? I would hope they are able to thoroughly analyze the remains so as to determine what it was up to.
$50B for the F-22 program is now entirely justified. It’s first known kill of an enemy combatant. US: 1, China: 0.
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It was reported a missile was used, but nothing more than that. It kind of looked like it hit the balloon. The audio commentary here is funny: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIDCJaFX-4I
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It’s just like the Chinese to not tell us ahead of time their balloon was drifting over the US. “Maybe they won’t notice”.
I really don’t think that putting a few bullet holes in a balloon that size would do much. It’s not a rubber balloon with high surface tension that pops when punctured. You would need something that would cause the skin to rip.
Oh, sorry. I read about it at the War Zone and almost posted a link, but I doubted anyone would be interested. It was probably some sort of AIM sidewinder missile, here:
Update 4:30 p.m. ET: Here are the new details we can share at this time:
Based on the video we have examined, although this is not definitive at this point, it appears an AIM-9 Sidewinder was used at close range. The F-22 primarily uses the AIM-9X now, but can also carry the AIM-9L/M as it had for years. The missiles can be cued by the F-22’s AN/APG-77 radar and AIM-9X Block II can use its datalink to be locked on and prosecute its target with the help of the F-22’s powerful radar after launch. It isn’t clear if the missile had a warhead or not. There was time to ‘weaponeer’ the target well in advance using intelligence gathered over the past days, especially by other F-22s. If fusing would be an issue, or they hoped to decrease its descent, fitting the live missile with an inert warhead is a possibility. If it did have a warhead, the AIM-9, with its laser fuse, which rings the midpoint of the missile, would have been a far better choice than the AIM-120, which features a radar fuse. The balloon’s envelope would be largely transparent to radar energy. Regardless, this is the first F-22 kill. It may be the highest altitude air-to-air kill ever, as well, but that is not confirmed at this time.
Senior U.S. military and defense officials shared the following information about the shootdown in a subsequent press briefing on Saturday afternoon:
An F-22 Raptor from the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base fired a single AIM-9X Sidewinder missile that downed the balloon from an altitude of 58,000 feet. The balloon was as high as 65,000 feet.
The shootdown occurred at the first available opportunity to do so without threat to those on the ground.
The U.S. took steps to stop and mitigate the balloon’s collection, neutralizing its intelligence value and preventing it from sending data back to China as it passed over sensitive sites.
There were three previously undisclosed intrusions by Chinese surveillance into U.S. airspace, but never of this duration. Two of these incursions came during the President Donald Trump administration, with the third early in the Biden administration. The Chinese explanation for this balloon’s flight lacked credibility.
The balloon entered the Alaska Joint Operation Area on January 27, Canadian airspace on January 30, and the continental U.S. over northern Idaho on January 31.
This is not the only surveillance balloon operating in the western hemisphere, with another operating over south and Central America as part of a fleet at the People’s Liberation Army’s direction across five continents.
What was an air operation to shoot the balloon down is now a recovery operation in conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the debris’ chain of custody.
Debris from the balloon fell in only 47 feet of water, much shallower than expected. There are multiple Navy and Coast Guard vessels in the area but no timeline for recovery from a debris field spanning seven miles.
Update 5:31 EST:
NORTHCOM confirmed that the F-22s flying with the call signs “FRANK01” and “FRANK02”, was indeed an homage to World War One flying ace and U.S. Army Air Service Medal of Honor recipient First Lieutenant Frank Luke Jr, better known as the “Arizona Balloon Buster” who destroyed 14 German balloons and four aircraft.
“From U.S. Northern Command, I can confirm the call sign was a nod to Frank Luke,” Air Force Col. Elizabeth Mathias, a NORTHCOM spokesperson, told The War Zone.
MikeM
It’s just like the Chinese to not tell us ahead of time their balloon was drifting over the US. “Maybe they won’t notice”.
Well… yeah. ‘Cuz it wasn’t a weather balloon.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #218273): “I really don’t think that putting a few bullet holes in a balloon that size would do much. It’s not a rubber balloon with high surface tension that pops when punctured. You would need something that would cause the skin to rip.”
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It was a super pressure balloon. The pressure inside was more than outside, but I don’t know by how much. So a bunch of bullet holes should have caused it to lose buoyancy and start to descend, even if the balloon did not “pop”.
Apparently bullets don’t work https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/why-shooting-down-chinas-spy-balloon-over-the-u-s-is-more-complicated-than-it-seems
“There is a historical precedent for all of this, as well. In 1998, a rogue weather balloon from Canada deployed to measure ozone levels accidentally drifted away. BBC reported at the time that the airship was the size of a 25-story building and was operating at an altitude between 27,000 and 37,000 feet, so admittedly much lower than China’s is now.
The incursion prompted attempts from Canada, Britain, and the United States to shoot it down, with two Canadian Air Force CF-18 Hornet fighters firing more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition from their own Vulcan cannons into the balloon off the coast of Newfoundland. That balloon took days to come down, at one point even gaining altitude and drifting across Canada and then out over the Atlantic Ocean, which made for a problematic situation for regional air traffic.”
I am pretty sure that Canadian balloon was zero pressure, so bullets aren’t going to have the same effect as on a superpressure balloon. But Tom’s link provided a number of reasons why it is a lot harder than it might seem.
Ah. Shooting a superpressure balloon would be a bad idea because it probably would only partially deflate. Then it would drop to a new equilibrium altitude and possibly stay there for a long time, likely as a hazard to aviation.
I know very little about these balloons. Suppose it was a weather balloon. Could the owners have tried to land it? If is the idea you send them up and they just stay up as long as possible until something goes wrong and forces them to fall down?
(Real Questions.)
Pentagon officials reportedly considered shooting down the balloon earlier this week, but didn’t want to have debris hit anything on the ground. But the U.S. is a very large place with plenty of farm land. It seems illogical that there wasn’t at least a stretch of land where the military could’ve safely forced the balloon down.
Yeah…. I thought this for about a hour. That’s when I thought of “debris” as heavy intact chunks of metal that might come down fast and hit things. But we don’t know what the payload is. It could include all sorts of things. We. Don’t. Know.
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It might be something you really, really, really don’t want to spread out over land.
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Reasonable people can disagree on whether the waiting game chosen by the Biden administration was the right course of action.
The ones who think it should have been taken down anywhere over land are wrong. Just wrong. I’m sure the security people aren’t fully explaining the danger. Partly because they don’t want to give anyone ideas.
I have heard of two methods for terminating the flight of stratospheric research balloons via remote control.
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One involves tearing a large hole in the side of the balloon using, I think, a small explosive charge. Then the deflated balloon acts as a sort of parachute to slow the descent of the payload, which is recovered and reused. I know for a fact that procedure used to be used (and probably still is) to bring the payload down in populated, albeit rural, areas.
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The other method uses explosive bolts to cut loose the payload, which then deploys a parachute during descent. I don’t know what is then done with the balloon, although I think a zero pressure balloon will quickly deflate once the open part is no longer held at the bottom.
If you destroy the balloon, as opposed to partly deflating it, then the payload is going to drop straight down. So you know quite well where it will land. Yesterday they had ships loitering near the landing spot.
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I would think that the missile might be a bigger risk.
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Dropping something over water does not guarantee that it won’t hit people.
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The spy balloon should have been shot down over the Aleutians, or just off shore from the Aleutians.
Forbes:
Yes, Chinese Spy Balloons Flew Over The U.S. When President Trump Was In Office Too
The Associated Press also has a new report that quotes a defense expert who said that Chinese spy balloons have been detected near sensitive sites in Hawaii, home to a large U.S. military presence, during the past five years.
That does not mean that the balloons were over US territory.
Other rumors of this sort say that it has happened before, but that the President was never told of it.
Sounds to me like the press is doing its “job” of running interference for the Deep State and Biden.
I think it was very low risk to shoot it down over the Midwest, but obviously even lower risk to shoot it down over the ocean. Letting it stay up had mostly political consequences. I don’t place much value on that decision either way. The history of plane wrecks over unpopulated areas doesn’t have a lot of planes hitting farm houses. Dropping something from 60,000 feet likely has a big cone of uncertainty, especially if a partially deflated balloon was still attached. Nobody was going to guarantee that drop was safe.
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I wonder if they will detail what’s in the wreckage. It won’t be hard to see advanced optics that have no place in a meteorological balloon. The Chinese were a bit sketchy in their statements “mostly civilian or meteorological” or some such doubletalk.
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I think Biden’s statement that he decided to shoot it down on Wednesday was convenient revisionism (what is known as a lie when it comes from Trump). He could have said that Wednesday.
Some did say that it might be possible that the military did not tell their civilian superiors. Disgraceful, if that is what happened.
Lucia,
Of course the Pentagon is miserly in what they’re willing to say, but they give us a few crumbs. Specifically, Ryders says it’s maneuverable, and they say it doesn’t pose a radiological or nuclear threat.
I have been unable to quickly find a link to the actual officials being referred to here speaking, but I read here that:
Officials said the balloons are part of a fleet that China uses for surveillance, and they can be maneuvered remotely through small motors and propellers. One official said they carry equipment in the pod under the balloon that is not usually associated with standard meteorological activities or civilian research.
Tom’s link earlier discussed some of the other problems involved with shooting the thing down over land. Missiles and cannons might tear through the balloon and keep going, and I gather it’s hard to control precisely where they [the projectiles] might end up and what the collateral damage might be.
Of course you are correct – if the Chinese wanted to make it a ‘dirty bomb’ if shot down, I’m sure they could. The trouble there is that that would make this a more serious act – something closer to an actual military attack or an act of war.
MikeM
If you destroy the balloon, as opposed to partly deflating it, then the payload is going to drop straight down. So you know quite well where it will land. Yesterday they had ships loitering near the landing spot.
Uh… no. Don’t assume this is a high school physics problem where you “neglect frictional forces”. If you destroy something and things break up into small bits, they will experience drag forces that can be large compared to gravitational forces. And if someone was planning something bad, it could carry a pay load of things that can break up into very small bits.
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I would think that the missile might be a bigger risk.
That’s a possible risk. There are other risks involving small things.
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The spy balloon should have been shot down over the Aleutians, or just off shore from the Aleutians.
Perhaps. But hitting it before it is over the Aleutians has diplomatic consequences if it is the first time we shoot something down. The ‘other side’ can claim they were going to take care of it, or that it wasn’t certain to drift over the US or something. And once again: Until we shoot it down, we can’t be sure the payload is not something really bad.
I think it was very low risk to shoot it down over the Midwest,
Depends on what’s in the payload. . . Shooting it down over the ocean was a much better decision.
The history of plane wrecks over unpopulated areas doesn’t have a lot of planes hitting farm houses.
Yep. Because these are commercial planes… With a “spy” balloon, you don’t know what’s in the payload.
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Anonymous sources say that the same thing happened during the Trump administration.
Maybe it did. But that could also depend on the definition of “same thing”.
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Did the other balloons fly by any of these places?
Research by magazine Mother Jones plotted locations on the BatchGeo map above from data released in 2011.
Here are the locations of nuclear weapons in the United States:
Naval Base Kitsap (Washington)
Malstrom Air Force Base (Montana)
Nellis Air Force Base (Nevada)
Warren Air Force Base (Colorado and Wyoming)
Minot Air Force Base (North Dakota)
Pantex plant (Texas)
Whiteman Air Force Base (Missouri)
Barksdale Air Force Base (Louisiana)
Naval Submarine Base (Georgia)
Or did they fly near anything like a Hanford, OakRidge, Idaho Falls… etc. Dropping something on stored waste wouldn’t be fun?
It’s possible something happened and, because no civilians spotted it, it got classifed. This balloon was visible to civilians. Obviously, you can’t just tell everyone that it’s not up there.
Mark
Specifically, Ryders says it’s maneuverable, and they say it doesn’t pose a radiological or nuclear threat.
Those aren’t the only possible threats.
The trouble there is that that would make this a more serious act – something closer to an actual military attack or an act of war.
Yep.
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It’s unlikely it a carried “bad stuff”. But it’s also not impossible. Don’t jump to the conclusion that just because you don’t like Biden and just because he is senile, this was not the right decision. I think in this case he followed advise that took into account the full range of possibilities and made the best choice in terms of safety of the US and diplomatic position.
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Is his communication a bit addled? Yes. He’s senile. But
(a) not shooting it down before it entered our air space
(b) not shootting it down over the continental US and
(c) shooting it down over the Atlantic
were more optimal solutions to the issue than other things.
There’s a good chance they were able to jam communications. (Not sure.) And at any time, they likely knew what the balloon could “see”.
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I think this looks like the right call.
Lucia,
There’s too much we don’t know for me to presume to say what call would be best. It might be. There are lots of factors. Some involve people’s safety right here and now. Some involve people’s safety down the road. Sometimes demonstrating a certain willingness to use destructive power minimizes conflict and loss in the long run. Obviously, right; I’m sure I’m not saying anything that hasn’t occurred to you.
Shrug.
FWIW, I read reports that suggested Biden wanted to shoot the things down and the top generals (who I also dislike) and military officials talked him out of it.
Everybody knows where our land based missiles are, that’s one of the reasons 70% of nukes are carried on submarines. The Chinese have optical satellites that can easily see these fixed installations. Those installations have been there 60+ years, underground cables, etc. etc. Additionally there’s nothing to see here as they are boring fenced enclosures almost entirely underground.
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There is lots of hand wringing here that seems rather implausible and could be just as easily accomplished using other Chinese means that aren’t nearly as provocative. These guys aren’t 3rd world farmers anymore, they put a rover on Mars.
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My main question is why would China do something so stupid? I don’t have an answer other than it’s a boneheaded mistake. The Chinese floating a dangerous payload over our airspace would be level 10 stupid. Subsequently not advising us of that as we ponder shooting it down would be level 11. I think that is low probability.
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A heavy object dropped from 60,000 feet is going to easily penetrate a house, there is some danger no matter what. Occasionally airline waste systems malfunction: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2201747/Mysterious-holes-roofs-Long-Island-homes-believed-caused-frozen-airplane-waste.html
FWIW, I read reports that suggested Biden wanted to shoot the things down and the top generals (who I also dislike) and military officials talked him out of it.
I heard this but specifically about over the midwest. I haven’t heard any objections to shooting it down over the Atlantic.
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I see lots of Trump supporters wingeing it should have been shotdown over the midwest. They are almost certainly wrong as in 99.999% chance they are wrong. It might have gone ok. But the risks were too high. Just because the people winngeing lack imagination about the consequences of all the things we don’t know about the payload doesn’t mean there is not a modest possibility that there could be really, really bad things on the payload.
Tom
My main question is why would China do something so stupid? I don’t have an answer other than it’s a boneheaded mistake.
My main theory is to show they can do it and will do it. They likely hope the can and will do it with impunity. If correct, the payload would not contain anything truly horrible.
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But when considering a response, I don’t decide my main theory must be correct.
If so, that might have been something “different” about it relative to any past balloons (if past ones happened.) Also, this one was definitely below the Karman line (which is the official line demarcating our airspace.) Maybe the rumored past ones passed over, but above that line.
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When hearing the “same thing” happened before, details matter. Until we hear more, we don’t know if the “same thing” has happened before.
Blowing up the payload, rather than the balloon, would create a debris field. Still not all that much risk if over a sparsely populated area.
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The possibility of it being booby trapped is extremely low probability and extremely high risk since that would be an act of war. That might well be a reason for not bringing it down over land. But dumping radioactive stuff in shallow water near public beaches might be a worse move.
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If it had propellers, then it was definitely a spy balloon.
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Smart move by China. They probably got at least some technical data they could not get otherwise and learned a *lot* about their adversaries.
Lucia,
I’m not saying your wrong.
What I am saying is, if PRC decides it is going to kill some Americans, PRC can kill some Americans. They don’t need to resort to a booby trapped spy balloon. Presumably the reason they do not is that there are undesirable consequences involved in killing Americans. But they wouldn’t need to play cat and mouse games where some horrible payload will be delivered to the American people IFF America decides to shoot down a spy balloon if that’s what they wanted.
Whatever. We did what we did. The balloon is over.
People’s Daily: “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and protest against the US’s use of force to attack civilian unmanned airships. The Chinese side has repeatedly informed the US side after verification that the airship is for civilian use and entered the US due to force majeure, which was completely accidental. China clearly requires the US to handle it properly in a calm, professional and restrained manner. A spokesperson for the US Department of Defense also stated that the balloon will not pose a military or personal threat to ground personnel. Under such circumstances, the U.S. insists on using force, obviously overreacting and seriously violating international practice. China will resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of relevant companies, while reserving the right to make further necessary reactions.”
MikeM
Still not all that much risk if over a sparsely populated area.
This conclusion is based on some big unwarranted assumptions about what is in the pay load. My guess is you don’t know what the assumptions are.
The possibility of it being booby trapped is extremely low probability and extremely high risk since that would be an act of war.
You don’t know the probability of this.
But dumping radioactive stuff in shallow ….
Radioactive is not the only type of dangerous stuff.
Why would not the balloon have not been shot down before it entered the US land territory? Was it not detected? That would imply that our surveillance/security has a hole in it. Was there some indecision in deciding what to do? Did we know what kind of balloon it was? Should not the CIA have known? Did the Chinese let the US known they had rouge balloon on the loose and explain in detail what its mission was. If we knew this happened before under the Trump administration why were not we more prepared? Why were those incidents, if they occurred, kept from the public?
I suspect both the governments of the US and China screwed up and would like nothing better than the whole incident to blow over.
Would the US shoot down a rouge foreign plane without fear of collateral damage?
Time to put a top security CYA lid on this one.
If it was a big todo about nothing why not let the public know that? Probably lots of politics involved there.
From what little I know (and I admit I think this is more interesting by the way people reacted to it than its actual merit) the missile defense system saw it early, sent up some planes to look at it, yawned, and went back to BAU. Some rednecks in Montana also saw it later and a PR contagion occurred similar to War of the Worlds. So far nothing substantive has been released to indicate it was actually a real surveillance effort beyond meteorological data collection. China is not being forthcoming as usual. Things may change when they pickup the pieces.
Tom
Some rednecks in Montana also saw it later and a PR contagion occurred similar to War of the Worlds.
Not surprising the rednecks alerted others to what they saw. Unlike ordinary UFOs, this was identifyable.
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It may be that whatever is said to have overflow during Trump time was much, much higher in the sky.
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I’m not sure anything substantive will be released.
mark bofill (Comment #218296): “What I am saying is, if PRC decides it is going to kill some Americans, PRC can kill some Americans. They don’t need to resort to a booby trapped spy balloon.”
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Indeed. Now that think about it, lucia’s “bad stuff” argument is a reason to shoot the thing down earlier rather than later. If China really wanted to release “bad stuff” they could steer the balloon over a city, then “accidentally” release it.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #218299): “Would the US shoot down a rouge foreign plane without fear of collateral damage?”
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That one should be easy. The answer is YES. Or at least, it was YES and dang well better still be.
The Russians got a little over anxious and shot down a rouge foreign plane, KAL 007. You have to be a little reserved.
From what little I know (and I admit I think this is more interesting by the way people reacted to it than its actual merit) the missile defense system saw it early, sent up some planes to look at it, yawned, and went back to BAU.
Tom, if this were the case why shot it down later. Politics?
My rouge plane was known rouge: like the Chinese balloon.
We should not shoot down a plane just because it is red [rouge means red as in Baton Rouge (red stick) and Moulin Rouge (red mill) or even makeup].
I was wondering if someone was going to pick up on that. I’ve grown to expect typos from lucia, but there isn’t much excuse for everyone else to follow suit.
Oooh. Typo got it. Simpletons like me thought maybe ‘communist’ was meant. Heh.
[Nah, that’s not true. I’m pretty sure I just autocorrected in my mind.]
Please excuse my rogue rouge.
MikeM
Indeed. Now that think about it, lucia’s “bad stuff” argument is a reason to shoot the thing down earlier rather than later. If China really wanted to release “bad stuff” they could steer the balloon over a city, then “accidentally” release it.
So you prefer that bad stuff certainly be released when shot down vs. the possibility it be released. Doesn’t sound like a great argument to me.
Yes, I think the reason it was shot down may have been entirely political. Biden supposedly wanted to take it out, was talked out of it, then claimed he really meant wait to take it out later. Then we have this weird “sources say other balloons have done this before” narrative, followed by Trump and half his cabinet saying they were never informed, followed by this narrative correction now from the WSJ:
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Prior Chinese Balloon Incursions Over U.S. Went Undetected, Officials Say https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-decision-to-delay-shootdown-of-chinese-balloon-questioned-11675616189?st=l3hnzl34eq32y5w&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
“One official said that much of the information on the flights was pieced together later. They declined to elaborate, citing the need to protect intelligence methods.”
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WTF. This is just a clown show. Undetected incursions, ha ha. Now we have unbelievably clumsy attempted protection for Biden. This is all politics here, it is so unserious. Anonymous sources peddling misleading garbage 24/7. Untrustworthy.
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I think we can shoot down any foreign balloon in our air space if we want. My reading of the tea leaves is that the initial read was this balloon was benign and could be ignored. Then Biden was roundly mocked and he changed his mind. Amateur hour.
MikeM,
BTW: There would be quite a bit harm in releasing certain stuff over agricultural areas.
It is like our government thinks we are scattered brained and cannot think through all the belated information they are throwing at this balloon incident and how incompetent they make our surveillance appear.
Why would it take so long to determine there were previous balloon fly overs? Did previous survelliance take a look and go ho hum just a weather balloon and not report it Then some Montana cowboys spotted one and intelligence and Biden decided this will be a bad look for security and politics. They decided to let the balloon fly over while they worked on their stories and whether to do what they must have thought would be a face saving shoot down. Sounds dumb, inconsistent and counter productive and makes one think that there were many political considerations involved.
Either our survelliance sucks or it is a clown show.
I might be completely and categorically wrong here — I don’t know what I’m talking about, buyer beware.
It doesn’t strike me as absolutely inconceivable that spy balloons might have gone undetected before and we only realized it belatedly.
Balloons don’t always have much radar signature. They’re slow and … not all that attention grabbing. If somebody doesn’t spot a spy balloon visually, it seems to me that it might not get spotted. Particularly if it’s not expected, and in this day and age who the heck expects to be spied on by balloon?
After the fact though, people might go through unprocessed satellite footage and say, hmm. What balloon was that? and eventually work out where it came from. I can buy this because satellites do take pictures.
I don’t know, I could be totally wrong, but it doesn’t strike me as completely implausible that maybe China ballooned Trump and nobody realized it till after the fact.
But y’all know me, I’m gullible. 😉
In a way, it’s similar to the idea that it was actually sort of complicated to figure out how to take down the balloon because none of our combat systems are really tuned to shooting down balloons anymore. Same idea. Our surveillance systems probably aren’t tuned to tracking balloons. Maybe.
lucia (Comment #218311): “So you prefer that bad stuff certainly be released when shot down vs. the possibility it be released.”
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How does that work? The Chinese teleport the bad stuff into the balloon just before the missile hits? If there is any “bad stuff” (incredibly unlikely) in the payload, it is going to be released. If there isn’t, it won’t be.
It’s the order and content of the information release.
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Other balloon incursions occurred during the TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP administration (… and he didn’t do anything about it). Oh, we didn’t think you would want to know that we didn’t bother telling anyone about it. We also thought it wasn’t important to tell you we didn’t even know it occurred until after Trump left office either. We had no idea that the media would run with a “Trump let balloons go wild” narrative. Totally unpredictable, we can’t control that. Sorry that took some extra news cycles to get straight, our bad.
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It’s a frickin balloon that takes a week to get to the US +- 1000 miles. Russia has guided hypersonic nuclear missiles, China has 400 nukes and ICBM’s, and the WSJ is worrying “An undetected balloon would be able to deliver a nuclear explosive that could detonate above the ground and cripple the U.S. electrical grid with an electromagnetic pulse”.
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What’s next? China has secret plan to use rocks and sticks against our tanks.
MikeM
How does that work? The Chinese teleport the bad stuff into the balloon just before the missile hits?
Huh? You already posited a speculation that it was there.
Stuff being there doesn’t mean it will certainly be released. It means it could be released if such a decision was made. They could also decide not to release it.
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If there is any “bad stuff” (incredibly unlikely) in the payload, it is going to be released.
No. You are making an assumption and it is an incorrect one. Stuff could be there to permit a decision to release it under some specific circumstance.
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If the stuff is there and the balloon is hit, things like containers and delicate stuff will tend to break apart or open. So if you hit the balloon, stuff will almost certainly be released.
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The circumstances that held were:
We knew where the balloon was. We knew what was in line of sight and what it could see. (We probably were jamming communication.) Likely, everyone knew it wasn’t seeing anything important from Montana to SC. The Chinese gained zero information. During that part of the flight. So relative to shooting it down when it got to the Atlantic, there was zero reward to shooting it down earlier.
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If there was nothing “bad” in the payload, there was no reason not to wait to shoot it down over the atlantic.
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If there was something “bad” in the payload, shooting the thing down down over land would certainly be bad. And even if the Chinese could decide to release that load, that would be no worse, and they might not do it.
If there was something “bad” in the payload, shooting the thing down down over land would certainly be bad. And even if the Chinese could decide to release that load, that would be no worse, and they might not do it.
Lucia, if you are saying the US government did not shoot down the balloon over land because they did not know whether something “bad” was in the payload and there could have been other balloons like it over US territory previously, that does not say much for our security or surveillance systems. I thought they said they were worried about falling debris doing damage by the force of gravity.
I thought they said they were worried about falling debris doing damage by the force of gravity.
Well, our technology is good, but. We can make mistakes. I’d think it possible something dangerous could be carried as a payload and we might miss it, given that before shooting the balloon down the only surveillance we performed was from F-22 flybys, cameras, radar, and telescopes.
Also, if there was something dangerous on that balloon and our government knew it, I suspect they wouldn’t tell the public. It’d cause panic and destabilization, or it might.
Kenneth,
I thought they said they were worried about falling debris doing damage by the force of gravity.
First: I don’t expect spokes people to list every single possible reason for not shooting it down. Giving one and omitting others is pretty common.
Second: Did anyone say say “force of gravity”? I read stuff like this
“The Pentagon had considered scrambling fighter jets to shoot it down as it traveled over Montana but determined not to do so out of fears such an act create a debris field and endanger Americans on the ground, the official said.”
Lightning bolts then occur as a means of balancing these charge distributions. Volcanic ash and gases can sometimes reach the stratosphere, the upper layer in Earth’s atmosphere. This volcanic debris can reflect incoming solar radiation and absorb outgoing land radiation, leading to a cooling of the Earth’s temperature. In extreme cases, these “volcanic winters” can affect weather patterns across the globe.
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Sure, some big stuff could have hurt people by coming down at high velocity. But that doesn’t exclude other stuff.
marc boffil
….given that before shooting the balloon down the only surveillance we performed was from F-22 flybys, cameras, radar, and telescopes.
Precisely. The fact is, we know we can’t have a complete inventory of what’s in the payload. Could there be a bottle of Mountain Dew, packet of Oreo Cookies, small restaurant sized containers of ketchup or box of talcum powder inside the payload? You aren’t going to see that with flybys, cameras, radar or telescopes. You could fly by with a geiger counter and still not see it. None of those are dangerous. But the fact is: if you can’t see them, there’s all sorts of stuff you can’t see.
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If military and security people know there are things that could be deployed from balloons that would be a danger if present and deployed, they aren’t going to tell everyone! They are especially not going to tell if they only know it’s not impossible to be there, but it very well also might not be there. But giving a full list of all hypothetical threats to the public doesn’t mean they don’t consider all possible threats when deciding on optimal responses under the circumstances.
Lucia and Mark what I hear from your replies is that our government was not aware what the balloon might have contained or what its mission might have involved. Some are calling it a spy balloon but I thought I heard a government spokeperson say there was no communication coming from it.
I get a different feel from what I hear from our government and some of our conjectures here. There appear to be a whole array of conclusions that could be drawn from the governments actions and words and the limited amount of evidence available to the public.
One thing I never buy in these situations is when an apparent security problem arises that we cannot attempt to draw conclusions because we do not have the all the facts – some of which are withheld by the government. Secrecy can hide a lot of incompetentcy.
Ken,
I don’t think our government had certainty about what the balloon contained. I don’t think it contained weapons and actually I come to this idea by reasoning about the larger situation rather than any immediate surveillance or physical evidence we might have obtained. I think reasonable confidence was warranted that the balloon didn’t contain weapons.
I don’t know what the mission was, or rather I don’t know why the mission was executed. Was it some sort of mistake? Was it deliberate provocation? I’m not sure what the government knows about this that I might not.
I think it’s possible to draw some conclusions. Earlier I commented to Lucia that I didn’t have enough information to say if we made the correct call in our timing on shooting down the balloon, and I stand by that. I don’t know what PRC was trying to accomplish, so I can’t evaluate if we helped or hindered them. That might just mean I’m a moron, YMMV. But I stand by my earlier statement, I don’t know if our call was correct or not. But yes, I expect other conclusions could be drawn.
Secrecy can hide a lot of incompeten[]cy.
I assume our government is incompetent going in. I think they’ve given us ample evidence of that in recent times.
Thanks.
Kenneth,
It’s possible to have an incomplete inventory. For example, if I creep around and look into the floor level windows of my neighbors house, I can see they have a couch and tv; I have 100% certainty of that. But I can’t see things upstairs or in the basement. I suspect they own a bed. I have no idea if they do or do not own sex toys or a gun.
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we cannot attempt to draw conclusions because we do not have the all the facts – some of which are withheld by the government. Secrecy can hide a lot of incompetentcy.
Of course I can attempt to draw conclusions based on what I know and what is common. And yes, of course secrecy can hide a lot of incompetency.
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But I know that conclusions I make based on partial information may be inaccurate. That’s true whether or not secrecy is warranted and whether or not it’s used to hide incompetency.
Just one more small thing, I said this:
I don’t know what PRC was trying to accomplish, so I can’t evaluate if we helped or hindered them. That might just mean I’m a moron, YMMV. But I stand by my earlier statement, I don’t know if our call was correct or not. But yes, I expect other conclusions could be drawn.
By default, when I don’t know everything I wish I could know about our adversaries, I prefer certain policies. One is that incursions into our airspace are challenged, and if the challenge is not respected, intruding airships be shot down. This way I don’t have to speculate what the adversary was trying to accomplish, I can have some reasonable expectation that whatever it was, he didn’t accomplish it.
mark
I prefer certain policies. One is that incursions into our airspace are challenged, and if the challenge is not respected, intruding airships be shot down.
I agree with this. So I approve of it being shot down. And I think given the balance of uncertainties, shooting down over the ocean was better than over land.
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As it stands, the debris field is 7 miles wide. And that would be 7 miles wide around what would be an uncertain center since you cant position your target nor change prevailing winds when you fire.
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The debris field could have been wider.
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They were evidently able to keep the general area of ocean clear while shooting the balloon down.
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I just don’t see how shooting it over land could have been a better call.
Lucia,
Maybe we could find agreement in saying it would have been preferable to shoot the darn thing down over the Pacific, if it in fact came in that way? https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2023/02/03/chinese-spy-balloon-origin-path-explainer-dnt-vpx.cnn
At minute 1:40, there is a graphic that suggests this was the path.
I would have preferred that we shoot it down before it traversed the continental US.
I have no problem with shooting it down over either ocean. But under current circumstances, it needs to be a definitive incursion. We can’t just shoot things down because we think they might, in the future, enter our air space.
So in this case, there was no definitive incursion when it was over the Pacific.
mark
note the article says “suspected path”
what it’s equipped with, and its suspected path.
You can’t shoot it down until you have seen it. Being able to reconstruct afterwards is nice. But you can’t go back and time and shoot it just before it reaches Puget Sound– if that is where it did enter air space.
Lucia,
That’s what the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) is for, or so I thought.
Sure. That’s what it’s for. But did we know the balloon was there when it was there? I thought we didn’t.
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Evidently we now know some balloons passed over the US (including Florida specifically) briefly during the Trump administration. But we didn’t know during the Trump administration. So obviously, we didn’t shoot them down. We didn’t even think of shooting them down because we didn’t know they were there.
I’m not 100% sure.
I can’t find the link right now, but I read something implying that NORAD first noticed the balloon over the Aleutian Islands on Sat. Jan 28’th.
Did they really? Did they notice before it was over Alaska? Would they say if they didn’t? I don’t know the answers to these questions.
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If they did notice, I wonder if we didn’t make a mistake not shooting it down then.
If they didn’t notice, well, there you have it. It makes more sense that they didn’t want to shoot it down over land.
[Edit: so either way, I guess I have a problem with the situation. If we didn’t notice the balloon until it was over our land, we need to plug that awareness gap in the future. If we did notice but took no action, we need to evaluate the security decisions being made in response to potential threats, as far as I am concerned.]
Mark,
The path at your link shows it entering nearish puget sound https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2023/02/03/chinese-spy-balloon-origin-path-explainer-dnt-vpx.cnn
But I also heard the alutian’s bit.
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I really haven’t heard anything confirmatory, nor when they were sure what it was or what they saw.
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Yes. If they were absolutely sure it was a Chinese Spy balloon while it was still over our waters, they should have shot it down then. I agree with that. But I think it was best not to shoot it down over land.
Where were you when the Chinese spy balloon was shot down? This is historical!
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I’m going to go ahead and take bets on whether we are being attacked by the Chinese with cleverly disguised weather balloons. They could have attacked Taiwan by a surprise military offensive, but instead chose open warfare against the US using weather balloons.
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Everyone is now referring to this thing as a “spy balloon”. Perhaps this will ultimately be true (really, really, dumb move from the Chinese), but I have seen exactly nothing to support that. The divers have no doubt already looked at it by now. Still nothing. The only real evidence to me it is a spy balloon is the Chinese not trying very hard to prove it was a benign weather balloon, surely they have pictures of what it is.
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My speculation is that if it isn’t a spy balloon then we will hear nothing at all (it’s a secret!) because it’s too embarrassing to admit we went into a national security freakout over a wayward weather balloon. There are zero closeup pictures of this thing? That is weird. This whole thing is beyond bizarre, but entertaining.
The Chinese could have easily proved to us it was a wayward weather balloon, then perhaps we don’t shoot it down if we believe them. Nobody launches a sophisticated device like this without lots of planning, pictures, specs, and videos. All we publicly know is an official statement which sounds a bit sketchy, a bit of a non-denial denial. In this case we shoot it down IMO. If it does contain “spy” equipment then this escalates to a major problem.
They could have attacked Taiwan by a surprise military offensive, but instead chose open warfare against the US using weather balloons.
Perhaps this will ultimately be true (really, really, dumb move from the Chinese), but I have seen exactly nothing to support that. The divers have no doubt already looked at it by now. Still nothing.
Tom, thanks. It’s crazy, but it’s not that much crazier than anything else to think that China might do that. Send some perfectly innocent weather balloons, dress them up / make them big enough that we wouldn’t believe they were perfectly innocent weather balloons, and send them off to get shot down so they have a Taiwan talking point for their internal CCP political maneuvering and power struggles. It could be.
It could be 4-D chess, but I guess they are better players than I am. They could be baiting the US to overreact so they can then start attacking US assets close to their shore or the new “Chinese islands” near Taiwan.
Alright Lucia. I get you now. Yes, if we take as a given that we missed our window for whatever reason to shoot the balloon down over the Pacific, and also given that the Chinese have perfectly good low altitude spy satellites just like we do, sure. Maybe it made the most sense not to shoot the balloon down over land.
I was wondering whether the balloon might be a message intended for someone else, nationally or regionally. I’m not convinced they really give a damn what the US would think about it, which the “how very dare you shoot down a Chinese balloon floating over your territory” statement tends to support.
mark,
Or that once we spotted them we knew where they were and they weren’t really seeing anything important. Or we could detect any communication signals and jam.
DaveJR,
The list of what China’s intentions might have been (if any) is lengthy.
It also includes a video with a map (or maybe just a cartoon) that shows a totally different route, with no source given.
If it is an overt spy attempt, I think the people who did it fail to understand US culture in a profound way. This kind of oppressive surveillance may be par for the course for their own citizens in China, but US citizens are going to predictably react very badly to China doing it here. We were bashing import cars with sledgehammers in the 1970’s, and that exact kind of consumer reaction could occur again. I’m just failing to comprehend the goal here, the risk / reward equation doesn’t pan out.
Mike,
Yeah. That’s where my real upset centers. Either we saw it and (IMO) did not take the appropriate actions or we didn’t see it. Neither way am I happy.
Mike from your link
The balloon is first detected over U.S. airspace high over Alaska, north of the Aleutian Islands. The military’s North American Aerospace Defense
NORAD tracks the balloon as it travels into Canadian airspace. Officials determine it is used for spying, as it carries surveillance equipment including a collection pod and solar panels located on the metal truss suspended below the balloon. Based on its small motors and propellers, officials also assess it can be actively maneuvered to fly over specific locations.
Then it says continue reading….
You know, I’m striving to look at the ‘over land’ risk in a reasonable way. Is it really reasonable to worry about debris falling over Alaska? It is *the* most sparsely populated US state, less than a million people in the whole place, maybe a third of those people living in or around Anchorage. I mean, at some point it seems to me we say ‘Screw it. The risk is reasonable’.
mark,
On the one hand, you have a point. But we aren’t actually at war with China. They may have wanted to be sure they knew what it was. They aren’t saying that, but it’s not impossible.
According to the story, the only knew it could actively manouver around the time it entered Canadian airspace
NORAD tracks the balloon as it travels into Canadian airspace. Officials determine it is used for spying, as it carries surveillance equipment including a collection pod and solar panels located on the metal truss suspended below the balloon. Based on its small motors and propellers, officials also assess it can be actively maneuvered to fly over specific locations.
I wouldn’t have been pissed off if we took down an actual weather balloon. But it’s not a bad thing to be more certain. Accidents happen.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218347): “If it is an overt spy attempt, I think the people who did it fail to understand US culture in a profound way.”
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Yeah, but they understand our government. Prior less aggressive missions elicited no response and the latest one elicited no response for several days, until the public noticed the balloon so the government could no longer pretend not to see it. Even then, it was no certain that there would be a response. Had the balloon not been spotted by the public, the Biden administration would have done nothing.
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The thing had propellers. It was a spy balloon. Case closed. No research balloon has propellers.
mark bofill (Comment #218350): “I mean, at some point it seems to me we say ‘Screw it. The risk is reasonable’.”
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Exactly. There are places one would not want to shoot it down over. But the emptiness of the high plains is quite remarkable. Petroleum County, MT has 0.3 people per square mile, many others are under 1 person per square mile and most have no more than 2-3 per square mile. There are county seats with about 20 people. The risk of bringing it down was minimal.
CNN updates it story on Trump allowed balloons to go wild:
“Muddling the situation further, on Sunday, a senior administration official told CNN that the transiting of the balloons over the US during Trump’s time in office wasn’t discovered until after Biden became president. If true, this raises concerns about why the Trump administration did not detect the incursions into US airspace.”
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Sigh.
AOC looks into the mirror: “I think it’s uncomfortable serving with people who engage in what many experts deem stochastic terrorism, which is an incitement of violence using digital means and large platforms so that the individual themselves may not be the one that’s wielding a weapon.”
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Or in other words, from SciAm: “Dehumanizing and vilifying a person or group of people can provoke what scholars and law enforcement officials call stochastic terrorism, in which ideologically driven hate speech increases the likelihood that people will violently and unpredictably attack the targets of vicious claims.”
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Propagandists have fomented disgust to dehumanize Jewish people as vermin; Black people as subhuman apes; Indigenous people as “savages”; immigrants as “animals” unworthy of protection; and members of the LGBTQ community as sexual deviants and “predators” who prey upon children.”
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And “white” people as the source of all evil in the world…
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“Right-wing media personalities and activists have created or amplified conspiracy theories about Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates and others.”
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“People who are trying to outlaw gender-affirming care for transgender kids and purge pro-gay books from library shelves have stirred up disgust by invoking the specter of sexual “grooming”; others have made the same accusations against those speaking out against such legislative efforts, and some have used the idea to fuel disinformation about the cause of scattered pediatric monkeypox cases. The manufactured grooming mythology has spurred another round of moral disgust and outrage.”
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In the lead-up to the midterm elections, a blitz of far-right radio ads targeting Black and Hispanic stations in swing states has repeated falsehoods about transgender people and a QAnon warning that the Biden administration will make it easier for children “to remove breasts and genitals”—an attempt to evoke disgust.”
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Which was correct.
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“Other ads aimed at white audiences claim minorities are the true aggressors and destroyers of social norms. One decries “anti-white bigotry.” Another warns ominously, “Stop the woke war on our children.”
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What can stop stochastic terrorism and break the cycle of disgust-fueled vilification, threats and violence? Turning off the source of fuel is a start. Programs to counter violent extremism, particularly those that emphasize early intervention and deradicalization, have yielded some successes in at-risk communities. Other programs disrupt the ideological ecosystem that creates radical conspiracies through counseling, education and other community interventions. Beyond understanding how our emotions can be exploited to demonize others, we can refuse to buy into “both-sides” false equivalence and the normalization of dangerous rhetoric and extremism. We can do better at enforcing laws against hate speech and incitement to violence. And ultimately, we can disengage with media platforms that make money by keeping us disgusted, fearful and forgetful of our own decency—and shared humanity.”
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I keep wondering what peak hypocrisy will look like…
Mike M. (Comment #218346)
Mike M’s link has the most comprehensive information I have heard on the balloon incident. It sounds like the US is just getting up to speed on what evidently has been an ongoing effort by the Chinese for awhile now. Suddenly we know about a lot of Chinese flyovers over other nations.
What can a balloon collect that a satellite cannot?
“What can a balloon collect that a satellite cannot?”
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Weather information, ha ha. In theory better pictures, better access to radio signals such as cellular and short range stuff, and some other dreamed up things. The real question is what can they get that satellites and all their other assets not get? Not much IMO. Chinese students driving around in a surveillance van, Chinese students flying in a Cessna, Chinese immigrants working in defense companies, Chinese hackers, spies with drones, Chinese elected government officials, Chinese modified electronics made in China, Chinese run software companies (backup software, remote control software, password managers, home surveillance cameras). This doesn’t even touch on the open strategy of forcing foreign companies to disclose IP for getting access to the Chinese market. We are an open society.
The great Chinese spy balloon drama of 2023 is not over yet. As it turns out, there’s another not-a-spy balloon floating over Latin America and yes, that one also belongs to China.
I think that’s the new official moniker: “Not-a-spy balloon”.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #218356): “It sounds like the US is just getting up to speed on what evidently has been an ongoing effort by the Chinese for awhile now. Suddenly we know about a lot of Chinese flyovers over other nations.”
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That is just not believable. They pretended the balloon was not there until they got called on it. Then they pretended there was no need to shoot it down, until it became clear that would not fly. Then they leaked that it happened several times during the Trump administration. That fell apart when everyone in that administration (including John Bolton, who is no friend of Trump) denied it. Then they changed the story again to say that nobody noticed the balloons at the time (yeah, right) but that they noticed them only many months later (we have a time machine!). Anything they say that happens to be true was either an accident or misdirection.
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The latest video I have seen of the take down, on Fox News, appears to show the balloon envelope being destroyed and the payload dropping straight down. If so, then so much for a “debris field”.
Mike M,
“Anything they say that happens to be true was either an accident or misdirection.”
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The permanent bureaucracy is a danger to liberty and representative government. The (many) intelligence agencies (including the FBI) represent the gravest risks. They need to be reined in via defunding.
SteveF: “Bill Maher calls out the enviro hypocrites.”
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Been rather outspoken on woke recently too. Late to tbe party, but welcome nonetheless. He can reach people completely immune to the same arguments presented by others.
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Jon Stewart on the other hand has gone the other way…
More absurd stenography from the media, ha ha. The intelligence community is not taking sides here.
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CNN:
“Past surveillance balloons were discovered at the beginning of the Biden administration because President Joe Biden directed the intelligence community “to increase both our vigilance and the assets that we were deploying to be able to detect Chinese efforts to spy against the United States,” said national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
“[B]ecause the intelligence community made this a priority at the direction of President Biden, we enhanced our surveillance of our territorial airspace, we enhanced our capacity to be able to detect things that the Trump administration was unable to detect,” Sullivan said at a Monday event with the US Global Leadership Coalition. “And were also able to go back and look at the historical patterns. And that led us to come to understand that during the Trump administration, as you said, there were multiple instances where the surveillance balloons traversed American airspace and American territory.””
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NYT:
“One explanation, multiple U.S. officials said, is that some previous incursions were initially classified as “unidentified aerial phenomena,” Pentagon speak for U.F.O.s. As the Pentagon and intelligence agencies stepped up efforts over the past two years to find explanations for many of those incidents, officials reclassified some events as Chinese spy balloons.
It is not clear when the Pentagon determined the incidents involved Chinese spying.”
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I’m guessing that reclassification was … rather recent. So Chinese balloons! We should let everyone know of course. Nope.
“The earlier Chinese balloons remained secret because intelligence officials typically do not want adversaries to know their surveillance efforts have been discovered.”
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Yes and Iraq has WMD’s. Thank you IC.
“What can a balloon collect that a satellite cannot?”
Up close active targeting emissions from a f-22 firing an Aim-9x? That’s the one thing I can see that this exposed which wouldn’t be readily acquired otherwise.
Andrew P,
Bravo. I wondered about that too. 60,000′ up is a long ways. The PRC would have to guess we’d send a Raptor up for a look. Great opportunity for SIGINT.
“National Security Council strategic communications coordinator John Kirby told reporters that there are several factors – like their altitude and speed – that make detecting the spy balloons difficult, saying that the ways to track them are “not constant.”
“They fly very, very high, very, very slow and in order to track, you’ve got to run the traps along many different lines of information and technology,” Kirby said.”
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Like UFO’s , which use a strategy of cloaking and very fast moving, the Chinese have found a devious way of avoiding detection.
Move very slowly.
The payload beneath the balloon is said to have been “the size of three school-buses”. Ok, so it has a radar signature which is obviously not the size of “a sparrow”, to quote one off-the-record explanation. If your air defense radar misses “three school-buses”, then it is useless; my marine radar from a decade ago was far more capable… it could easily detect a few dozen birds flying together at 15 miles.
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Every official pronouncement on this, from Biden down, is a lie. The only question is if the liars will be exposed and suffer consequences, or if the lies will be hidden as ‘national security secrets’. Based on the continuing fabulist babble from officials, I am guessing it will be the later.
“the size of three school-buses”
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Not the size I was imagining. Clearly, this could do something a satellite could not.
SteveF,
Does the shape (thin) matter for the radar signature?
Lucia,
The balloon envelope is likely a (vacuum deposited) aluminized polymer film, with the aluminum used to eliminate most loss of hydrogen (or helium, but probably hydrogen). Depending on the thickness of the aluminum (could be a handful of nanometers thick) the balloon itself might not have much of a radar signature. But the payload below the balloon would almost certainly have a significant radar signature…. you can’t make solar panels radar invisible, and those panels were big.
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IMHO, the DOD (and everyone else in the administration) is being a lot less than forthcoming about detecting the balloon. The blatant CYA contortions would be comical, save for that it is a serious security issue.
Maybe the air defense radar makes use of AI. Ignoring something because it is too slow is just the sort of error I’d expect from a computer.
SteveF,
My very brief reading (after I posted– and now– and I had breakfast mind you) says that cylinders have good signatures because some part is nearly always perpendicular to incoming radar. But if no surface is perpendicular, then the radar reflects away from the radar reciever. (Law of reflection.)
So it’s just possible that those big flat panels can only be seen by radar when they are in “just the right” position. (And that might actually be almost never since they balloon is not directly above the radar.)
It also said nuts and bolts etc. increase radar signature. No idea, if there are lots of those or not.
I’m not saying you are wrong about the signature being large. But it does seem possible the radar signature of a large flat panel might be small.
Jet fighters obviously don’t have that shape.
I’m sure there are non-military people who can chime in on this. Not necessarily reading comment here though.
(I”m going to be out all day. So I won’t have any more time to google something about radar signatures.)
MikeM,
Haha! Yeah. That would be the sort of mistake an AI made!
Mike M,
Oh… I also read one of the “reasons” for letting the balloon travel for a while was to collect data on it’s motion. Maybe that was to accumulate training data while the balloon moved?
We are hearing more– both rumor and true over time.
Mike M,
“Maybe the air defense radar makes use of AI. Ignoring something because it is too slow is just the sort of error I’d expect from a computer.”
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That is a far more plausible explanation than no radar signature.
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Lucia,
Yes absolutely flat surfaces reflect only in one direction, but the wires, supporting structure, electronics, etc would have a significant signature that would be very difficult to hide. Besides that, the balloon was so damn big that it was clearly visible from the ground, and airline pilots noticed it as well. It is just not plausible that the multiple claimed earlier balloons during the Trump administration (everything bad is Trump’s fault, you know) would not have been noticed by anyone…. it is 100% lies.
SteveF
Besides that, the balloon was so damn big that it was clearly visible from the ground, and airline pilots noticed it as well.
Well… obviously, this one was visible from the ground. The supposedly past 3? Evidently no one reported those. So maybe they were smaller or floated higher up.
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Oh… well, as I said, maybe something passed over during Trump era. It may have been the same is some ways and different in others. They do way it was over land a small time– and I heard “Florida” mentioned. Maybe something floated very high over Key West? That would be both “the same” and “entirely different” from penatrating all the way to Montana before rednecks reported what they saw and then floating on out to SC.
My impression is that when it comes to an air defense system, the issue isn’t seeing everything on radar. It’s making sense of the tracks and filtering out the clutter. The ‘AI’ might just in this case be the filtering heuristics of the air defense computer, but yeah. That’d be where my money is, if it’s true that we didn’t detect the balloon (or balloons) via air defense systems.
The other thing that makes me wonder is this isn’t the first time we’ve had high altitude balloons circumnavigating the globe. I seem to recall a few around the world attempts a decade or few back. What is the usual protocol for notifying countries involved or seeking permission? It only seems neighborly to let someone know that you’re overflying their airspace.
We should note that every intelligence official in the Trump administration has flat out said that no information about Chinese balloons was ever provided to the Trump administration. That means either: 1) The Biden administration is simply lying, or 2) the USA really doesn’t have the capability to detect a giant spy balloon in the sky, or 3) the DOD hid the presence of these earlier balloon overflights from the Trump administration, or 4) some combination. All three explanations strike be as incredibly damning, and even frightening. I sure hope the House calls these clowns to task, and sooner rather than later.
From the Chinese perspective I could an internal conversation where they are confused about all the fuss since objects that are 90 miles high are overflying every country hourly. The Chinese balloon was higher than air traffic could go, but just large and low enough to be visible in daylight.
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Does anyone think there is not a James Webb type telescope could not be pointing down too? Would that be cause for international outrage?
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Maybe we need to start thinking more about how the world views the USIC, considering that more and more of the US considers an unaccountable, heavily funded and well armed agency untrustworthy.
Ron Graf,
Domestic airspace for every country extends to >50 miles. 12 miles up is well within US airspace. U-2 aircraft flew at 72,000 feet, and were immediately targeted by the Russians (and others). Maybe we need to start thinking about protecting US air space.
‘”Trans Lives Matter occupies Oklahoma capitol to protest bill criminalizing genital mutilation of minors”
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Trans activists gathered in the Oklahoma Capitol Monday to protest legislation that would prohibit the sterilization and mutilation of children. “Trans lives matter,” they chanted.
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The legislative session began in the state on Monday, and lawmakers are expected to consider the Millstone Act, which would “prohibit Oklahoma doctors from providing gender transition procedures or referral services relating to such procedures to anyone under the age of 26.”
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“Child abuse is a felony in our state and mutilating a young person’s genitalia should be viewed no differently. The Millstone Act will hold those who perform child mutilation accountable by making such activity a felony. Those guilty of such a heinous crime will be both legally and financially liable,” Bullard said.
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a trans activist and lawyer, Brittany Novotny, is forming a new political action committee in the state to try to block the legislation. Called the Securing Liberty PAC, Novotny claims that bills protecting children run contrary to the GOP principle of limited government.
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Novotny claims that protecting children from sexualized drag content is simply government interference in private lives.
“We’re not going to beat these bills by rehashing the same far-left rhetoric and playing victim,” Novotny said. “We’re going to defeat these bills by finding common ground with Republicans in the Legislature and helping them to see this isn’t necessarily the winning issue they think it is.”‘
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Personally, I don’t think defending child abuse as a matter of “liberty”, or “big government”, is the winning issue they think it is, either.
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I would question the proposed 26yo limit. This would appear to be overreach, to the detriment of its intentions.
“As NORAD commander, it’s my responsibility to detect threats to North America,” Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, the head of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), told reporters. “I will tell you that we did not detect those threats. And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out.”
You make this announcement publicly? How does this not damage U.S. national security, announcing our air defense gaps and failures to the world.
That is completely outrageous. Military leadership is obviously overdue for some housecleaning, not that we didn’t already know that from our Afghanistan withdrawal.
[Edit: He goes on to say that we detected the balloon but didn’t shoot it down because there wasn’t hostile action or intent. This guy needs to be relieved of command.]
FYI: Wikipedia – Geostationary balloon satellite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_balloon
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“Geostationary balloon satellites (GBS) are proposed high-altitute balloons that would float in the mid-stratosphere (60,000 to 70,000 feet (18 to 21 km) above sea level) at a fixed point over the Earth’s surface and thereby act as an atmospheric satellite. At that altitude, air density is 1/15 of what it is at sea level. The average wind speed at these levels is less than that at the surface.[citation needed] A propulsion system would allow the balloon to move into and maintain its position. The GBS would be powered with solar panels.
A GBS could be used to provide broadband Internet access over a large area. Laser broadband would connect the GBS to the network, which could then provide a large area of coverage because of its wider line of sight over the curvature of the Earth and unimpeded Fresnel zone.”
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If you are worried about balloons, you have pretty much lost your minds ha ha. China has at least 400 nukes, ICBM’s, ballistic missile submarines and reportedly hypersonic cruise missiles. They have maintained what they call minimum nuclear deterrence for a long time. They are currently upgrading their nuclear capability, but as always their actual intentions are opaque.
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If you examine closely the US doesn’t really put a priority on homeland conventional protection. Have you seen fixed anti-aircraft installations around your city? Countries with 1000’s of nukes with global reach don’t really need to protect their homeland with tanks or defend against balloon attacks.
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Our borders are porous. China sends 20,000 shipping containers a day. Maybe 1% are examined? If they want to smuggle in a nuke it wouldn’t be hard, but they don’t need to. We can’t defend against ballistic missiles. I’m trying hard to figure out what the relative threat is here, and still perplexed what the Chinese goal was.
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Maybe it’s just diversionary. In WWII the US put out a huge effort to bomb Japan early in the war (The Doolittle Raid, 1942). It produced very little damage but the effects were mostly psychological “it raised fear and doubt about the ability of military leaders to defend the home islands”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid
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I’m all for shooting down all Chinese balloons, but it’s really just not an actual threat. The anti-Chinese backlash is real and it blows my mind that anyone thought that this was wise. The NYT ponders this was a rogue effort by some hawkish Chinese military commanders.
Tom, yes. At the end of the day what keeps us safe from attack is the fact that the U.S. military would deliver sure and certain destructive vengeance to any country that attacked us, not some imaginary power to prevent the attack and loss of life in the first place (at least when it comes to [adversaries] like PRC).
But demonstrating military incompetence and then proudly announcing our failures for the world to review does nothing to bolster international confidence in the ability of the US to exercise power effectively in the world. When confidence in the ability of the US to act in the world goes down, Ukraines and Taiwans get grabbed. North Korea starts firing off missiles and making noise. The Middle East goes to pot. So on.
mark,
“I will tell you that we did not detect those threats. And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out.”.
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This is a strange statement, I half suspect he is challenging the actual existence of these alleged prior balloons but cannot do so directly publicly. These are phantom balloon sightings reclassified from UFO’s. I’ve seen just about enough leaks from the IC lately to question everything they say. All we know is the IC claims they are real, decided that after the fact, won’t tell us anything more, and kept it secret all the way up until it was politically convenient to leak it. NORAD says they never saw anything. That’s what we know.
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I’d be inclined to believe the IC but WMD’s, Hunter Biden, Trump dossier, and a seemingly long line of political biased deceptions make me doubt them when a clear political advantage is present to their information. The way they threw Trump under the bus here is just shameful and I’m no fan of Trump. Trump has nothing to do with this, literally nothing, and I keep reading his name in balloon articles.
Tom,
Note that it doesn’t actually matter if the prior balloons were real or not. Either way, we have the guy in charge of NORAD announcing to the world that ‘we did not detect those threats. And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out.’ Which, taken along with the Afghanistan fiasco makes the U.S. military look like they cannot find their asses with both hands, which does not improve the global situation anywhere.
[Edit: Look at it this way. Certainly, it would not be beyond the pale for the military to say ‘we have no comment on that’ regarding alleged spy balloons in the past. There is no reason for them to be publicly confirming gaps in our capabilities! This is basic stuff.]
It is implausible to me that China would send something that big (visible to the naked eye from the ground at 60,000 feet) and believe it would not be noticed. They might as well have put flashing lights and lasers on it.
Right, I don’t know why they leaked the existence of uncertain prior balloon events. It serves no purpose except for Biden politically. It could be the usual fearmongering to keep the defense budget up. We have a balloon gap with China!
Line of sight view from 70,000 ft is a circle ~650 miles in diameter; even if you assume only 1/2 that as practical coverage, that is still a circle of 325 miles diameter. Any observational equipment at that altitude would not need to go directly over a militarily sensitive location to observe it.
Did everyone see the video of the Montana contrail and two flashes? I heard Tucker say that it was likely a fake because there was no other reports and, of course, the balloon kept flying. But what if that was an EMP or some type of electronic jammer? I am hoping that they truly had the balloon instrument jammed like they said.
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SteveF, I agree that we had the right to shoot it down and I would have given the order over as it approached Alaskan islands. But I am just agreeing with Tom that it is not a big deal in since any observation can be done almost as well from orbit.
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The answer to which country screwed up more in this affair is a good one. The US revealed that it was asleep at the post. But in finding that out China woke everyone up.
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Tom: “I’d be inclined to believe the IC but WMD’s, Hunter Biden, Trump dossier, and a seemingly long line of political biased deceptions make me doubt them when a clear political advantage is present to their information.”
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Amen to that.
I don’t think the government actually ever said they jammed it, they said they took precautions which I think translates to they told people on the ground to be aware they were being potentially surveilled and to not do anything important.
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At this point it isn’t clear whether there was an active real time communications link to China from the balloon, I have seen nothing definitive either way. If it was talking to a satellite I think it would be difficult to jam its transmission to a satellite from the ground (60,000 feet away). One could imagine something in between the balloon or satellite or something relatively close to the balloon jamming it. My guess is they decided it wasn’t really going to see anything very important and they let it be.
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Same type of thing, no need to expose our electronic warfare capabilities unless we need to.
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There is pretty much a continuing black hole of actual information. 3 days and pretty much nothing on what the wreckage has. They are very much committed to a “spy balloon” narrative so I would parse what they say very closely. Backing down from that would be humiliating.
I have seen nothing definitive either way. If it was talking to a satellite I think it would be difficult to jam its transmission to a satellite from the ground (60,000 feet away).
They had a couple of Rivets flying beneath it across the midwest which helps a bit. Probably more for monitoring what the balloon was emitting doing than using it’s electronic warfare systems against it but that was a possibility.
Hannah is not happy.
Asleep at the wheel or playing cards and not watching the screens.
Someone at the top should go.
Or is it all just deflection from the Hunter Biden laptop which the Republicans should be focusing in heavily for the next 6 months?
Democrats actually on an upswing in the polls showing doing nothing
works!
Sarah Huckabee Sanders: “The dividing line in America is no longer Right or Left, it is normal or crazy.”
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Spot on.
Whatever popped the balloon did not hit the electronics package. The picture accompanying a WSJ opinion piece clearly shows in the lower half of the picture that the instrument package is falling intact, complete with solar panels.
It’s a shame they couldn’t have removed the charge from the missile or somehow made a smaller hole. Then they could have followed the balloon down with a ship and recovered everything relatively intact and with minimal recovery effort.
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I am wondering if there was some kind of electric motor on top out of sight. One would think a steering mode would add a lot of value to a surveillance apparatus.
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Edit: I wonder how the Chinese would recover it. It likely had a remote method of releasing the gas. If it had a motor it could then have been remotely landed.
Certainly the government has close up pictures of the payload of the balloon. It would be incompetence of the highest level to not do that before the shoot down. Why not release them? Real question.
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I can’t believe amateurs with telescopes or high powered cameras didn’t take any better pictures.
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Still, nothing.
Mike M, yes, I agree. Sarah Sanders hit it out of the park. Biden seemed to be in an endless dream where there were no price tags or unintended consequences of government programs.
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He forgot to mention how President Harris is rooting out the causes of the southern border invasion or updates on his unconstitutional giveaway to holders of college loans. Also, he forgot to mention how the defund the police initiative worked out or his support for critical race theory.
Ron Graf (Comment #218411): “It’s a shame they couldn’t have removed the charge from the missile or somehow made a smaller hole.”
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That might well have resulted in partial deflation followed by descent to a new equilibrium altitude, possibly one where it could be a hazard to aviation and/or been rapidly swept out to sea in the jet stream.
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Ron Graf: “I wonder how the Chinese would recover it. It likely had a remote method of releasing the gas.”
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My guess would be a mechanism to command the release of the payload from the balloon and then deploy a parachute from the payload.
Thanks Mike M and Tom.
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The next question is who is lying about the Nord-Stream sabotage? Sy Hersh, a one-time Pulitzer Prize winning NYT reporter, now the go-to man for government conspiracies, just reported a detailed expose on a US operation to blow up Putin’s pipeline. The US denials are not helped by Biden’s promise beforehand to “end it” if Putin’s tanks crossed the Ukraine border. https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream
“Memphis cop Demetrius Haley texted photo of bloodied Tyre Nichols after beating: document
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One of the Memphis police officers charged with the murder of Trye Nichols snapped a photo of the 29-year-old father — bloodied and handcuffed — and sent it to six people after they brutally beat him, according to a report.
Officer Demetrius Haley — who was fired from his job after the killing — took two photographs of the critically injured Nichols driver on his personal phone, according to a state document obtained by the Memphis news station WREG.
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The 30-year-old officer texted the photos of Nichols, who was propped against a car as he was unable to sit up on his own, to two fellow cops, a civilian employee of the police department and a female acquaintance, the record states.
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A sixth person also received the pictures, according to the document…”
. https://nypost.com/2023/02/07/memphis-cop-demetrius-haley-texted-photo-of-bloodied-tyre-nichols-after-beating/
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An odd thing to do. This gives more weight to the premeditated attack theory IMO.
Hersch has a reputation for spectacular but questionable stories. I am not inclined to give his latest a lot of credit.
Hersch writes:
Biden’s decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community
Since the bombs were placed in June 2022, than means the discussions started in September 2021. Before the Russian build up began and just 4 months after Biden gave the green light for allowing Nordstream 2 to go ahead. Not believable.
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Maybe by “decision to sabotage” Hersch meant “decision to detonate the explosives”. That would mean that discussions started in Dec. 2021, which would be more believable. Still, that makes me wonder about the care that went into the story.
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The three month plus delay between placing the explosives and detonating them seems implausible. All sorts of things could go wrong, including the Russians spotting the explosives.
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I suppose the undetonated explosives are still on the fourth pipeline. But they have not been spotted?
After reading the Hersh article I think his source is the truthful one. The question is did this source just put the world’s international infrastructure in greater danger of future escalating sabotage, or did Biden? Clearly the source thought the later was true.
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Asked why he thought the Russians failed to respond, he said cynically, “Maybe they want the capability to do the same things the U.S. did.
“It was a beautiful cover story,” he went on. “Behind it was a covert operation that placed experts in the field and equipment that operated on a covert signal.
“The only flaw was the decision to do it.”
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Hersh makes his view known with a beautifully written paragraph regarding an infamous closed door quote from the CIA’s Richard Helms during the Church hearings.
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In unpublished, closed-door testimony, Helms ruefully explained that “you almost have an Immaculate Conception when you do something” under secret orders from a President. “Whether it’s right that you should have it, or wrong that you shall have it, [the CIA] works under different rules and ground rules than any other part of the government.” He was essentially telling the Senators that he, as head of the CIA, understood that he had been working for the Crown, and not the Constitution.
It’s going to take a smoking gun to convince me of either side sabotaging the pipeline. It’s just irrational for either side in my view. It’s very likely a nation state because of the level of effort it takes. Also I think it would be very risky to get caught. I think there might have been a Chinese balloon in the area at the time … (these jokes are so easy now).
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As I recall both Russia and the US have been seen monitoring undersea cables.
Mike M, the article is very explicit. The request for presidential options was made in December 2021.
In December of 2021, two months before the first Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Jake Sullivan convened a meeting of a newly formed task force—men and women from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments—and asked for recommendations about how to respond to Putin’s impending invasion.
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It would be the first of a series of top-secret meetings, in a secure room on a top floor of the Old Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, that was also the home of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). There was the usual back and forth chatter that eventually led to a crucial preliminary question: Would the recommendation forwarded by the group to the President be reversible—such as another layer of sanctions and currency restrictions—or irreversible—that is, kinetic actions, which could not be undone?
Tom Scharf (Comment #218457): “It’s going to take a smoking gun to convince me of either side sabotaging the pipeline. It’s just irrational for either side in my view.”
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Indeed. And why just 3 of the 4?
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But no explanation makes sense. If one pipeline went, it could plausibly be an accident. But 3? All at the same time?
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So it wasn’t an accident. Russia didn’t do it. We didn’t do it. Only one explanation remains: It was those alien jokesters in the UFOs just messing with us. 🙂
They now claim that certain antennas on the Chinese balloon are indicative of surveillance. This is certainly one thing you would specifically look for.
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I’ve done a lot of “tear downs” of electronics and they should be able to identify the antennas which will tell you what frequencies they were optimized for looking at and the electronics as well (devices specifically for decoding US cellular signals, etc.). For the most part a weather balloon can be constructed with off the shelf parts and perhaps a few custom things. They should be able to look in the electronics boxes and pretty easily get a feeling for things that don’t really belong to a weather balloon. Specifically very expensive custom devices, and unmarked devices are a red flag. If there are gigantic amounts of storage, a red flag. An expert should be able to tell the difference unless it is cleverly designed as a dual use device.
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That being said, I don’t entirely trust the statements because of how heavily invested the IC is in the outcome here. It is very likely a weather balloon would have a high bandwidth short range connection for software servicing and data transfer as well as a lower bandwidth civilian satellite connection for command and control. The existence of these aren’t that meaningful.
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Examining the storage devices will also be meaningful. If they were scrubbed by the Chinese then that is a red flag. If they are encrypted that is a red flag. A sophisticated program would scrub the surveillance data on command and fill up the storage with innocent looking weather data. A real time only system would require a very high bandwidth satellite connection.
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Examining the firmware will also be meaningful, but this is a tedious long term process. Many uControllers allow the firmware to be read out. If this has been specifically blocked, another red flag. A long term examination of that firmware will reveal what it is doing and be a smoking gun. If an elaborate software defined radio is found, red flag.
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The presence of expensive high resolution optics would also be a smoking gun.
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The other side. If this is an innocent commercial weather balloon then the Chinese can hand over the electrical design and software source code. The US could then easily confirm that is exactly what they found. I don’t see any signs of this, so my balance at the moment is this is a surveillance exercise maybe 75%/25%. A very stupid exercise.
The article on the Nordstrom conspiracy appears to use a single anonymous “the source” who apparently has omnipotent information gathering capabilities across the entire US government and military.
Come to think of it, maybe Russia had a reason to blow up their own pipelines. Putin wants NATO to stop helping Ukraine. He figures that Europe can’t get through the winter without Russian gas; after all, plenty of people in the West were predicting calamity in Europe this winter. Putin also figured that those effete westerners would be afraid to even try getting through the winter without Russian gas.
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But simply cutting off the NordStream gas would leave Europe with hope that Russia, needing to sell its gas, would relent. The result would be a waiting game. Putin needed to force Europe’s hand. So he blew the pipelines to make it clear that there was no chance of gas from that route.
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There is still a way to get Russian gas to Europe: via the pipelines running through Ukraine. But that would require an end to the war.
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So maybe Putin blew his own pipelines in an attempt to force Europe to force an end to the war. Didn’t work.
———
Addition: Blowing up his own pipelines had a low probability of achieving the desired result. But the potential payoff was huge. So it was a reasonable gamble for Putin.
What did the US have to gain by blowing up the pipelines? *Nothing*, as long as Biden’s alliance held firm. It would only matter if Germany and the EU broke and decided to buy Russian gas. So the attack on the pipeline was not an attack on Russia, it was an attack on the EU. Having that come out would have been massively destructive to NATO.
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So if the US did it, it was an act with massive risks and very little reward. I don’t think even Biden’s Biddies are *that* stupid.
Right, Russia wanted the EU to suffer for (potentially) intervening in Ukraine by using energy leverage. However by the time the pipeline was sabotaged all the writing was on the wall, the EU was exiting as a Russia customer and was willing to take a hit. Russia had previously had “technical problems” that limited gas transfer and had seen to it that the gas reserves in the EU were low going in to the war. This might have been an exercise in market manipulation to keep gas prices high to fund the war effort. I just don’t think it made much sense at the time for Russia, and even less sense for anyone else.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218464): “the EU was exiting as a Russia customer and was willing to take a hit.”
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Many people in the West thought the EU was bluffing. There were widespread predictions that before the winter was over, the EU would be begging Russia for gas. Putin may well have believed the same and called their bluff. But it seems the EU was not bluffing.
The hallmark of covert ops is a false flag – have someone else take the blame. The problem is that after living in the world with acknowledged state funding for super-power sized agencies that can launch covert ops for a dictator of ballsy president, nobody is to blame when mysterious sabotage, hacks or assassinations occur. Or, there becomes a clear divide in who gets the blame, which naturally becomes whoever is trusted least among whipped up national or international political factions.
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Hersh’s article says Germany and Norway were notified at the IC level to provide cover. It was unclear whether any elected officials were notified.
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I agree that a closet full of smoking guns delivered by an insider whistle-blowing participant are needed before guilt beyond a reasonable doubt can be established. But the US is a person of interest.
So let’s see. The situation prior to Hersch’s piece was that we don’t know who is to blame for what happened to the pipelines. One possibility is that the US did it, but it seems unlikely. Now that Hersch has published, the situation is unchanged.
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Anonymous sources, especially single anonymous sources, are not to be trusted.
Destruction of the pipeline was worth $billions to the US and Norway in increased gas prices and increased gas delivery to Europe.
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Follow the money works in most cases
What can be trusted? Death and taxes. We need to do better. The US has little standing, thanks to the USIC, to claim it couldn’t be them.
“ WASHINGTON—SpaceX has taken steps to limit Ukraine’s use of the company’s satellite-internet connections for military purposes, a top executive at the Elon Musk-founded company said Wednesday.
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SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said SpaceX had worked to restrict the country from using Starlink, as the company’s satellite-internet business is called, for military purposes.
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Starlink, which provides high-speed broadband, isn’t designed to be used for offensive or defensive military operations, according to user documents. Ms. Shotwell reiterated that point in explaining why SpaceX had added the limits in Ukraine.”
. https://www.wsj.com/articles/spacex-to-limit-ukraines-military-use-of-starlink-satellite-business-11675894401?mod=djemalertNEWS
Ed Forbes (Comment #218468): “Destruction of the pipeline was worth $billions to the US and Norway in increased gas prices and increased gas delivery to Europe.”
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How does that work? Delivery of gas was unchanged by the explosions.
Ron Graf
Sy Hersh, a one-time Pulitzer Prize winning
Strike 1.
NYT reporter,
Strike 2
now the go-to man for government conspiracies
Strike 3.
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MikeM
Hersch has a reputation for spectacular but questionable stories. I am not inclined to give his latest a lot of credit.
Well… that’s how you keep jobs at the NYT and win Pulitzer Prizes these days!
Tom Scharf
It’s going to take a smoking gun to convince me of either side sabotaging the pipeline.
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Hersh’s story might be true. It’s behind a pay wall. Does anyone have a non-paywall version? (Or did you guys all pay for his subStack to read it?)
IMHO, only the USA (and maybe Norway) ever had motivation to blow up the pipelines. I predict it will some day (maybe many years in the future) be confirmed it was the Biden administration.
“Seymour Hersh Unveils the ‘Mystery’ of the Nord Stream Pipeline“
Gets a hit on Firefox
I saw the story on Real Clear Politics Wednesday as the third lead story with a fourth lead story saying White House and CIA denied it.
Visible yesterday but completely gone today.
Cannot find it at RCP search.
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No moments at The Hill, CNN ; Fox or Breitbart.
Weird
Ron Graf’s link in Comment #218453 to the Hirsch piece worked for me.
It seems that there were two pairs of bombs, some distance apart. I don’t think that is quite consistent with what Hirsch describes. But it does explain why only 3 pipelines were taken out: One was bombed twice! Or so says Wikipedia.
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Hmm. Maybe we did do it. 🙂
By Jo Nova. It was an act of terrorism that revolved around energy, but it’s also about free speech and the media. It’s a red-pill moment, and it was released on a blog, not in “the news”. Journalism lives — but it has moved.
Seymour Hersh is the same writer that broke the My Lai massacre and Abu Ghraib scandal. The veteran reporter won a Pulitzer prize and has an insider source and many details on his new substack blog. He claims The United States deliberately blew up the Nordstream pipes with help from Norway. The explosives were planted by divers in June under the cover of tine BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise. They were triggered by a sonar buoy dropped from a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane on Sept 26th, last year.
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That’s probably enough conspiracy rubbish.
Mike “ How does that work? Delivery of gas was unchanged by the explosions.”
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Not so, large increases in delivery of gas by both the US and Norway and large increase in the price for gas.
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Europe is also building LNG terminals to increase US delivery of gas.
Ed Forbes (Comment #218480): “Not so, large increases in delivery of gas by both the US and Norway and large increase in the price for gas.”
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Those things had nothing to do with the explosions. The amount of gas flowing through the NordStream pipelines was exactly the same before and after the explosions.
Ed Forbes (Comment #218481): “Some Small Corrections To Seymour Hersh’s New Nord Stream Revelations”.
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Sounds like he is saying that it could not possibly have gone down the way Hirsch says. Not that I have any reason to give more credit to that guy than to Hirsch.
Ukraine was using Starlink to control their drones, this is supposedly against the terms of service (no offensive use, blah blah). I also think they are providing this service for free(?). Whether it should be allowed is a different question. I’m guessing SpaceX doesn’t really want its satellite array to be a valid Russian target, and I think it is reasonable to restrict it if they want. SpaceX is paying for it. A pretty messy situation for them.
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Based on the literally hundreds of “watch a drone drop a grenade on a Russian soldier and kill him” videos lately on the Reddit channel, this has been effective on a small scale. Reddit has gone full war gore porn now. Yesterday they had a video of a Ukrainian soldier dragging captured Russian soldiers out and executing them point blank. It’s getting pretty ugly. The fighting is ramping up again, yet another critical time for Ukraine.
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You have been warned, it’s 99% pro-Ukraine: https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/
Tom Scharf,
wrt your comment 218451 on the ChatGPT thread about spike protein modification. There’s a piece in today’s WSJ that is germane to the subject but not specific to Pfizer.
We Still Don’t Know the Truth About Covid
Congress should establish a bipartisan national commission of inquiry into the pandemic’s origins.
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But in September 2021, a leaked Defense Department document revealed that some of the same scientists had worked together, along with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, on a 2018 proposal to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Their project? Genetically engineering rare gain-of-function features, called furin cleavage sites, into SARS-like viruses in their possession.
*****************
My, what a coincidence that a coronavirus with a furin cleavage site first showed up in Wuhan. /sarc
That gun is smoking enough for me, as if I needed more evidence.
Mike “ Those things had nothing to do with the explosions. The amount of gas flowing through the NordStream pipelines was exactly the same before and after the explosions.”
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What we have here is a failure to communicate
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Gas delivery from the US and Norway does not go through NordStream. Not saying these caused the explosion. I am saying there is a financial incentive for both the US and Norway to sabotage NordStream due to both being able to ship additional quantities of gas, and at increased prices, to Europe. Additionally, large amounts of European industry is relocating to the US due to the increased cost of European energy supplies.
Ed Forbes (Comment #218486): “I am saying there is a financial incentive for both the US and Norway to sabotage NordStream due to both being able to ship additional quantities of gas, and at increased prices, to Europe.”
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The explosions had NO effect on gas shipments.
Shipments through the pipelines prior to the explosions: ZERO.
Shipments through the pipelines after the explosions: ZERO.
Zero = Zero. No change means no effect. It is not hard to understand.
Lucia, if you get the please subscribe popup on Hersh’s Substack just select the free subscription. You can unsubscribe if you don’t want to be emailed his free articles.
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The international press if picking up Hersh’s story and also some conservative US press.
. https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream
Another possible angle is that Russia’s long term plan was anticipating a lot of political blowback for cutting off gas supplies to Europe and causing a potential humanitarian crisis, thus they preplanned this anonymous sabotage to avoid political culpability. Perhaps more for their domestic audience than outside.
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What actually happened was everyone basically already knew Russia was a bunch of untrustworthy thugs and saw this gas cutoff behavior as right in line with historical standards. It was met with a shrug, of course Russia was going to cutoff gas, that’s how Russia operates.
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Russia may have thought they had more energy leverage than they did. Russia firmly believes it can out suffer anybody, not without good historical reason. This doesn’t mean other countries will endure no pain at all. They believed Ukraine would just fold, and the EU would prioritize domestic economics above all. They were wrong and wrong.
Zero ?
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LITTLETON, Colo., Dec 20 (Reuters) – Record liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from the United States helped soften the blow to Europe from sharply lower Russian pipelined natural gas supplies in 2022, and will remain a vital energy source for the continent in 2023.
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More zero
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OSLO, Nov 15 (Reuters) – Norway’s trade surplus rose to a record high in October as revenues from its offshore petroleum fields soared, led by a spike in the price of natural gas, national statistics agency (SSB) data showed on Monday.
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The October surplus hit 84.5 billion Norwegian crowns ($9.73 billion), a rise of 60.7% from September, which had held the previous single-month record.
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With a daily output of around four million barrels of oil equivalent, almost equally divided between oil and natural gas, Norway has been a winner here from the spike in global energy prices.
. https://www.reuters.com/article/norway-economy-tradefigures-idUSL1N2S60E4
Ed Forbes,
Surely you can not be that stupid unless you are doing it on purpose. Yes, gas exports have increased from the US and Norway. That is a result of no gas to the EU from Russia. That has nothing to do with blowing up the ALREADY SHUT DOWN pipelines since the explosions had no effect on gas exports from Russia to the EU.
Mike M,
I think the issue is that as shipments of LNG increased and prices increased (due to limited supplies), the Europeans, and especially Germans, suffered ever increasing costs for the war in Ukraine. With those higher costs would come the temptation to argue for a negotiated end to the war….. and return to cheap gas, thus increasing Russian influence in Europe. Blowing up the pipelines guaranteed rising economic costs would not motivate any return to the situation of two years ago.
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Coupled with both Biden’s and Victoria Nuland’s cryptic assurances about Nordstream 2 never going into service, I think the USA is by far the most likely country to have blown up the pipelines. Eventually the truth will come out, though maybe not for a long time.
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The people in the Biden administration insist that all countries MUST comply with a “rules based international order”. With the USA and their close allies setting the rules, of course. Russia, China, India, and many others reject that rules based order and insist on acting in what they believe to be their own best interests. Note that countries rejecting sanctions against Russia include dictatorships, democracies, and communists; it is not a left/right issue, but rather about who will exercise control. The conflict is not only about the Ukraine, and will not end when the war in the Ukraine ends.
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The danger I see is the real potential for uncontrolled escalation. The Biden administration continues to threaten Russia with sending ever more advanced weapon systems to the Ukraine (tanks, artillery, surface-air defenses, fourth generation fighters), all of which Russia surely sees as escalation and a direct threat.
DeWitt,
Yes, the presence of a furin cleavage site in a virus from a family where no such site has ever been found is strong evidence covid-19 came from a lab in Wuhan. The danger is that hiding the source of covid-19 from the public will allow similarly dangerous GOF research to continue. Ten million+ lives lost, and the real potential for future catastrophe, seems to me far too high a price for virologists to continue doing GOF research. It needs to be stopped.
SteveF (Comment #218494): “I think the issue is …”
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Essentially what I said earlier in arguing that Russia is a more likely culprit than the USA.
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There are alternatives to Nord Stream, in particular the pipelines passing through Ukraine. If the EU is desperate for Russian gas, then destroying Nord Stream *increases* pressure on the EU to end the war. That is in Russia’s interest, not ours (by which I mean the stated interest of our government).
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Destroying Nord Stream was an act against the EU more than Russia. If we did it, it was spectacularly high risk. I find it hard to believe that we did it just to keep gas prices high.
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None of this pertains to Ed Forbes’s claim that the purpose of the sabotage was to drive gas prices up.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218489): “Another possible angle is that Russia’s long term plan was anticipating a lot of political blowback”
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At this point I very much doubt that Russia cares at all about political blowback outside of Russia. And inside Russia, their position is that NATO is waging war on Russia, so no problem there with cutting off gas to the EU.
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There *might* be financial blowback to cutting off gas. They have contracts with the EU. When the war ends, they will probably want to resume those contracts. Voluntarily cutting off gas is presumably a violation of those contracts and might either void them or require large compensation to resume them. But an unknown party blowing up the pipelines is probably treated as force majeure.
Mike M,
I really see zero motivation for Russia to blow up its own pipelines, but plenty of motivation for the USA (especially “internationalists” in the Biden administration). We will have to agree to disagree. BTW, I do not think higher gas pricing was the motivation. I think the motivation was to get the weak-kneed Europeans to commit to the war ‘no matter how long it takes’.
DaveJR, O’keefe’s — the monster slayer of becoming a monster, an eternal story. Sad they want to cancel him though rather than have a talk.
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DeWitt, the 2018 Eco-Health bioweapons research proposal to DARPA to engineer the FCS into SARS is old news for those that follow world-shaking revelations that get almost no MSM coverage. It came to light in August 2021, three months after Nobel virologist David Baltimore was forced to walk back his opining that the FCS was a “smoking gun.” The full picture of the evidence of lab leak is presented in “Viral,” 12/2021, by Alina Chan and Matt Ridley (yes, that Matt Ridley).
SteveF, I think you have the Nord Stream sabotage analysis spot on. Add to your list of reasoning by the Big Man was that Europe really didn’t need to be tempted to keep the ambilocal cord of fossil fuel sitting there when they all know they have to get to net zero in 20 years anyway.
Ron wrote: “O’keefe’s — the monster slayer of becoming a monster, an eternal story. Sad they want to cancel him though rather than have a talk.”
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Probably more akin to letting perfect be the enemy of good. It’s easy to say other people should handle things better when you’re not the one being lied about, dragged through the courts, and getting raided by the FBI. As I suggested, I expect his successors have bitten off more than they can chew and that will show in a decline in the “controversial” department. Some people thrive in high stress chaos. Their ability to do so results in deficiencies in other areas. Others just curl up and cry.
Rand Paul yesterday laid out a normal people’s argument for the federal government to stop acting like a foreign occupier of the USA versus the crazy argument that everything must be kept secret, like Eco Health’s 2018 proposal to DARPA to place a FCS in SARS to see how deadly to humans it might become. https://twitter.com/akheriaty/status/1624074304496492544?s=20&t=SfK6ZT3WfCondOg1PJ7ZAA
Supposedly the House Republicans are going to do some hearings on GOF. It will likely be yet another clown show like all these hearing degrade into. Why GOF should be a partisan issue is beyond me. Defend “science” at all costs is just scientism.
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Many people are concerned about the Ukraine war escalating into a nuclear confrontation, millions would die.
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7 million people died from covid, it just didn’t happen in one massive thermo-covid blast. I see GOF like the world’s population is a bunch of U-235 atoms and viral labs are busy shooting off neutrons for research of questionable usefulness but promise they will not let those neutron escape. One slipup and a massive unstoppable chain reaction can occur.
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On top of that we now learn that private industry (Pfizer) is likely doing GOF beyond regulatory reach. Instead of people being concerned about this we get flood the zone coverage of Chinese balloons.
Ron Graf,
Many years ago George Will (semi-conservative RINO) often complained that progressives were just people who wanted to “boss everyone around”…. or more accurately, they wanted to control every personal choice in the USA. Today’s Democrats are that, of course, but on mega-doses of steroids: they want to dictate exactly what everyone in the whole world is allowed to do and say (at least publicly).
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IMHO, they are a nightmarish plague on humanity, and need to be thrown from power.
Ron Graf,
“…they have to get to net zero in 20 years anyway.”
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There is real comedy to be found in almost any progressive policy, at least if you enjoy comedy of the absurd.
Jamie Raskin must be suffering from recto-cranial inversion. How is an internal investigation of the DOJ weaponizing it? I mean really!
“How is an internal investigation of the DOJ weaponizing it?”
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I don’t ever want to get into Jamie Raskin’s head but I can only think he means that investigating the spotless work of Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, etc… is harming the morale and recruitment of good social justice warriors into the department. Clinesmith. for example, was not altering the CIA email about their assessment of Page’s file folder as being one of an asset to one of a suspect for the sake of being the 26th policy violation involved with their FISA on Page. No, Clinesmith pleaded his innocence to the judge at his probation sentencing. He was simply correcting what he honestly thought was an error by the CIA. After all, how could Carter Page, a Trump supporter, be of any value to the US.
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Jeff Gerth’s Columbia Journalism Review tearing into the MSM spurred a half dozen articles clapping right back. Trump was a Putin stooge all the way they still say. The injustice is that Barr let him slip away. They almost had him on obstruction remember.
. https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-president-part-1.php
DeWitt, yeah. Getting really sick of the constant gaslighting. It’s tiringly predictable.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #218508): “Jamie Raskin must be suffering from recto-cranial inversion.”
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Oh, THAT’S the reason for the do rag he wears!
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On second thought, given the real reason, I may have just crossed a line.
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On third thought, when Congress Critters act like officious idiots, they deserve to be mocked. Cancer treatment does not provide a pass.
What can we make of Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi and other former far left Dems basically sounding the alarm against the administrative state? Has the USIC really been running information ops against the American people? If so, can it be exposed by a ragtag handful of independent reporters? If it can, will true believers that have been consuming the product ever accept that they were being fed? Will the establishment GOP, like McConnell and Graham, allow the brand of the US government be degraded by such defaming revelations? It looks like the fight that Trump started may be taken over by Dem defectors, like Taibbi.
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If you’re listening out there, deep state, Matt is coming for you.
For decades, our government at least loosely complied with legislation like the Smith-Mundt Act, which prohibits aiming at the domestic population any official propaganda “intended for foreign audiences.” However, gloves came off in recent years.
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In a remarkably short time since the end of the Obama presidency, the U.S. government has funded an elaborate network of NGOs and think-tanks whose researchers call themselves independent “disinformation experts.” They describe their posture as defensive — merely “tracking” or “countering” foreign disinformation — but in truth they aggressively court both the domestic news media and platforms like Twitter, often becoming both the sources for news stories and/or the referring authorities for censorship requests.
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The end result has been relentless censorship of, and mountains of (often deceptive) state-sponsored propaganda about, legitimate American political activity. In the Twitter Files we see correspondence from state agencies and state-sponsored research entities describing everything from support of the Free Palestine movement to opposition to vaccine passports as illicit foreign propaganda. Some of this messaging devolves into outright smear campaigns, with efforts to denounce the organic #WalkAway hashtag as a Russian “psychological operation” serving as a particularly lurid example. The Hamilton 68 story (about which more is coming) hints at this dynamic.
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The irony is the entire field of “disinformation studies” itself has the features of an inorganic astroturfing operation. Disinformation “labs” cast themselves as independent, objective, politically neutral resources, but in a shocking number of cases, their funding comes at least in part from government agencies like the Department of Defense. Far from being neutral, they often have clear mandates to play up foreign and domestic threats while arguing for digital censorship, de-platforming, and other forms of information control.
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Worse, messages from these institutions are parroted more or less automatically by our corporate press, which has decided that instead of a network of independent/adversarial newspapers and TV stations, what the country needs is one giant Voice of America, bleating endlessly about “threats to democracy.” I’ve come to believe a sizable percentage of reporters don’t know that their sources are funded by the government, or that they’re repeating government messaging not just occasionally but all the time. The ones who don’t know this truth need to hear it, and the ones who knew all along need to be exposed. -MT
Tom Scharf,
“…this is basically more stenography from the DNC.”
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Sure. Biden kept those documents willfully, knowing that he was prohibited by law from doing so. He used the documents for personal gain. There was nothing unintentional in his taking of the documents. He is and has always been a crook and a creep.
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The NYTs is still only good for disposal of fish guts; sadly, the useful paper version is becoming harder to find when you need to clean fish.
Russia’s biggest failure was not militarily but in the Ukrainians the FSB was supposed to have bought. It worked in Kherson, but they expected it to work all across the country. If that had worked as planned the limitations of the RAF wouldn’t have been made as apparent as it has been.
Russia seems to be expecting a major escalation in the coming weeks. Russia was craning pantsir onto high rise roofs in Moscow yesterday and there are active systems running at Putin’s residences. This seems to point to an expectation that NATO will be striking Russia territory as Ukraine hasn’t shown that they have the range to strike that far into russia. That’s worrisome as the only way that NATO crosses that line is if he uses a Nuke or attacks a western country directly.
SteveF (Comment #217940): “… logs for the 8 years Biden was Vice President. Whether those will ever be released to the public …”
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To at least some degree, those logs ARE public.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hunter-biden-business-partner-eight-additional-white-house-visits
Schwerin definitely met with members of Biden’s staff, but it is “unclear” if he met with the Big Guy himself.
Tom Scharf (Comment #217944),
For once the New York Times gets something right, although they avoided the word “coverup”. It is not a coincidence that Garland took action just a few days after the leak.
Mike M,
I meant the visitor logs for Biden’s personal residences, which surely exist for the 8 years he was vice president, and the last two years as president.
Ukraine forces are coming close to a full collapse. If Ukraine does not come to its senses and fully capitulate, Ukraine faces total dismemberment as Russia will not leave a hostile Ukraine to rearm and be able to fight another day.
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https://liveuamap.com/
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https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/01/ukraine-russian-army-activates-southern-front.html
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“….. The long expected Russian offensive in Ukraine has begun.
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The Ukrainian army, egged on by its U.S. controllers, had put most of its resource into the static defense of the Bakhmut (Artyomovsk) – Soledar sector of the eastern front. An insane number of Ukrainian brigades, though many partially depleted, were concentrated on that 50 kilometer long front. This left other sectors nearly empty of Ukrainian troops.”
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“ The big Ukrainian concentration in Bakhmut is now in an operational encirclement. The Russian forces have progressed north and south of the city and their artillery can easily control the western exit roads of Bakhmut. ”
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“ The Military Land Deployment map, sympathetic to the Ukrainian side, shows just three Territorial Defense brigades covering a 100 kilometer long southern defense line. These brigades are infantry rich but not mobile.”
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The first probing Russian attacks in the area were launched two days ago. The Ukrainian lines immediately broke down and the Russian forces advanced some 5 kilometer on the very first day. Yesterday they advanced further.”
Did they look under the bed?
In a shock news flash DOJ shows shocking photo of Hunter Biden shooed and feet under a bed in the Wilmington house during a search today.
“Nothing to see here” he is reported to have said.
In view of this report DOJ and Biden lawyers agreed not to search under any other beds as well.
“We are not his mother” said special counsel Ben Hur to the Praesidian Guard Press.
“When federal authorities last August discovered classified documents at former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, President Joe Biden said he couldn’t understand “how anyone could be that irresponsible.””
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CjzgWJZmtY
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Well, he certainly understands that now, ha ha. The DOJ executes a 10 hour search and even more documents found, some going back to his Senate days. What an embarrassment. The “cases are different” narrative is now in complete collapse. I’m pretty sure Biden was trying to sell nuclear secrets to the highest bidder in Saudi Arabia!!!!!! Very serious people need to address this very, very seriously. Call in the CNN panels to discuss with many a furrowed brow.
Tom Scharf,
That Biden has been pilfering classified documents since his days in the Senate comes as no surprise; he is a lifelong creature of Washington DC, and like all such creatures, acts as if inconvenient laws do not apply to him. Now that we are up to maybe 30 or 40 classified documents, stolen over decades, maybe Biden will (finally) get pushed into not running again.
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This latest disclosure makes charging Trump appear even less likely, and were it to happen, it would be incredibly destructive of the county’s social fabric….. and respect for the rule of law. Add to it all the fact Trump had plenary power to declassify any document he wanted at any time he wanted, while Biden never did, and moving legally against Trump, but not Biden, would be farcical. The DOJ needs to think very carefully about how to abandon this charade and quietly end both investigations.
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But I am not sure a partisan clown like Merrick Garland can appreciate the potential damage he can do to the country. Pray that enough people at the DOJ have the good sense to explain it to him.
SteveF
Well.. yes. They really can’t charge Trump and not charge Biden. To get that to fly they have to argue Trump’s infraction was somehow “worse”. And they have to get people to believe that is the reason for charging one and not the other. But they have no way to do that.
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Because this involves documents marked classified (whether they should be or not), they can’t just show everyone the documents to explain how some are “more important” than others. And because Biden has been doing it for freakin’ ever that makes Biden look “worse”.
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Now Trump did act like an asshole alpha gorilla thumping his chest, (because he always acts like an asshole). But that’s not really an element of the crime.
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SteveF (Comment #217955): “This latest disclosure makes charging Trump appear even less likely, and were it to happen, it would be incredibly destructive of the county’s social fabric”.
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Indeed. Unless the plan is to take out BOTH Biden and Trump.
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Secrecy as a weapon of partisan warfare (would be a better article without the first few paragraphs): https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/secrecy-is-for-losers-jacob-siegel
New thread. 🙂
The classified documents fiascos point to several conclusions one of which is there is way too much secrecy in government. Given that we know there have been high level Russian and Chinese moles in most of the intelligence agencies, our countries adversaries have much more knowledge about our elected officials histories of corruption than our voters have.
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Would the US have better foreign relations and domestic security having one tenth the security state?
Ron-
I don’t think it necessarily means there is too much secrecy. It does mean that Senators, VPs and Presidents and their offices are allowed to be pretty sloppy with these documents. That could be because many are over classified or it could be because personal involved in the system (usually ‘little guys’) can’t effectively push back and enforce the rules. And no one wants to follow up after these politicians leave office (or are approaching the time of leaving.)
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On the one hand, we do need elected officials to be able to gain knowledge of things that are classified. However, at some point, classified materials need to be collected and tracked. Certainly the papers Biden had when in the Senate should have been collected long ago.
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Taking tracking seriously might actually motivate people to not-over classify. (Or not.) But whether or not things are over classified, the location of these materials ought to be tracked at least as well as my local lending library tracks things. My local lending library knows if I haven’t returned something!!
Lucia,
“My local lending library knows if I haven’t returned something!!”
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Yup. And the fact that classified documents remain unaccounted for (for decades!) tells me that 1) the system for controlling state secrets is woefully inadequate, and 2) it is very likely that most “classified” documents should never have been classified in the first place. As I noted in the last thread, IMO, classification should be explicitly limited in time except under the most extreme of circumstances, and classification practiced as routine CYA (which is what it usually seems to be) should lead to immediate firing of any bureaucrat, or prosecution in cases of serial abuse.
Steve and Lucia, I hear you pretty much agreeing that over classification has problems. Let me add to your list.
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Keeping the people, press and congress, from being fully and accurately informed dulls policy. If public debates are robust from the outset there will be greater acceptance of the sacrifices that are realized in implementation. The counter-argument is that the public does not have the time to process complex topics and thus can easily be swayed in a shortsighted direction. In practice it seems the public is more longsighted than our intelligence state on most foreign policy examples.
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Secrecy also undermines diplomacy. Nations do not have a lot of trust in other nations that are run by an elite bureaucracy rather than by the people at large. Wars are ultimately the result of an escalation of distrust.
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As far as military technology, this should be in the shared hands of private vendors, all of whom need to be aided in maintaining secrecy. But all private businesses should be supported in some ways to protect their intellectual properties.
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I support a strong cyber security agencies as long as we repeal the patriot act and there is strong oversight to protect the 4th Amendment against government snooping.
Ron Graf
It may be true that “the public” doesn’t have time to process complex topics. It certainly is if by “the public” doesn’t have time to do that you mean most people aren’t going to be reading everything printed.
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That’s not a good reason to classify things. The entire public doesn’t need to be read or process everything.
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Some things are best kept secret for some amount of time. But the reason isn’t because the public doesn’t have time to process complex things. It’s because some information, if available, is not all that hard to process and can be used for ill.
The trade off between security and ability to function effectively is enormous.
A simple lesson in medical school on bacteria 50 years ago to illustrate.
A simple bacteria, staph albus, sensitive to all antibiotics flourishes widely as it does not damage its hosts.
Staph aureus builds up genes carrying resistance to antibiotics and causes a lot of damage.
The more genes it attracts or acquires to fight off the more antibiotic used against it the less able it is to compete with staph albus in the non hospital world.
It becomes a superbug but only capable of surviving in a hostile environment, not the normal environment.
One of the reasons not to worry about superbugs in general, only if you are unlucky to go to hospital, especially a very good hospital!
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Back to documents and security the Tom Cruise movie MI 1996 showed the highest security disc under lock and vault and lasers, who could possibly access it at all for use?
When trying to monitor people in real time it requires 40 people minimum to monitor 1 person effectively over 24 hours.
There are not enough people, yawn to monitor everyone in the world.
Third the spy industry already know most important secrets
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In Australia we have both freedom of information laws [might cost you 20 dollars a page , so much for freedom and privacy laws [provided you give the company you deal with all your information] which basically meant no-one could communicate important information to anyone else when needed.
Disastrous for the medical profession and patients when introduced and worse now.
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Exactly the same as your security listed documents problem.
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How do people cope?
By ignoring the restrictions where practicable and hoping no officious nong [Australian slang] lodges complaints.
Works except when someone wants to use the laws to their own, usually financial gain.
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Should I care if Biden had Ukraine documents when his son was being paid for by the Ukrainians.
No.
He obtained the documents legitimately.
He was free to [illegally]photocopy them on a photocopier if he wished and keep them forever if no one blabbed.
As someone else in his position said, you cannot unsee documents.
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His crime and the crime of the security services, which should not be the National archives but the forwarding agencies, secret service CIA FBI etc was in his case to keep the originals and theirs in not seeking to recover them to cross off against their records.
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This only applies to the Biden case.
Trump’s possession was known at all times[they kept those records]
and the only element was his refusal to give them back in a timely fashion which could have been quietly and legally worked through.
Did Hilary Clinton knowingly admit to willfully destroying classified documents?
If she got a pass then common sense suggests all Presidents and possibly vice presidents should just get the same admonishment, not punishment.
Angech, you added another cost to over classification that I omitted: poorer access creates poorer functionality.
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Each mishandling case is different. For Clinton she exposed the documents to online hackers. She presumably deleted copies, not originals, likely inadvertently in order to destroy other incriminating emails regarding selling influence through the Clinton Foundation.
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In Biden’s case it seems like he had originals but we don’t know if other copies existed. We don’t know why he kept them except that returning them may have exposed his theft, if that was how they were obtained. That issue is not even addressed yet.
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You accurately summarized Trump’s case. There was no reason to raid unless they had some reason to believe that Trump was going to leak or destroy the documents. They may have had to do with Russiagate some have guessed.
Thanks Ron.
There is a need for secrecy.
Witness the execution of the [alleged] British spy in the Iranian Government recently.
Exposure has costs.
But nuclear secrets? 80 years after 10 countries [?] have the bomb.
No big deal.
angech,
Uhhmmm… You clearly don’t know what might be kept secret about nuclear related weapons, tactics or strategies.
Couple of end of the day updates on the Russian-Ukraine lines. Ukraine lines are getting stretched and starting to crack.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvOzpu1ZKGA
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv8XdQYY9ek
Angech, regarding secrecy to protect spies within foreign governments, doesn’t spying erode trust among nations? How would you feel if your news showed the discovery of a CIA mole in the Australian government? Wouldn’t make you less likely to trust the US should the time come to join in Taiwan’s defense, for example?
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If we didn’t scheme against or spy on other nations what do we need to keep secret? I agree that industry, especially for weapons technologies need to be kept secret. But there are few in the government who would have any need to know the workings of an atomic switch anyway.
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I support counter-intelligence to prevent others spying. I guess you could argue that we need spies to infiltrate foreign spy agencies to help out their spies. But if that is the bulk of the purpose it seems a bit circular.
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What was the last national security secret that was compromised by spying that was not technology related? We left an awful lot of technology behind in Afghanistan just because we wrongly thought it could help them. I am sure that part of the hesitancy in shipping front line weapons to Ukraine is for the concern of handing Russians the technology.
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The only technology that we can keep without using it is nuclear weapons technology. And I think that is why the press leaked that is what Trump’s documents had (because they couldn’t think of anything else legitimate).
Lucia,
Absolutely. A consequence of this is, you don’t know what else has to be kept secret as a result. Some things might seem silly to keep secret or classified, except that not keeping them secret or classified might permit an adversary to deduce other things that actually are important to keep secret or classified. It’s not as straightforward as it might look at a glance.
Ummmm…. most classified documents have nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
Almost all government documents are restricted from the public. FOIA is a process that if you know a document exists through some other reference then you can begin to request. There is no guarantee that you will get anything, even if you sue the government, which is standard practice for FOIA.
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Congress had to make a special law compelling the CIA to release their last JFK assassination documents by 2017. First, the CIA shouldn’t have had any withheld documents in the first place. Second, the ones they coughed up were mostly duplicates of files that had been in other databases. New files were all inconsequential. But the CIA protested to Pompeo to get Trump to use executive power to halt the releases anyway. It is utterly ridiculous. The CIA might as well come out and admit that they were the culprits by their over the top suspicious behavior. They would be better to release all documents and just deny what they implicate. They do that with a straight face all the time. That’s how all the media, Faucis, Schiffs and George Santoses learned it.
One of the most fun facts about the JFK assassination is that Lee Harvey Oswald’s friend right before the assassination, George de Mohrenschildt, was a CIA informant. Here
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Even more bizarre, he also was an uncle to George HW Bush’s college roomate and worked for his father, Prescott Bush in 1940s. And, at about that same time he was known to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy as “Uncle George” when she was a little girl on his knee. Here.
Today:
Ex-FBI official arrested for alleged money laundering, Russia sanctions, taking money from former foreign agent
Charles McGonigal allegedly took $225,000 in cash from a former foreign agent while still working for the FBI.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/ex-counterintel-head-fbi-new-york-mcgonigal-arrested-rcna66995
“Federal prosecutors say the former head of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York office laundered money, violated sanctions against Russia while working with a Russian oligarch and while still at the FBI took hundreds of thousands of dollars from a foreign national and former foreign intelligence official.”
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One thing for sure, the US reeling in their operations isn’t going to stop others. The Russians stole our nuclear weapons designs and probably cut off a decade from their program, not that it makes a lot of difference now. A lot of this “doesn’t really matter” until the day it does, and then it matters a great deal.
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If the Chinese/Russians have compromised our communications or military capability then ho-hum … until the missiles start flying in a hot war (or vice versa). People are going to care an awful lot on that day.
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Knowing how to effectively jam a missile sensor or being well versed on its operational capabilities can be worth billions when 200 Chinese missiles are fired at an aircraft carrier group in the Taiwan strait.
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So you just cannot afford to not do this stuff. I totally agree there are better uses of this effort of mankind’s engineering than this circus, but I also don’t want to be rendering my services for Putin or Xi.
mark bofill,
Also, some things might likely need to be kept secret for a time. But it’s hard to go through and check that the reason is no longer valid.
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I mean… suppose one did an analysis to identify current vulnerabilities at a major event. ( Inauguration, Bowl game, March Madness, Boston Marathon, whatever.) Or you do a red-team, blue-team game to see if one team can break into somewhere. From that you learn certain things need to be protected against.
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Almost by definition there will be a window of time between when you learn the vulnerability and when you fix things to protect against it. During that time you don’t want that document circulating!!
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If the document got out, some reading it might say, “Oh. Ho hum… It’s not the nuclear launch codes.” But other people know this needs to be kept secret for a while.
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Now perhaps it should be declassified at some point. But reviewing every so often ain’t a snap either.
“If the document got out, some reading it might say, “Oh. Ho hum… It’s not the nuclear launch codes.” But other people know this needs to be kept secret for a while.”
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This is exactly the reason that the JFK assassination files have been locked up. As an example of what one can do when they collect up fragments over time one should read my second link on George de Mohrenschildt. By they time one is done with reading that page the picture is very clear what happened. But no one piece of the chronicle gives a concrete picture.
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Another example is when Lindsey Graham released the FBI 302 report interviewing Christopher Steele’s secret primary subsource. Immediately Stephen McIntyre and his band of cronies on Twitter went to work trying to fit names into the redacted blacked out area identifying the interviewee. The FBI report was thorough enough that they gave his whole history. So there were multiple blacked out names of organizations and city of birth and so on that made the job do-able. The main clue was his birth city in Russia. It was only four letters. Perm was the winner.
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I watched them crack it in less than two days.
I read a book once of the true story of the German assistant air attaché working in the DC German embassy before Pearl Harbor. He meticulously collected all the military trade publications and government reports and combined them with local news paper stories in the towns of aircraft factories to produce a perfect picture of US air production capacity. His only problem was that his superior, the attaché, did not want to give alarming or unwanted news to Berlin, so he watered it all down.
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After Pearl Harbor, when they were all deported back to Germany, that same assistant, then a captain, tried to take his intelligence to others in the German air intelligence and ran into the same problem again. He then went to his contacts in the German aircraft manufacturing and was advised to be quiet or he would be labeled a defeatist.
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Knowing it would be a matter of months before bombs would be falling on Germany he got himself transferred to Sweden, a neutral country, where he fled into the countryside after learning he had been betrayed by his girlfriend’s friend, whose husband wanted his job. He learned later that had he complied with his recall to Berlin he would have been arrested and likely sent to a camp.
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Happy ending. He made his way to Spain, a man without a country, got arrested with a fake passport, spent a year in jail and then escaped to Venezuela and eventually to the US, where he died in 1998. Peter Reidel.
Ron Graf,
Gerald Posner, Case Closed.
DeWitt,
Way too obscure.
SteveF,
I had a longer post that I managed to delete before sending. In short, it’s related to Ron’s bringing up the supposed involvement of the CIA in the JFK assassination. Posner’s book, IMO, is the definitive work on Oswald being the sole assassin. The CIA managed to bungle multiple attempts to kill Castro. That they could engineer an assassination using an obvious nut case and not be found out by someone actually rational is beyond belief.
Found something worth watching. A full movie by the Wagner group on urban warfare. Well done.
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I was expecting a propaganda film, but nothing of the sort. The only way to tell the difference between the 2 sides is by the color of their armbands. It is a typical Russian film though in that almost everyone on both sides dies. Death and destruction is the main theme in the close combat scenes with neither side giving, or asking, for quarter and that nothing changes much day after day.
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Best in Hell w/English subtitles
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4ZxWaRHhnQ
The top security document process is obviously broken and probably has been for some time if not always. We tend to give great importance and seriousness to government agencies that were never considered during the founding time. Further, agencies that are deemed to need great secrecy are relieved of the need of oversight or voter scrutiny. Whatever their purpose is said to be they cannot be said to be a part of a democratic/constitutional republic.
Being an extraneous part of government one would expect more attention would be paid to what little we know of their operations. We do know that the classification of documents is often such that it has nothing to do with secrecy but probably to cover government blunders and incompetence. How easily the Trump and Biden admistrations, and no doubt other administrations, were able to obtain and loosely store confidential documents without any system alarms tells us the system is far from a serious one.
The reactions to recent developments have been limited to political oneupsmanship and a few oh mys how did this happen which in total are void of any serious analyses.
Ken: “We do know that the classification of documents is often such that it has nothing to do with secrecy but probably to cover government blunders and incompetence.”
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DeWitt: “The CIA managed to bungle multiple attempts to kill Castro.”
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It seems the Occam’s razor default is that incompetency can explain everything. At the same time Ken argues that these agencies are extra-constitutional and lack checks. DeWitt acknowledges that the CIA secretly attempted assassination of a foreign leader multiple times. We are allowed to know this now because the CIA was told by congress they are not allowed to do assassinations any more unless there is a presidential order.
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So we are to believe that this extra-constitutional community within the government that has an extraordinary record of incompetence at national intelligence, counterintelligence or even illegal assassinations, is a necessary evil that is providing the US and the world security. I would have to ask that this at least be debated a little more. And if we are afraid to debate that topic are they really providing the type of security that we desire? Real question.
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“Case Closed.”
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That is what people that work within the community would like the rule to be on assassination. In reality there has been research on the Lincoln assassination for over 150 years.
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One does not even need to read one author’s definitive book. For those who trust themselves to have open minds the web has a lot of information. Most people are just afraid to look. Edit: Or, they have what I would say is an unreasonable lack of curiosity, considering what is known today.
Ron Graf (Comment #217971)
“Angech, regarding secrecy to protect spies within foreign governments, doesn’t spying erode trust among nations?”
No.
It is a foolish nation that trusts another to do the right thing.
If a nation is foreign almost by definition it should and is kept under surveillance.
“How would you feel if your news showed the discovery of a CIA mole in the Australian government?”
Australians are naturally lazy and trusting and generally appreciate the Americans and work with them.
I expect the CIA has at least a dozen moles in the Australian Government as a matter of self preservation, more so since we elected a left wing government.
Why should Australia be special?
Wouldn’t make you less likely to trust the US should the time come to join in Taiwan’s defense, for example?
Our Government is big on talk and small on action, I have even less faith in the Biden Administration supporting Taiwan.
The economic harm to their own economy is the only reason for China not to invade Taiwan
“If we didn’t scheme against or spy on other nations what do we need to keep secret? ”
But we do spy and need to spy.
Hence secrets like the names of American spies in the Chinese, Ukrainian and Russian Governments are high priority.
“I agree that industry, especially for weapons technologies need to be kept secret.”
Theirs or ours?
You see the conundrum of course.
The thing is we send troops to die armed with increasingly lethal weapons as a game.
Robotic soldiers and unmanned vehicles including but not limited to drones could be unleashed at any time by 5 of the top countries.
Viruses , botulinum, Hyper sonic sound waves and the Australian designed machine gun capable of leveling a city in minutes already exist but like Nuclear weapons are not used as the consequences are too severe.
Instead we send people to die in war games. Sad.
“What was the last national security secret that was compromised by spying that was not technology related?”
There is an American now naturalized Russian who could answer that.
” We left an awful lot of technology behind in Afghanistan just because we wrongly thought it could help them. I am sure that part of the hesitancy in shipping front line weapons to Ukraine is for the concern of handing Russians the technology. ”
I wish that was the case.
Third (?) mass shooting in a week in California!!!!
I read about the first one at Dance-forums.com (https://www.dance-forums.com/threads/mass-shooting-at-star-dance-studio-in-la.50347/page-3#post-1171139) . The suspect (70 yo male named Tran.)
Then the second one is ??
Third one is in Half Moon by a 57 year old named Chunli Zhao! (https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/video/california-dealing-with-third-mass-shooting-in-as-many-days/ , https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/24/us/half-moon-bay-california-shootings-tuesday/index.html )
I don’t know… I can’t find three. The Half Moon Bay one is called both 2nd and third.
Oh… The Half Moon Bay one seems to be two shootings. First one set of bodies were found. Then another at a slightly different place. All supposedly by Chunli Zhao. https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-least-seven-dead-in-californias-second-mass-shooting-in-three-days-11674531688
Worried about a gas stove ban? Here are alternatives
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“Natural gas stoves do emit air pollutants at levels the World Health Organization and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have deemed unsafe. A peer-reviewed study published last month found that more than 12% of current childhood asthma cases in the U.S. can be attributed to use of the common kitchen appliance.”
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https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/environment/gas-stove-ban-20230119-7pt7sa4kkbgrzlxc3injx72zca-story.html
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Math education discriminates against queer, trans students, prof argues
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“Luis Leyva, an assistant professor of mathematics education at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, delivered a lecture titled “Undergraduate Mathematics Education as a White, Cisheteropatriarchal Space and Opportunities for Structural Disruption to Advance Queer of Color Justice” on Jan. 4 as part of the Joint Mathematics Meetings, according to the website. Leyva argued that the mathematics field is predominantly white and heterosexual and limits opportunities for queer and trans students.”
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https://dailycaller.com/2023/01/20/professor-math-white-cisheteropatriarchal-space-conference/
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Aretha Franklin song ‘A Natural Woman’ blasted by transgender ‘activists’
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“One alleged activist group in Norway is calling for Aretha Franklin’s hit 1968 song “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” to be removed from both Apple Music and Spotify after they deemed its lyrics offensive.
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The Trans Cultural Mindfulness Alliance took to Twitter last week to condemn the ballad, citing that it has ignited harm against transgender women.”
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https://nypost.com/2023/01/23/aretha-franklin-song-natural-woman-blasted-by-trans-group/
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Jackson School Board calls for unity after trustee’s ‘whiteness’ remarks reveal division
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“Hamilton tweeted on Dec. 18, saying” Whiteness is so evil. it manipulates then says, I won’t apologize for my dishonesty and trauma inducing practices and thinks you should applaud it for being honest about its ability to manipulate and be dishonest.”
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A common thread among board members seemed to be an acknowledgement that the board’s own disagreements in the past year haven’t set a good tone for the district to properly address complex issues of diversity, equity and inclusion.”
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https://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/2023/01/jackson-school-board-calls-for-unity-after-trustees-whiteness-remarks-reveal-division.html
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Jacinda Ardern’s successor as New Zealand PM urges men to call out misogyny after ‘utterly abhorrent’ treatment she faced
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“Ardern has said that the abuse she endured as prime minister didn’t play a role in her shock resignation last week, citing instead a lack of energy after five grueling years leading the country through crisis after crisis. However, former prime minister Helen Clark said Ardern faced an unprecedented level of hatred and vitriol.
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Anti-government protesters often brandished placards calling her things such as “Jabcinda” and “a pretty communist,” and she received increasing numbers of threats from the public.”
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https://fortune.com/2023/01/22/jacinda-ardern-successor-chris-hipkins-urges-men-to-call-out-misogyny-new-zealand-leadership/
Angech: “It is a foolish nation that trusts another to do the right thing.”
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We all have to trust. We can’t travel out of our countries otherwise. Heck, we can’t go to the grocery store or dance hall. Not being able to trust is a mutual surrender of freedom.
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“If a nation is foreign almost by definition it should and is kept under surveillance.”
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I never said to put one’s head in the sand. Diplomatic corps are legitimately tasked with gathering public information, as well as building relationships with foreign leaders, both within and outside the governments. There was nothing illegal or even immoral about Peter Reidel gathering aircraft production capacity information, for example.
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We are trusting Russia not to use nuclear weapons or hyperbaric weapons while we supply light armor and debate whether we can extend that trust to supplying heavy armor.
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So, trust at some level is always present. People trust their dogs not to bite. A well socialized dog trusts people enough not to bite them. Our whole culture is built around the hope that we can build trust amongst one another. The twelve points of the Boy Scout Law are all virtues that support the first point: A scout is trustworthy.
Ron: “I agree that industry, especially for weapons technologies need to be kept secret.”
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Anchech: “Theirs or ours?”
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I think you are saying that we typically give ourselves a pass to spy on others, and don’t see it as the same offense as them spying on us. The rationale is that they are dangerous and untrustworthy, unlike us. I would then agree that even whole nations have difficulty remembering the golden rule. That really is the core of all my points.
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“There is an American now naturalized Russian who could answer that.”
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Snowden was not a spy. What he witnessed as a technical contractor alarmed him as a breach of ethics and constitutional guarantees. He did what he thought was right to expose it. I did not see Snowden or Assange’s massive releases of classified information as harming the US except in lowering their own trustworthiness amongst their people and fellow nations. The USIC blame Snowden for that. On the debate of labeling Snowden a whistleblower versus a spy I come down on the former.
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“The thing is we send troops to die armed with increasingly lethal weapons as a game.”
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There was a debate among the world’s elite after the horrors of the Great War of whether modern industrial warfare made the battlefield obsolete. It was essentially the sprouting of the MAD concept. Their answer was the League of Nations and the Council on Foreign Relations. But also they set up the Geneva Convention so that we trust there would be some limitations to the horror. How we balance trust with building trustworthiness is definitely is an important question for the future of humanity. I would venture to say it’s the most existential one.
I think it’s noteworthy that politicians and media (at least as far as I have noticed) focus on AR-15 and ‘assault weapons’ (which as best I can tell means scary looking rifles), when it’s overwhelmingly handguns (pistols) that are used in homicides. This appears to be the case in the California shootings:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-staggered-by-deadly-back-to-back-mass-shootings-2023-01-24/
Regarding Tran’s weapon:
from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/01/23/california-gunman-complained-dance-studio-instructors-said-evil/
Obviously, California needs to pass some common sense gun control legislation.
Oh wait…
“Common sense gun control” is another motte and bailey. The aim is obviously a total ban on all firearms, but they still pretend it isn’t. Recently, the CDC decided to remove a report on defensive shooting stats. It used to read:
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“Estimates of defensive gun use vary depending on the questions asked, populations studied, timeframe, and other factors related to the design of studies. The report Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence indicates a range of 60,000 to 2.5 million defensive gun uses each year.”
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Now says:
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“Estimates of defensive gun use vary depending on the questions asked, populations studied, timeframe, and other factors related to study design. Given the wide variability in estimates, additional research is necessary to understand defensive gun use prevalence, frequency, circumstances, and outcomes.”
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I doubt any effort will be put into deriving a new figure. I suspect the main problem is the answer is not insignificant, which ever way you fudge it. The police likely already have stats which would provide a good baseline.
I decided to go looking for the gas-stoves-cause-asthma paper. Here it is (not paywalled): https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/1/75
I think that assumption (1) is unlikely to be valid.
DaveJR (Comment #217994): “The police likely already have stats which would provide a good baseline.”
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The police only have stats for those cases where somebody gets shot. Overwhelmingly, successful defensive gun use results in nobody getting shot. Turns out that criminals don’t want to mess with people who are armed.
There are a huge number of academic papers that count excess deaths for their own pet causes over and over and over. The cause of death on a death certificate never says gas stove, air pollution, second hand smoke, long term exposure to lead, radon, long covid, high blood pressure, etc. etc. etc. etc.
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They all produce a model that compares reality with what their “but for” model says, which is quite dynamic in nature. Ultimately what you end up with is people’s deaths being overcounted multiple times. Some of these papers may be a legitimate best effort but my feeling is most are nothing more than paid propaganda. The media amplifies these things to fill a slow news day.
“What was the last national security secret that was compromised by spying that was not technology related?”
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NYT 2017: Killing C.I.A. Informants, China Crippled U.S. Spying Operations
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spies-espionage.html
“The Chinese government systematically dismantled C.I.A. spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward.
Current and former American officials described the intelligence breach as one of the worst in decades. It set off a scramble in Washington’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies to contain the fallout, but investigators were bitterly divided over the cause. Some were convinced that a mole within the C.I.A. had betrayed the United States. Others believed that the Chinese had hacked the covert system the C.I.A. used to communicate with its foreign sources. Years later, that debate remains unresolved.
But there was no disagreement about the damage. From the final weeks of 2010 through the end of 2012, according to former American officials, the Chinese killed at least a dozen of the C.I.A.’s sources. “
Giving small numbers of tanks to Ukraine isn’t likely to make any difference at all. These actually require real expertise to operate unlike artillery and some of the armored vehicles. At some point you just have to allow Ukraine to lose if that is what is in the cards. I’m not sure I see what the point is here.
Tom, I just recently read an article where they caught the Chinese national mole within the CIA. Hansen was the big one before that. That is why I wrote: “I support counter-intelligence to prevent others spying. I guess you could argue that we need spies to infiltrate foreign spy agencies to help out their spies. But if that is the bulk of the purpose it seems a bit circular.”
Another Crossfire Hurricane agent is indicted. If this head of the NY counterintelligence FBI office get’s convicted it will be the highest ranking official ever since McCabe was let go. This guy retired from the FBI to go to work for Oleg Deripaska, the same Russian oligarch that Bruce Ohr was working with in January 2015 and the same one that hired Steele to investigate Manafort when he came back to America to volunteer to lead the Trump campaign while secretly emailing Konstantine Kilimnick “how do we use this to get whole” with Deripaska, whom Manafort owed $19MM to. Manafort was later convicted my Mueller on charges of fraud surrounding that unpaid-back loan.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jan/23/fbi-official-trump-russia-probe-now-charged-illega/
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Who watches the watcher? I’m sure GOP house will investigate Durham’s investigation of the FBI, DOJ and Mueller to see how they missed investigating themselves. Hopefully the scope will include Hillary, the DNC, Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS, Steele, Ohr, DoJ, FBI, CIA, NSA, Obama WH, Ukraine, Biden, Mueller, Comey, Rosenstein, Baker, Schiff, Warner, CNN, NYT, WaPo.
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If the top FBI officials are working for Russia and the press doesn’t care that Hunter Biden is working for China what exactly is our confidence in the USIC to be an unaccountable secret authority protecting us? I am saying we might really be safer with more openness than less in world where secrecy is to the advantage of our adversaries.
Tom Scharf (Comment #217998): “What was the last national security secret that was compromised by spying that was not technology related?”
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Afghanistan, after we bugged out. We left behind lots of info on the Afghani’s who helped us. Some got out, some are in hiding, and no doubt many have endured very unpleasant deaths.
WRT confidence in the USIC, having 51 former IC leaders publish an open letter claiming that Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation didn’t do what little confidence I had much good. But then lying is the way of life for spies.
One of the oddities of Biden’s classified document mess is why lawyers were packing up his old office. Here is a plausible theory.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/01/24/biden_document_discovery_doesnt_add_up_148764.html
I saw a familiar name in today’s WSJ: Steven Mosher.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-there-too-many-asians-population-control-china-children-babies-family-growth-humanity-birth-rate-11674508135?st=4ufww3u5vk39te5&reflink=share_mobilewebshare
Mike M,
That sounds very plausible
And now we have TWO former VP’s who trashed Trump over classified docs and turned out to have some of their own:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/vice-president-mike-pence-discovered-classified-documents-indiana-home#&_intcmp=hp1bt1,hp1bt
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Who’s next?
Mike M.,
I don’t think attorney-client privilege would cover becoming an accessory to a crime. Lawyers are also officers of the court. Of course that doesn’t explain how Biden’s lawyers could be involved while Trump’s lawyers couldn’t.
I don’t know the specifics, but everyone who lost control of classified documents under their control has likely violated the law, with stiffer penalties for those who willfully allow others not cleared to see the information. Petraeus was guilty of this. The media goes on and on about intent but that is only part of the law.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/23/david-petraeus-sentenced-sharing-classified-information
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Lawyers who aren’t cleared shouldn’t be looking at found documents, and they probably didn’t, or at least would never admit to such.
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What this series of events (HRC, Trump, Biden, Pence) is showing is how sloppily the system is constructed with minimal traceability and little consequences for violations. There are of course many people throwing rocks in their glass houses. What’s the DOJ going to do now, another special prosecutor?
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It’s probably a good time to declare general amnesty and everyone agree to build a better system. But that isn’t likely to happen if anyone thinks there is even minimal political points to be scored.
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If the DOJ charged Trump, and not Biden, I would foresee a very quick impeachment process to follow.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #218008): “I don’t think attorney-client privilege would cover becoming an accessory to a crime.”
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I don’t think it make the lawyer an accessory. But it could be tampering with evidence.
Sounds like the Biden stories prompted Pence to bother to look. That was the responsible thing to do.
But we still have the situation where it’s clear there is no tracking. There should be some record of who has what that is better than a small town lending library!
Attorney client privilege is no longer acknowledged for Republicans. It remains to be seen if that will be reciprocated ever for Democrats.
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Mike M, you have a good theory. Mine is that aids were moving the files and then came upon the documents at the Penn-Biden Center and lawyers were called in. Since the aides likely did not have security clearances the lawyers realized that another foul had been committed, a foul that could be reversed by the lawyers claiming to be the ones acting.
Lucia “Sounds like the Biden stories prompted Pence to bother to look.”
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Tom: “It’s probably a good time to declare general amnesty and everyone agree to build a better system.”
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I think chief legal counsels are advising clients to take advantage of the circumstantial amnesty window before consequences are placed in precedent.
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BTW, Trump is still beating Biden and DeSantis in RCP polling for 2024. I predict DeSantis will rise to overtake him though.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218009)
“What this series of events (HRC, Trump, Biden, Pence) is showing is how sloppily the system is constructed with minimal traceability and little consequences for violations.”
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Good if true.
On thinking about it ,it is obvious that highly secret documents of the type described must have a recording and collecting system much better than a small town lending library.
The system is in place but the people in charge deferred, wrongly in my opinion, to their political bosses.
The Secret service knew exactly how many documents Trump had at all times.
That is why they should not have charged him, their problem if they let him keep them, not his.
Biden and Pence?
A lot of people in charge of these records in big trouble.
Ron Graf (Comment #217990)
” I never said to put one’s head in the sand.”
yet when I said
Angech: “It is a foolish nation that trusts another to do the right thing.”
you replied
“We all have to trust.”
Several points.
Firstly your two replies were generally excellent.
Secondly from bitter experience my motto is never trust.
How does one get by in life then?
I practice a surface view of trust people until that trust is abused.
Plus, where necessary, trust but verify.
All the important people in my life I give complete trust to, but remember the motto.
Nations are not friends or family and cannot , on principle, ever be trusted.
They have completely conflicting competitive desires.
The proof of this is of course they all have armies when they can.
If we followed the dictum of trusting them the we would all disband our armies, John Lennon and all.
Since you believe in having armies [presumptive of me] you cannot support having trust as nations at the same time.
Tech in me wants to know why there are still using paper over a secure device that automates deletion and retrieval. If they are using paper they need to record the creation, distribution, return, and destruction. Page by page with bates stamps. It’s clear they don’t.
angech
Uhmm…. no. Almost certainly not. You need to stop imagining every theory you dream up is ground truth.
Lucia “You need to stop imagining every theory you dream up is ground truth.”
I know I go overboard a lot of the time.
Still.
Q. In a chain of command and information who does initiate the giving of classified information to a President, highly classified information?
A. The intelligence agencies.
The Pentagon.
The Treasury Department.
Not the Tax Office.
Q. What is the procedure, once initiated by those departments and others to record what they collate and put it in a folder marked Highly Classified and who does it?
A. Not the bellboy or junior staff. The heads of department and their top staffers who have security clearance.
Q. who records it?
A. The same people.
Q. who delivers it.
The same people
Q. Is it paper or electronic.
A. Electronic.
Q. who recovers it after use?
A. the same people [note Not the National Archives].
Despite all the commentary the National Archives should have no authority to have or keep highly classified documents while they are still in a highly classified state. They are not a SKIP.
Now the interesting part.
Q. who is responsible for the supervision of the highly classified documents in their SKIP at the White House or Mar del Lago?
A. The secret service branches supplied to the President to make sure no one unauthorized gets access. Presumably the FBI?
They are recorded every time they go out of or back into the SKIP.
After the end of his presidency the FBI etc helped surveil his SKIP at Mar del Lago with full knowledge of what was in there as they put it in there or recorded who put it in there.
When the problems arose Trump had no need to tell these Services he had these documents. They were sitting on them trying to get them back.
Hence they already knew every important highly classified document including ones the National Archives are unauthorized he did not return. He did have personal papers as well the Archive was to receive but this was a matter for negotiation only, not a criminal offense.
Garland conflated the two issues to ensure he could charge Trump.
“The Secret service knew exactly how many documents Trump had at all times.”
“Uhmm…. no.”
My comment would be that if they did not know, exactly, then they are a pretty useless secret service and should be sacked.
They did know, that is the basis for the warrants to search Trump’s establishment knowing the documents were there to find and exactly where to find them.
I have a vivid imagination at times. Sorry.
Angech
First– since it’s most relevant to the issue of whether or not the Secret Service has a list: None of these are the secret service.
But you also left someone out: The president can ask for what he wants. He’s the top of the chain of command for all of those groups.
There are other agencies too.
Well…. the secret service was not on your list of those who might supply the president. So by your logic not the secret service.
Uhmmm…. Nope. They are recovering paper documents.
,
I now need to ask you a real question: Do you know the difference between the Secret Service and the FBI? Do you know what either actually do?
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I mean, there is nothing shameful in you not knowing. After all you are Australian. But you need to accept that you know practically nothing about which agency does what and how security documents are handled or by whom! Your guesses are totally wrong because you have no idea what agencies do what. Heck, I don’t think you know what agencies exist. Have you heard of DOD? DOE? (Either of them) HUD? NSA?
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Well, that might be true if it was the secret service’s job to track classified info. It’s not.
AndrewP
Well according to angech’s analysis, they are all electronic. 🙂
Angech, I think you are generally correct that the National Archive (NARA) had a good idea of what Trump had. And with the FBI’s visit they certainly had the opportunity to inventory what was there, except for documents that may have been upstairs. The Secret Service, which used to have a couple functions when it was in the Treasury Dept., now solely has the job of protecting high government officials and retired presidents. They would not be involved with classified documents except in relation to travel location’s security. But since they are under the DHS they are within the USIC and could have some level of security clearance to be tasked by the current administration to do a special task. If so, it wouldn’t be a new experience for Trump to be spied on.
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“If we followed the dictum of trusting them the we would all disband our armies, John Lennon and all.”
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Yes, in the 1980s we had the flower children grown up and demanding the Cold War be ended by unilateral disarmament -“No Nukes”. At a time when France had a socialist president and the USSR was still full strength Reagan came into office and kindly stood tall and called out the Soviet Union as evil (and illegitimate). He went on a huge re-armament campaign at the same time he negotiated mutual strategic arms reductions, starting with medium range nukes. He struck the perfect balance of toughness and trustworthiness to build toward peace. “Trust but verify” – Ronald Reagan. Just imagine if he hadn’t been battling pre-dementia. Biden just has the last part down.
Dewitt Payne, that’s not the climate Steven Mosher. It’s another dude.
lucia (Comments #218019)
the Secret Service is part of an Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland security
They are responsible for the protection of the President plus facilitating investigation of electronic computer crime plus helping coordinate other intelligence agencies.
There are approximately 18 known organizations in the Intelligence Community.
The President can ask for classified information.
He does not give himself classified information.
Yes, there are other agencies.
I mentioned important ones where most of the top secret classified documents come from.
The Secret Service has to be au fait with all classified information the President receives. That is its remit to carry out its function.
That means they must have lists.
” Q. Is it paper or electronic. A. Electronic.
Uhmmm…. Nope. They are recovering paper documents.”
You are quite right they are only talking about paper documents…
It is 2023. It is an electronic age. The documents are printed out on paper for ease of reading and ease of tracing [they all have special markings to identify who had that particular copy] and reducing the risk of photocopying or phone camera recording and transmission.
I find the distinction between where it came from [electronic] and how it was presented [we are told paper] to the recipients to be a non issue.
Anything top secret is recorded electronically these days.
It is interesting that despite the HC computers and the famous laptop no one mentions searching Biden’s computers, laptops or USB sticks [am I too old fashioned] at his home or office in this day and age.
Or did they take the Biden’s lawyers words on trust?
“I now need to ask you a real question: Do you know the difference between the Secret Service and the FBI? Do you know what either actually do?”
What with Lucy and Quantico and Jack Reacher I have at least the average person’s understanding of the agencies and what they do.
I have been following US politics with special interest for the last 6 years.
I do not know the 18 different members of the intelligence Community and their overlapping roles in great detail.
I hope I never have that privilege.
I was putting forward an outline of how I thought Intelligence would be gathered and presented to a President and others from the various agencies
“Your guesses are totally wrong because you have no idea what agencies do what”
My suppositions are possibly right regardless of which agency is protecting the President, investigating the President or spying on the President.
They are based on a commonsense approach to how I think it would work and presumably most people would think the information is put together and supplied.
I was not trying to build up a theory, If other people feel it does not work the way I said they could always explain the way they think it works.
I am comfortable either way.
Angech,
Ok. So why do you think the agency responsible for protecting the President is supposed to track documents?!
Of course he doesn’t give it to himself. That doesn’t mean the secret service does.
The Secret Service has to be au fait with all classified information the President receives. That is its remit to carry out its function.
The problem is it is not part of it’s function to be the only conduit to convey classified information to the President. So it is not in it’s remit to know this stuff.
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Perhaps. But presumably self taught with no one external to you checking if you know what each agency really does.
It is not a “feeling” about how things work. You have built a theory that the only conduit for the President to receive info is through the Secret Service. That is neither the only conduit nor the main one.
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I mean…. my husband wrote some things that ended up classified and had to read some things that were classified. The Secret Service had nothing to do with conveying it to people. I would never go so far as to say they never convey material to the President. But material simply does not need to pass through the Secret Service to get to the president!
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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2023/01/23/how-does-the-governments-classification-system-work/
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The CIA is not the “Secret Service”. The NSA is not the “Secret Service”. The Secret Service is part of HomeLandSecurity (not NSA).
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There is no need to have a CIA person with an appropriate clearnace hand off the documents to someone in the Secret Service to then hand off the materials to the president. And keeping secret documents safe is best done by keeping the number of people who handle things as small as possible. So given there is no need for the presidents security detail to handle the documents, the system is not going to be designed to insist this entirely unncessary hand off.
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You have made up a fantasy about how these things work.
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Someone may be tracking every secret document the president (and vice president) receives. But it is not the Secret Service– an agency whose principle job wrt to the president is to keep the him physically safe. As in: Keep people from shooting him, kidnapping him, blowing up the place and so on.
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Other agencies have the job of keeping track of classified documents.
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You can read what the secret service agency does here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secret_Service
It’s not “tracking documents” or “keeping the president informed about classified information” and so on. The definition of “protect” is not “keeping track of documents he reads”.
Angech, I think it’s great to have your interest in US governmental affairs. It gives us in the USA a better international point of view input to discussions here. I am sorry that our government agency diagram is so out of control complex. Eighteen intelligence agencies, none of which were contemplated in our constitution, is a lot to follow. However, if they could just be checks on one another rather than either be compartmentalized and clueless or cooperative but colluding then I would be fine with any number.
.
Here is a list:
Air Force Intelligence
Army Intelligence
Central Intelligence Agency
Coast Guard Intelligence
Defense Intelligence Agency
Department of Energy
Department of Homeland Security
Department of State
Department of the Treasury
Drug Enforcement Administration
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Marine Corps Intelligence
Office of Director of National Intelligence
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
National Reconnaissance Office
National Security Agency
Navy Intelligence
Space Force Intelligence
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They don’t list the NSC, National Security Council, which is run out of the White House. I believe the National Security Advisor sits on top of that and advises the president.
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Did I mention our president has signs of dementia? Is it obvious to the world too? Do people wonder who is running the US?
Nobody ever talks about the tracking systems. I’d speculate that a lot of the documents are simply destroyed after use and then reported as such. The thinness of the reporting on this area just shows how shallow our interests are, endless baying about politic opponents and nearly zero on how to fix the broken system. People love drama, not shredder traceability.
One of the conclusions of the 9/11 investigation was these agencies reluctance to share information. Some of that got fixed via the creation of yet another agency, DHS.
Although I have to admit. It seems a little over the top for the DOE to have their own intelligence and counterintelligence people. I mean, I know the DOE denies that they employ evil scientists who mess with monsters and explore other dimensions, and maybe that’s so. But even setting these ideas aside, it’s hard for me to grasp why existing [traditional] intelligence and counterintelligence can’t protect … whatever secrets DOE is protecting.
mark
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Of course, Hawkins National Laboratory must be Argonne National Laboratory.
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Hawkins is in Indiana, Argonne next door in Illinois.
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When the guys from Hawkins drive to the big city, it’s Chicago. Which is evidently pretty close to Hawkins.
Argonne is pretty well surrounded by a forest preserve and has a big fence around it. That’s the “light” security. Inside, the have a more secure place.
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The Physics Fossils claim they are doing physics research. But who knows what really goes on there.
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The name of the lab must have been changed to protect …. the….
Notice the article you link even admits the similarities….
https://www.energy.gov/articles/what-stranger-things-didn-t-get-quite-so-right-about-energy-department
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Nice? Oh yeah. What about this guy?
http://insidehpc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/MV5BMTQwODkxOTU0MV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNTcyOTYzNg@@._V1_SX640_SY720_.jpg
He’s an Argonne scientist. Look how he treated his employee at the “car wash”? Not so nice.
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(Actually, Marius was Jim’s boss for a brief time. He is nice.)
~grins~
A very good analysis of the current Ukraine situation
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https://bigserge.substack.com/p/russo-ukrainian-war-the-world-blood
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“… Bakhmut is an operationally critical keystone position in the Ukrainian defense, and Russia has transformed it into a death pit which compels the Ukrainians to sacrifice exorbitant numbers of men in order to hold the position as long as possible. In fact, the insistence that Bakhmut is not operationally significant is mildly insulting to the audience, both because a quick glance at a map clearly shows it at the heart of the regional road network, and because Ukraine has thrown a huge number of units into the front there.….”
With secrecy and no final regrets, there goes accountability. Over sight has to maintain secrecy as do, I suspect, any legal actions. Otherwise the secrecy is broken in this chain. This is a fundamental problem once a government operation depends on secrecy.
The system is obviously broken, but as much as we talk around the problem, the question remains: how do you fix a system that depends on secrecy. It will depend on a plea to good intentions without much of the accountability made or maintained to the public. Even with a vast majority of the people involved in the secrecy process operating with good faith it only takes a few not so operating or misusing the system to eventually cause great damage and doing it because good faith is assumed over accountability.
There are fundamental issues involved here that I do not see being discussed by the public. I am not surprised that the politicians are not doing so.
lucia (Comment #218025): https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2023/01/23/how-does-the-governments-classification-system-work/
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That is a somewhat informative article but also somewhat puzzling. There are different levels of classification. It seems clear that they are not treated the same.
So it sounds like the bit lucia quoted may be referring to the handling of Top Secret documents.
That implies that procedures are less strict for lower levels of classification. Which would make sense.
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But none of the bloviating about ‘Trump this’ and ‘Biden that’ ever makes distinctions between types of classification. I’d be very surprised if the government can not track Top Secret documents as well as a lending library tracks its books. Or if it were possible for a Top Secret document to get accidentally misfiled and end up in a box in someone’s garage. Such things would not much surprise me for Confidential documents. But all the commentary acts as if “classified” means only the most sensitive, super critical information.
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And then there is
I doubt that the markings automatically disappear. And I can readily imagine that people are not fanatical about removing the markings.
MikeM, Trump had the highest level Top Secret documents at Maralago. We do not know what Biden or Pence or other yet to be identified politicians possessed. Biden as a Senator should not have had any secret documents outside of an authorized reading place.
Tom Scharf,
“It’s probably a good time to declare general amnesty and everyone agree to build a better system. But that isn’t likely to happen if anyone thinks there is even minimal political points to be scored.
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If the DOJ charged Trump, and not Biden, I would foresee a very quick impeachment process to follow.”
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Yes and yes. Which is why I very much doubt even a political hack like Garland will press charges against Trump over having those documents.
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What he might do, with his odd combination of political motivation and apparent stupidity, is charge Trump over his fight with bureaucrats (eg “obstruction of justice”), at which point all hell would break loose. I truly hope Garland allows the special prosecutors to make their recommendations and then just drops the issue completely; I am just not sure he can muster enough common sense to do that.
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In fairness to Garland, he is not as nakedly political and utterly dishonest as Eric Holder, just considerably dumber than Holder.
Looks like the RU-486 (abortion pill) legal fight will be making its way to the Supreme Court. The Biden administration is claiming it can ignore any state law banning abortion and allow mail order sales of RU-486 to women everywhere in the USA.
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The SC doesn’t usually like its rulings circumvented, so I suspect in the end the SC will insist the Federal government has no authority to over-rule the states on a question it has just declared the Federal government has no jurisdiction over. But the SC probably won’t even hear the case until dueling Federal judges/circuit courts of appeal issue conflicting orders and the need for a resolution becomes even more obvious than it already is. That may take a year or two.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #218035): “Trump had the highest level Top Secret documents at Maralago.”
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How do you know that? Real question. There was hyperventilating about “nuclear secrets”, but I am no aware of a reliable report of what was present.
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Also, Trump says that he declassified the documents.
Kenneth,
“Biden as a Senator should not have had any secret documents outside of an authorized reading place.”
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Maybe that’s true, but he clearly did have them outside of an authorized reading place. It falls under the general heading of ‘theft’; Petraeus went to prison for this. Biden won’t.
Mike M,
” There was hyperventilating about “nuclear secrets”, but I am not aware of a reliable report of what was present.”
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That is the beauty of secret documents: leaks about secret documents can be made to hammer those you disagree with, and those people have no way to ever fight back. Its even better that Adam Schiff’s endless lies about “secret evidence” of Trump being a Russian asset. Unless a Republican President declassifies all the documents in question and releases all of them to the public, we will never know what documents/secrets any of the three politicians actually had. Think the “twitter files” were interesting? Imagine the public release of (obviously idiotic) secret documents.
Mike M. (Comment #218007): “Who’s next?”
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And the winner is … Jimmy Carter!
https://www.dailywire.com/news/former-president-jimmy-carter-once-found-classified-docs-at-his-home-report
The first paragraph is mildly amusing. The second, if true, is very concerning.
MikeM, regards top secret documents at Maralago
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/12/documents-taken-in-trump-raid-included-files-marked-top-secret-report-says.html
Kenneth Fritsch,
That is leaked information that is designed to damage Trump. That is not credible, and tells us essentially nothing.
Lucia
Thanks for the research on protocol
Information is “Delivered to the National Security Adviser [who] usually selects the most important reports for the President.”
“CIA briefer delivers the PDB (President’s Daily Brief) each morning to the Oval Office or wherever the president is.”
Since 2012 this has typically been on an I Pad or tablet.
Note it is not and has not been paper for 10 years.
Does the National Archive store the tablets and the information on the tablets or is it the CIA?
How does the Secret Service do this?
They have to and do put the PDB in the SKIF, the situation room.
Is it piled high with tablets and I Pads?
Do they transfer it to the I Pad held by the NSA guy in charge for the President who keeps it in the SKIF?
Is the NSA guy the Secret Service guy?
Since there is no paper book it is impossible for the President to write a message on it to go back to Langley.
Or did he mean there is a separate paper book that goes back and forwards to Langley?
Or does he deface a Top Secret classified document by writing on it and putting his stamp on it?
Do then then photocopy it and put the photocopy in the SKIF in a manila folder marked Top Secret?
How many of the documents are actually photocopies in this case?
If they are photocopies could the originals already be back with the CIA or illegally in my opinion in the National Archives collection?
Where are Mcintosh and Mosher when you need them?
I hope the contradictions mentioned pique your interest
SteveF (Comment #218043): “That is leaked information that is designed to damage Trump”.
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No, it is from the inventory of materials taken in the raid, which was made public with Trump’s permission. Also, it turns out that the famous photo shows folders labelled “Top Secret”, although they could have been empty, which some of them were.
Opinion: Mr. President, it’s time to go digital
Opinion by Beth Sanner
Updated 12:47 AM EST, Sun January 22, 2023
Source: CNN
Editor’s Note: Beth Sanner is a former deputy director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration, a position where she oversaw the elements that coordinate and lead collection, analysis, and program oversight throughout the Intelligence Community. In this role she also served as the president’s intelligence briefer. She is a professor-of-practice at the Applied Research Lab for Intelligence and Security at the University of Maryland and a CNN national security analyst.
This is what I figured, the “Biden team asked for his house to be searched” narrative smelled like 2 day old dead fish to me.
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CNN: Justice Department was prepared to seek warrant had Biden not consented to home search, sources say
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/25/politics/justice-department-biden-home-search/index.html
angech
No. The secret service is part of Homeland Security, not NSA.
I have no idea what most of your questions (ending with ?) relate to.
I didn’t see any contradictions in what you wrote. So…. no. They didn’t pique my interest.
It just seems mindboggling how misguided government funding can be. It’s taken three years for there to be an inspector general to report on the Eco Health Alliance contract. And surprise — the EHA failed to oversee and also failed to report the dangerous activities outlined in their funding agreement because they were getting the funding regardless of what they did under the agreement. And, they continue to get funding to this day. Sen (R) Joni Ernst is trying to stop it.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jan/25/nih-failed-track-how-chinas-wuhan-virus-lab-was-sp/
Hey, a footnote to add to my remarks above on the California shooting:
Apparently the primary gun used was an old MAC-10 pistol. These guns were considered assault weapons, as even the semi-auto versions were open bolt guns derived from the original fully automatic design. Apparently the guy had the semi-automatic variant. STILL- the gun was already illegal in CA.
mark
Is this the dance hall shooting? or the later one?
But yes, LA has stiff gun laws.
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My pro and his wife knew the dead Studio Owner.
Lucia,
This was Star Ballroom Monterey Park and then Alhambra, shooter Huu Can Tran.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64368796
Mac-10’s are in fact junk; prone to jam and inaccurate as heck. Dog ugly gun too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC-10
The fact that in the posts here there remains much uncertainty about the secrecy levels of the documents that are known to be outside the standard purview of the system, lends to my previous suggestion that government secrecy breeds more secrecy and allows for the system to be broken for a long time.
There was an article above that presented a rather benign view of his personal experience with secret documents and Presidents. A further look showed him as a long time employee of the CIA. He has a background in foreign policy and has a few publications, but when some question here the reliability of sources, I would have to question it further when the commentator comes from the world ruled by near total secrecy.
SteveF, makes a good point about government secrecy that can be leaked without repercussions and arbitrarily to fit a political agenda. This part of the secrecy system needs fundamental discussion and analysis. Unfortunately much of the Republican party has some lasting effects of a previous love affair with the likes of CIA and the FBI. In the mean time the Democrat party has initiated a love affair with these agencies because apparently the recent politicization has come down on their side.
Heal thyself sure as hell has no meaning with reference to current government problems.
It seems that in addition to levels of classification, there is also a category called “Sensitive Compartmentalized Information”, SCI. It seems that SCI can apply at any level of classification. SCI documents require special facilities, called SCIF’s. They do not leave a SCIF except under limited circumstances, usually for the use of top officials in the executive branch. I have no idea what fraction of classified documents are SCI or if all Top Secret documents are SCI.
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Given the massive number of documents that are classified and the cumbersome nature of accessing SCI, it strikes me as likely that SCI might be just a small fraction of classified documents, perhaps even of Top Secret documents. I have no idea if that is true. If is is, then it might be that what really matters is not whether something is classified, but if it is SCI.
Mike M: “I have no idea what fraction of classified documents are SCI or if all Top Secret documents are SCI.”
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Knowledge of how these things work, or even that they exist, must all be carefully guarded. Even voicing the term SCI or SCIF makes me very nervous. I’m being facetious to make the point that secrecy comes at great cost.
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Government secrecy is intrinsically anti-American and anti-constitutional. The only legitimate reasons for secrecy or deception per se are to prevent bodily harm, in the government’s case to protect individual privacy and the nation from attack. But in a broader perspective one can argue that bodily harm chances are enhanced by environments of secrecy, the opportunities for abuse it presents, and the distrust it promotes.
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This is a similar dynamic to the unintended attendant harms caused by the lockdowns designed to protect from a virus.
There has been a lot of back and forth on the current casualty ratios in the ongoing attritional battles between Ukraine and Russia.
One typical comment:
“ In military history terms the defender does not lose in an 8:1 ratio in an attritional fight. Any such claim must be treated with much suspicion.”
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My response to these is:
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“Iraq losses defending vs the US was many time higher than 8:1. Training, stockpiles, quality, and logistics all play major roles in combat loss ratios. Artillery has historically been a major strength of Russian armies going back centuries. The US relies on air power to deliver high explosives where the Russians use artillery defended by the most sophisticated air defenses in the world.
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The Ukraine battlefield is being dominated by artillery. Ukraine has been reduced to firing about 1500 rounds per day vs 20,000 rounds per day by the Russians. The west has given up on trying to match the volume of Russian artillery fire as their stockpiles have been burned up and they are reduced to only being able to supply from their very weak ( compared to Russia ) monthly artillery production amounts.
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Russian battlefield tactics is to recon enemy positions, call in heavy and prolonged artillery strikes on the spotted enemy positions, and then move in to attacked the reduced defenses.
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Almost no casualties on either side are from small arms in these attrition battles. Due to the disparity in artillery between the two sides, I would not be surprised that the loss ratio now exceeds 8:1.
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I expect the loss ratio to greatly expand as Russian counter battery continues to destroy Ukraine artillery and artillery ammunition stockpiles, making the artillery imbalance even greater over time.”
MikeM, your post could be used to make an argument for much less classification. Your “no idea” points to the secrecy of the secrecy where there is trust but no verify.
Ed.
For the love of heaven. You have been saying the same things for the past six months or more:
Nobody knows. Ukraine might fall tomorrow, and Ukraine might still be holding out a year and a half from now. You can go on posting every step of the way that the end is nigh if you like. I don’t see what you hope to accomplish that you haven’t already accomplished though.
Mark Bofill #218052)
Your comment brings up an interesting ethnic and nationalist issue. I attended a Fourth of July Celebration this summer that was given by a Vietnamese businessperson and attended mostly by Vietnamese people. My half-Chinese son (now 21) when he was younger was a very good friend of the businessperson’s son.
We got talking about a visit to Vietnam, and the Vietnamese friends of my son unequivocally told him not to say he was partially Chinese if he visited Vietnam. The Vietnamese said there was a strong animus against Chinese people. I wonder if there was some sort of anti-Chinese animus at work here by the Vietnamese shooter. Also, classifying Vietnamese and Chinese together as Asians is roughly equivalent to lumping English and Russians together as Europeans.
Another interesting tidbit is the Vietnamese language has 6 tones and Mandarin has 4 tones.
MikeM #217995)
January 24th, 2023 at 9:56 am
“I decided to go looking for the gas-stoves-cause-asthma paper. Here it is (not paywalled): https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/1/75”
I haven’t bothered to read the paper, but in my past workers’ compensation practice, I had an informal sub specialty in lung diseases. I came across workers exposed to highly dangerous airborne chemicals. Not once did I see an instance of a clear lung injury where there was substantial ventilation. Very hard for me to imagine that gas stoves, which are used sporadically and not continuously, would give off enough pollutants in the comparatively large area of people’s homes to cause lung disease.
Hi JD, good to hear from you again.
What makes you think Tran was Vietnamese? The NY Post at least thinks he was Chinese:
Well… or at least that he was a Chinese immigrant anyway.
Mark Bofill ; “What makes you think Tran was Vietnamese?
Maybe he is Chinese, but I have known a lot of “Trans” who are Vietnamese “Tr?n (?) or Tran is a common Vietnamese surname. More than 10% of all Vietnamese people share this surname. It is derived from the common Chinese surname Chen.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr%E1%BA%A7n
Mark Bofill on Monterey Dance Club shooter. I think this article proves the shooter was Vietnamese. Would also add that I am pretty familiar with many Chinese first names and have never heard of “Hu Can” In the middle of article, his immigration papers referred to his Vietnamese ethnicity.
“An immigrant of Vietnamese origin, who had arrived from China in the early 90’s, Huu Can Tran had been a regular patron at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio, as per The Independent, where the first shooting took place.” https://www.sportskeeda.com/pop-culture/news-who-huu-can-tran-suspect-california-monterey-park-shooting-allegedly-took-life
Thanks JD! I didn’t catch that the first time through.
What drives me bananas is all the very serious lectures by very serious people in the intelligence community on secret documents who proceed to selectively leak secret information (Trump selling nuclear secrets!) for partisan purposes. Where are the selective Biden leaks? It’s gotten to the point where I think the media should be compelled to give up anonymous sources of secret information in this type of situation. These IC people (or people who were entrusted to keep this info safe) are being protected while spreading unverifiable misinformation in many cases.
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Sometimes I wonder if the IC has become the 4th branch of government. The community has serious responsibilities that are being betrayed by bad actors IMO.
Apparently Ed was never read The Boy Who Cried Wolf as a child. The updated version is apparently The Man Who Cried Big Bad Bear.
I got a laugh out of this report from PBS on gas stoves. My God, what has happened to science reporting in the media?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgnIR18Te5Y
Tom Scharf (Comment #218066): “The Man Who Cried Big Bad Bear”.
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🙂
Tom Scharf: “Sometimes I wonder if the IC has become the 4th branch of government. The community has serious responsibilities that are being betrayed by bad actors IMO.”
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Where could we draw the line and more importantly how would we enforce it? I would suggest to cut 10% from each agency and spend half of it on expanding the office of the IC IG. Also, there needs to be accelerated removals and prosecutions by a standing IC special counsel. An out of control IC is an existential threat to the country.
Ron Graf (Comment #218055)
“Mike M: “I have no idea what fraction of classified documents are SCI or if all Top Secret documents are SCI.”
Even voicing the term SCI or SCIF makes me very nervous.”
me too.
We can talk about it a bit, which is good in a free society.
It also means we do not really understand what is happening.
I guess I hope a lot of people read the comments here because it should make people think about the society they want and how to achieve some sort of fair balance.
Funny how it works. News comes out such and such is considering a ban on something ridiculous. Immediately issues a correction. Just a mistake. Media mostly laugh, call BS, and chide people for taking it seriously. Then begins a drip drip effect, maybe a ban is justified. Look, this convenient research released just a few weeks before “the mistake” proves we need to ban these things. Won’t you think of the children and all the queer people of color?
The only real motive for banning gas stoves is to stop people from burning natural gas. There is no credible reason based on health. Gas has ALREADY been banded in several (lefty controlled) cities, and the motivation has until now always been clear: deduce the use of fossil fuels. The dishonesty of the green left is obvious and shameless.
Regarding the SCI thing, I’m getting confused. I thought we were being facetious before. Sensitive Compartmentalized Information is a standard term that I’m quite sure was covered in the insanely boring mandatory security training I have to sit through every year and that hundreds of thousands (might even be millions) of perfectly ordinary people just like me are exposed to. I could talk intelligently about it if only I’d turned off autopilot and paid the slightest bit of attention to the material, but. It’s not an esoteric hush hush thing that nobody knows about. It’s just ..obscure by virtue of being extremely uninteresting I think. Pretty sure anyway.
Shrug.
A big problem is as James Comey would put it … the “Higher Calling” problem. People with access to certain information such as Snowden believe they have a noble cause that exceeds their previously signed up for responsibilities. My view is that if you think you might be subject to the higher calling exception, then you need to not have access to high level information. Many people in the IC obviously thought stopping Trump was an exception to their responsibilities, and soon enough it has morphed into anyone who disagrees with their political ideology.
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As for engineering it is entirely possible to build very complex platforms (satellites, ships, planes, etc.) with 99.8% of everyone on the program not understanding their true capabilities. You get handed a low level spec. The Chinese have basically infiltrated most defense companies by simply sending huge numbers of students over and getting them hired into defense agencies. A long term infiltration program will have multiple generations, forged documents, etc. that allow better access. The Russians are serious, but the Chinese are very serious and much more committed to long term exploitation.
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Not to put too fine a point to it, but the Chinese steal everything, everything. Shared IP is basically part of their culture, they don’t even think it is wrong for the most part. They just suck up everything they can put their hands on and worry about specific exploitations later. The CIA is more targeted. It’s a different game as there isn’t currently a whole lot the US needs to steal from China, but those days may very well come in the future. We do want to know how well the Chinese systems work and what their vulnerabilities are.
Mark, I was being facetious. An article in Wa Po says that it’s estimated that 90% of classified material does not need to be, this despite a 2010 Reducing Over-Classification Act. Over classification is the clearest metric of the CYA doctrine.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/16/too-much-classified-material/
Thanks Ron.
NPR discusses potential restrictions to GOF research.
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When is it OK to make germs worse in a lab? It’s a more relevant question than ever
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/01/27/1151867224/virologists-science-oversight-risky-experiments
“Over 150 virologists have signed on to a commentary that says all the evidence to date indicates that the coronavirus pandemic started naturally, and it wasn’t the result of some kind of lab accident or malicious attack.
They worry that continued speculation about a lab in China is fueling calls for more regulation of experiments with pathogens, and that this will stifle the basic research needed to prepare for future pandemics.
The virologists issued their statement just ahead of a key meeting Friday held by outside advisors to the federal government. That group is set to wrap up a recent review of the existing oversight system for experiments that are controversial because they could create new potential threats.
The advisors’ draft recommendations call for expanding a special decision-making process that currently weighs the risks and benefits of experiments that might make “potential pandemic pathogens” more dangerous.”
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I’m triggered by the use of the “no evidence” canard every time I see it now, what follows that phrase is usually a distortion. Open letters are almost always an attempt to make an unpopular opinion seem like it is supported.
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After seeing this BS for years, you can now just easily read between the lines.
“Felicia Goodrum, a virologist at the University of Arizona, says that open-minded experts have investigated the origins of the pandemic. The available evidence, she says, supports the notion that the virus emerged from nature
“The evidence that we have to date suggests that SARS-CoV-2 entered the human population by that route,” says Goodrum. “There is no evidence to the contrary or in support of a lab leak, nothing credible.” (anyone who disagrees is by definition close minded, and there is evidence to the contrary, and they have never found the alleged animal source)
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“Basic research on viruses, she says, is what led to the swift development of vaccines and drugs to fight the pandemic.” (but not GOF research)
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The good news here is that it looks like there may be more oversight, but I’d prefer this area of research gets globally banned.
Tom, the constitution is a legitimate higher calling. If not then the Nuremburg prosecutions for people “just following orders” were wrong.
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Snowden should have been able to safely blow the whistle on wrongdoing. But when the entire top of most federal departments are captured by political corruption then there is no place to blow the whistle to but the public.
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The higher calling of a foreign entities interest is never legitimate unless one’s whole government is corrupt, which is every citizens job to combat from happening.
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In order to fight corruption we need transparency, which is direct conflict with government secrecy. As I said before, IP is a separate matter and is mainly the private domain’s responsibility to protect.
Tom,
Regarding GOF, have you seen these?
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2023/01/26/watch-project-veritas-confronts-pfizer-director-and-all-hell-breaks-loose-n694415
https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2023/01/27/google-is-doing-its-best-to-censor-the-project-veritas-bombshell-sting-on-pfizer-executive-n694613
..
I don’t think there is much ‘there’ there. A Pfizer guy reporting on a speculative meeting where Pfizer gave consideration to the idea of deliberately ‘mutating’ COVID to stay ahead of the curve, so to speak. He went absolutely berserk when he realized he’d been taped though, but that’s not necessarily proof of anything except that maybe this particular guy is a bit of a wierdo.
The problem is you can’t have a bunch of individuals making independent decisions on publicly releasing secret information that they disagree with. Half of these people are legitimately crazy to start with so you end up with a non-functioning system. There needs to be penalties.
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Snowden is an interesting case, there was some legitimate wrongdoing here but I don’t think he tried very hard to handle it internally as I recall. Snowden ending up as a guest of Russia didn’t help his case much. I would respect Snowden more if his upright morals had him taking a jail term for his exposures. That’s believing in your own noble cause. He would likely have been released or pardoned by now if he would have stayed.
That Project Veritas video was nuts. That guy absolutely panicked and lost composure. I do actually feel kind of sorry for him because he was targeted in a sting operation, but he did not handle it well and it looks like a parody of eleven different culture issues all at once.
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Pfizer is going to need to make a statement to clarify this, and I’m guessing his future at the company isn’t too rosy. “Directed evolution” is not GOF, ha ha.
mark bofill (Comment #218079): “I don’t think there is much ‘there’ there.”
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Indeed. A guy exaggerating in order to try to impress a date. I am pretty sure that has happened before.
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If what he said was not mostly BS, then his career at Pfizer is probably over. If it was mostly BS, then his career at Pfizer is probably over.
Yup. If he had shrugged and walked away it’d likely have been a whole lot better. That was quite a spectacular meltdown he had. I can think of several ways of looking at it and none of them bode well for the guy’s continued employment.
I’m not going to pretend to tell Memphis how to run their city, but to basically advertise and then release that video of an alleged police beating on Friday night doesn’t seem wise to me. It may be normal to dump bad political news at Friday COB but I don’t think this falls into that category. Also the police force isn’t likely to want to defend against a riot if they view their own were just thrown under the bus, hope they have the National Guard on speed dial. It may very well be that the officers deserve to be charged, we shall see.
Yeah. We know the cops were black. But it was still racism. But even though it was definitely still racism, other things. But: racism.
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For anyone who still has any brains in their heads and needs those brains dissolved and drained out through their nostrils, this article will definitely get the job done.
Now excuse me, I gotta go clean up the dissolved brains that dripped onto my shirt…
The Twitter Files this weeks uncovers the source for a lot of “Russian Disinformation” media stories, a Twitter account called Hamilton68 that used a secret algorithm to detect what was Russian linked misinformation. Twitter (to their credit) reverse engineered it and found that the accounts they used were mostly just ordinary accounts that were just right leaning or people with hardly any followers. Basically it was a political site to shmear right leaning themes as Russian propaganda.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1619029772977455105
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Interestingly they tried telling reporters off the record the account’s algorithms were completely bogus but the reporters were not interested. Twitter tried to force Hamilton68 to release their sources but they never did, and Twitter never released them although they considered it.
Tom Scharf,
I rather suspect Matt Taibbi is going to become a top target for attack from the lunatic left.
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The weird thing is: he is an absolutely mainstream (Clinton/Obama) liberal. If a mainstream liberal is no longer allowed under the Democrat tent, then that tent is in danger of housing only crazies and totalitarians…. which sadly, seems in fact to be the case.
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Musk spent his $44 billion to control Twitter, most of which I expect he will ultimately lose. We’ll see if that was a worthwhile price for a measure of honesty. One thing is clear: nobody in the MSM is going to report on the abuses that went on at Twitter (and no doubt the other social media sites), any more than the MSM is going to report on the blatant corruption/influence peddling of the Biden family.
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I think we have reached a ‘watershed moment’, and it is not clear if the public will or will not continue to accept the lies/distortions/misrepresentations of the MSM over the political corruption of the ‘intelligence agencies’. The pleadings of folks like Taibbi, Shellenberger, and Greenwald help, but it may not be enough to be heard above the left’s ‘megaphone’ of the MSM.
It makes no sense that the Memphis video would cause riots. Unless of course people just want to riot. The cops are getting the book thrown at them.
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Memphis PD would seem to have no choice but to release the video. So scheduling it (sometime tomorrow, I think) might be the best option. I think they are trying to get pastors and other community leaders to get out in front to keep things peaceful. The dead guy’s mom is publicly asking for no violence.
I’m only commenting on the timing, Monday morning would be better IMO. The media will be there in force waiting for the riots tonight. It will be interesting to see if they do riot, is it about race, police abuse, police accountability, just opportunistic mob hooligans, all of the above? I find this situation hard to predict.
Tom Scharf: “I would respect Snowden more if his upright morals had him taking a jail term for his exposures. That’s believing in your own noble cause. He would likely have been released or pardoned by now if he would have stayed.”
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I thought that from the beginning, but after the degree of USIC corruption we witnessed since then I don’t really blame him that much. The guy who pepper sprayed Officer Brian Sicknick just got 80 months in jail. Many people without criminal records get less than that for 2nd degree murder.
After the IG report that blasted NIH’s oversight of the Eco Health grant they just passed an expanded definition of the prohibition on GOF research.
Thank goodness.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218089): “is it about race, police abuse, police accountability, just opportunistic mob hooligans, all of the above? I find this situation hard to predict.”
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It is about insurrection. Antifa is organizing riots in cities across the country.
The pole camera here shows most of it clearly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn-J94qXAqY
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It was definitely an unnecessary and malicious beating. Clearly job termination behavior. The kicks at 2:18, 4:06 and striking with the baton at 3:00 are just ridiculous, it boggles my mind that they would do that with bodycams on. Really? For a traffic stop? They could have just cuffed him and put him in the car.
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I’m not sure I really see where there is intent to murder here, it was more of an unintentional homicide during an unprovoked beatdown IMO, but it is without a doubt criminal behavior from the cops if I’m on the jury. The ones who struck him when he was defenseless are going to go to jail, the others I’m not so sure about. They definitely didn’t stop it.
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This was shameful.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218093): “Really? For a traffic stop? They could have just cuffed him and put him in the car.”
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It was not just a traffic stop. The cops pulled him out of the car, as if they had reason to believe that he was dangerous. Why has not been disclosed. They tried to cuff him, he put up a fight, got away, and led the cops on a chase. It seems they then decided to wait for him to come back to the car, then another big struggle. Pepper spray seemed to be having little effect on him. Maybe a TASER also. The tox report might be interesting.
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None of that excuses a beat down after he was secured.
Thanks for the video link, Tom. I saw here what I didn’t see on TV, how they really cold cocked him a couple of times after he was cuffed. Those were heavy weight blows after he was already likely concussed. It’s also perplexing to see the white medic arrive at ~10:00 and set down his medical bag and just stand around for ten minutes talking with the officers as Nichols slowly fades. They are checking with him to see him conscious but that is not a medical check. Finally and ~20:00 the medic starts treating him with what might have been an injection after he fumbles putting on gloves for 2 minutes. Then the stretcher is wheeled over at ~26:00 and they still don’t put him on it. Then the ambulance seems to get impatient and pulls up right in front of him at 30:00 but we still never see them not load him before the video ends at 35:00.
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The picture from the hospital bed on TV looks like he had a burst jugular, as there was a massive bruising from his very swollen neck to up to his eyes on his face. He could have also died from brain bleeding or pressure from bleeding outside the brain in the dura. His death was just as much caused by poor medical attention imo than the beating. Of course, we don’t know the toxicology report, (if there was one).
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The cops responding to Paul Pelosi were not much better trained. But the medical treatment surely saved him.
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I give great credit to Nichols’s mother and step father imploring people to stay peaceful for Terry’s memory and for the community. Hope it works.
The four cops will all be convicted of 2nd degree murder. I doubt the DOJ will jump in with federal civil rights charges. The DOJ is a political enforcement arm for Democrats, and civil rights charges wouldn’t have the same political impact as in the George Floyd case, even though the cops’ behavior seems far more egregious in this case.
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My experience: young men who want to be cops are often pretty scary, and exactly the type of person you don’t want being cops. Beat-downs like this, and excessive police force in general, are the too frequent result.
My impression of those Memphis police who murdered Nickols were that they were poorly trained and probably badly selected. The responsibility there has to be with the police department and the city government. Until responsibity is correctly placed (which often would be on Democrat run cities) these incidents can continue.
The involved police should all be prosecuted to the limits of the law. With that many police involved in this incident there would appear to be a group mentality involved here. Memphis has a very high crime rate which again is typical of Democrat run cities. The emotional over reaction of those policeman is evidence of some larger underlying problem in Memphis law inforcement.
Typical of the understanding of these police incidents, and that includes the MSM, was shown in an ESPN interview with an NBA player who was touting the line that the “billionaire” team owners have the greatest responsibility in speaking out and resolving issues like these and much more so than the NBA players (who incidently are at least multi millionaires). He is probably a Democrat much like most of the media where partisan ignoring is a big part of the message.
Footnote: If Republicans ran big cities without political competion the cities problems could well be the same, but given the current partisan divide the situation would surely be reported differently and responsibility better assigned.
It is unclear why this kid was removed from the car in the middle of an intersection. I read it was reckless driving, but that doesn’t usually involve a dangerous extraction in traffic. No probable cause has been uncovered. There is probably more to the story here but they have had 3 weeks to make this look more justifiable and nothing has been reported. They may have thought he was somebody else or were executing a personal vendetta. I doubt they will get much sympathy from a jury.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218098): “It is unclear why this kid was removed from the car in the middle of an intersection.”
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We only have one side. That sure looks bad, but judgement should be suspended until the defense has had its say.
The media is heavily reporting/implying that the defendants responsible for Sicknick’s death were sentenced … ahem … fact check:
“(Judge) Hogan said Sicknick’s death was the “elephant in the room” but stressed that the coroner’s report didn’t give him any basis to use that as a sentencing factor against him.”
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As far as I know this autopsy has never been released, even during the trial which is a bit bizarre. The judge apparently has it. This continues to smell rather fishy as well and looks to be buried forever. My speculation has been that the toxicology report probably has something worth hiding. I’m seeing the ever present lack of media curiosity once a preferred narrative falls apart.
You normally don’t want to have a trial by public opinion before a criminal trial, this may be a case where that is warranted. Public perception is getting very hardened right now. The Ferguson case fell apart once the gentle giant was seen robbing the convenience store. Irrelevant of a future discovery of an initial justifiable stop it looks like the subsequent beating will never be seen as anything but criminal. Body cams and surveillance are good things.
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There could be some legitimate debate about how that beating ended up resulting in death. Apparently the guy had a cardiac arrest later. I’m no expert but I think that type of beating is survivable almost all the time. Perhaps that baton hit was to a critical area. The officer spent some time lining it up, pretty disgusting really.
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The taxpayers of Memphis will be paying dearly for this one.
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I would agree with Ken that this type of allowed behavior would show there is a culture of abuse in the department. If none of the cops had a problem with that in the first few days then it would seem a major overhaul is necessary in that department.
Tom Scharf: “As far as I know this autopsy has never been released”
It has, here are the pertinent findings by the medical examiner.
In an interview with Wash Post the examiner stated:
that “the autopsy found no evidence the 42-year-old officer suffered an allergic reaction to chemical irritants, which Diaz said would have caused Sicknick’s throat to quickly seize. Diaz also said there was no evidence of internal or external injuries. Diaz said Sicknick suffered two strokes at the base of the brain stem caused by a clot in an artery that supplies blood to that area of the body. ” https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca…b-afbe-9a11a127d146_story.htmlNotwithstanding this the federal judge stated that Sicknick’s death was “The elephant in the room” and noted that the Defendant didn’t apologize . [on advice of Attorney because he is being sued by Sicknick’s family]
Also, members of Sicknick’s family were at the sentencing falsely blaming the defendant for Sicknick’s death in line with their frivolous lawsuits. [that may succeed because of public opinion and ignorance] https://nypost.com/2023/01/27/julian-khater-sentenced-in-attack-of-capitol-cop-brian-sicknick/ Somewhat understandable that they might want to profit from the tide of leftie ignorance and prejudice, but wrong nonetheless.
Disgraceful that the federal judge ignorantly mentions any potential causal connection between the bear spray and Sicknick’s death. No relationship at all.
jd,
Yes, the autopsy results were paraphrased and the important conclusions were released, but my understanding is the official autopsy report is almost always available in criminal cases and it was withheld here for reasons unknown. I vaguely recall an FOI was made for it and was rejected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Brian_Sicknick
“It took more than 100 days to release these results from the January autopsy.[25] The full autopsy report was not released to the public.[31]”
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A more mundane justification for not releasing this report is the Capital Police’s desire to have Sicknick recognized as dying in the line of service for benefits, etc.
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The judge criticized the defendant for not apologizing to the officers (no remorse!) but the defendant said his lawyers told him not to because of the pending civil lawsuit. Catch-22.
When police beat a defenseless person it does not matter what the person is suspected of doing before the encounter. If that person dies it is murder. If we want to talk about a rush to judgment in these cases, the police actions were the fastest and worse rush to judgement I can imagine.
I looked up baton use guidelines for police, you aren’t supposed to target the head or neck area with a baton unless use of deadly force is necessary. I reviewed a few online and they all basically say something similar:
“Restrictions. Although batons are considered less-lethal weapons, they can cause serious injury or death. For the safety of everyone involved, the following additional restrictions apply:
1. Head and Neck Strikes. Members will not use batons to intentionally strike a subject in the head or neck except when deadly force is justified.”
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If you look at the video the cop is definitely intentionally targeting the neck. This guy is definitely going to jail for a long time. It does look like they were having a hard time getting cuffs on him.
Why we still need the Second Amendment, contd.:
The ATF staged the original raid in Waco to try to improve their image after murdering three innocent people and a dog at Ruby Ridge. And now we also have well armed DHS agents to complement the incompetent thugs at the FBI and the ATF.
But you can trust your government to protect you! /sarc
Tom Scharf 103 “A more mundane justification for not releasing this report is the Capital Police’s desire to have Sicknick recognized as dying in the line of service for benefits, etc.”
Didn’t realize that the actual report wasn’t released. Don’t know how it could possibly not be subject to FOIA. Should be released in the context of civil trials. I agree with your reasoning as to why not released. If it helped Sicknick family, it would have been done.
DeWitt,
Janet Reno was an incompetent fool, with the judgement of a six year old. She made all the decisions that ended up killing 26 children and 45+ adults at Waco. How she even stayed in office after that is something I never understood. That she was so shameless over the remainder of her years, even running for public office, in spite of killing all those people, describes her more clearly than anything else. What a horrible person.
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The problem with those who want to take guns from citizens is they are more than happy to have the Federal government use guns on those citizens. Control and power is what it is always about.
Ken, I agree with you, I can’t think of a scenario where any of the police’s actions were justified, from pulling him out of the car to hitting him. The fact that part of the abuse was knowingly recorded on body cam is puzzling as well, although I noticed that the worst abuses were only captured by the pole cam, which the officers apparently were not aware of.
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SteveF, I was no fan of Janet Reno, but I give the majority of the responsibility for the death to David Koresh. He stockpiled the arms, shot and killed the ATF agents outside and held non-combatant women and children in the standoff after the killings.
Never again: How a ‘lesson of 2011’ shaped Biden’s no-negotiation stance on debt limit
The Obama-Biden White House agreed to negotiate with Republicans on the debt ceiling. It brought the U.S. economy to the brink of disaster — and the president and vice president vowed to change their posture.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/debt-ceiling-deadline-biden-negotiate-2011-near-default-rcna67854
“They agreed that going forward, “Nobody can use the threat of default or not increasing the debt limit as a negotiating tool,” said a former Obama official involved in the fiscal discussions, who recounted the Oval Office meeting and the “lesson of 2011” they all discussed. “It made you hold your stomach. You couldn’t believe you were at this situation,” the official said.”
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Yes, well. We cannot allow another branch of government to use one of the only tools they have to force financial sanity into our system, the administrative branch are the kings after all. The balance of powers thing is so 2011.
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I think we have spent quite enough over the past few years. What is another permanent student debt relief, or endless rent relief? People need nice things! We can’t possibly actually negotiate with Congress on budget, that is literal insanity. What could possibly go wrong with infinite spending? Debt doesn’t matter, Nobel winning economists say so (at least when their preferred party is in charge). Can’t somebody write an open letter saying so?
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I’m inclined to let it burn down with this kind of attitude.
Someone tried to catfish me on facebook!
For several reasons, I knew they were probably a catfisher from the first “hey” in messenger. But I wanted to see how it would go if I responded.
It’s pretty funny
(a) to see how obvious the catfishing is provided you know there are people who catfish and
(b) google afterwards and find the very close matches some exact matches between things they say and a “Nigerian Scammer Playbook” script.
The NIgerian Scammer playbook is here:
https://archive.org/stream/6544402-Nigerian-Scammers-Playbook/6544402-Nigerian-Scammers-Playbook_djvu.txt
My catfisher wrote
The playbook version is
Quite a mouthful for an exact match, eh?
My catfisher
Scammer playbook version:
And so on.
Notice how poor the grammar is. Initially this guy claimed he was with the Marines in Somalia. Later that changed to with the UN in Somalia.
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(For those wondering what is going on…. google “Romance Scams”. There has been an explosion. Usually these guys operate on dating sites. But for some reason, this one decided to send me a “hey” out of the blue. A friend of mine encountered a scammer during Covid. She caught on when he suddenly claimed to be stuck in another country and needed her to wire him $30K to get out of the clutches of some deluded authorities. . . At that point, she was like, “Whoa Nelly! This guy ain’t real!!!!” Unfortunately, some people send money.
Anyway, why this guy is operating by contacting people out of the blue on facebook messenger, I do not know. But perhaps the dating sites have begotten good at blocking them so they need new turf? Dunno….)
If you are wondering if he is still trying to scam me: Yep. If there is sufficient interest, I can post the whole discussion and his tweak in strategy.
The Memphis five were part of a special unit that was assigned to violent crime. The incident started with a traffic stop. I have not heard any explanation from the police department or the city government about this seeming puzzle.
I have heard that a group is being formed to investigate the incident and thus details of the incident can delayed with the hopes of disassociating the police from city government. And why not, these tactics have worked before.
Ron Graf (Comment #218110): “I can’t think of a scenario where any of the police’s actions were justified, from pulling him out of the car to hitting him.”
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The fact is that we don’t know. Why were there four cops at the traffic stop? I would guess it was because of something that happened prior. Maybe the cops had reason to believe he was a fugitive. Maybe his driving was so crazy that they thought he was wigged out on drugs; his subsequent behavior might support that. Maybe they stopped him and he drove off, then when they stopped him again they weren’t going to give him a chance to do that again. We don’t know.
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After they got him out of the car he fought like crazy and got away from four cops. It seems they tased him and maced him to little effect. If you try that, you will end up with a bunch of bruises (and maybe worse) by the time the cops get you under control. Again, we don’t know.
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The one thing that seems inexplicable is pounding on the guy after he was cuffed.
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Officer Sicknick was killed by a rioter who bashed him over the head with a fire extinguisher. Oh no, he wasn’t. There have been many such cases. So I will wait and see.
Pro Ukraine site but very well done analysis on a number of issues
PRERUN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9xQf8LQgCU
Ron Graf,
You are far more generous with mass murder than I. There were multiple options open Reno that didn’t involve killing people. Yes, Koresh was a psychopathic lunatic. In a sensible world, people would do their best to limit his harm. That was the opposite of what Reno did. She chose the wrong path at Waco every time. Instead of de-escalating, she chose escalating. Instead of simply waiting them out, she chose to precipitate the final confrontation that killed a bunch of kids.
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Were I a Christian, I would have the comfort of knowing that she suffers in Hell; but I am not. She got away with mass murder, and never suffered any significant consequence. At least the good people of Florida saw to it she was never elected to public office.
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IMHO, Janet Reno was an absolutely horrible person.
Lucia,
You should email him that you’re extremely interested in meeting, but that you’d need him to float you $800 bucks for a few days for a plane ticket.
I’m with Steve. I never forgave Janet Reno for Elian Gonzalez, either.
mark,
When he told me he was with the Marines in Somalia, I wrote
“I’m glad I’m not in Somalia!! Not enough sun screen in the world for me to ever want to go there.”
I think that’s true. Though right now, there are other reason to not visit Somalia.
I’ve batted around ideas for what to say if he does ask me for money. I told Jim I think I’ll say my deceased husband tied up all the money in a trust and my trustee won’t allow me control of my own money! I just send the bills and he pays them. I’ve used my small allowance of “mad money” up for the month. 🙂
But really, I think I exchanged enough with the guy.
Fair enough. My personal preference is to insist that they need to send me money to get whatever ball they want rolling in motion, but it’s not like I’ve ever collected a dime that way anyway.
mark,
Actually…. you don’t want to collect any significant money from the Nigerian scammers either. There ARE some scams that use the duped people to unwittingly launder money!
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Mind you, $800 is small potatoes in the money laundering biz. But if you send them your details, you never know what they might send you. ( So definitely don’t give them a bank number to deposit $$$$ into.)
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The main advice if you think they are a Nigerian (or similar) scammer is to stay away….. But when I got a message saying “hey”…. I wanted to see what they would write.
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The guys kinda sorta lost interest after a day.
I’d told him I was going out. He asked me where. The next morning I told him I’d gone dancing and asked him what dances he danced! I suspect someone with a decent social life may not be his target.
But I say “kinda sorta” because actually…. he set up an entirely new facebook page and THAT sock puppet has asked me to friend them. Not going to do that.
Mark–
For your enjoyment, check out the profile pics at
https://www.facebook.com/vito.magrone.3
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100085677339460
Similar?
The first page used to belong to Vito Magrone. But it got hacked away by ‘Victor Davis”. I did follow Vito Magrone — he owned a dance studio around here which closed during Covid. The fact that “victor davis” has a facebook url that contains the name vito.magrone.3 is sort of a big flag that he’s a hacker. (Other flags have happened since. Many.)
The second one…. well… that one has asked me to “friend it”. But it has the same dang profile pick.
Anyway, you don’t want these people sending you money either. Not. Safe.
LOL. That is awesome. Thanks Lucia!
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And thanks for the warning. I’ve only been contacted by people wanting to run scams a couple times in my life and the idea of forwarding me money was a complete non starter for them. And embarrassingly I have to admit now that I’d likely have backed down if they agreed, now that I think it through. That’s no fun. :/
Mark
I suspect if YOU suggest it, it’s a non-starter for them. But if they suggest it, watch out!!
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I had a friend who got chatted up by someone from a dating site. She wasn’t aware of these scams…. Fortunately, she had to good sense to say “whoa!” when asked for money. Of course she told me about it. So I then read up on the recent “romance scams” and so on.
People getting others to act as mules and launder is also a “thing”. But I suspect if a scammer latches on to you, they either want you to send them money or they want you to launder. So you asking the ones who are trying to get your money for money makes them stop dead.
It’s a little bit fun to egg them on…. but ultimately just at time waster. Nothing I’m going to do is going to get them arrested or stopped.
I’ve seen a few scam the scammers episodes on YouTube. It usually involves playing along as long as possible and sucking up as much of their time as you can. Go all the way and then tell them you are having problems with the money order. Make all kinds of incoherent statements like a clueless 75 year old with Alzheimer’s. Slowly ask them for lots of identifying information and make them evade, etc.
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One of the engineers I know almost fell for a “you owe taxes and must pay now” scam. He had a guy waiting to pick up some cash as the local tax authority but the cops were not even remotely interested in getting involved. They are getting more sophisticated.
Mark, Steve, I never said Janet Reno didn’t deserve disdain. I just said that in my mind Koresh held more control of the deaths there. I saw a documentary a long time ago on it and I am pretty sure the survivors pointed the finger at Koresh for starting the fire.
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I could be wrong but I don’t think the ATF and FBI were trying to burn them out. However, that may have been the tactic of the 1985 Philadelphia MOVE fire.
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I would think the MOVE catastrophe would be too fresh in their minds to plan a fire and repeat the same result.
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IIRC the Gonzalez kid’s father wanted him back in Cuba. That was a tough call.
What you can rightly blame Reno for is the senseless raid on a remote family mountain house called Ruby Ridge. The father was in the ATF cross hairs for taking a hacksaw to a shotgun to make a few dollars to feed his family. He didn’t know the order was being placed by an undercover ATF agent pretending to be another Idaho hillbilly. IIRC they killed his armed son coming up the driveway and then sniper shot his wife in the heart while aiming for him. Jerry Spence took his case pro bono and made the government look like buffoons. Reno was likely out of the loop. Even her deputy, who was hauled before the senate, claimed he was on vacation at the time. The key issue was the rules of engagement. The higher ups said they relied on the lower downs to use good judgment.
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After George Terwillager III, gave long long statement about everything but what was relevant Sen (R) Arlen Spector questioned him. By the end of the exchange it came down to what the definition of should is.
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SEN. SPECTER
“I know you’ve communicated with the staff that you had nothing to do with the rules of engagement, but I think for the record we need to ask you about that specifically. ”
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George J. Terwilliger III
United States Marshal Johnson testified that he overheard a conversation where FBI agents were apparently talking to the FBI in Washington and your…
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SEN. SPECTER
Mr. Terwilliger, back to the specifics on the rule of — rules of engagement, how can you possibly justify this rule, quote: “If any male adult is observed with a weapon prior to the announcement, deadly force can and should be employed if the shot can be taken without endangering any children.” How — how can you square that with the Supreme Court holding in Tennessee versus Garner (sp) where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so?
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George J. Terwilliger III
Well, first of all, Mr. Chairman, I’m not trying to justify the rules of engagement. I was trying to give the committee the benefit of my observation that I do not believe the rules of engagement were constitutionally unreasonable. That is different in my mind, at least, from trying to justify.
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SEN. SPECTER
Constitutionally unreasonable? The — the question is whether they comport with the Supreme Court decision which requires immediacy and requires a threat imperiling life or grievous bodily harm. And here the rule says that all you need to do is observe an adult male with a weapon and deadly force can and should be employed, which removes it on its face from even a discretionary judgment with the use of the word “should”. Show Less Text
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George J. Terwilliger III
Well, Mr. Chairman, I guess —
SEN. SPECTER
The director of the FBI, who defends the second shot which was fatal to Mrs. Weaver, says that the rules of engagement were unconstitutional. So my question to you is How can you square them with the Supreme Court decision?
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Well, as I tried to explain before, I do not, after reading the public version of the task force report and listening to the testimony here, I believe the “can and should” language, perhaps even the “can” language, would be unconstitutional if it were interpreted to be a direction to shoot on sight. I do not believe — media conclusions to the contrary at this point — that those rules were intended to be a “shoot on sight.”
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George J. Terwilliger III
However, Senator, I recognize that that’s —
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SEN. SPECTER
Well, what — whatever —
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George J. Terwilliger III
— my judgment, and others may disagree.
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SEN. SPECTER
Whatever the intent is, don’t they say that on their face?
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George J. Terwilliger III
I do not believe that they do.
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George J. Terwilliger III
I also — let me — permit me an observation, if I may, Mr. Chairman. I do not necessarily believe that the “can and should” language is necessarily determinative in these kinds of situations.
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George J. Terwilliger III
I was involved in the hostage rescue at Talladega. There were unarmed individuals inside of that facility, holding a number of innocent people hostage. The entry of the HRT into the prison facility to effectuate the release of the hostages was timed to occur during a period in which it was anticipated that the hostages and their captors would be physically separated, to minimize the danger to the hostages. I have no idea to this day what the rules of engagement were for that particular operation. But if they were instructions to the effect — to the members of the HRT going in — “if you see a — one of the subjects taking a hostage into physical custody at the time that we make the entrance” — thus someone that could be a shield — “deadly force can and should be used,” I would not think that that would be a constitutionally inappropriate instruction.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?67290-1/ruby-ridge-investigation-day-10#!
Nobody in Cuba was free to express what they wanted. You think that man could tell the government, ‘nah, he’s better off there, I want him to stay’?
More fool you, if so.
Tom
The cops not being remotely interested is why trying to scam the scammers doesn’t work.
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There are actually relatively good reasons the police don’t want to get involved.
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If the scam is only attempted, it is often not a crime. If it succeed, it might be a crime– but that depends on some details. And because it depends on details, it’s hard to prove it was a crime.
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I mean: sending a $$ to a boyfriend or friend or person you barely knew doesn’t mean they committed a crime. Them lying? Still not necessarily a crime. (I mean… suppose your cheating boyfriend told you he needed $$ because his car broke down in Indiana. So you wire him money. He really spends it on hookers at the Indian Casino in Indiana. Is his getting the money an actual crime according to a statute? Yes. He lied….. Even if it’s a crime, good luck getting the police to act. And which police? The ones in Illinois? Or Indiana? Or some police authority of the Indian Reservation?
But anyway, if that lie doesn’t make it a crime, maybe some other does. But it has to be some sort of special type of lie.)
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I think the scammers often know fairly precisely which sorts of deception are “crimes” and which are not, and which are ambiguous. And they also make sure there is confusion over jurisdiction. So the police know it’s likely hopeless.
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Even though this Vitto/Victor/Mark entity is clearly a scammer who is trying to lay the ground work to scam me (and likely others), I’m fairly sure he hasn’t violated any law vis-a-vis me. Probably Victor/Mark has violated a law on hacking– (into Vitto’s account). But good luck getting Facebook to help prove it. I can’t prove it– I only suspect. But if I look to Illinois law, impersonation can only be a crime if he got a “benefit”. And I doubt “gaining Vitto’s ‘friends'” fits the definition of “benefit”; that probably requires getting $$ or property (and possibly from Vitto who he is impersonating.) But either way, he hasn’t gotten any $$ or property from me.
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And as far as impersonating to get money from me– well he switched his screen name to “Victor”. So he’s not actually presenting himself as Vitto to me. He’s telling me he’s “Victor” a marine– and later UN something or other.
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So I don’t see how or why the police would get involved here. Because he probably hasn’t broken any law yet. Of if he has, I can’t give them evidence of that. And setting up a sting would likely be useless because he’s probably in Nigeria.
Pfizer’s response to the Project Veritas videos
https://www.pfizer.com/news/announcements/pfizer-responds-research-claims
“Allegations have recently been made related to gain of function and directed evolution research at Pfizer and the company would like to set the record straight.
In the ongoing development of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer has not conducted gain of function or directed evolution research. Working with collaborators, we have conducted research where the original SARS-CoV-2 virus has been used to express the spike protein from new variants of concern. This work is undertaken once a new variant of concern has been identified by public health authorities. This research provides a way for us to rapidly assess the ability of an existing vaccine to induce antibodies that neutralize a newly identified variant of concern. We then make this data available through peer reviewed scientific journals and use it as one of the steps to determine whether a vaccine update is required.
In addition, to meet U.S. and global regulatory requirements for our oral treatment, PAXLOVID™, Pfizer undertakes in vitro work (e.g., in a laboratory culture dish) to identify potential resistance mutations to nirmatrelvir, one of PAXLOVID’s two components. With a naturally evolving virus, it is important to routinely assess the activity of an antiviral. Most of this work is conducted using computer simulations or mutations of the main protease–a non-infectious part of the virus. In a limited number of cases when a full virus does not contain any known gain of function mutations, such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells. In addition, in vitro resistance selection experiments are undertaken in cells incubated with SARS-CoV-2 and nirmatrelvir in our secure Biosafety level 3 (BSL3) laboratory to assess whether the main protease can mutate to yield resistant strains of the virus. It is important to note that these studies are required by U.S. and global regulators for all antiviral products and are carried out by many companies and academic institutions in the U.S. and around the world.”
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No denial that the guy works for them or stated his title correctly. No specific denials of things he said. This looks like a lot of hand waving. If it looks like GOF, smells like GOF, tastes like GOF … then it is not GOF because lots of big words!
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So the be clear, not GOF:
“In a limited number of cases when a full virus does not contain any known gain of function mutations, such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells. In addition, in vitro resistance selection experiments are undertaken … to assess whether the main protease can mutate to yield resistant strains of the virus.”
Tom Scharf,
Clearly Pfizer is doing GOF, and it’s clearly a significant hazard. I hope at some point Congress comes to it’s senses and makes all such research on pathogens unlawful. There is simply too much risk of escape…. do similar work in a hundred labs around the world and escape seems more likely than not. Add to that several already known, confirmed instances of pathogen escape from laboratories, and the (IMO) likely escape of covid from a lab in Wuhan, and allowing this kind of research borders on madness.
Ron Graf,
My recollection was that the fire was started by one of the tear-gas dispenser canisters the FBI lobbed into the structure. But what the hell was the FBI doing lobbing tear gas canisters into a structure housing 25 kids? As I said, Reno took every possible wrong choice, and steadfastly refused to prioritize the safety (and lives !) of people in the compound.
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WRT the Gonzales boy: what Mark said. The boy’s father (and other relatives in Cuba) would have faced the wrath of a violent police state had he not asked for his son back. Reno (and Bill Clinton) chose the wrong path… yet again. It wasn’t even a close call; it was an immoral decision. Which was a very common thread in Reno’s career
(and Bill Clinton’s).
The rumors on the grapevine are three of the cops were members of the Vice Lords gang and this was a gang sanctioned beating. Apparently not the first. This would certainly fit with all the facts. If true, I expect it won’t take long for this to come out.
Tom
What does “engineered” mean in this context? “To engineer” can mean a huge range of things. That’s a bad verb to pick if you are denying doing GOF because “engineering” could include GOF, though it need not.
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What does this mean? It doesn’t say what method is used to “express” the new spike. Is it just allowing mutations in the lab waiting to see what mutations spontaneously occur? That’s not GOF. I think that’s what they mean. But I need a biology person to tell me if that lingo specifically means that. Better copy editing is required to allow non-specialists to know.
SteveF (Comment #218132): “Clearly Pfizer is doing GOF”.
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Um, and how do you know that?
SteveF, the original theory was that the tear gas started the fire. But the investigation found accelerants were there and Davidians were overheard by FBI surveillance saying spread the fuel, which I didn’t know. If the later were true they should have attached a fire hose to the tank instead of the teargas.
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“Who started the fire that erupted a little more than six hours after the FBI began inserting the tear gas on April 19?
Although several of the surviving Branch Davidians insist that they did not start the fire, a panel of arson investigators concluded that the Davidians were responsible for igniting it, simultaneously, in at least three different areas of the compound. Unless they were deliberately set, the probability of the three fires starting almost simultaneously was highly unlikely, according to fire experts. Furthermore, the videotapes show the use of accelerants that strongly increased the spread of the fire. Although one Branch Davidian stated that a FBI tank had tipped over a lantern, videotapes show that the tank had struck the building a minute and a half before the fire began. Also some of the surviving Davidians’ clothing showed evidence of lighter fluid and other accelerants. In addition, FBI listening devices seemed to establish that the Davidians were overheard making statements such as, “Spread the fuel,” some six hours before the fires began. (Joint Hearing of the Crime Subcommittee July 1995.)
DaveJR (Comment #218134): “The rumors on the grapevine are three of the cops were members of the Vice Lords gang and this was a gang sanctioned beating.”
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Huh. That could explain why a traffic stop needed so many cops, from a special violent crime unit, no less. And why it was so aggressive from the start. But it raises other questions, like why that target and why the cops did not turn off their lapel cameras before committing a premeditated crime.
Steve F, Mark B, what about the chance that the father really wanted to raise his own child even if it was in Cuba? One can’t discount that. Clinton made a lot of bad decisions but even a broken clock can be right.
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The biotech jargon is not even clear to the biotech people, which is why the bio establishment are re-defining GOF currently to avoid more slippery Fauci moments.
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DaveR, the gang ordered beating makes the most sense of why they allowed him to resist handcuffs for so long and allowed him to run. They just didn’t know about the pole cam.
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Edit: It does not explain the lackadaisical medical response by the white guy. Of course he did not see or have a reason to know about the head traumas.
Ron,
Sure, it’s possible the dad was a fool and a jerk. The world is full of people like that. I think the odds favor my interpretation, but as we’ve discussed before I think being wrong is our natural state. So it’s not unlikely I’m wrong.
Shrug.
As someone who’s done a fair amount of “genetic engineering”, I would interpret this statement as:
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“In the ongoing development of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer has not conducted gain of function or directed evolution research.”
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The expected conclusion is presented up front for the lazy.
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“Working with collaborators, we have conducted research where the original SARS-CoV-2 virus has been used to express the spike protein from new variants of concern.”
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Taking the DNA sequence of the new spike protein and inserting it into to the “original” virus, most likely in the same position as the “original” spike protein. The recombinant virus would likely then be inserted into cells to allow it to create virus particles which can then be studied. This could result in “gain of function” by giving it a spike protein with enhanced properties. It is unclear if this “original virus” has been nerfed to make it less harmful in some way.
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“In a limited number of cases when a full virus does not contain any known gain of function mutations, such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells.”
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That seems like a rather candid admission that viruses are mutated to “add in” mutations known to increase function so the antivirals can be tested to see if they still work.
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“In addition, in vitro resistance selection experiments are undertaken in cells incubated with SARS-CoV-2 and nirmatrelvir in our secure Biosafety level 3 (BSL3) laboratory to assess whether the main protease can mutate to yield resistant strains of the virus.”
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Would suggest to me using “directed evolution” to see if COVID will mutate to overcome Paxlovid, which would result in “gain of function”, but that depends on semantics. Again, I would hope the virus has been nerfed.
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My conclusion is that the guy from Pfizer wasn’t lying about what they are doing. He was merely presenting it to a layman in terms they can understand. The rest is semantics. Unless these viruses have been neutered in some way to prevent transmission, the risk exists that a careless scientist could allow one of these viruses to escape into the wild with “enhanced capabilities”.
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The argument is whether the results of these experiments are necessary compared to the potential risk they pose. For example, is it necessary to know it’s possible that the virus can overcome paxlovid, by trying to force it to do so? From a purely scientific POV, this is probably a yes. To try and anticipate future mutations. From a safety POV, that you may end up creating and releasing a virus which may never have existed in nature, I doubt it.
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Again, the safety, IMO, depends on whether they are using some kind of nerfed virus backbone. The fact that they don’t say they are, when it would seem beneficial to do so, is suggestive that they aren’t :/.
MikeM wrote: “why the cops did not turn off their lapel cameras before committing a premeditated crime.”
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I suspect that wouldn’t have been an issue, and might have raised red flags, if the suspect had not died. Still, if this is true, it shouldn’t take too long to dig out, assuming anyone is bothered to try.
It is notable that Pfizer doesn’t bother defining GOF, only their conclusion that they aren’t doing it. This is just another round of master class equivocation. They tell all the vaccine evangelists and the media backers what they want to hear in simple terms and then proceed to say they basically do GOF in 11 syllable techno-speak that almost nobody understands but that that they can get an expert to say isn’t GOF later.
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Why the Star Trek worthy technobabble? Because they know if they made a blanket GOF denial and the stated activity came to light later it would be perceived as a coverup. So the actual admission is made for CYA. Sadly this is working.
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The industry knows GOF is now a toxic term in the public domain so they are trying to narrowly define it out of existence. Personally I think this is absolutely revolting. Revolting.
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To be clear I think this tactic is revolting. I can understand that Pfizer and others want to genetically engineer viruses to make their products better. There is a legitimate debate to be had on the risk / rewards tradeoff of this technology. I’m willing to lose that (honest) debate as a layman. Intentionally obscuring that you are engineering potentially more lethal versions of the virus for research to avoid having that debate is, well, revolting.
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Pfizer and Fauci are both pissing on me and telling me its raining.
Tom Scharf,
“Pfizer and Fauci are both pissing on me and telling me its raining.”
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Worthy of Ron DeSantis. 😉
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But yes, the semantic arm-waving reminds me of liberals talking about the “living Constitution”… AKA we will interpret the actual Constitution out of existence and substituting something essentially unrelated to the original intent.
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MikeM,
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Suppose Pfizer genetically modifies an existent covid strain and discovers that the modified strain easily by-passes the effect of Paxlovid, rendering that treatment useless. Should that modified virus escape the lab, how many people might die with the now Paxlovid resistant strain in circulation? I don’t know, but sounds like more than a handful. I mean, if some nut cake were trying to make bacterial pathogens which are resistant to all known antibiotics, how could that not be called GOF research? I don’t think it could not be GOF. Pfizer is being a lot less than honest and clear about this.
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Of course, if they have somehow weakened the strain so that it is much, much less infective, maybe the experiments can be justified. But I don’t think that is at all what they are describing.
In my view it is the public’s right to have a potentially irrational hissy fit over viral genetic engineering and ban it. The related science and industries do not have a blanket right to veto the public’s viewpoint because the industries have a self interest bias. They need to be candid and win the public debate. This issue has risen to a public decision level in my view, not a panel of insider technocrats.
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The power companies don’t get to decide what the emission levels are, they do get an opportunity for input. Curiously where is the EPA on this? There are 6 billion bioreactors walking around earth. I suppose it is mostly an NIH or FDA issue.
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I’m just surprised very few people who oversee this technology are publicly worried about this, maybe I read too many apocalyptic genre novels, ha ha.
The rot and dishonesty at Twitter was so deep that the House should conduct hearings: https://www.racket.news/p/move-over-jayson-blair-meet-hamilton
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Even when Twitter’s own investigations showed clearly the “Russian bot attack” meme was pure garbage being fed to every major MSM outlet, Twitter managers decided to make no public announcement, and the deception constantly fed to the MSM continued until Musk took over.
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I suspect the same rot is present at other social media companies.
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I hope Taibbi has plenty of paying subscribers for his outlet, because he will never be offered another job in the MSM.
It’s an open question whether the lab engineers have any useful ability to predict viral evolution even if they had a perfect genetic toolset. I haven’t seen any evidence yet that they could predict covid variants or their internal experiments actually resulted in more effective vaccines or treatments. If this is the case then engineering more lethal lab versions is mostly a downside.
For example, I used to use adenovirus to insert tagged proteins into cells. The adenovirus DNA vector had had its packaging proteins removed so it was incapable of creating more virus once it inserted the payload into a cell. To create more virus, it was necessary to insert the DNA back into a cell line which had been specially engineered to produce the required packaging proteins. Thus, if accidents occur and you end up infecting yourself, for example, it’s incapable of replication.
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I would have expected to see a semi-technical, supposedly reassuring, statement, highlight this kind of precaution if it existed. I guess the kinds of experiments might also preclude it.
DaveJR,
If you worked with adinoviruses, maybe you would find this of some interest: https://academic.oup.com/jimb/article-pdf/20/6/317/34749583/jimb0317.pdf
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The adenovirus based covid vaccine was produced by a company that used the size characterization technique the paper described for about 20 years before the covid vaccine was produced.
Interesting article on the rise and fall(?) of string theory:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/requiem-for-a-string-charting-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-theory-of-everything/
The comment thread is interesting too, IMO.
Strings don’t even rise to the level of a theory. It’s never been more than a conjecture. They can’t even write the equations, much less solve them. And forget anything experimental. Mathturbation at it’s best.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #218150)
Interesting article on the rise and fall(?) of string theory:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/requiem-for-a-string-charting-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-theory-of-everything/
“Strings don’t even rise to the level of a theory.”
–
Well it has been a major theory for 54 years.
The essence of it is adding extra dimensions which helped lead to the discovery of particles which behave like impossible numbers.
Different spins etc.
Agreeing to it leads to an impossible for us to understand universe.
A bit like the astronomers working out the planets orbits round a stationary earth.
Very difficult.
What will probably happen is that the math kicks in with an easy to solve algorithm reducing the complexity of the other universes to something easier to comprehend.
Maybe.
The interesting thing as far as I can see is that as 4 or 5 dimensional creatures we actually are very close to the starting point of one dimension only conceptually.
Whereas with size for instance we are in the middle of the known or knowable levels.
It became rubbish once they insisted on a set number of strings which is not sensible.
If we are the building blocks of the wider universe possibilities it makes a little bit more significant in the scheme of things, or so one would like to think.
Hope I make sense.
angech,
“…..is that as 4 or 5 dimensional creatures we actually are very close to the starting point of one dimension only conceptually.”
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“Hope I make sense.”
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Nope. I have only seen we creatures moving about in 3 dimensions. 4 or 5 dimensions? ????
SteveF, we used density centrifugation for purification. I suspect our purified band contained all virus forms. We were using adenovirus in vitro to insert into cardiac cells, which weren’t amenable to other methods.
Angech,
“it”? Which string theory is “it”? The various different ones lead to various different universes all of which are quite different from each other. Take your pick!
You and Penny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRXhxsyoQBA
DaveJR,
The people at Schering did density gradient purification as well. The issue they faced was the formation of permanent aggregates, which were identical in density to the individual virons. They needed a method to characterize the extent of aggregation so that they could optimize handling and storage to avoid aggregates. It was a fun project for me, because it forced us to improve sensitivity quite a lot.
angech,
I assume from your response that you didn’t read the article. A theory makes testable predictions. String ‘theory’ has never made it past speculation.
This guy is NOT Trump in any way shape or form: https://youtu.be/keXtOuqx6b4
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He is a smart and tough politician.
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I hope he beats Trump in the primaries, although Trump’s threat of a third party run would doom the country to another 4 years of lunatic lefties in the White House. We can always hope for a bolt from on high. Trump is, IMHO, just horrible.
Me and Penny?
One of my regrets in life is not watching that show.
I hope DeWitt has a chuckle too.
Thanks.
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DeWitt,
Neither of us is enamoured with string theory.
I get where you are coming from.
But….
Princess Bride – Diego.
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The article about string theory, and its its existence or not, reminds me about arguments re the existence of god.
Both explain and are all possible universes as well.
Is god a string rather than a particle?
Penny!!!
angech,
“The article about string theory, and its its existence or not, reminds me about arguments re the existence of god.”
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And that, of course, is the problem. 50 years and no real progress?!?!? Usable science can be tested and proven false if it is false. String theory? Not so much. Non-disprovable scientific theories are WORSE than religion. They waste public resources for nothing.
I have found more recent seroprevalence data from the CDC estimating Covid-19 infection rates in the US and US states. It shows the rate seemingly reaching a plateau at 95% of the population. That rate agrees well with anecdotal evidence I have about infection rates for relatives and friends, assuming those appearing not infected where not infected so lightly to be unaware.
The death rate for infected person and allowing for multiple infections per person would be close to 0.003 which is a rate a model I used by extrapolation predicted.
I would be interested in getting tighter confidence interval on that 95% plateau and determine what factors that group might hold in common.
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#pediatric-seroprevalence
angech,
String theory is a bit like the theory of dark matter: Even though nobody has the slightest clue, and have not a bit of observational data, they wave their arms faster than the speed of light, and so gain credibility among the unknowing masses. Crap is, well, just crap. Arm waving crap doesn’t help.
SteveF,
So gravitational lensing where there is no visible matter isn’t evidence? See, for example, the bullet cluster where two clusters of galaxies collided. We also know that hot dark matter exists in the form of neutrinos. But those we have been able to detect travel at relativistic velocities, making them easier (a relative term considering the extremely low probability of an interaction) to detect than cold (traveling at much less than relativistic velocities) dark matter. The tau neutrino, however, is only postulated to exist and has yet to be detected, unlike the electron and muon neutrinos.
“gravitational lensing where there is no visible matter isn’t evidence”
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It’s evidence that the current models or observations are wrong, it’s not necessarily evidence that dark matter is correct. Dark matter is like subtracting the observations from the current model and proclaiming that error as the correct theory, a circular theory without a foundation AFAICT.
Tom Scharf,
“Dark matter is like subtracting the observations from the current model and proclaiming that error as the correct theory, a circular theory without a foundation AFAICT.”
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Yup, that is the crux of it. it is like placing a band aid on a bullet wound and declaring all is well. A more fundamental understanding is missing. It will surely happen, just not with today’s astrophysicists; or as someone noted long ago, the scientific paradigm shifts only when the old guard dies off.
Kenneth,
The 0.003 rate model for deaths is a mixture of a relative handful of unvaccinated elderly with a large majority of vaccinated elderly. If you look at the death rates for Australia and New Zealand compared to the USA and most of Europe, where nearly everyone over age 40 was vaccinated before “letting it rip”, the death rates are MUCH lower, on the order of 0.001 or a bit less.
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If it were possible to separate deaths among the unvaccinated elderly from deaths among the vaccinated elderly, I suspect you would find the unvaccinated elderly account for a disproportionate fraction of deaths. After vaccination, covid looks to be a bit more feeble than seasonal flu.
SteveF (Comment #218153)
“…..is that as 4 or 5 dimensional creatures we actually are very close to the starting point of one dimension only conceptually.”
“Hope I make sense.”
.”Nope. I have only seen we creatures moving about in 3 dimensions. 4 or 5 dimensions? ????”
–
We possess the ability to perceive objects because our mind functions outside of as well as inside 3 dimensions.
Part of this is because our mind can also detect the passage of time
( time is sometimes referred to as a fourth dimension) to think in .
However only a creature in a fourth or greater dimension can perceive and process third dimension structures.
Think of it this way, you can only truly perceive the box you are in if you can be outside the box.
AI can lead to employment discrimination. What to do about it is up for debate
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/31/1152652093/ai-artificial-intelligence-bot-hiring-eeoc-discrimination
“How can you prevent discrimination in hiring when the discrimination is being perpetuated by a machine? What kind of guardrails might help?”
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Black Americans Are Much More Likely to Face Tax Audits, Study Finds
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/us/politics/black-americans-irs-tax-audits.html
“The findings do not suggest bias from individual tax enforcement agents, who do not know the race of the people they are auditing.”
“… by relying on automated systems to select returns for audit.
Those decisions have produced an approach that disproportionately flags tax returns with potential errors in the claiming of certain tax credits, like the earned-income tax credit”
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The null model is that computer systems that intentionally have race removed from consideration are secretly biased (the IRS doesn’t even collect race data). Implicit computer bias. I guess we just need to send these computer programs to training seminars.
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It’s ironic that these programs are specifically used to avoid bias. Neither of these articles ponders whether perhaps the identity group is less qualified or makes more tax errors. It’s easy to see where this is going, race will need to be intentionally added to these programs to make them “fair”.
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The “AI discriminates and must be fixed” narrative has been around for a while now.
angech,
That is the kind of quality argument fundamentalist preachers use to ‘prove’ the existence of God.
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Neither argument is even remotely convincing.
Tom Scharf,
And young male drivers are stopped much more often for speeding because they are black? No, because, black or white, many young male drivers go much faster than everyone else. Blind auditions for symphony orchestras are similarly ‘prejudiced’ against black classical musicians, and track and field sprints are clearly ‘prejudiced’ against white sprinters. The entire concept of woke ‘equity’, where anything but proportional outcomes according to race proves racism, is so disconnected from reality, and itself so utterly racist, that it beggars belief.
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The rot in higher education is doing real social damage.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218168): “Black Americans Are Much More Likely to Face Tax Audits, Study Finds”.
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Of course, the reality is that *poor* people are more likely to get audited, along with small business owners.
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But the Biden administration wants us to believe that his army of new IRS agents (47K, if memory serves) are only going to go after the rich. An obvious lie, since if the IRS wants more resources to audit the rich, they could just shift agents from auditing poor people. Yellen has actually admitted that the poor and middle class will be targeted, while pretending otherwise.
DeSantis once again sees a slow underhanded softball pitch and knocks it out of the park.
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NYT: The College Board Strips Down Its A.P. Curriculum for African American Studies
After criticism from Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the official course looks different: No more critical race theory, and the study of contemporary topics — like Black Lives Matter — is optional.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/01/us/college-board-advanced-placement-african-american-studies.html
“In light of the politics, the College Board seemed to opt out of the politics. In its revised 234-page curriculum framework, the content on Africa, slavery, reconstruction and the civil rights movement remains largely the same. But the study of contemporary topics — including Black Lives Matter, affirmative action, queer life and the debate over reparations — is downgraded. The subjects are no longer part of the exam, and are simply offered on a list of options for a required research project.
And even that list, in a nod to local laws, “can be refined by local states and districts.””
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As much as the NYT’s wants to try to generate outrage here, the progressives got way too far over their skis with this effort. Another easy win for DeSantis and making the NYT dislike you so much they lose their minds is the path to victory.
Another NYT article today, ha ha:
““There’s this idea that Ron DeSantis thinks he and the Legislature have the right to tell Florida students what classes they can take and what degree programs,” said Dr. Gothard”
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For taxpayer funded education, yes. It is statements like this that are making his job pretty easy. Anyone who has stayed awake for the last 10 years knows academia has become conformist with progressive ideology. In theory they could still still provide an unbiased education for their students, but they keep demonstrating the exact opposite loudly and proudly. Self defeating.
SteveF, conventional thinking during the pandemic was that reported infections were much more under reported than deaths. Using sero prevalence as a proxy for cases in my judgment puts cases probably on a more objective path than deaths. We have the not completely resolved the issue of dying from or with Covid-19. A high percentage of Covid-19 deaths were people with one or more comorbidities.
Excess deaths are used to help resolve the uncertainty of Covid-19 deaths, but excess deaths being estimated from one time period to another has its own uncertainties due to various changing factors. In some nations the efforts to record causes of deaths is far from complete and is why better statistics have to come from the most developed nations. Even there differences in defining causes can cause problems in making comparisons.
Covid-19 death count estimates beyond what is officially reported have been politicized with reports of large under and over reported deaths.
My models for early pandemic reported deaths to reported cases showed the significant independent variables of age, overweight and genetic groupings that could explain much of the nation variation in death/cases ratio. Australia and New Zealand were very large outliers (on the low ratio side) in those models.
Mike M,
“Yellen has actually admitted that the poor and middle class will be targeted, while pretending otherwise.”
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Poor Yellen is in a difficult position: she wants to please the lefty nuts that run the Biden Administration, but is grounded enough in reality to know the whole “new IRS agents will target rich people” meme is pure garbage. Of COURSE people who make dubious claims are going to be targeted, and that will most often be over things like the earned income tax credit, and (mostly very) small businesses hiding income or overstating costs.
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Long ago, I worked weekends and evenings for one tax season as a paid tax return preparer. The lower the income level, the greater the chance of people suggesting to me the use of clearly improper credits/expenses/etc. I quit after just a few weeks, but it was an informative experience.
Tom,
I like that wording. #sarc.
For those who want those topics, it makes it sound like it “can be” in ther cals. But wrt to AP tests, anything not on the test is “not in the curriculum”. May teachers cover stuff not in the curriculum? Sure. One of the AP Physics 1 courses around here also wedges in optics. Which is “not on the test”. They just blaze through faster than many other schools so the kids get that. Teachers of any AP test can add all sorts of things that are not on the test. Wanna spend a week on “philosophy of science” in AP physics? Discuss Aristotle’s idea vs. Bacon etc? Wanna spend time having kids do a Python project? Knock yourself out. it’s not on the test.
What does that even mean? If a topic is on the test, students need to cover that to avoid losing points. If it’s not on the test, they don’t need to spend time on it. But if it’s guaranteed never tested, it’s really not in the AP curriculum.
Kenneth,
“Australia and New Zealand were very large outliers (on the low ratio side) in those models.”
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Sure, but Australia and New Zeland essentially closed their borders to travel, and what travel was allowed required physical isolation after arrival. In addition, they did aggressive contact tracing with required isolation of all contacts. With those procedures in place, they would catch ~100% of cases, and their deaths to cases ratio would be lower than elsewhere. To me, more convincing is the death/cases ratio after those countries “let it rip”, where total reported cases are likely to be under-reported, but total deaths more accurately reported.
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Population sero-prevalence data is better than reported cases, but it still misses the potentially large discrepancy between deaths among seronegative (unvaccinated) elderly and seropositive elderly, with a disproportionate number of deaths among the (relatively few) seronegative elderly.
Tom Scharf
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And we’ve had the state making rules for what is and is not taught of the public dime for a long, long, time. State standards saying kids need to learn to add, subtract, multiply, divide? Read books of a certain level of complexity? Take sex education? Not put Penthouse magazine on the shelves of an elementary school? That the state can make all sorts of rule, standards about what schools must teach and what they may not teach are either not remotely controversial or barely controversial. (And the controversial one is that some parents don’t want sex ed. And they pretty much lose out on that one. At best their kids can “opt out”. The school still teaches it– and the state mandates it be taught.)
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Yes. The State can write laws that says certain things will not be taught on the public dime. Want a elective bible reading class? One that is clearly evangelizing? Make all the kids memorize Apostles Creed? Nope. Can’t do that in a public school. State can prohibit schools from offering this elective.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/02/01/college-board-pares-back-ap-african-american-studies-after-desantis-complaint-heres-whats-removed/?sh=300d45ba774e
My view is that generally speaking, AP courses should NOT go beyond what is taught in first year college courses. And schools should not give AP credit for any course above introductory. This is because inevitably the actual level of mastery in high school is nearly always watered down.
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If College Board wants to grant their own Batchelors or Associates degrees, they should grant them. (And watch everyone else say those are not real degrees.) There have always been entities that “grant degrees”.
Not sure there is any viable legal action to force DeSantis to “work with” the College Board. Pritzker may, of course, also reject the reconstituted course. If it happens, that will be interesting.
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Interesting they are slamming College Board. Heh.
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Look, I’m betting CB found lots of colleges were also not going to grant real credit for this elective. It probably didn’t over lap any of their offering. (And it costs them $$$ to grant too much college credt, and also degrades their degrees if students get credit for what is, in the end, somewhat inadequate as a college level course. Which these often are.)
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SteveF, I believe we agree to the factors that made Australia and New Zealand outliers in my models.
Antibodies tests can differentiate between infection and vaccinations that do not use the virus – which I believe is all of the current based ones. Again I agree with your conclusion here. Tests could account for what you indicate here, but I am unsure of any studies using test results in that way.
https://www.labcorp.com/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/providers/antibody-test
https://rankexploits.com/musings/2023/open-thread-jan-22/#comment-218179
Lucia, as you note it is obvious that the claim that parents and/or parents through the state cannot control public school curriculum is not grounded in fact or accepted law and tradition.
I see this claim from the left as a misdirection play whereby the intent is to minimize family involvement with their children’s education which is to be replaced by the state. This is a well known and held Marxist concept.
Kenneth,
“This is a well known and held Marxist concept.”
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Yup, the left has always tried to reduce the ability of parents to teach their kids morals/values/beliefs which contradict the goals of the left. Since the left dominates teaching (and has since I was attending public schools!), the use of public schools to indoctrinate kids to be “good socialists” and reliable voters for the left is not going to change unless parents insist at the ballot box that it change.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218173): “It is statements like this that are making his job pretty easy.”
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Sure. But how many Republican governors took aim at the same easy target? Zero, I think. DeSantis is in a class by himself.
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The art does not consist of winning easy battles. It consists of recognizing which battles are winnable.
SteveF (Comment #218175): “Of COURSE people who make dubious claims are going to be targeted, and that will most often be over things like the earned income tax credit, and (mostly very) small businesses hiding income or overstating costs.”
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Indeed. But there is another factor. The lower income taxpayer or hard pressed small businessman does not have the resources to fight the IRS. So even if the IRS disallows something that should be allowed, the little guy will tend to just curse under his breath and pay up.
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We don’t need more IRS auditors. We need a simpler tax code so that fewer auditors are needed.
DeWitt, thanks for the Bullet Galaxy cluster evidence reference. I see the claim that dark matter does not interact with visible matter or itself. And this is proven by the aftermath of the collision of the two galaxy clusters where the gravitational lensing is out in front of the path of visible matter in each of the two post collision clusters. The non-interaction claim is supposedly confirmed by showing that the visible matter was slowed down by interaction, but not the dark matter.
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This type of evidence seems very prone to misinterpretation, especially when viewed from 3.8 billion light years distant in a 13.7 billion-year-old universe. I would think that since most of the a galaxy is empty space a galactic collision is mostly a gravitational interaction. For galaxy clusters there would be even less occurrences of actual collisions of matter per unit of space. If we are saying that dark matter only interacts gravitationally it should not be acting perceptually differently than visible matter on galactic scales. In other words why would dark matter be gravitationally attracted to galaxies and not individual stars and planets?
The NYT chooses which arguments to print, they can pretty much dial in anything they want as an expert opinion (aka expert laundering). It’s fascinating they choose to highlight an opinion that there should be no accountability by the electorate to what is taught in schools. I would surmise that they just know they are on the losing side here and this is the only path forward for that agenda.
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I don’t particularly like DeSantis’s approach here, it can easily be used in the opposite direction. It’s unclear if all other reasonable approaches were exhausted before this bare knuckles method was executed. Clearly political, but effective. It is quite arguable we don’t want the electorate micromanaging the education curriculum, but giving them veto power when the curriculum has gone off the rails is reasonable.
Tom,
Who is ‘we’ precisely here? Not the electorate. (a) right minded people everywhere, (b) ‘us’ here at the Blackboard, (c) the royal ‘We’? (d) someone else entirely.
I think the separation of the visible matter from the Bullet Galaxy cluster’s gravitational in the direction of its time path is more likely evidence of a variability of the speed of light as our universe aged. Or somehow there is an apparent less time lag is for the light beyond the cluster to reach us than the lag for the light from the cluster itself. Or something to this effect.
99% of the curriculum is nuts and bolts education. I don’t think we need voter referendums on how calculus is taught. Experts on teaching and math tyrannically setting that exact agenda is OK for most people. Hot button subjects like religion and culture trench warfare are different, with the wisest decision to usually leave it out. What is important is that there is a level of trust there, so going off into the weeds is a very bad idea for everyone involved. A few bureaucrats with a spine can solve the problem, but that seems to be in short supply.
Mike M,
“We don’t need more IRS auditors. We need a simpler tax code so that fewer auditors are needed.”
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Sure, but a great deal of the complexity is due to carve-outs to make the tax rate relatively more progressive, and to protect the interests of many influential businesses and influential individuals (like the carried interest tax rate for wealthy investment fund managers). Any attempted simplification will face very strong resistance from multiple special interests. I would like to fill out my taxes on a post-card, but the 25+ pages I summit each year is very likely to continue… or increase.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218189)
February 1st, 2023 at 12:22 pm
Obviously the problem with public schools is that they have come to want to teach students what to think and not how to think. Teaching that sticks to the fundamentals is not going to be controversial except for perhaps the teaching methods. But methods could be evaluated by good measures of the results.
Taxpayers and parents supporting public schools should not be left out of the process over even good intentioned bureaucrats and “experts”. I have little faith in democratic processes in these matters but the way the system is supposed to work is for voters to decide whether they are in agreement with the public administration of schools. Private schools can be more controlled by the demands of the free market. Parents and voters have been sold a bill of goods that they remain essentially out of the loop with the exception of occasional meetings with teachers and voting on funding.
While school choice is still under control of the state, it at least allows for some parent discretion and choice and competition amongst choices. I think choice is the way to go and regardless of whether it initially can create significant positive improvements over public schools. The key is that there is a choice and that requires needed parent involvement.
Kenneth
And ironically, they are trying to make the claim the state cannot state what can and cannot be taught in the state funded public schools while also claiming parents can’t. We are then left to ponder the question: “So who can or does decide what public schools teach?”
Sorry, but the answer can’t be “The College Board” or “The teachers union” or just every single individual teacher has 100% say.
Tom Sharf
But I think voters (taxpayers, parents) etc should have some way in whether it is taught in high school. I think it should be.
I don’t think saying high schools will required “N” years of math and will overs “N+n” years (including Calculus) is “micromanaging”. That’s precisely the level of management we’ve expected from the State when tax money is doled out.
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And DeSantis No Woke (or whatever) bill is about what can and can’t be taught. It’s not about how it’s taught.
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Some people are upset at the list of subjects the bill forbids schools to teach. Ok. But deciding what can, cannot and must be taught in schools has been something the State has been doing for as long as there have been public taxpayer funded schools! And schoolboards have been involved in more local decisions.
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There are some subjects that I would object to having the local taxpayer funded schools teach– if only because the budget is finite and picking those over other subjects strikes me as a waste of money. For example, I don’t think the local public school should be run an elective course in Oenology. Oenology is a great thing, but I think people who want to take a course in that can do it outside a public high school.
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Currently, it’s unnecessary to write any law. But if all the science and history classes were being taken over by diversions into oenology, the history of wine, and teachers were all pushing this, we very well might need a law that said: No. Stick to biology, chemistry, phyiscs…. etc.
I’m making no point in posting this. I was browsing related articles and was vastly entertained by this hypothetical (?) description and discussion of ‘Coastal Elite Theory’:
Lucia,
“But deciding what can, cannot and must be taught in schools has been something the State has been doing for as long as there have been public taxpayer funded schools!”
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Of course. The issue is that teachers (who are almost uniformly left to nutty-very-woke-left) hate having what subject matter they can use to indoctrinate students limited by the voters. As Tom Scharf says, it is hard to politicize trigonometry or introductory calculus, but even those subjects are being targeted by the nutty left: insisting that wrong answers in math or physics are actually “wrong” is considered ‘racist’ by the lunatics on the left.
Yes, some of the current trendy thinking needs fixed. The trend toward removing dual track, gifted classes, general merit rewards are way, way off in the weeds and if the current “feedback” isn’t enough then I say I’m all for the well deserved nuclear option. CRT is letting a bunch of activist crybullies set an agenda. We can pass laws to forbid CRT or we can figure out how to not let any activists set an unpopular agenda in education.
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Perhaps we are currently at a point where the education agenda is on probation and needs to be verified until they behave, but it is a bit of a moral panic. Nobody wants to sit on a committee to review math textbooks, and it is really weird that people think we need to do that.
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Ultimately the strange thing here is that bureaucrats currently think it is less risky for them to insert CRT and other progressive fantasies than tell the activist race baiters H*** NO. To the extent that DeSantis’s actions here are useful, it is notice that there will be a price to pay for inserting crazy ideological agendas into education. It is now risky to do that in Florida. Balance to the force has been restored.
Tom Scharf,
“Balance to the force has been restored.”
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Not in New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Rode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Minnesota, New Mexico, etc. In those places, the indoctrination of students in public schools continues apace.
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That could change in some places, but if so, it will be a slow, difficult slog. In other places, like California and Massachusetts, any potential change is very far in the future…. if ever. Crazy lefties are going to be crazy lefties after all.
FYI: Florida is also looking at a major expansion of school choice programs that allow most parents to use state voucher for private schools.
https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/politics/2023/01/26/private-school-vouchers-expansion-florida-parents-house-bill-desantis/69844069007/
“A proposed massive expansion of Florida’s private school voucher program easily cleared its first House stop Thursday, despite drawing blistering criticism that it would drain billions of dollars of needed cash from public schools used by 2.9 million students.
Analysts estimate the “universal choice” plan backed by House Speaker Paul Renner could result in Florida steering $2.4 billion to private schools from public schools as early as next year, as even more students leave”
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Bifurcating the school system is less optimal than building a working state system. I think this stuff is currently mostly warning shots (specifically at the teachers union) to straighten up or suffer the consequences. DeSantis cleverly increased the education budget and installed these nuclear trip mines.
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This is what many people miss when they attempt ideological capture of an institution. They are pyrrhic victories many times. If the opposition completely abandons working within the system there are no trophies. Academia is going down this path as well and may face some institutions getting defunded, who wants to fund the social sciences at this point at state institutions? That is a referendum they may easily lose.
Even SF recalled most of their school board recently and reversed the lottery admission at their best high school. They will lose the Asian vote pretty quickly with overt education equity policies.
https://www.ktvu.com/news/san-franciscos-lowell-high-school-to-return-to-merit-based-admissions
Tom Scharf,
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ONLY if parents insist upon it (at the ballot box) will some sanity be restored to public education.
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There was once a competitive entry high school in Massachusetts I am familiar with. Years ago, they abandoned all merit based admission. Now admission is based only on a lottery. Not surprisingly, this drove most very good students (if their families could afford it) to attend private schools. The idiocy, it burns.
Tom
And not gain anyone else’s vote in the process. The fact is: the group they want to “benefit” by introducing lottery admission mostly doesn’t value the benefit all that much. (Yes. Some African Americans do want in. But those African American’s who do care tend to fall in groups who might get in with testing anyway. If they can get in, they want their kids to be in a school that is competitive!! So they aren’t necessarily going to be all for someone eliminating competitive admissions. They want school choice!!)
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Mostly, there is no group of parents who really, really, really want the path to “equity” to be to dumb things down for the faster/brighter. What they want is the best for their kids– which is what they should want.
Interesting take on the Tyre Nichols beating:
https://www.americanexperiment.org/memphis-police-conduct-towards-tyre-nichols-is-deserving-of-criticism-criminal-charges-and-some-context/
Lucia wrote: “And not gain anyone else’s vote in the process.”
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Don’t underestimate the power of virtue signaling. There are plenty of childless people who would think this is a great idea. Plenty of people with children who don’t partake in the system who would also agree for the “benefit” of others.
Mike M, thanks for the article on Nichols. I would agree that the medical examiner report is going to be important. I find it hard to place all the blame for the death on police if Nichols spent three days in the hospital before death. I think it’s likely that he was poorly monitored for cranial pressure and died needlessly from concussion or clot. Both are treatable.
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I disagree with the article that only one officer was mainly culpable for the head blows to attempt to knock him unconscious. There were other officers there wither holding Nichols or looking on that were duty bound to stop a crime in progress, unlike civilian onlookers.
Ron Graf (Comment #218205): “There were other officers there wither holding Nichols or looking on that were duty bound to stop a crime in progress, unlike civilian onlookers.”
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Police do not have a legal duty to intervene to stop a crime. For instance: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/parkland/florida-school-shooting/fl-ne-douglas-survivor-lawsuit-federal-judge-20181217-story.html
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In many states, Tennessee included, police have a duty to intervene in the behavior of other officers. But we do not know just what happened. Some of the officers had their hands full. Others may not have been in position to see what the offender was doing. Others may have told the guy to stop, which would have been the initial intervention.
Ron Graf
I’m pretty sure there is a principle at law that if the question is murder, you are still responsible if the victim was frail or in poor condition.
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That the person had a weak skull or other issue that made them more prone to injury of death does not absolve you if what you were doing what bashing their head into the ground.
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Five strikes to the a head is a problem and the victim being especially delicate due to prior injury isn’t necessarily going to help.
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If I’m on the jury, the only thing that helps the cop who dealth the blow much is if the examiner said what look like five strikes to the head were so mild they left no injury at all.
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As for the other cops: It’s not going to be the examiners report that’s going to matter a lot. It’s going to be whether given the amount of time and access they had could have intervened to stop what is going on.
(Surprisingly perhaps, I haven’t watched the video. But video evidence matters– and it sounds like there is no dispute that there seem to be five blows to the head on the video.)
Everyone participating in a felony where a murder occurs can be charged with murder, and often are. This is used for things like armed robbery or a fatal beating where there aren’t any witnesses to see who actually killed the victim. They all say they didn’t do it and it is impossible to prove who pulled the trigger or who delivered a fatal blow. Typically at least one person will rat out another to get a reduced sentence. I’m not passing judgment on whether this policy is fair or not, but it is effective.
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The cops who kicked the victim and hit the victim with a baton after he was on the ground are likely going to jail for sure. The cops who engaged in the initial take down but didn’t engage in the beating may get lesser sentences, but won’t get much sympathy for not intervening. I haven’t sorted out who is who, at least one cop claims he didn’t participate at all.
“But we do not know just what happened”
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We have a video showing almost the entire beating, additionally several cop bodycams. We know what happened, there may yet be some evidence as to why the victim was pulled over, but the video is more than enough for criminal conviction. Almost all citizens are convicted of heinous crimes with less evidence than this.
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We also apparently have what appears to be a falsified account of the incident filed by the officers after the event. The victim was screaming for his mother who apparently lived 100 yards away from the final beating so the story he was running away from a cop beating to get to his mother might be true.
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The cop’s story (before they went silent) was reckless driving, a confrontation at the intersection (that did happen) and the victim ran way followed by another confrontation at the site of the beating. He was tased and pepper sprayed. From the video it appears the victim didn’t have a clue what was going on.
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It’s possible there may yet be some evidence that the victim had committed a crime and the initial stop and aggressive removal from the car was warranted. There is never, ever, going to be evidence that the later beating was warranted or non-criminal in my view. There may also be evidence that there was no intent for murder and that the victim died because of pre-existing conditions or medical incompetence.
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It’s also possible that some guy was just driving down the road, got misidentified, and was beaten to death by the police. This is negligent homicide at a minimum IMO. It must also be stressed the victim is never going to get to testify here. I don’t think he made a statement at the hospital(?).
FYI: Here is the video will all the views sync’d
https://youtu.be/–cnsfrX6Cs?t=463
Amazing takedown of the media’s behavior regarding Trump Russia Collusion, by of all places CJR (Columbia Journalism Review). This is an epic 4 part series that is quite unflattering to the profession.
https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-president-ed-note.php
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TLDR, read the Afterword in Part 4.
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Example:
“On January 24, more Strzok texts were released. One was written shortly after Mueller’s appointment; the man leading the FBI inquiry was weighing whether to join him. Strzok was hesitant, he wrote, because “there’s no big there, there.” Other FBI documents, released in 2020, reflect the same assessment: the inquiry into possible ties between the campaign and Russia, according to one of the agents involved in the case, “seemed to be winding down” then.
Strzok’s message was cited dozens of times in news stories, including the lead of an article in the Wall Street Journal and further down in a piece by the Washington Post. The Times, however, did not mention the message in a story—that day, or in the coming years.
“We should have run it,” a former Times journalist who was involved in the Russia coverage said. In its statement, the Times said it had reported on the matter “thoroughly and in line with our editorial standards.””
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They also say Strzok (the one who can smell Trump supporters at Walmart) was a lead anonymous source for the NYT. Always nice to know the lead of the FBI investigation was selectively giving the NYT information who was more than happy to credulously parrot it. This story also notes many times what wasn’t reported in the major outlets.
Tom Scharf,
“They also say Strzok (the one who can smell Trump supporters at Walmart) was a lead anonymous source for the NYT.”
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Since leaking by FBI agents is a criminal offense, it is hard to understand how a dishonest political hack like Strzok is not sitting in a Federal Prison. The FBI needs to be largely de-funded.
Eastern Ukraine lines being outflanked and will either withdraw or be surrounded
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKze6365zWI
Tom Scharf (Comment #218212)
February 2nd, 2023 at 12:24 pm
Tom, after reading the linked article I did see it as a take down of the press but rather a boring attempt at damage control. Too much written about Trump and how his actions could have caused the press to misinterpret. Too much about the back story where the press had reservations. Too little, or better, ignored, about how in a very partisan manner the press proceeded anyway and allowed innuendo and Democrat politicians to proceed unattended.
Does anyone here have any idea how the Chinese “spy balloon” can be maneuverable?
MikeM,
Nope. But I had a family friend who dated a guy who entered “balloon races”. So there seems to be some amount of manouverability. Perhaps the incline a hot air balloon by pulling strings and ejecting some gas? Dunno
Navigating balloons
https://heritageinninternationalballoonfestival.com/about/hot-air-balloon-competition-101/
You can change altitude with a hot air balloon. The wind direction varies with altitude in the lower atmosphere. So that provides some ability to control direction.
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But I think that stratospheric balloons, at least research always use helium (that is definitely the norm). So they can not ascend at will. And I think there is little vertical wind shear in the stratosphere.
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Of course, a bigger question is why we didn’t shoot the dang thing down.
MIkeM
Supposedly they were worried about the falling pieces damaging stuff. Dunno….
I don’t get the falling pieces argument. Put a few rounds through the balloon and it comes down in one piece.
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The method of recovering payload from a stratospheric research balloon is (or at least used to be) to equip it with an explosive charge that could be commanded to rip a hole in the balloon. Then you chased down the descending payload to recover and reuse the equipment.
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Addition: I am not saying hit the payload with a missile. But I think our fighters are still equipped with this thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M61_Vulcan
And the balloon instead is a heck of a big target.
China launches large orbital rockets at a pace of about one a week. They built a space station last year. I have no idea why they would need to send a balloon over the US. This is more likely just crazy speculation that it is a spying exercise, it would be incredibly stupid to do this.
FYI: Some info here:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/why-would-the-chinese-government-be-flying-a-large-stratospheric-balloon/
From Tom’s link:
So that half answers my question, but does not really provide illumination.
MikeM
My husband also doesn’t get the falling pieces argument. Can’t say I do either, but then I don’t know much about it.
I think the best speculation is that this is a spying balloon, it was being tested in China, but it had a failure and drifted over the US. Possibly this is a backup for satellite surveillance if they are taken out. It is certainly easier to see things from 60,000 feet than from orbit. But they can also just ask one of their Chinese “students” in the US to get a drone and take some shots from a 1000 feet.
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This is too provocative to be anything but a mistake IMO.
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The US should take it out, examine it closely, and then return it to China. Maybe the US already knows exactly what it is so doesn’t feel the need.
It seems that the Chinese spy balloon is not unique except in getting a lot of public attention. If so, it is not a mistake.
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Provocation is likely at least part of the point, to see how we respond. It has been a brilliant success for the Chinese.
Well, it could be a mistake, for sure. Odd that I read that there is a second similar mistake over South America though. But maybe. Depends on what sort of mistake we think it was maybe.
One possibility is that the Chinese think our reaction to the balloon gambit tells them something they want to know that they didn’t already. Maybe our willingness or unwillingness to react aggressively was what was being measured. Maybe.
Maybe it was a distraction.
I don’t know, it really beats the heck out of me what this was all about.
Something is going on in the skies over Montana. An explosion has been reported but reports are contradictory so far. Nobody seems to know what the heck is actually going on, or if they do know they aren’t saying.
If the goal is to ramp up anti-Chinese sentiment in the US then it was very successful. Why one would want to do that is a bit of a mystery. About half of the Chinese rocket launches are carrying unknown (military) payloads and the other half seem to be “civilian” surveillance satellites of one kind or another.
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Another possibility is the US has been doing things like this to China for a while and they want to draw attention to US activity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident
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I still say this was just a major f*** up in China and somebody is likely going to pay dearly for it over there.
Hmm. This from Canadian CTV news:
Fox News Banner from Mark’s link: “Biden so weak he won’t even pop a balloon”. Hilarious, ouch.
https://babylonbee.com/news/biden-announces-us-surrender-to-chinese-balloon
[Edit: I read someplace that Biden wanted to bring it down, but Lloyd Austin and that butthole Mark Milley talked him out of it.]
We should absolutely take it out unless we are certain what it is and it won’t provide anything useful by doing so. Things are changing though with public pressure, Biden will likely need to do so with the usual suspects making him look ridiculous. At the least he will need to make a statement of why he isn’t doing it.
Just for you amateur satellite hunters: A .30-06 cartridge will go 10,000 feet high and take 58 seconds to come back down · A 9 mm will go 4000 feet and take 37 seconds to come back.
Maybe there is something of use to observing at 60,000 feet instead of 150 miles. I was thinking it could be the possibility of monitoring individual cell phone transmissions from 60,000 feet, which might not be possible from a satellite, since there would be too much cross-talk/band sharing from so far away.
We should shoot down the balloon for no other reason than that it is Chinese and in our air space.
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The supposed “explosion” over Billings seems to the greatly exaggerated.
Yeah. I think that was fake. I was gulled by the casual sprinklings of references to residents (plural) having witnessed it. I’ve been looking and I can’t find anyone other than the woman who filmed it to substantiate it. Add to it that the video looks wrong – the ‘explosion’ looks like the phone’s auto contrast adjust to me. There are no other artifacts produced by the ‘explosion’ (no new smoke plume, no other visual indication of any explosion), and so on.
My bad.
About darn time.
I read here and in other places that we’ve shot down the balloon over the Atlantic.
Our adversaries quake in their boots. Let it be known that huge floating balloons can be taken out by the most advanced military on earth. Nice try Chinese! Better up your game!
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I feel so much safer now.
Like I have said before, the Chinese steal everything. The nefarious Japanese tried this sad old trick in WWII:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb
“A hydrogen balloon measuring 10 metres (33 ft) in diameter, it carried a payload of two 11-pound (5.0 kg) incendiary devices plus one 33-pound (15 kg) anti-personnel bomb (or alternatively one 26-pound (12 kg) incendiary bomb), and was intended to start large forest fires in the Pacific Northwest.
Between November 1944 and April 1945, the Imperial Japanese Army launched about 9,300 balloons from sites on Honshu, of which about 300 were found or observed in the U.S. and Canada, with some in Mexico.[1] The balloons traveled on high-altitude and high-speed currents over the Pacific Ocean, today known as the jet stream, and used a sophisticated sandbag ballast system to control altitude on their three- to four-day flight. The bombs were largely ineffective as fire starters due to damp winter conditions, causing only minor damage and six deaths (from a single civilian incident in Oregon in May 1945). The Fu-Go balloon bomb was the first weapon to possess intercontinental range, with its flights being the longest-ranged attacks in the history of warfare at the time.”
Jim and I were downstairs practicing. When I came up I said “I heard it was drifting over NC when I was working out (that was 10 or 11. Gotta go see if we shot that balloon down over the Atlantic.” He said, “Oh. Yeah, that would make sense”.
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Yep. Shot down.
Do any of you know if the missile took out the balloon or the payload? I would hope they are able to thoroughly analyze the remains so as to determine what it was up to.
$50B for the F-22 program is now entirely justified. It’s first known kill of an enemy combatant. US: 1, China: 0.
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It was reported a missile was used, but nothing more than that. It kind of looked like it hit the balloon. The audio commentary here is funny:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIDCJaFX-4I
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It’s just like the Chinese to not tell us ahead of time their balloon was drifting over the US. “Maybe they won’t notice”.
I really don’t think that putting a few bullet holes in a balloon that size would do much. It’s not a rubber balloon with high surface tension that pops when punctured. You would need something that would cause the skin to rip.
Oh, sorry. I read about it at the War Zone and almost posted a link, but I doubted anyone would be interested. It was probably some sort of AIM sidewinder missile, here:
MikeM
Well… yeah. ‘Cuz it wasn’t a weather balloon.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #218273): “I really don’t think that putting a few bullet holes in a balloon that size would do much. It’s not a rubber balloon with high surface tension that pops when punctured. You would need something that would cause the skin to rip.”
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It was a super pressure balloon. The pressure inside was more than outside, but I don’t know by how much. So a bunch of bullet holes should have caused it to lose buoyancy and start to descend, even if the balloon did not “pop”.
Apparently bullets don’t work
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/why-shooting-down-chinas-spy-balloon-over-the-u-s-is-more-complicated-than-it-seems
“There is a historical precedent for all of this, as well. In 1998, a rogue weather balloon from Canada deployed to measure ozone levels accidentally drifted away. BBC reported at the time that the airship was the size of a 25-story building and was operating at an altitude between 27,000 and 37,000 feet, so admittedly much lower than China’s is now.
The incursion prompted attempts from Canada, Britain, and the United States to shoot it down, with two Canadian Air Force CF-18 Hornet fighters firing more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition from their own Vulcan cannons into the balloon off the coast of Newfoundland. That balloon took days to come down, at one point even gaining altitude and drifting across Canada and then out over the Atlantic Ocean, which made for a problematic situation for regional air traffic.”
I am pretty sure that Canadian balloon was zero pressure, so bullets aren’t going to have the same effect as on a superpressure balloon. But Tom’s link provided a number of reasons why it is a lot harder than it might seem.
Ah. Shooting a superpressure balloon would be a bad idea because it probably would only partially deflate. Then it would drop to a new equilibrium altitude and possibly stay there for a long time, likely as a hazard to aviation.
I know very little about these balloons. Suppose it was a weather balloon. Could the owners have tried to land it? If is the idea you send them up and they just stay up as long as possible until something goes wrong and forces them to fall down?
(Real Questions.)
Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/02/04/yes-chinese-spy-balloons-flew-over-the-us-when-president-trump-was-in-office-too/?sh=5af83fde3ea3
Yeah…. I thought this for about a hour. That’s when I thought of “debris” as heavy intact chunks of metal that might come down fast and hit things. But we don’t know what the payload is. It could include all sorts of things. We. Don’t. Know.
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It might be something you really, really, really don’t want to spread out over land.
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The ones who think it should have been taken down anywhere over land are wrong. Just wrong. I’m sure the security people aren’t fully explaining the danger. Partly because they don’t want to give anyone ideas.
I have heard of two methods for terminating the flight of stratospheric research balloons via remote control.
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One involves tearing a large hole in the side of the balloon using, I think, a small explosive charge. Then the deflated balloon acts as a sort of parachute to slow the descent of the payload, which is recovered and reused. I know for a fact that procedure used to be used (and probably still is) to bring the payload down in populated, albeit rural, areas.
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The other method uses explosive bolts to cut loose the payload, which then deploys a parachute during descent. I don’t know what is then done with the balloon, although I think a zero pressure balloon will quickly deflate once the open part is no longer held at the bottom.
If you destroy the balloon, as opposed to partly deflating it, then the payload is going to drop straight down. So you know quite well where it will land. Yesterday they had ships loitering near the landing spot.
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I would think that the missile might be a bigger risk.
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Dropping something over water does not guarantee that it won’t hit people.
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The spy balloon should have been shot down over the Aleutians, or just off shore from the Aleutians.
Forbes:
That does not mean that the balloons were over US territory.
Other rumors of this sort say that it has happened before, but that the President was never told of it.
Sounds to me like the press is doing its “job” of running interference for the Deep State and Biden.
I think it was very low risk to shoot it down over the Midwest, but obviously even lower risk to shoot it down over the ocean. Letting it stay up had mostly political consequences. I don’t place much value on that decision either way. The history of plane wrecks over unpopulated areas doesn’t have a lot of planes hitting farm houses. Dropping something from 60,000 feet likely has a big cone of uncertainty, especially if a partially deflated balloon was still attached. Nobody was going to guarantee that drop was safe.
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I wonder if they will detail what’s in the wreckage. It won’t be hard to see advanced optics that have no place in a meteorological balloon. The Chinese were a bit sketchy in their statements “mostly civilian or meteorological” or some such doubletalk.
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I think Biden’s statement that he decided to shoot it down on Wednesday was convenient revisionism (what is known as a lie when it comes from Trump). He could have said that Wednesday.
Anonymous sources say that the same thing happened during the Trump administration. And a whole slew of people on the record saying it is not true: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-top-national-security-officials-refute-claim-chinese-spy-balloons-transited-us-under-last-admin#&_intcmp=hp1bt1,hp1bt
Some did say that it might be possible that the military did not tell their civilian superiors. Disgraceful, if that is what happened.
Lucia,
Of course the Pentagon is miserly in what they’re willing to say, but they give us a few crumbs. Specifically, Ryders says it’s maneuverable, and they say it doesn’t pose a radiological or nuclear threat.
I have been unable to quickly find a link to the actual officials being referred to here speaking, but I read here that:
Tom’s link earlier discussed some of the other problems involved with shooting the thing down over land. Missiles and cannons might tear through the balloon and keep going, and I gather it’s hard to control precisely where they [the projectiles] might end up and what the collateral damage might be.
Of course you are correct – if the Chinese wanted to make it a ‘dirty bomb’ if shot down, I’m sure they could. The trouble there is that that would make this a more serious act – something closer to an actual military attack or an act of war.
MikeM
Uh… no. Don’t assume this is a high school physics problem where you “neglect frictional forces”. If you destroy something and things break up into small bits, they will experience drag forces that can be large compared to gravitational forces. And if someone was planning something bad, it could carry a pay load of things that can break up into very small bits.
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That’s a possible risk. There are other risks involving small things.
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Perhaps. But hitting it before it is over the Aleutians has diplomatic consequences if it is the first time we shoot something down. The ‘other side’ can claim they were going to take care of it, or that it wasn’t certain to drift over the US or something. And once again: Until we shoot it down, we can’t be sure the payload is not something really bad.
Depends on what’s in the payload. . . Shooting it down over the ocean was a much better decision.
Yep. Because these are commercial planes… With a “spy” balloon, you don’t know what’s in the payload.
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Maybe it did. But that could also depend on the definition of “same thing”.
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Did the other balloons fly by any of these places?
Research by magazine Mother Jones plotted locations on the BatchGeo map above from data released in 2011.
Here are the locations of nuclear weapons in the United States:
Naval Base Kitsap (Washington)
Malstrom Air Force Base (Montana)
Nellis Air Force Base (Nevada)
Warren Air Force Base (Colorado and Wyoming)
Minot Air Force Base (North Dakota)
Pantex plant (Texas)
Whiteman Air Force Base (Missouri)
Barksdale Air Force Base (Louisiana)
Naval Submarine Base (Georgia)
Or did they fly near anything like a Hanford, OakRidge, Idaho Falls… etc. Dropping something on stored waste wouldn’t be fun?
It’s possible something happened and, because no civilians spotted it, it got classifed. This balloon was visible to civilians. Obviously, you can’t just tell everyone that it’s not up there.
Mark
Those aren’t the only possible threats.
Yep.
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It’s unlikely it a carried “bad stuff”. But it’s also not impossible. Don’t jump to the conclusion that just because you don’t like Biden and just because he is senile, this was not the right decision. I think in this case he followed advise that took into account the full range of possibilities and made the best choice in terms of safety of the US and diplomatic position.
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Is his communication a bit addled? Yes. He’s senile. But
(a) not shooting it down before it entered our air space
(b) not shootting it down over the continental US and
(c) shooting it down over the Atlantic
were more optimal solutions to the issue than other things.
There’s a good chance they were able to jam communications. (Not sure.) And at any time, they likely knew what the balloon could “see”.
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I think this looks like the right call.
Lucia,
There’s too much we don’t know for me to presume to say what call would be best. It might be. There are lots of factors. Some involve people’s safety right here and now. Some involve people’s safety down the road. Sometimes demonstrating a certain willingness to use destructive power minimizes conflict and loss in the long run. Obviously, right; I’m sure I’m not saying anything that hasn’t occurred to you.
Shrug.
FWIW, I read reports that suggested Biden wanted to shoot the things down and the top generals (who I also dislike) and military officials talked him out of it.
Everybody knows where our land based missiles are, that’s one of the reasons 70% of nukes are carried on submarines. The Chinese have optical satellites that can easily see these fixed installations. Those installations have been there 60+ years, underground cables, etc. etc. Additionally there’s nothing to see here as they are boring fenced enclosures almost entirely underground.
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There is lots of hand wringing here that seems rather implausible and could be just as easily accomplished using other Chinese means that aren’t nearly as provocative. These guys aren’t 3rd world farmers anymore, they put a rover on Mars.
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My main question is why would China do something so stupid? I don’t have an answer other than it’s a boneheaded mistake. The Chinese floating a dangerous payload over our airspace would be level 10 stupid. Subsequently not advising us of that as we ponder shooting it down would be level 11. I think that is low probability.
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A heavy object dropped from 60,000 feet is going to easily penetrate a house, there is some danger no matter what. Occasionally airline waste systems malfunction:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2201747/Mysterious-holes-roofs-Long-Island-homes-believed-caused-frozen-airplane-waste.html
I heard this but specifically about over the midwest. I haven’t heard any objections to shooting it down over the Atlantic.
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I see lots of Trump supporters wingeing it should have been shotdown over the midwest. They are almost certainly wrong as in 99.999% chance they are wrong. It might have gone ok. But the risks were too high. Just because the people winngeing lack imagination about the consequences of all the things we don’t know about the payload doesn’t mean there is not a modest possibility that there could be really, really bad things on the payload.
Tom
My main theory is to show they can do it and will do it. They likely hope the can and will do it with impunity. If correct, the payload would not contain anything truly horrible.
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But when considering a response, I don’t decide my main theory must be correct.
This balloon may have had propellers for steering.
https://www.denverpost.com/2023/02/04/chinese-spy-balloon-over-the-us-an-aerospace-expert-explains-how-the-balloons-work-and-what-they-can-see/
If so, that might have been something “different” about it relative to any past balloons (if past ones happened.) Also, this one was definitely below the Karman line (which is the official line demarcating our airspace.) Maybe the rumored past ones passed over, but above that line.
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When hearing the “same thing” happened before, details matter. Until we hear more, we don’t know if the “same thing” has happened before.
Blowing up the payload, rather than the balloon, would create a debris field. Still not all that much risk if over a sparsely populated area.
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The possibility of it being booby trapped is extremely low probability and extremely high risk since that would be an act of war. That might well be a reason for not bringing it down over land. But dumping radioactive stuff in shallow water near public beaches might be a worse move.
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If it had propellers, then it was definitely a spy balloon.
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Smart move by China. They probably got at least some technical data they could not get otherwise and learned a *lot* about their adversaries.
Lucia,
I’m not saying your wrong.
What I am saying is, if PRC decides it is going to kill some Americans, PRC can kill some Americans. They don’t need to resort to a booby trapped spy balloon. Presumably the reason they do not is that there are undesirable consequences involved in killing Americans. But they wouldn’t need to play cat and mouse games where some horrible payload will be delivered to the American people IFF America decides to shoot down a spy balloon if that’s what they wanted.
Whatever. We did what we did. The balloon is over.
People’s Daily: “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and protest against the US’s use of force to attack civilian unmanned airships. The Chinese side has repeatedly informed the US side after verification that the airship is for civilian use and entered the US due to force majeure, which was completely accidental. China clearly requires the US to handle it properly in a calm, professional and restrained manner. A spokesperson for the US Department of Defense also stated that the balloon will not pose a military or personal threat to ground personnel. Under such circumstances, the U.S. insists on using force, obviously overreacting and seriously violating international practice. China will resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of relevant companies, while reserving the right to make further necessary reactions.”
MikeM
This conclusion is based on some big unwarranted assumptions about what is in the pay load. My guess is you don’t know what the assumptions are.
You don’t know the probability of this.
Radioactive is not the only type of dangerous stuff.
Why would not the balloon have not been shot down before it entered the US land territory? Was it not detected? That would imply that our surveillance/security has a hole in it. Was there some indecision in deciding what to do? Did we know what kind of balloon it was? Should not the CIA have known? Did the Chinese let the US known they had rouge balloon on the loose and explain in detail what its mission was. If we knew this happened before under the Trump administration why were not we more prepared? Why were those incidents, if they occurred, kept from the public?
I suspect both the governments of the US and China screwed up and would like nothing better than the whole incident to blow over.
Would the US shoot down a rouge foreign plane without fear of collateral damage?
Time to put a top security CYA lid on this one.
If it was a big todo about nothing why not let the public know that? Probably lots of politics involved there.
From what little I know (and I admit I think this is more interesting by the way people reacted to it than its actual merit) the missile defense system saw it early, sent up some planes to look at it, yawned, and went back to BAU. Some rednecks in Montana also saw it later and a PR contagion occurred similar to War of the Worlds. So far nothing substantive has been released to indicate it was actually a real surveillance effort beyond meteorological data collection. China is not being forthcoming as usual. Things may change when they pickup the pieces.
Tom
Not surprising the rednecks alerted others to what they saw. Unlike ordinary UFOs, this was identifyable.
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It may be that whatever is said to have overflow during Trump time was much, much higher in the sky.
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I’m not sure anything substantive will be released.
mark bofill (Comment #218296): “What I am saying is, if PRC decides it is going to kill some Americans, PRC can kill some Americans. They don’t need to resort to a booby trapped spy balloon.”
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Indeed. Now that think about it, lucia’s “bad stuff” argument is a reason to shoot the thing down earlier rather than later. If China really wanted to release “bad stuff” they could steer the balloon over a city, then “accidentally” release it.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #218299): “Would the US shoot down a rouge foreign plane without fear of collateral damage?”
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That one should be easy. The answer is YES. Or at least, it was YES and dang well better still be.
The Russians got a little over anxious and shot down a rouge foreign plane, KAL 007. You have to be a little reserved.
Tom, if this were the case why shot it down later. Politics?
My rouge plane was known rouge: like the Chinese balloon.
Oops. I misread. We should not shoot down a plane just because it is red. Not even if it is from Red China.
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On the other hand: https://www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2023/02/IMG_6900.jpg
Mike M.,
I was wondering if someone was going to pick up on that. I’ve grown to expect typos from lucia, but there isn’t much excuse for everyone else to follow suit.
Oooh. Typo got it. Simpletons like me thought maybe ‘communist’ was meant. Heh.
[Nah, that’s not true. I’m pretty sure I just autocorrected in my mind.]
Please excuse my rogue rouge.
MikeM
So you prefer that bad stuff certainly be released when shot down vs. the possibility it be released. Doesn’t sound like a great argument to me.
Yes, I think the reason it was shot down may have been entirely political. Biden supposedly wanted to take it out, was talked out of it, then claimed he really meant wait to take it out later. Then we have this weird “sources say other balloons have done this before” narrative, followed by Trump and half his cabinet saying they were never informed, followed by this narrative correction now from the WSJ:
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Prior Chinese Balloon Incursions Over U.S. Went Undetected, Officials Say
https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-decision-to-delay-shootdown-of-chinese-balloon-questioned-11675616189?st=l3hnzl34eq32y5w&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
“One official said that much of the information on the flights was pieced together later. They declined to elaborate, citing the need to protect intelligence methods.”
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WTF. This is just a clown show. Undetected incursions, ha ha. Now we have unbelievably clumsy attempted protection for Biden. This is all politics here, it is so unserious. Anonymous sources peddling misleading garbage 24/7. Untrustworthy.
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I think we can shoot down any foreign balloon in our air space if we want. My reading of the tea leaves is that the initial read was this balloon was benign and could be ignored. Then Biden was roundly mocked and he changed his mind. Amateur hour.
MikeM,
BTW: There would be quite a bit harm in releasing certain stuff over agricultural areas.
It is like our government thinks we are scattered brained and cannot think through all the belated information they are throwing at this balloon incident and how incompetent they make our surveillance appear.
Why would it take so long to determine there were previous balloon fly overs? Did previous survelliance take a look and go ho hum just a weather balloon and not report it Then some Montana cowboys spotted one and intelligence and Biden decided this will be a bad look for security and politics. They decided to let the balloon fly over while they worked on their stories and whether to do what they must have thought would be a face saving shoot down. Sounds dumb, inconsistent and counter productive and makes one think that there were many political considerations involved.
Either our survelliance sucks or it is a clown show.
I might be completely and categorically wrong here — I don’t know what I’m talking about, buyer beware.
It doesn’t strike me as absolutely inconceivable that spy balloons might have gone undetected before and we only realized it belatedly.
Balloons don’t always have much radar signature. They’re slow and … not all that attention grabbing. If somebody doesn’t spot a spy balloon visually, it seems to me that it might not get spotted. Particularly if it’s not expected, and in this day and age who the heck expects to be spied on by balloon?
After the fact though, people might go through unprocessed satellite footage and say, hmm. What balloon was that? and eventually work out where it came from. I can buy this because satellites do take pictures.
I don’t know, I could be totally wrong, but it doesn’t strike me as completely implausible that maybe China ballooned Trump and nobody realized it till after the fact.
But y’all know me, I’m gullible. 😉
In a way, it’s similar to the idea that it was actually sort of complicated to figure out how to take down the balloon because none of our combat systems are really tuned to shooting down balloons anymore. Same idea. Our surveillance systems probably aren’t tuned to tracking balloons. Maybe.
lucia (Comment #218311): “So you prefer that bad stuff certainly be released when shot down vs. the possibility it be released.”
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How does that work? The Chinese teleport the bad stuff into the balloon just before the missile hits? If there is any “bad stuff” (incredibly unlikely) in the payload, it is going to be released. If there isn’t, it won’t be.
It’s the order and content of the information release.
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Other balloon incursions occurred during the TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP administration (… and he didn’t do anything about it). Oh, we didn’t think you would want to know that we didn’t bother telling anyone about it. We also thought it wasn’t important to tell you we didn’t even know it occurred until after Trump left office either. We had no idea that the media would run with a “Trump let balloons go wild” narrative. Totally unpredictable, we can’t control that. Sorry that took some extra news cycles to get straight, our bad.
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It’s a frickin balloon that takes a week to get to the US +- 1000 miles. Russia has guided hypersonic nuclear missiles, China has 400 nukes and ICBM’s, and the WSJ is worrying “An undetected balloon would be able to deliver a nuclear explosive that could detonate above the ground and cripple the U.S. electrical grid with an electromagnetic pulse”.
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What’s next? China has secret plan to use rocks and sticks against our tanks.
MikeM
Huh? You already posited a speculation that it was there.
Stuff being there doesn’t mean it will certainly be released. It means it could be released if such a decision was made. They could also decide not to release it.
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No. You are making an assumption and it is an incorrect one. Stuff could be there to permit a decision to release it under some specific circumstance.
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If the stuff is there and the balloon is hit, things like containers and delicate stuff will tend to break apart or open. So if you hit the balloon, stuff will almost certainly be released.
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The circumstances that held were:
We knew where the balloon was. We knew what was in line of sight and what it could see. (We probably were jamming communication.) Likely, everyone knew it wasn’t seeing anything important from Montana to SC. The Chinese gained zero information. During that part of the flight. So relative to shooting it down when it got to the Atlantic, there was zero reward to shooting it down earlier.
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If there was nothing “bad” in the payload, there was no reason not to wait to shoot it down over the atlantic.
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If there was something “bad” in the payload, shooting the thing down down over land would certainly be bad. And even if the Chinese could decide to release that load, that would be no worse, and they might not do it.
Lucia, if you are saying the US government did not shoot down the balloon over land because they did not know whether something “bad” was in the payload and there could have been other balloons like it over US territory previously, that does not say much for our security or surveillance systems. I thought they said they were worried about falling debris doing damage by the force of gravity.
Well, our technology is good, but. We can make mistakes. I’d think it possible something dangerous could be carried as a payload and we might miss it, given that before shooting the balloon down the only surveillance we performed was from F-22 flybys, cameras, radar, and telescopes.
Also, if there was something dangerous on that balloon and our government knew it, I suspect they wouldn’t tell the public. It’d cause panic and destabilization, or it might.
Kenneth,
First: I don’t expect spokes people to list every single possible reason for not shooting it down. Giving one and omitting others is pretty common.
Second: Did anyone say say “force of gravity”? I read stuff like this
https://time.com/6252551/chinese-weather-balloon-shoot-down/
That doesn’t mention anything about “force of gravity”. It only suggests “debris” can endanger people.
Volcanic ash is a type of debris. See usage here:
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/human-environmental-impact-volcanic-ash
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Sure, some big stuff could have hurt people by coming down at high velocity. But that doesn’t exclude other stuff.
marc boffil
Precisely. The fact is, we know we can’t have a complete inventory of what’s in the payload. Could there be a bottle of Mountain Dew, packet of Oreo Cookies, small restaurant sized containers of ketchup or box of talcum powder inside the payload? You aren’t going to see that with flybys, cameras, radar or telescopes. You could fly by with a geiger counter and still not see it. None of those are dangerous. But the fact is: if you can’t see them, there’s all sorts of stuff you can’t see.
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If military and security people know there are things that could be deployed from balloons that would be a danger if present and deployed, they aren’t going to tell everyone! They are especially not going to tell if they only know it’s not impossible to be there, but it very well also might not be there. But giving a full list of all hypothetical threats to the public doesn’t mean they don’t consider all possible threats when deciding on optimal responses under the circumstances.
Lucia and Mark what I hear from your replies is that our government was not aware what the balloon might have contained or what its mission might have involved. Some are calling it a spy balloon but I thought I heard a government spokeperson say there was no communication coming from it.
I get a different feel from what I hear from our government and some of our conjectures here. There appear to be a whole array of conclusions that could be drawn from the governments actions and words and the limited amount of evidence available to the public.
One thing I never buy in these situations is when an apparent security problem arises that we cannot attempt to draw conclusions because we do not have the all the facts – some of which are withheld by the government. Secrecy can hide a lot of incompetentcy.
Ken,
I don’t think our government had certainty about what the balloon contained. I don’t think it contained weapons and actually I come to this idea by reasoning about the larger situation rather than any immediate surveillance or physical evidence we might have obtained. I think reasonable confidence was warranted that the balloon didn’t contain weapons.
I don’t know what the mission was, or rather I don’t know why the mission was executed. Was it some sort of mistake? Was it deliberate provocation? I’m not sure what the government knows about this that I might not.
I think it’s possible to draw some conclusions. Earlier I commented to Lucia that I didn’t have enough information to say if we made the correct call in our timing on shooting down the balloon, and I stand by that. I don’t know what PRC was trying to accomplish, so I can’t evaluate if we helped or hindered them. That might just mean I’m a moron, YMMV. But I stand by my earlier statement, I don’t know if our call was correct or not. But yes, I expect other conclusions could be drawn.
I assume our government is incompetent going in. I think they’ve given us ample evidence of that in recent times.
Thanks.
Kenneth,
It’s possible to have an incomplete inventory. For example, if I creep around and look into the floor level windows of my neighbors house, I can see they have a couch and tv; I have 100% certainty of that. But I can’t see things upstairs or in the basement. I suspect they own a bed. I have no idea if they do or do not own sex toys or a gun.
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Of course I can attempt to draw conclusions based on what I know and what is common. And yes, of course secrecy can hide a lot of incompetency.
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But I know that conclusions I make based on partial information may be inaccurate. That’s true whether or not secrecy is warranted and whether or not it’s used to hide incompetency.
Just one more small thing, I said this:
By default, when I don’t know everything I wish I could know about our adversaries, I prefer certain policies. One is that incursions into our airspace are challenged, and if the challenge is not respected, intruding airships be shot down. This way I don’t have to speculate what the adversary was trying to accomplish, I can have some reasonable expectation that whatever it was, he didn’t accomplish it.
mark
I agree with this. So I approve of it being shot down. And I think given the balance of uncertainties, shooting down over the ocean was better than over land.
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As it stands, the debris field is 7 miles wide. And that would be 7 miles wide around what would be an uncertain center since you cant position your target nor change prevailing winds when you fire.
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The debris field could have been wider.
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They were evidently able to keep the general area of ocean clear while shooting the balloon down.
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I just don’t see how shooting it over land could have been a better call.
Lucia,
Maybe we could find agreement in saying it would have been preferable to shoot the darn thing down over the Pacific, if it in fact came in that way?
https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2023/02/03/chinese-spy-balloon-origin-path-explainer-dnt-vpx.cnn
At minute 1:40, there is a graphic that suggests this was the path.
I would have preferred that we shoot it down before it traversed the continental US.
I have no problem with shooting it down over either ocean. But under current circumstances, it needs to be a definitive incursion. We can’t just shoot things down because we think they might, in the future, enter our air space.
So in this case, there was no definitive incursion when it was over the Pacific.
mark
note the article says “suspected path”
You can’t shoot it down until you have seen it. Being able to reconstruct afterwards is nice. But you can’t go back and time and shoot it just before it reaches Puget Sound– if that is where it did enter air space.
Lucia,
That’s what the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) is for, or so I thought.
Sure. That’s what it’s for. But did we know the balloon was there when it was there? I thought we didn’t.
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Evidently we now know some balloons passed over the US (including Florida specifically) briefly during the Trump administration. But we didn’t know during the Trump administration. So obviously, we didn’t shoot them down. We didn’t even think of shooting them down because we didn’t know they were there.
I’m not 100% sure.
I can’t find the link right now, but I read something implying that NORAD first noticed the balloon over the Aleutian Islands on Sat. Jan 28’th.
Did they really? Did they notice before it was over Alaska? Would they say if they didn’t? I don’t know the answers to these questions.
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If they did notice, I wonder if we didn’t make a mistake not shooting it down then.
If they didn’t notice, well, there you have it. It makes more sense that they didn’t want to shoot it down over land.
[Edit: so either way, I guess I have a problem with the situation. If we didn’t notice the balloon until it was over our land, we need to plug that awareness gap in the future. If we did notice but took no action, we need to evaluate the security decisions being made in response to potential threats, as far as I am concerned.]
Mark,
The path at your link shows it entering nearish puget sound
https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2023/02/03/chinese-spy-balloon-origin-path-explainer-dnt-vpx.cnn
But I also heard the alutian’s bit.
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I really haven’t heard anything confirmatory, nor when they were sure what it was or what they saw.
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Yes. If they were absolutely sure it was a Chinese Spy balloon while it was still over our waters, they should have shot it down then. I agree with that. But I think it was best not to shoot it down over land.
Where were you when the Chinese spy balloon was shot down? This is historical!
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I’m going to go ahead and take bets on whether we are being attacked by the Chinese with cleverly disguised weather balloons. They could have attacked Taiwan by a surprise military offensive, but instead chose open warfare against the US using weather balloons.
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Everyone is now referring to this thing as a “spy balloon”. Perhaps this will ultimately be true (really, really, dumb move from the Chinese), but I have seen exactly nothing to support that. The divers have no doubt already looked at it by now. Still nothing. The only real evidence to me it is a spy balloon is the Chinese not trying very hard to prove it was a benign weather balloon, surely they have pictures of what it is.
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My speculation is that if it isn’t a spy balloon then we will hear nothing at all (it’s a secret!) because it’s too embarrassing to admit we went into a national security freakout over a wayward weather balloon. There are zero closeup pictures of this thing? That is weird. This whole thing is beyond bizarre, but entertaining.
The Chinese could have easily proved to us it was a wayward weather balloon, then perhaps we don’t shoot it down if we believe them. Nobody launches a sophisticated device like this without lots of planning, pictures, specs, and videos. All we publicly know is an official statement which sounds a bit sketchy, a bit of a non-denial denial. In this case we shoot it down IMO. If it does contain “spy” equipment then this escalates to a major problem.
https://babylonbee.com/news/china-assures-warships-heading-for-taiwan-are-just-meteorological-warships
Tom, thanks. It’s crazy, but it’s not that much crazier than anything else to think that China might do that. Send some perfectly innocent weather balloons, dress them up / make them big enough that we wouldn’t believe they were perfectly innocent weather balloons, and send them off to get shot down so they have a Taiwan talking point for their internal CCP political maneuvering and power struggles. It could be.
It could be 4-D chess, but I guess they are better players than I am. They could be baiting the US to overreact so they can then start attacking US assets close to their shore or the new “Chinese islands” near Taiwan.
Alright Lucia. I get you now. Yes, if we take as a given that we missed our window for whatever reason to shoot the balloon down over the Pacific, and also given that the Chinese have perfectly good low altitude spy satellites just like we do, sure. Maybe it made the most sense not to shoot the balloon down over land.
I was wondering whether the balloon might be a message intended for someone else, nationally or regionally. I’m not convinced they really give a damn what the US would think about it, which the “how very dare you shoot down a Chinese balloon floating over your territory” statement tends to support.
mark,
Or that once we spotted them we knew where they were and they weren’t really seeing anything important. Or we could detect any communication signals and jam.
DaveJR,
The list of what China’s intentions might have been (if any) is lengthy.
This says that NORAD was tracking the balloon from at least the time it entered US airspace “north of the Aleutian Islands” on Jan. 28.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/timeline-a-chinese-spy-balloon-s-7-day-trip-across-the-united-states/ar-AA1785Rf
It also includes a video with a map (or maybe just a cartoon) that shows a totally different route, with no source given.
If it is an overt spy attempt, I think the people who did it fail to understand US culture in a profound way. This kind of oppressive surveillance may be par for the course for their own citizens in China, but US citizens are going to predictably react very badly to China doing it here. We were bashing import cars with sledgehammers in the 1970’s, and that exact kind of consumer reaction could occur again. I’m just failing to comprehend the goal here, the risk / reward equation doesn’t pan out.
Mike,
Yeah. That’s where my real upset centers. Either we saw it and (IMO) did not take the appropriate actions or we didn’t see it. Neither way am I happy.
Mike from your link
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/timeline-a-chinese-spy-balloon-s-7-day-trip-across-the-united-states/ar-AA1785Rf
That sounds like it was first detected over land.
Later on, it sounds like the monitored, and based on monitoring concluded it could navigate.
Then it says continue reading….
You know, I’m striving to look at the ‘over land’ risk in a reasonable way. Is it really reasonable to worry about debris falling over Alaska? It is *the* most sparsely populated US state, less than a million people in the whole place, maybe a third of those people living in or around Anchorage. I mean, at some point it seems to me we say ‘Screw it. The risk is reasonable’.
mark,
On the one hand, you have a point. But we aren’t actually at war with China. They may have wanted to be sure they knew what it was. They aren’t saying that, but it’s not impossible.
According to the story, the only knew it could actively manouver around the time it entered Canadian airspace
I wouldn’t have been pissed off if we took down an actual weather balloon. But it’s not a bad thing to be more certain. Accidents happen.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218347): “If it is an overt spy attempt, I think the people who did it fail to understand US culture in a profound way.”
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Yeah, but they understand our government. Prior less aggressive missions elicited no response and the latest one elicited no response for several days, until the public noticed the balloon so the government could no longer pretend not to see it. Even then, it was no certain that there would be a response. Had the balloon not been spotted by the public, the Biden administration would have done nothing.
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The thing had propellers. It was a spy balloon. Case closed. No research balloon has propellers.
mark bofill (Comment #218350): “I mean, at some point it seems to me we say ‘Screw it. The risk is reasonable’.”
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Exactly. There are places one would not want to shoot it down over. But the emptiness of the high plains is quite remarkable. Petroleum County, MT has 0.3 people per square mile, many others are under 1 person per square mile and most have no more than 2-3 per square mile. There are county seats with about 20 people. The risk of bringing it down was minimal.
CNN updates it story on Trump allowed balloons to go wild:
“Muddling the situation further, on Sunday, a senior administration official told CNN that the transiting of the balloons over the US during Trump’s time in office wasn’t discovered until after Biden became president. If true, this raises concerns about why the Trump administration did not detect the incursions into US airspace.”
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Sigh.
AOC looks into the mirror: “I think it’s uncomfortable serving with people who engage in what many experts deem stochastic terrorism, which is an incitement of violence using digital means and large platforms so that the individual themselves may not be the one that’s wielding a weapon.”
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Or in other words, from SciAm: “Dehumanizing and vilifying a person or group of people can provoke what scholars and law enforcement officials call stochastic terrorism, in which ideologically driven hate speech increases the likelihood that people will violently and unpredictably attack the targets of vicious claims.”
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Propagandists have fomented disgust to dehumanize Jewish people as vermin; Black people as subhuman apes; Indigenous people as “savages”; immigrants as “animals” unworthy of protection; and members of the LGBTQ community as sexual deviants and “predators” who prey upon children.”
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And “white” people as the source of all evil in the world…
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“Right-wing media personalities and activists have created or amplified conspiracy theories about Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates and others.”
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“People who are trying to outlaw gender-affirming care for transgender kids and purge pro-gay books from library shelves have stirred up disgust by invoking the specter of sexual “grooming”; others have made the same accusations against those speaking out against such legislative efforts, and some have used the idea to fuel disinformation about the cause of scattered pediatric monkeypox cases. The manufactured grooming mythology has spurred another round of moral disgust and outrage.”
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In the lead-up to the midterm elections, a blitz of far-right radio ads targeting Black and Hispanic stations in swing states has repeated falsehoods about transgender people and a QAnon warning that the Biden administration will make it easier for children “to remove breasts and genitals”—an attempt to evoke disgust.”
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Which was correct.
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“Other ads aimed at white audiences claim minorities are the true aggressors and destroyers of social norms. One decries “anti-white bigotry.” Another warns ominously, “Stop the woke war on our children.”
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What can stop stochastic terrorism and break the cycle of disgust-fueled vilification, threats and violence? Turning off the source of fuel is a start. Programs to counter violent extremism, particularly those that emphasize early intervention and deradicalization, have yielded some successes in at-risk communities. Other programs disrupt the ideological ecosystem that creates radical conspiracies through counseling, education and other community interventions. Beyond understanding how our emotions can be exploited to demonize others, we can refuse to buy into “both-sides” false equivalence and the normalization of dangerous rhetoric and extremism. We can do better at enforcing laws against hate speech and incitement to violence. And ultimately, we can disengage with media platforms that make money by keeping us disgusted, fearful and forgetful of our own decency—and shared humanity.”
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I keep wondering what peak hypocrisy will look like…
Mike M. (Comment #218346)
Mike M’s link has the most comprehensive information I have heard on the balloon incident. It sounds like the US is just getting up to speed on what evidently has been an ongoing effort by the Chinese for awhile now. Suddenly we know about a lot of Chinese flyovers over other nations.
What can a balloon collect that a satellite cannot?
“What can a balloon collect that a satellite cannot?”
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Weather information, ha ha. In theory better pictures, better access to radio signals such as cellular and short range stuff, and some other dreamed up things. The real question is what can they get that satellites and all their other assets not get? Not much IMO. Chinese students driving around in a surveillance van, Chinese students flying in a Cessna, Chinese immigrants working in defense companies, Chinese hackers, spies with drones, Chinese elected government officials, Chinese modified electronics made in China, Chinese run software companies (backup software, remote control software, password managers, home surveillance cameras). This doesn’t even touch on the open strategy of forcing foreign companies to disclose IP for getting access to the Chinese market. We are an open society.
https://gizmodo.com/china-claims-ownership-second-spy-balloon-latin-america-1850076980
I think that’s the new official moniker: “Not-a-spy balloon”.
Absolutely hilarious: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=63KXfwC9BdU
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Bill Maher calls out the enviro hypocrites.
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He actually endorses nuclear power. Progress.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #218356): “It sounds like the US is just getting up to speed on what evidently has been an ongoing effort by the Chinese for awhile now. Suddenly we know about a lot of Chinese flyovers over other nations.”
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That is just not believable. They pretended the balloon was not there until they got called on it. Then they pretended there was no need to shoot it down, until it became clear that would not fly. Then they leaked that it happened several times during the Trump administration. That fell apart when everyone in that administration (including John Bolton, who is no friend of Trump) denied it. Then they changed the story again to say that nobody noticed the balloons at the time (yeah, right) but that they noticed them only many months later (we have a time machine!). Anything they say that happens to be true was either an accident or misdirection.
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The latest video I have seen of the take down, on Fox News, appears to show the balloon envelope being destroyed and the payload dropping straight down. If so, then so much for a “debris field”.
Mike M,
“Anything they say that happens to be true was either an accident or misdirection.”
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The permanent bureaucracy is a danger to liberty and representative government. The (many) intelligence agencies (including the FBI) represent the gravest risks. They need to be reined in via defunding.
SteveF: “Bill Maher calls out the enviro hypocrites.”
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Been rather outspoken on woke recently too. Late to tbe party, but welcome nonetheless. He can reach people completely immune to the same arguments presented by others.
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Jon Stewart on the other hand has gone the other way…
More absurd stenography from the media, ha ha. The intelligence community is not taking sides here.
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CNN:
“Past surveillance balloons were discovered at the beginning of the Biden administration because President Joe Biden directed the intelligence community “to increase both our vigilance and the assets that we were deploying to be able to detect Chinese efforts to spy against the United States,” said national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
“[B]ecause the intelligence community made this a priority at the direction of President Biden, we enhanced our surveillance of our territorial airspace, we enhanced our capacity to be able to detect things that the Trump administration was unable to detect,” Sullivan said at a Monday event with the US Global Leadership Coalition. “And were also able to go back and look at the historical patterns. And that led us to come to understand that during the Trump administration, as you said, there were multiple instances where the surveillance balloons traversed American airspace and American territory.””
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NYT:
“One explanation, multiple U.S. officials said, is that some previous incursions were initially classified as “unidentified aerial phenomena,” Pentagon speak for U.F.O.s. As the Pentagon and intelligence agencies stepped up efforts over the past two years to find explanations for many of those incidents, officials reclassified some events as Chinese spy balloons.
It is not clear when the Pentagon determined the incidents involved Chinese spying.”
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I’m guessing that reclassification was … rather recent. So Chinese balloons! We should let everyone know of course. Nope.
“The earlier Chinese balloons remained secret because intelligence officials typically do not want adversaries to know their surveillance efforts have been discovered.”
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Yes and Iraq has WMD’s. Thank you IC.
Up close active targeting emissions from a f-22 firing an Aim-9x? That’s the one thing I can see that this exposed which wouldn’t be readily acquired otherwise.
Andrew P,
Bravo. I wondered about that too. 60,000′ up is a long ways. The PRC would have to guess we’d send a Raptor up for a look. Great opportunity for SIGINT.
“National Security Council strategic communications coordinator John Kirby told reporters that there are several factors – like their altitude and speed – that make detecting the spy balloons difficult, saying that the ways to track them are “not constant.”
“They fly very, very high, very, very slow and in order to track, you’ve got to run the traps along many different lines of information and technology,” Kirby said.”
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Like UFO’s , which use a strategy of cloaking and very fast moving, the Chinese have found a devious way of avoiding detection.
Move very slowly.
The payload beneath the balloon is said to have been “the size of three school-buses”. Ok, so it has a radar signature which is obviously not the size of “a sparrow”, to quote one off-the-record explanation. If your air defense radar misses “three school-buses”, then it is useless; my marine radar from a decade ago was far more capable… it could easily detect a few dozen birds flying together at 15 miles.
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Every official pronouncement on this, from Biden down, is a lie. The only question is if the liars will be exposed and suffer consequences, or if the lies will be hidden as ‘national security secrets’. Based on the continuing fabulist babble from officials, I am guessing it will be the later.
“the size of three school-buses”
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Not the size I was imagining. Clearly, this could do something a satellite could not.
SteveF,
Does the shape (thin) matter for the radar signature?
Lucia,
The balloon envelope is likely a (vacuum deposited) aluminized polymer film, with the aluminum used to eliminate most loss of hydrogen (or helium, but probably hydrogen). Depending on the thickness of the aluminum (could be a handful of nanometers thick) the balloon itself might not have much of a radar signature. But the payload below the balloon would almost certainly have a significant radar signature…. you can’t make solar panels radar invisible, and those panels were big.
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IMHO, the DOD (and everyone else in the administration) is being a lot less than forthcoming about detecting the balloon. The blatant CYA contortions would be comical, save for that it is a serious security issue.
Maybe the air defense radar makes use of AI. Ignoring something because it is too slow is just the sort of error I’d expect from a computer.
SteveF,
My very brief reading (after I posted– and now– and I had breakfast mind you) says that cylinders have good signatures because some part is nearly always perpendicular to incoming radar. But if no surface is perpendicular, then the radar reflects away from the radar reciever. (Law of reflection.)
So it’s just possible that those big flat panels can only be seen by radar when they are in “just the right” position. (And that might actually be almost never since they balloon is not directly above the radar.)
It also said nuts and bolts etc. increase radar signature. No idea, if there are lots of those or not.
I’m not saying you are wrong about the signature being large. But it does seem possible the radar signature of a large flat panel might be small.
Jet fighters obviously don’t have that shape.
I’m sure there are non-military people who can chime in on this. Not necessarily reading comment here though.
(I”m going to be out all day. So I won’t have any more time to google something about radar signatures.)
MikeM,
Haha! Yeah. That would be the sort of mistake an AI made!
Mike M,
Oh… I also read one of the “reasons” for letting the balloon travel for a while was to collect data on it’s motion. Maybe that was to accumulate training data while the balloon moved?
We are hearing more– both rumor and true over time.
Mike M,
“Maybe the air defense radar makes use of AI. Ignoring something because it is too slow is just the sort of error I’d expect from a computer.”
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That is a far more plausible explanation than no radar signature.
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Lucia,
Yes absolutely flat surfaces reflect only in one direction, but the wires, supporting structure, electronics, etc would have a significant signature that would be very difficult to hide. Besides that, the balloon was so damn big that it was clearly visible from the ground, and airline pilots noticed it as well. It is just not plausible that the multiple claimed earlier balloons during the Trump administration (everything bad is Trump’s fault, you know) would not have been noticed by anyone…. it is 100% lies.
SteveF
Well… obviously, this one was visible from the ground. The supposedly past 3? Evidently no one reported those. So maybe they were smaller or floated higher up.
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Oh… well, as I said, maybe something passed over during Trump era. It may have been the same is some ways and different in others. They do way it was over land a small time– and I heard “Florida” mentioned. Maybe something floated very high over Key West? That would be both “the same” and “entirely different” from penatrating all the way to Montana before rednecks reported what they saw and then floating on out to SC.
My impression is that when it comes to an air defense system, the issue isn’t seeing everything on radar. It’s making sense of the tracks and filtering out the clutter. The ‘AI’ might just in this case be the filtering heuristics of the air defense computer, but yeah. That’d be where my money is, if it’s true that we didn’t detect the balloon (or balloons) via air defense systems.
The other thing that makes me wonder is this isn’t the first time we’ve had high altitude balloons circumnavigating the globe. I seem to recall a few around the world attempts a decade or few back. What is the usual protocol for notifying countries involved or seeking permission? It only seems neighborly to let someone know that you’re overflying their airspace.
We should note that every intelligence official in the Trump administration has flat out said that no information about Chinese balloons was ever provided to the Trump administration. That means either: 1) The Biden administration is simply lying, or 2) the USA really doesn’t have the capability to detect a giant spy balloon in the sky, or 3) the DOD hid the presence of these earlier balloon overflights from the Trump administration, or 4) some combination. All three explanations strike be as incredibly damning, and even frightening. I sure hope the House calls these clowns to task, and sooner rather than later.
From the Chinese perspective I could an internal conversation where they are confused about all the fuss since objects that are 90 miles high are overflying every country hourly. The Chinese balloon was higher than air traffic could go, but just large and low enough to be visible in daylight.
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Does anyone think there is not a James Webb type telescope could not be pointing down too? Would that be cause for international outrage?
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Maybe we need to start thinking more about how the world views the USIC, considering that more and more of the US considers an unaccountable, heavily funded and well armed agency untrustworthy.
Ron Graf,
Domestic airspace for every country extends to >50 miles. 12 miles up is well within US airspace. U-2 aircraft flew at 72,000 feet, and were immediately targeted by the Russians (and others). Maybe we need to start thinking about protecting US air space.
‘”Trans Lives Matter occupies Oklahoma capitol to protest bill criminalizing genital mutilation of minors”
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Trans activists gathered in the Oklahoma Capitol Monday to protest legislation that would prohibit the sterilization and mutilation of children. “Trans lives matter,” they chanted.
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The legislative session began in the state on Monday, and lawmakers are expected to consider the Millstone Act, which would “prohibit Oklahoma doctors from providing gender transition procedures or referral services relating to such procedures to anyone under the age of 26.”
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“Child abuse is a felony in our state and mutilating a young person’s genitalia should be viewed no differently. The Millstone Act will hold those who perform child mutilation accountable by making such activity a felony. Those guilty of such a heinous crime will be both legally and financially liable,” Bullard said.
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a trans activist and lawyer, Brittany Novotny, is forming a new political action committee in the state to try to block the legislation. Called the Securing Liberty PAC, Novotny claims that bills protecting children run contrary to the GOP principle of limited government.
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Novotny claims that protecting children from sexualized drag content is simply government interference in private lives.
“We’re not going to beat these bills by rehashing the same far-left rhetoric and playing victim,” Novotny said. “We’re going to defeat these bills by finding common ground with Republicans in the Legislature and helping them to see this isn’t necessarily the winning issue they think it is.”‘
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Personally, I don’t think defending child abuse as a matter of “liberty”, or “big government”, is the winning issue they think it is, either.
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I would question the proposed 26yo limit. This would appear to be overreach, to the detriment of its intentions.
here I read VanHerck (NORAD head):
You make this announcement publicly? How does this not damage U.S. national security, announcing our air defense gaps and failures to the world.
That is completely outrageous. Military leadership is obviously overdue for some housecleaning, not that we didn’t already know that from our Afghanistan withdrawal.
[Edit: He goes on to say that we detected the balloon but didn’t shoot it down because there wasn’t hostile action or intent. This guy needs to be relieved of command.]
FYI: Wikipedia – Geostationary balloon satellite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_balloon
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“Geostationary balloon satellites (GBS) are proposed high-altitute balloons that would float in the mid-stratosphere (60,000 to 70,000 feet (18 to 21 km) above sea level) at a fixed point over the Earth’s surface and thereby act as an atmospheric satellite. At that altitude, air density is 1/15 of what it is at sea level. The average wind speed at these levels is less than that at the surface.[citation needed] A propulsion system would allow the balloon to move into and maintain its position. The GBS would be powered with solar panels.
A GBS could be used to provide broadband Internet access over a large area. Laser broadband would connect the GBS to the network, which could then provide a large area of coverage because of its wider line of sight over the curvature of the Earth and unimpeded Fresnel zone.”
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If you are worried about balloons, you have pretty much lost your minds ha ha. China has at least 400 nukes, ICBM’s, ballistic missile submarines and reportedly hypersonic cruise missiles. They have maintained what they call minimum nuclear deterrence for a long time. They are currently upgrading their nuclear capability, but as always their actual intentions are opaque.
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If you examine closely the US doesn’t really put a priority on homeland conventional protection. Have you seen fixed anti-aircraft installations around your city? Countries with 1000’s of nukes with global reach don’t really need to protect their homeland with tanks or defend against balloon attacks.
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Our borders are porous. China sends 20,000 shipping containers a day. Maybe 1% are examined? If they want to smuggle in a nuke it wouldn’t be hard, but they don’t need to. We can’t defend against ballistic missiles. I’m trying hard to figure out what the relative threat is here, and still perplexed what the Chinese goal was.
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Maybe it’s just diversionary. In WWII the US put out a huge effort to bomb Japan early in the war (The Doolittle Raid, 1942). It produced very little damage but the effects were mostly psychological “it raised fear and doubt about the ability of military leaders to defend the home islands”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid
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I’m all for shooting down all Chinese balloons, but it’s really just not an actual threat. The anti-Chinese backlash is real and it blows my mind that anyone thought that this was wise. The NYT ponders this was a rogue effort by some hawkish Chinese military commanders.
Tom, yes. At the end of the day what keeps us safe from attack is the fact that the U.S. military would deliver sure and certain destructive vengeance to any country that attacked us, not some imaginary power to prevent the attack and loss of life in the first place (at least when it comes to [adversaries] like PRC).
But demonstrating military incompetence and then proudly announcing our failures for the world to review does nothing to bolster international confidence in the ability of the US to exercise power effectively in the world. When confidence in the ability of the US to act in the world goes down, Ukraines and Taiwans get grabbed. North Korea starts firing off missiles and making noise. The Middle East goes to pot. So on.
mark,
“I will tell you that we did not detect those threats. And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out.”.
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This is a strange statement, I half suspect he is challenging the actual existence of these alleged prior balloons but cannot do so directly publicly. These are phantom balloon sightings reclassified from UFO’s. I’ve seen just about enough leaks from the IC lately to question everything they say. All we know is the IC claims they are real, decided that after the fact, won’t tell us anything more, and kept it secret all the way up until it was politically convenient to leak it. NORAD says they never saw anything. That’s what we know.
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I’d be inclined to believe the IC but WMD’s, Hunter Biden, Trump dossier, and a seemingly long line of political biased deceptions make me doubt them when a clear political advantage is present to their information. The way they threw Trump under the bus here is just shameful and I’m no fan of Trump. Trump has nothing to do with this, literally nothing, and I keep reading his name in balloon articles.
Tom,
Note that it doesn’t actually matter if the prior balloons were real or not. Either way, we have the guy in charge of NORAD announcing to the world that ‘we did not detect those threats. And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out.’ Which, taken along with the Afghanistan fiasco makes the U.S. military look like they cannot find their asses with both hands, which does not improve the global situation anywhere.
[Edit: Look at it this way. Certainly, it would not be beyond the pale for the military to say ‘we have no comment on that’ regarding alleged spy balloons in the past. There is no reason for them to be publicly confirming gaps in our capabilities! This is basic stuff.]
It is implausible to me that China would send something that big (visible to the naked eye from the ground at 60,000 feet) and believe it would not be noticed. They might as well have put flashing lights and lasers on it.
Right, I don’t know why they leaked the existence of uncertain prior balloon events. It serves no purpose except for Biden politically. It could be the usual fearmongering to keep the defense budget up. We have a balloon gap with China!
Line of sight view from 70,000 ft is a circle ~650 miles in diameter; even if you assume only 1/2 that as practical coverage, that is still a circle of 325 miles diameter. Any observational equipment at that altitude would not need to go directly over a militarily sensitive location to observe it.
Did everyone see the video of the Montana contrail and two flashes? I heard Tucker say that it was likely a fake because there was no other reports and, of course, the balloon kept flying. But what if that was an EMP or some type of electronic jammer? I am hoping that they truly had the balloon instrument jammed like they said.
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SteveF, I agree that we had the right to shoot it down and I would have given the order over as it approached Alaskan islands. But I am just agreeing with Tom that it is not a big deal in since any observation can be done almost as well from orbit.
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The answer to which country screwed up more in this affair is a good one. The US revealed that it was asleep at the post. But in finding that out China woke everyone up.
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Tom: “I’d be inclined to believe the IC but WMD’s, Hunter Biden, Trump dossier, and a seemingly long line of political biased deceptions make me doubt them when a clear political advantage is present to their information.”
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Amen to that.
I don’t think the government actually ever said they jammed it, they said they took precautions which I think translates to they told people on the ground to be aware they were being potentially surveilled and to not do anything important.
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At this point it isn’t clear whether there was an active real time communications link to China from the balloon, I have seen nothing definitive either way. If it was talking to a satellite I think it would be difficult to jam its transmission to a satellite from the ground (60,000 feet away). One could imagine something in between the balloon or satellite or something relatively close to the balloon jamming it. My guess is they decided it wasn’t really going to see anything very important and they let it be.
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Same type of thing, no need to expose our electronic warfare capabilities unless we need to.
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There is pretty much a continuing black hole of actual information. 3 days and pretty much nothing on what the wreckage has. They are very much committed to a “spy balloon” narrative so I would parse what they say very closely. Backing down from that would be humiliating.
They had a couple of Rivets flying beneath it across the midwest which helps a bit. Probably more for monitoring what the balloon was emitting doing than using it’s electronic warfare systems against it but that was a possibility.
Hannah is not happy.
Asleep at the wheel or playing cards and not watching the screens.
Someone at the top should go.
Or is it all just deflection from the Hunter Biden laptop which the Republicans should be focusing in heavily for the next 6 months?
Democrats actually on an upswing in the polls showing doing nothing
works!
Sarah Huckabee Sanders: “The dividing line in America is no longer Right or Left, it is normal or crazy.”
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Spot on.
Whatever popped the balloon did not hit the electronics package. The picture accompanying a WSJ opinion piece clearly shows in the lower half of the picture that the instrument package is falling intact, complete with solar panels.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-balloon-pops-d-c-s-myth-bubble-surveillance-china-hunter-biden-laptop-ufo-pentagon-11675791973?st=kzybzf2zj77gza6&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
It’s a shame they couldn’t have removed the charge from the missile or somehow made a smaller hole. Then they could have followed the balloon down with a ship and recovered everything relatively intact and with minimal recovery effort.
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I am wondering if there was some kind of electric motor on top out of sight. One would think a steering mode would add a lot of value to a surveillance apparatus.
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Edit: I wonder how the Chinese would recover it. It likely had a remote method of releasing the gas. If it had a motor it could then have been remotely landed.
Certainly the government has close up pictures of the payload of the balloon. It would be incompetence of the highest level to not do that before the shoot down. Why not release them? Real question.
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I can’t believe amateurs with telescopes or high powered cameras didn’t take any better pictures.
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Still, nothing.
Mike M, yes, I agree. Sarah Sanders hit it out of the park. Biden seemed to be in an endless dream where there were no price tags or unintended consequences of government programs.
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He forgot to mention how President Harris is rooting out the causes of the southern border invasion or updates on his unconstitutional giveaway to holders of college loans. Also, he forgot to mention how the defund the police initiative worked out or his support for critical race theory.
Ron Graf (Comment #218411): “It’s a shame they couldn’t have removed the charge from the missile or somehow made a smaller hole.”
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That might well have resulted in partial deflation followed by descent to a new equilibrium altitude, possibly one where it could be a hazard to aviation and/or been rapidly swept out to sea in the jet stream.
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Ron Graf: “I wonder how the Chinese would recover it. It likely had a remote method of releasing the gas.”
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My guess would be a mechanism to command the release of the payload from the balloon and then deploy a parachute from the payload.
NASA’s High Altitude Balloon Research
https://blogs.nasa.gov/superpressureballoon/
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Large Balloon, heavy payload (10,000 lbs total weight with balloon), real time communications, 42 day missions so far but could go longer. At the end of the mission they drop the payload using a parachute, the balloon I guess is discarded.
https://youtu.be/1KQPf2kA7WE?t=959
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One 40 day flight trajectory.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/superpressureballoon/wp-content/uploads/sites/260/2016/06/balloon9.png
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Payload. Spectrometer and image “spy” equipment.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/superpressureballoon/wp-content/uploads/sites/260/2016/04/04152016_NZ-SPB-BLOG-PIC-1024×576.jpeg
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Rather importantly southern hemisphere (mostly), no doubt due to political considerations. They have flown it in Europe and the US.
They are transparent about it up front.
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The Chinese story is this is a malfunctioning research balloon, if the NASA parachute drop fails then it is going to float wherever it goes.
Thanks Mike M and Tom.
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The next question is who is lying about the Nord-Stream sabotage? Sy Hersh, a one-time Pulitzer Prize winning NYT reporter, now the go-to man for government conspiracies, just reported a detailed expose on a US operation to blow up Putin’s pipeline. The US denials are not helped by Biden’s promise beforehand to “end it” if Putin’s tanks crossed the Ukraine border.
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream
“Memphis cop Demetrius Haley texted photo of bloodied Tyre Nichols after beating: document
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One of the Memphis police officers charged with the murder of Trye Nichols snapped a photo of the 29-year-old father — bloodied and handcuffed — and sent it to six people after they brutally beat him, according to a report.
Officer Demetrius Haley — who was fired from his job after the killing — took two photographs of the critically injured Nichols driver on his personal phone, according to a state document obtained by the Memphis news station WREG.
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The 30-year-old officer texted the photos of Nichols, who was propped against a car as he was unable to sit up on his own, to two fellow cops, a civilian employee of the police department and a female acquaintance, the record states.
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A sixth person also received the pictures, according to the document…”
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https://nypost.com/2023/02/07/memphis-cop-demetrius-haley-texted-photo-of-bloodied-tyre-nichols-after-beating/
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An odd thing to do. This gives more weight to the premeditated attack theory IMO.
Hersch has a reputation for spectacular but questionable stories. I am not inclined to give his latest a lot of credit.
Hersch writes:
Since the bombs were placed in June 2022, than means the discussions started in September 2021. Before the Russian build up began and just 4 months after Biden gave the green light for allowing Nordstream 2 to go ahead. Not believable.
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Maybe by “decision to sabotage” Hersch meant “decision to detonate the explosives”. That would mean that discussions started in Dec. 2021, which would be more believable. Still, that makes me wonder about the care that went into the story.
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The three month plus delay between placing the explosives and detonating them seems implausible. All sorts of things could go wrong, including the Russians spotting the explosives.
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I suppose the undetonated explosives are still on the fourth pipeline. But they have not been spotted?
After reading the Hersh article I think his source is the truthful one. The question is did this source just put the world’s international infrastructure in greater danger of future escalating sabotage, or did Biden? Clearly the source thought the later was true.
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Hersh makes his view known with a beautifully written paragraph regarding an infamous closed door quote from the CIA’s Richard Helms during the Church hearings.
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It’s going to take a smoking gun to convince me of either side sabotaging the pipeline. It’s just irrational for either side in my view. It’s very likely a nation state because of the level of effort it takes. Also I think it would be very risky to get caught. I think there might have been a Chinese balloon in the area at the time … (these jokes are so easy now).
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As I recall both Russia and the US have been seen monitoring undersea cables.
Mike M, the article is very explicit. The request for presidential options was made in December 2021.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218457): “It’s going to take a smoking gun to convince me of either side sabotaging the pipeline. It’s just irrational for either side in my view.”
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Indeed. And why just 3 of the 4?
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But no explanation makes sense. If one pipeline went, it could plausibly be an accident. But 3? All at the same time?
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So it wasn’t an accident. Russia didn’t do it. We didn’t do it. Only one explanation remains: It was those alien jokesters in the UFOs just messing with us. 🙂
They now claim that certain antennas on the Chinese balloon are indicative of surveillance. This is certainly one thing you would specifically look for.
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I’ve done a lot of “tear downs” of electronics and they should be able to identify the antennas which will tell you what frequencies they were optimized for looking at and the electronics as well (devices specifically for decoding US cellular signals, etc.). For the most part a weather balloon can be constructed with off the shelf parts and perhaps a few custom things. They should be able to look in the electronics boxes and pretty easily get a feeling for things that don’t really belong to a weather balloon. Specifically very expensive custom devices, and unmarked devices are a red flag. If there are gigantic amounts of storage, a red flag. An expert should be able to tell the difference unless it is cleverly designed as a dual use device.
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That being said, I don’t entirely trust the statements because of how heavily invested the IC is in the outcome here. It is very likely a weather balloon would have a high bandwidth short range connection for software servicing and data transfer as well as a lower bandwidth civilian satellite connection for command and control. The existence of these aren’t that meaningful.
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Examining the storage devices will also be meaningful. If they were scrubbed by the Chinese then that is a red flag. If they are encrypted that is a red flag. A sophisticated program would scrub the surveillance data on command and fill up the storage with innocent looking weather data. A real time only system would require a very high bandwidth satellite connection.
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Examining the firmware will also be meaningful, but this is a tedious long term process. Many uControllers allow the firmware to be read out. If this has been specifically blocked, another red flag. A long term examination of that firmware will reveal what it is doing and be a smoking gun. If an elaborate software defined radio is found, red flag.
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The presence of expensive high resolution optics would also be a smoking gun.
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The other side. If this is an innocent commercial weather balloon then the Chinese can hand over the electrical design and software source code. The US could then easily confirm that is exactly what they found. I don’t see any signs of this, so my balance at the moment is this is a surveillance exercise maybe 75%/25%. A very stupid exercise.
The article on the Nordstrom conspiracy appears to use a single anonymous “the source” who apparently has omnipotent information gathering capabilities across the entire US government and military.
Come to think of it, maybe Russia had a reason to blow up their own pipelines. Putin wants NATO to stop helping Ukraine. He figures that Europe can’t get through the winter without Russian gas; after all, plenty of people in the West were predicting calamity in Europe this winter. Putin also figured that those effete westerners would be afraid to even try getting through the winter without Russian gas.
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But simply cutting off the NordStream gas would leave Europe with hope that Russia, needing to sell its gas, would relent. The result would be a waiting game. Putin needed to force Europe’s hand. So he blew the pipelines to make it clear that there was no chance of gas from that route.
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There is still a way to get Russian gas to Europe: via the pipelines running through Ukraine. But that would require an end to the war.
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So maybe Putin blew his own pipelines in an attempt to force Europe to force an end to the war. Didn’t work.
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Addition: Blowing up his own pipelines had a low probability of achieving the desired result. But the potential payoff was huge. So it was a reasonable gamble for Putin.
What did the US have to gain by blowing up the pipelines? *Nothing*, as long as Biden’s alliance held firm. It would only matter if Germany and the EU broke and decided to buy Russian gas. So the attack on the pipeline was not an attack on Russia, it was an attack on the EU. Having that come out would have been massively destructive to NATO.
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So if the US did it, it was an act with massive risks and very little reward. I don’t think even Biden’s Biddies are *that* stupid.
Right, Russia wanted the EU to suffer for (potentially) intervening in Ukraine by using energy leverage. However by the time the pipeline was sabotaged all the writing was on the wall, the EU was exiting as a Russia customer and was willing to take a hit. Russia had previously had “technical problems” that limited gas transfer and had seen to it that the gas reserves in the EU were low going in to the war. This might have been an exercise in market manipulation to keep gas prices high to fund the war effort. I just don’t think it made much sense at the time for Russia, and even less sense for anyone else.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218464): “the EU was exiting as a Russia customer and was willing to take a hit.”
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Many people in the West thought the EU was bluffing. There were widespread predictions that before the winter was over, the EU would be begging Russia for gas. Putin may well have believed the same and called their bluff. But it seems the EU was not bluffing.
The hallmark of covert ops is a false flag – have someone else take the blame. The problem is that after living in the world with acknowledged state funding for super-power sized agencies that can launch covert ops for a dictator of ballsy president, nobody is to blame when mysterious sabotage, hacks or assassinations occur. Or, there becomes a clear divide in who gets the blame, which naturally becomes whoever is trusted least among whipped up national or international political factions.
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Hersh’s article says Germany and Norway were notified at the IC level to provide cover. It was unclear whether any elected officials were notified.
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I agree that a closet full of smoking guns delivered by an insider whistle-blowing participant are needed before guilt beyond a reasonable doubt can be established. But the US is a person of interest.
So let’s see. The situation prior to Hersch’s piece was that we don’t know who is to blame for what happened to the pipelines. One possibility is that the US did it, but it seems unlikely. Now that Hersch has published, the situation is unchanged.
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Anonymous sources, especially single anonymous sources, are not to be trusted.
Destruction of the pipeline was worth $billions to the US and Norway in increased gas prices and increased gas delivery to Europe.
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Follow the money works in most cases
What can be trusted? Death and taxes. We need to do better. The US has little standing, thanks to the USIC, to claim it couldn’t be them.
“ WASHINGTON—SpaceX has taken steps to limit Ukraine’s use of the company’s satellite-internet connections for military purposes, a top executive at the Elon Musk-founded company said Wednesday.
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SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said SpaceX had worked to restrict the country from using Starlink, as the company’s satellite-internet business is called, for military purposes.
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Starlink, which provides high-speed broadband, isn’t designed to be used for offensive or defensive military operations, according to user documents. Ms. Shotwell reiterated that point in explaining why SpaceX had added the limits in Ukraine.”
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/spacex-to-limit-ukraines-military-use-of-starlink-satellite-business-11675894401?mod=djemalertNEWS
Ed Forbes (Comment #218468): “Destruction of the pipeline was worth $billions to the US and Norway in increased gas prices and increased gas delivery to Europe.”
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How does that work? Delivery of gas was unchanged by the explosions.
Ron Graf
Strike 1.
Strike 2
Strike 3.
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MikeM
Well… that’s how you keep jobs at the NYT and win Pulitzer Prizes these days!
Tom Scharf
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Hersh’s story might be true. It’s behind a pay wall. Does anyone have a non-paywall version? (Or did you guys all pay for his subStack to read it?)
IMHO, only the USA (and maybe Norway) ever had motivation to blow up the pipelines. I predict it will some day (maybe many years in the future) be confirmed it was the Biden administration.
“Seymour Hersh Unveils the ‘Mystery’ of the Nord Stream Pipeline“
Gets a hit on Firefox
I saw the story on Real Clear Politics Wednesday as the third lead story with a fourth lead story saying White House and CIA denied it.
Visible yesterday but completely gone today.
Cannot find it at RCP search.
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No moments at The Hill, CNN ; Fox or Breitbart.
Weird
Ron Graf’s link in Comment #218453 to the Hirsch piece worked for me.
It seems that there were two pairs of bombs, some distance apart. I don’t think that is quite consistent with what Hirsch describes. But it does explain why only 3 pipelines were taken out: One was bombed twice! Or so says Wikipedia.
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Hmm. Maybe we did do it. 🙂
By Jo Nova. It was an act of terrorism that revolved around energy, but it’s also about free speech and the media. It’s a red-pill moment, and it was released on a blog, not in “the news”. Journalism lives — but it has moved.
Seymour Hersh is the same writer that broke the My Lai massacre and Abu Ghraib scandal. The veteran reporter won a Pulitzer prize and has an insider source and many details on his new substack blog. He claims The United States deliberately blew up the Nordstream pipes with help from Norway. The explosives were planted by divers in June under the cover of tine BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise. They were triggered by a sonar buoy dropped from a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane on Sept 26th, last year.
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That’s probably enough conspiracy rubbish.
Mike “ How does that work? Delivery of gas was unchanged by the explosions.”
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Not so, large increases in delivery of gas by both the US and Norway and large increase in the price for gas.
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Europe is also building LNG terminals to increase US delivery of gas.
Some Small Corrections To Seymour Hersh’s New Nord Stream Revelations
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https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/02/some-small-corrections-to-seymour-hershs-new-nord-stream-revelations.html#more
Ed Forbes (Comment #218480): “Not so, large increases in delivery of gas by both the US and Norway and large increase in the price for gas.”
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Those things had nothing to do with the explosions. The amount of gas flowing through the NordStream pipelines was exactly the same before and after the explosions.
Ed Forbes (Comment #218481): “Some Small Corrections To Seymour Hersh’s New Nord Stream Revelations”.
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Sounds like he is saying that it could not possibly have gone down the way Hirsch says. Not that I have any reason to give more credit to that guy than to Hirsch.
Ukraine was using Starlink to control their drones, this is supposedly against the terms of service (no offensive use, blah blah). I also think they are providing this service for free(?). Whether it should be allowed is a different question. I’m guessing SpaceX doesn’t really want its satellite array to be a valid Russian target, and I think it is reasonable to restrict it if they want. SpaceX is paying for it. A pretty messy situation for them.
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Based on the literally hundreds of “watch a drone drop a grenade on a Russian soldier and kill him” videos lately on the Reddit channel, this has been effective on a small scale. Reddit has gone full war gore porn now. Yesterday they had a video of a Ukrainian soldier dragging captured Russian soldiers out and executing them point blank. It’s getting pretty ugly. The fighting is ramping up again, yet another critical time for Ukraine.
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You have been warned, it’s 99% pro-Ukraine:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/
Tom Scharf,
wrt your comment 218451 on the ChatGPT thread about spike protein modification. There’s a piece in today’s WSJ that is germane to the subject but not specific to Pfizer.
link
My, what a coincidence that a coronavirus with a furin cleavage site first showed up in Wuhan. /sarc
That gun is smoking enough for me, as if I needed more evidence.
Mike “ Those things had nothing to do with the explosions. The amount of gas flowing through the NordStream pipelines was exactly the same before and after the explosions.”
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What we have here is a failure to communicate
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Gas delivery from the US and Norway does not go through NordStream. Not saying these caused the explosion. I am saying there is a financial incentive for both the US and Norway to sabotage NordStream due to both being able to ship additional quantities of gas, and at increased prices, to Europe. Additionally, large amounts of European industry is relocating to the US due to the increased cost of European energy supplies.
Ed Forbes (Comment #218486): “I am saying there is a financial incentive for both the US and Norway to sabotage NordStream due to both being able to ship additional quantities of gas, and at increased prices, to Europe.”
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The explosions had NO effect on gas shipments.
Shipments through the pipelines prior to the explosions: ZERO.
Shipments through the pipelines after the explosions: ZERO.
Zero = Zero. No change means no effect. It is not hard to understand.
Lucia, if you get the please subscribe popup on Hersh’s Substack just select the free subscription. You can unsubscribe if you don’t want to be emailed his free articles.
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The international press if picking up Hersh’s story and also some conservative US press.
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https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream
https://mate.substack.com/p/seymour-hersh-reveals-how-the-us
https://nypost.com/2023/02/08/seymour-hersh-claims-us-navy-behind-nord-stream-2-pipeline-explosio
https://dailycaller.com/2023/02/09/seymour-hersh-nord-stream-explosion-cia-navy-russia-report-sabotage/
Another possible angle is that Russia’s long term plan was anticipating a lot of political blowback for cutting off gas supplies to Europe and causing a potential humanitarian crisis, thus they preplanned this anonymous sabotage to avoid political culpability. Perhaps more for their domestic audience than outside.
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What actually happened was everyone basically already knew Russia was a bunch of untrustworthy thugs and saw this gas cutoff behavior as right in line with historical standards. It was met with a shrug, of course Russia was going to cutoff gas, that’s how Russia operates.
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Russia may have thought they had more energy leverage than they did. Russia firmly believes it can out suffer anybody, not without good historical reason. This doesn’t mean other countries will endure no pain at all. They believed Ukraine would just fold, and the EU would prioritize domestic economics above all. They were wrong and wrong.
Zero ?
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LITTLETON, Colo., Dec 20 (Reuters) – Record liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from the United States helped soften the blow to Europe from sharply lower Russian pipelined natural gas supplies in 2022, and will remain a vital energy source for the continent in 2023.
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But the surging cost of U.S. LNG supplies – which have roughly doubled since late 2021 – look set to come under closer scrutiny in 2023 as governments, utilities and households across Europe move to mend tattered budgets.
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https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-lng-exports-both-lifeline-drain-europe-2023-maguire-2022-12-20/
More zero
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OSLO, Nov 15 (Reuters) – Norway’s trade surplus rose to a record high in October as revenues from its offshore petroleum fields soared, led by a spike in the price of natural gas, national statistics agency (SSB) data showed on Monday.
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The October surplus hit 84.5 billion Norwegian crowns ($9.73 billion), a rise of 60.7% from September, which had held the previous single-month record.
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With a daily output of around four million barrels of oil equivalent, almost equally divided between oil and natural gas, Norway has been a winner here from the spike in global energy prices.
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https://www.reuters.com/article/norway-economy-tradefigures-idUSL1N2S60E4
Ed Forbes,
Surely you can not be that stupid unless you are doing it on purpose. Yes, gas exports have increased from the US and Norway. That is a result of no gas to the EU from Russia. That has nothing to do with blowing up the ALREADY SHUT DOWN pipelines since the explosions had no effect on gas exports from Russia to the EU.
Mike M,
I think the issue is that as shipments of LNG increased and prices increased (due to limited supplies), the Europeans, and especially Germans, suffered ever increasing costs for the war in Ukraine. With those higher costs would come the temptation to argue for a negotiated end to the war….. and return to cheap gas, thus increasing Russian influence in Europe. Blowing up the pipelines guaranteed rising economic costs would not motivate any return to the situation of two years ago.
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Coupled with both Biden’s and Victoria Nuland’s cryptic assurances about Nordstream 2 never going into service, I think the USA is by far the most likely country to have blown up the pipelines. Eventually the truth will come out, though maybe not for a long time.
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The people in the Biden administration insist that all countries MUST comply with a “rules based international order”. With the USA and their close allies setting the rules, of course. Russia, China, India, and many others reject that rules based order and insist on acting in what they believe to be their own best interests. Note that countries rejecting sanctions against Russia include dictatorships, democracies, and communists; it is not a left/right issue, but rather about who will exercise control. The conflict is not only about the Ukraine, and will not end when the war in the Ukraine ends.
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The danger I see is the real potential for uncontrolled escalation. The Biden administration continues to threaten Russia with sending ever more advanced weapon systems to the Ukraine (tanks, artillery, surface-air defenses, fourth generation fighters), all of which Russia surely sees as escalation and a direct threat.
DeWitt,
Yes, the presence of a furin cleavage site in a virus from a family where no such site has ever been found is strong evidence covid-19 came from a lab in Wuhan. The danger is that hiding the source of covid-19 from the public will allow similarly dangerous GOF research to continue. Ten million+ lives lost, and the real potential for future catastrophe, seems to me far too high a price for virologists to continue doing GOF research. It needs to be stopped.
SteveF (Comment #218494): “I think the issue is …”
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Essentially what I said earlier in arguing that Russia is a more likely culprit than the USA.
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There are alternatives to Nord Stream, in particular the pipelines passing through Ukraine. If the EU is desperate for Russian gas, then destroying Nord Stream *increases* pressure on the EU to end the war. That is in Russia’s interest, not ours (by which I mean the stated interest of our government).
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Destroying Nord Stream was an act against the EU more than Russia. If we did it, it was spectacularly high risk. I find it hard to believe that we did it just to keep gas prices high.
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None of this pertains to Ed Forbes’s claim that the purpose of the sabotage was to drive gas prices up.
Tom Scharf (Comment #218489): “Another possible angle is that Russia’s long term plan was anticipating a lot of political blowback”
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At this point I very much doubt that Russia cares at all about political blowback outside of Russia. And inside Russia, their position is that NATO is waging war on Russia, so no problem there with cutting off gas to the EU.
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There *might* be financial blowback to cutting off gas. They have contracts with the EU. When the war ends, they will probably want to resume those contracts. Voluntarily cutting off gas is presumably a violation of those contracts and might either void them or require large compensation to resume them. But an unknown party blowing up the pipelines is probably treated as force majeure.
In other news, James O’Keefe has been exiled from Project Veritas over accusations leveled in this letter:
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https://www.scribd.com/document/624864598/Memo-to-PV-Board-Feb-6-2023-1#from_embed
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“Veritas, which issued a statement after the news broke in New York Magazine and the Daily Beast that O’Keefe’s tenure was in question, said that they were confident in their ability to stay the course and continue to deliver on the mission O’Keefe set out for them, whether he was helming the project or not.”
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https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-project-veritas-employees-letter-targeting-james-okeefe-leaked-james-okeefe-is-project-veritas-trends-on-twitter
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Nah. I suspect it was only the tenacity of O’Keefe that kept them on the course they were and that future “expose’s” will back off from poking The Beast until they sink without a trace. Miracles do occasionally occur though.
Mike M,
I really see zero motivation for Russia to blow up its own pipelines, but plenty of motivation for the USA (especially “internationalists” in the Biden administration). We will have to agree to disagree. BTW, I do not think higher gas pricing was the motivation. I think the motivation was to get the weak-kneed Europeans to commit to the war ‘no matter how long it takes’.
DaveJR, O’keefe’s — the monster slayer of becoming a monster, an eternal story. Sad they want to cancel him though rather than have a talk.
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DeWitt, the 2018 Eco-Health bioweapons research proposal to DARPA to engineer the FCS into SARS is old news for those that follow world-shaking revelations that get almost no MSM coverage. It came to light in August 2021, three months after Nobel virologist David Baltimore was forced to walk back his opining that the FCS was a “smoking gun.” The full picture of the evidence of lab leak is presented in “Viral,” 12/2021, by Alina Chan and Matt Ridley (yes, that Matt Ridley).
SteveF, I think you have the Nord Stream sabotage analysis spot on. Add to your list of reasoning by the Big Man was that Europe really didn’t need to be tempted to keep the ambilocal cord of fossil fuel sitting there when they all know they have to get to net zero in 20 years anyway.
Ron wrote: “O’keefe’s — the monster slayer of becoming a monster, an eternal story. Sad they want to cancel him though rather than have a talk.”
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Probably more akin to letting perfect be the enemy of good. It’s easy to say other people should handle things better when you’re not the one being lied about, dragged through the courts, and getting raided by the FBI. As I suggested, I expect his successors have bitten off more than they can chew and that will show in a decline in the “controversial” department. Some people thrive in high stress chaos. Their ability to do so results in deficiencies in other areas. Others just curl up and cry.
Rand Paul yesterday laid out a normal people’s argument for the federal government to stop acting like a foreign occupier of the USA versus the crazy argument that everything must be kept secret, like Eco Health’s 2018 proposal to DARPA to place a FCS in SARS to see how deadly to humans it might become.
https://twitter.com/akheriaty/status/1624074304496492544?s=20&t=SfK6ZT3WfCondOg1PJ7ZAA
Supposedly the House Republicans are going to do some hearings on GOF. It will likely be yet another clown show like all these hearing degrade into. Why GOF should be a partisan issue is beyond me. Defend “science” at all costs is just scientism.
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Many people are concerned about the Ukraine war escalating into a nuclear confrontation, millions would die.
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7 million people died from covid, it just didn’t happen in one massive thermo-covid blast. I see GOF like the world’s population is a bunch of U-235 atoms and viral labs are busy shooting off neutrons for research of questionable usefulness but promise they will not let those neutron escape. One slipup and a massive unstoppable chain reaction can occur.
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On top of that we now learn that private industry (Pfizer) is likely doing GOF beyond regulatory reach. Instead of people being concerned about this we get flood the zone coverage of Chinese balloons.
Ron Graf,
Many years ago George Will (semi-conservative RINO) often complained that progressives were just people who wanted to “boss everyone around”…. or more accurately, they wanted to control every personal choice in the USA. Today’s Democrats are that, of course, but on mega-doses of steroids: they want to dictate exactly what everyone in the whole world is allowed to do and say (at least publicly).
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IMHO, they are a nightmarish plague on humanity, and need to be thrown from power.
Ron Graf,
“…they have to get to net zero in 20 years anyway.”
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There is real comedy to be found in almost any progressive policy, at least if you enjoy comedy of the absurd.
Jamie Raskin is calling for an investigation of weaponization of the DOJ by Bill Barr’s appointment of Durham. I say take him up on it. We still have many unanswered questions and still classified documents. https://www.yahoo.com/news/raskin-slams-durham-probe-total-225504425.html
Ron Graf,
Jamie Raskin must be suffering from recto-cranial inversion. How is an internal investigation of the DOJ weaponizing it? I mean really!
“How is an internal investigation of the DOJ weaponizing it?”
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I don’t ever want to get into Jamie Raskin’s head but I can only think he means that investigating the spotless work of Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, etc… is harming the morale and recruitment of good social justice warriors into the department. Clinesmith. for example, was not altering the CIA email about their assessment of Page’s file folder as being one of an asset to one of a suspect for the sake of being the 26th policy violation involved with their FISA on Page. No, Clinesmith pleaded his innocence to the judge at his probation sentencing. He was simply correcting what he honestly thought was an error by the CIA. After all, how could Carter Page, a Trump supporter, be of any value to the US.
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Jeff Gerth’s Columbia Journalism Review tearing into the MSM spurred a half dozen articles clapping right back. Trump was a Putin stooge all the way they still say. The injustice is that Barr let him slip away. They almost had him on obstruction remember.
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https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-president-part-1.php
DeWitt, yeah. Getting really sick of the constant gaslighting. It’s tiringly predictable.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #218508): “Jamie Raskin must be suffering from recto-cranial inversion.”
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Oh, THAT’S the reason for the do rag he wears!
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On second thought, given the real reason, I may have just crossed a line.
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On third thought, when Congress Critters act like officious idiots, they deserve to be mocked. Cancer treatment does not provide a pass.
What can we make of Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi and other former far left Dems basically sounding the alarm against the administrative state? Has the USIC really been running information ops against the American people? If so, can it be exposed by a ragtag handful of independent reporters? If it can, will true believers that have been consuming the product ever accept that they were being fed? Will the establishment GOP, like McConnell and Graham, allow the brand of the US government be degraded by such defaming revelations? It looks like the fight that Trump started may be taken over by Dem defectors, like Taibbi.
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If you’re listening out there, deep state, Matt is coming for you.