In comparison, the ’89 Loma Prieta quake which dropped the Embarcadero freeway in San Francisco was “only” 6.9.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
September 19, 2017
ALLIES: Trump team to block Erdogan gun deal.
The decision blocks a $1.2 million deal that would have supplied arms to Erdogan’s security detail, months after Erdogan’s team outraged U.S. leaders by beating protesters against his regime during a trip to Washington, D.C. The violence added new stress to an alliance that has grown fraught in recent years, despite Turkey’s status as a key member of NATO.
“The State Department, in informing Congress that it was formally withdrawing the planned sale, said it was at the request of Sig Sauer, which had requested the license from the U.S. government that’s needed to export weapons outside the U.S.,” according to the Associated Press, which first reported the cancellation. “But the U.S. had already quietly put the sale on hold after the violence, and the Trump administration had informed the Turkish government that the sale wouldn’t be allowed to take place. Sig Sauer appeared to have pulled its request for a license from the U.S. government after hearing from the Turks that it no longer expected to purchase the weapons.”
The cancellation drew immediate applause from Congress, where Republican and Democratic lawmakers have demanded that Trump punish Erdogan. “Erdogan thinks he can beat up people with immunity from our law,” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., told the Washington Examiner. “He may behave that way in Turkey but he can not do that in America.”
Kemal Ataturk’s Turkey is gone, and Erdogan’s Turkey is no friend to Western values.
HOTBLACK DESIATO COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: NASA’s Hubble Captures Blistering Pitch-Black Planet.
The oddball exoplanet, called WASP-12b, is one of a class of so-called “hot Jupiters,” gigantic, gaseous planets that orbit very close to their host star and are heated to extreme temperatures. The planet’s atmosphere is so hot that most molecules are unable to survive on the blistering day side of the planet, where the temperature is 4,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Therefore, clouds probably cannot form to reflect light back into space. Instead, incoming light penetrates deep into the planet’s atmosphere where it is absorbed by hydrogen atoms and converted to heat energy.
“We did not expect to find such a dark exoplanet,” said Taylor Bell of McGill University and the Institute for Research on Exoplanets in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, lead researcher of the Hubble study. “Most hot Jupiters reflect about 40 percent of starlight.”
Hubble is still producing fascinating results, nearly 30 years after its launch.
NEWS I HOPE YOU DON’T HAVE TO USE: 8 Essential Things You Should Be Doing NOW to Prepare for an EMP Attack.
MISSILE DEFENSE: U.S. Establishes Permanent Military Base in Israel.
The move comes at a time of growing Israeli concerns about archenemy Iran’s development of long-range missiles. Together with the U.S., Israel has developed a multilayered system of defenses against everything from long-range guided missile attacks from Iran to crude rockets fired from Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
The base’s opening is largely symbolic and isn’t expected to bring operational changes. But the Israeli military says that along with other measures, it sends a message of readiness to Israel’s enemies.
“It’s a message that says Israel is better prepared. It’s a message that says Israel is improving the response to threats,” said Brig. Gen. Zvika Haimovich, the commander of Israel’s aerial defense.
The base is located within an existing Israeli air force base and will operate under Israeli military directives.
This is a huge deal — or would be, if any of Israel’s Arab neighbors chose to make it one. But they haven’t, which just goes to show you how much Israeli-Arab relations have improved in the face of Iranian aggression.
EXPLAINER: Understanding the Roles of the IAEA, the Joint Commission, and the United States.
On August 31, major Western media outlets reported that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had once again certified Iran’s compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal. This assertion, which purported to re ect the IAEA’s seventh and latest post-implementation report on Tehran’s nuclear activities, mirrors statements by the Iranian government and key world leaders in response to the agency’s previous reports. e IAEA has repeatedly a rmed “that Iran has implemented the deal faithfully, fully, and completely,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on July 16. Federica Mogherini, the high representative of the European Union for foreign a airs and security policy, said on July 20 that the UN watchdog “has certified six times – not once, six times – the full implementation of the deal’s provisions.”
These accounts are false. In fact, the IAEA has never certified Iran’s compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
This is pretty dry reading from the FDD, but it goes a long way towards clearing up the misconceptions presented by Washington, the international community, and the mainstream media.
DON’T BE WEEVILS: Gab.AI Sues Google Over Removal Of App From Google Play Store. “Google used comments from users to justify removing the app due to ‘hate speech.’ Now, Gab is fighting back.”
Google intends to monitor speech even on other people’s platforms.
THEY ALREADY ARE: Are Conservatives Prepared to be Censored?
What images should appear when you Google “white couple”? Probably two people of European descent. If you search those words today, though, you’ll find almost exclusively black couples. The results are similarly skewed for “white man & white woman” and “white couple with children”. Try it. Strange, a bit annoying, and vaguely political – just imagine the reaction if a query for “black couple” turned up only whites. I suspect that wouldn’t fly at Google.
What results would you expect when Googling “American inventors”? Likely a mix of great innovators from our past and present, from a variety of backgrounds. Instead, Google tells us they’re almost all black. No Benjamin Franklin, no Samuel Morse, no Bill Gates. Without disrespecting Dr. Patricia Bath and her cataracts-surgery machine, the telegraph and personal computer merit a higher placement.
Somebody at Google is skewing the queries, in this case a form of digital affirmative action: conceivably another point scored in an endless matchup against “white supremacy,” whose presence at all turns is the greatest of progressive obsessions. The implication is that anything related to whiteness – even the telegraph – shouldn’t be searched for at all, and takes up “space” from the accomplishments of marginalized people. In both of the above examples, we receive a political indoctrination in lieu of sought after information. In the second one, we actually learn an altered version of history.
Read the whole thing.
Google made its name by doing what no one before them could: Produce meaningful search results of the web’s nearly unlimited and completely un-curated information. Their results were, by far, the best — and it made the company untold billions.
Clearly that’s no longer true — so use a different search engine, refuse to part with your personal data in exchange for their “free” services, and take away their billions.
NEW YORK TIMES: Republicans Demand Another Vote to Repeal the Affordable Care Act.
“Demand?” Republicans control The Hill, allegedly, and ObamaCare repeal is one of the jobs what they were elected to get done.
KIDS THESE DAYS: Today’s US teens about three years behind ’70s generation when it comes to sex, alcohol and getting jobs.
The findings in the journal Child Development were based on an analysis of seven large, nationally representative surveys of 8.3 million teenagers between 1976 and 2016.
The surveys sought to find out how those aged 13 to 19 spent their time, and how often they engaged in adult activities such as drinking alcohol, dating, taking jobs, driving, or having sex, said the report.
What researchers found was a ‘broad-based cultural shift,’ said the study.
Adolescents in the 2010s ‘are less likely to work for pay, drive, date, drink alcohol, go out without their parents, and have sex than adolescents in previous decades,’ it said.
These changes were apparent across the nation, and regardless of race, gender or socioeconomic lines.
‘The developmental trajectory of adolescence has slowed, with teens growing up more slowly than they used to,’ said lead author Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University.
‘In terms of adult activities, 18-year-olds now look like 15-year-olds once did.’
It’s one thing to skip the youthful sex and drinking for ambitious kids taking on the world at work. Or to slack off for a few years sowing some wild oats. But missing out on gainful employment, sex, and alcohol is just sad.
WHEN EVERYTHING IS RACIST… Even Hobby Lobby Cotton Is Racist These Days.
FREE KURDISTAN: Kurdish Independence Referendum on September 25th Raises Threats from Turkey, Iraq. “The White House also wants the Kurds to cancel the vote.”
Citing concerns about continued efforts against ISIS, President Trump’s administration—like Obama’s before him—does not support an independent Kurdish state. The Trump administration has demanded that the Kurds cancel their independence referendum in favor of further negotiations.
With few exceptions, a lack of imagination has been hindering US policy in the Middle East since Nixon and Kissinger completed Egypt’s realignment more than 40 years ago.
WASTE PAPER: Someone Keeps Flushing €500 Bank Notes Down The Toilet.
In recent weeks, Swiss prosecutors have been gripped by a mystery, trying to figure out why someone tried to flush tens of thousands of euros down the toilet at a Geneva branch of UBS.
And not just once.
The first €500 bills were discovered several months ago in a bathroom close to a bank vault containing hundreds of safe deposit boxes, according to a report in Tribune de Geneve confirmed by the city prosecutor’s office. A few days later, Bloomberg adds that more banknotes turned up in toilets at three nearby restaurants, requiring thousands of francs in plumbing repairs to unclog the pipes. Indeed, AP adds that at one pizzeria, police were informed after the clogged toilet had overflowed.
In all, police have extracted tens of thousands of euros in soiled bills, many of which appear to have been cut with scissors.
While destroying banknotes isn’t a crime in Switzerland, “there must be something behind this story,” said Henri Della Casa, a spokesman for the Geneva Prosecutor’s Office. “That’s why we started an investigation.” He declined to discuss the case further.
If the money had been stolen and been marked by police or had the serial numbers recorded, then there wouldn’t be any mystery for the police to solve — but apart from that, I can’t imagine any reason for flushing away perfectly good money.
TRUMP AT UN: Mideast Peace Deal ‘Will be a Fantastic Achievement… I Say It Can Happen.’
Not until certain parts of the Arab world give up on ethnic cleansing and/or genocide, it can’t.
(INTER)NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE: Britain is offering US physician assistants cash and long vacations in Europe if they relocate to fill desperate staff shortage.
The National Health Service (NHS) is offering £1,000 ($1,350) to cover their relocation, 41 days paid vacation a year, and free flights home during holidays.
Ultimately, officials say the plan is to recruit up to 3,200 PAs to perform minor operations and monitor wards.
The move has sparked outrage, with senior medics and patient groups warning it could trigger a slippery slope towards relying on under-qualified transplants to perform essential duties.
British health officials insist the PAs would not be replacing doctors, though they would be allowed to perform the same tasks.
Who will we poach medical staff from if BernieCare is passed into law?
SNOWFLAKE NATION: Feds Spend $587,441 to Make Engineering a ‘Safe Zone’ for LGBTQ Students.
The engineers I’ve known didn’t seem to care much about other engineers except whether they were competent.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Riots in Georgia, Manafort Tapped and Much, Much More.
THE NEW CIVILITY: California Governor Compares Trump Supporters to Cave Dwellers.
“They’re both kind of very similar. You should check out the derivation of ‘Trump-ite’ and ‘troglodyte,’ because they both refer to people who dwell in deep, dark caves,” Brown said in remarks reported by Politico.
The California governor, speaking at an event during Climate Week NYC, said the election of Trump has made it easier to promote climate-related policies. Trump is a “real adversary that is not believable, is not credible,” according to Brown.
“President Trump is the null hypothesis, which he’s proven. Everything he’s doing is … stupid and dangerous and silly. I mean, come on, really, calling the North Korean dictator ‘Rocket Man?’ … He is accelerating the reversal through his own absurdity,” Brown said.
Brown can’t even get his pet rail line built, which is technology dating back to the early 19th Century.
SHOT: Information Warfare: Russia’s “Active Measures.”
According to researchers who conducted a post-mortem of social media activity during the election using internet analytics tools, Russian Information Warfare content on social media attempts to subvert Western democracies in five ways: undermine public confidence in democratic government, exacerbate internal political divisions, erode trust in government, push the Russian agenda in foreign populations, and create confusion and distrust by blurring fact and fiction.
CHASER: Clinton won’t rule out challenging legitimacy of 2016 election.
“I don’t know if there’s any legal constitutional way to do that. I think you can raise questions,” Clinton told NPR’s Terry Gross during an extended interview on “Fresh Air,” before pivoting to criticism of President Donald Trump’s rhetoric regarding Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 race.
Gross quickly returned to her initial question, asking if Clinton would “completely rule out questioning the legitimacy of this election if we learn that the Russian interference in the election is even deeper than we know now?”
“No. I would not,” Clinton said.
The followup question should have been, “Why are you doing the Kremlin’s work?”
BRUCE BAWER: The Sinister Way Germany’s Recollection of the Holocaust Impacts Its Approach to Muslim Immigration.
Every observer of Germany knows that its officially prescribed attitude of perpetual atonement over the Holocaust coexists with an anti-Semitism that’s been on the rise for decades. These two phenomena are unquestionably linked – which is to say that the hostility of many Germans toward Jews is rooted in their awareness of their grandfathers’ or great-grandfathers’ wartime actions, their awareness that they’re expected to spend their lives professing guilt for these actions, and the fact that, in a country full of reminders of those actions, it’s impossible to escape this awareness.
How, after all, can a country that did what Germany did in the 1940s be psychologically healthy only three generations later? Henryk M. Broder, the German Jewish writer, put it this way in 1986: “The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.” It’s become a cliché that Germans love dead Jews – they just don’t care for living ones.
Six years ago I reviewed Tuvia Tenenbom’s eye-opening book I Sleep in Hitler’s Room: An American Jew Visits Germany. Tenenbom, I wrote, was “constantly exposed to rote expressions of sympathy for the victims of Auschwitz – and rote expressions of rage over Israel’s supposedly deplorable treatment of the Palestinians.”
Obviously, Germans enjoy equating Israel with Nazi Germany because it helps relieve their historical guilt. Germans will tell you that they’re resolved never to let “that” happen again – but they’ve managed to convince themselves that the group most in danger of being subjected to “that” in today’s Europe isn’t the Jews but the Muslims. Therefore, the best way to atone for what their ancestors did to Jews is to kowtow to Islam.
The end of this new path is the same as the old one: Lots of dead Jews — and Germans, too.