Indications of War and the Underwater Surveillance System of Norway

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[If this event in Norway had happened, wouldnt we have heard about it from many sources?  Wouldnt it be a big deal?  I am guessing that either this did not happen or people are being seriously discreet.  Well I guess we will find out.]

This post is to bring to your attention that something has happened recently that has almost certainly caused concern and sleepless nights for many people.  It may sound innocuous if a little aggressive but it may actually signal that something important is about to happen.  The particular event involves the silencing of a Norwegian underwater sensor system which probably had the ability to track Russian submarines which work very hard not to be tracked.

See the following story.  These people have a good reputation for discussing things of interest without using secret sources. 

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43094/norwegian-undersea-surveillance-network-had-its-cables-mysteriously-cut

Even when rivals do not intend to go to war, they do things we might call provocative and not all that trusting or friendly. So for example, since WW2 we have flown jets somewhere close to the Russian border to see how long it takes for their radar to light up, where they are, and a bunch of what is sometimes called "signals intelligence", which means we may not know what they are saying but we know they are talking. Russia might fly a strategic bomber towards the UK to see how long it takes for them to be intercepted. This is all normal peacetime activities. If you want peace, they say, prepare for war. So far so good. But there is more to it than that.  When JFK was assassinated and people asked why the pentagon did not go on alert, the guy in charge of that said something like "the board was clear", the board probably referring to something called NMIC.  in other words, yes, the president had been assassinated which could be the opening stage of a war, but none of the other things they look for had happened.  What sort of things?  Well there is a list of things.  Assassinations for example, mobilization of the ground forces which are in maneuver near the border. Important reconnaissance systems becoming inoperative.  The satellites go dark.  The relevant embassy or embassies starts destroying classified material.  All of these things happen now and then, sometimes for innocent reasons (e.g. a satellite went dark but thats because it simply broke, no need to get your panties in a bunch over it.)  But there is more history here.  

When Israel was about to do the 1967 preemptive strike they told us to take a listening post, a ship in the Mediterranean,  away. We refused or ignored them and they blew up the USS Liberty so that we could not hear the fighters being scrambled for Egypt (even if we did not know what the pilots were saying, they wanted surprise so no warnings).   There is a fuzzy line between what you might normally do, try to catch spies for example, and things you might do if you were about to attack and needed tactical surprise (or in some cases strategic surprise, a whole other thing). Its one thing for Russia to roll up an amphibious tank onto a beach in Sweden to spy on a naval base in the middle of the night, but its a whole other thing to cut underwater cables, revealing they have that ability, which is a big deal independent of the cables actually cut.  We knew they had that capability but they had not demonstrated it on operational cables of a strategic listening system by a neighbor.   You only do that right before you need to do something you dont want people to see. Something fairly big. 

So in deterrence theory we say that if there is nuclear war it is very important to have a few days notice, if you can, because all kinds of things can be moved around for safety. So we keep a 24/7 team in the basement of the pentagon connected to a bunch of different sources to ask what is going on. Are the satellites mysteriously going silent? Have NATO generals suddenly disappeared? Are the bad guys on maneuvers near the border. Are the underwater cables going out?

The job of the people on the ground is to read the clues and form the right conclusions about what is going on.  Thats what they get paid for.

 

Possible Explanation for A Conservative Meme about COVID-19

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If you examine the following article you will find a discussion of a Republican doctor who claims that the CDC is grossly inflating COVID-19 death statistics.  Are the Republicans just making this stuff up or is there even the slightest reason to believe it? So I have a theory about where this baseless story came from which I present here. Its total speculation on my part so dont go around saying this is what happened.  I am just thinking out loud.

First the article.  The doctor in question is midway through the story.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/montana-extreme-trump/2021/10/22/0f82afbc-0037-11ec-a664-4f6de3e17ff0_story.html

 

Now for my theory.  Did you know that we dont know how many people die of the flu each year?  Well we dont and the CDC admits its statistics are wrong.  There are a number of reasons for this and they are not because of bad people doing bad things, unfortunately because that (bad people) would be easier to fix.  Here are two examples of why the statistics understate the real numbers.  In the first scenario, someone goes to the hospital with bad flu and dies of cardiac failure.  Now, did that person die of a heart attack or did that person die from the flu? What do you put in the "cause of death" field on the form?   In the second scenario, someone gets bad flu and dies at home and nothing is reported because the person was old, and got sick, and it doesnt seem important to report the cause of death in a way that the CDC can capture. Maybe the cause of death is reported as "complications of old age".  In this case, its quite possible that "flu" was never formally diagnosed. The flu has been with us a long time, most people think it is the same as the "common cold".  It just doesnt get reported.

But in the case of COVID which is very different from the flu and much more dangerous (at least until the really bad flu like 1918 comes around again) the CDC wanted to make sure that the cases of COVID-19 got reported and the cause of death correctly attributed.  So my guess is that they sent out information fliers requesting local doctors and hospitals to be particularly diligent and if there were multiple probable causes of death, to make sure that COVID-19 is listed.  And of course our nutty Republicans who are not too smart saw this as a conspiracy to inflate the figures.  

I dont know if this is even close to what happened.  But I would like to believe that our Republicans are just stupid and paranoid and wrong but not deliberately malicious about distorting information that can and does cause the death of otherwise clueless people.  That would be negligent, criminally negligent.  I hope therefore that the Republicans are just wrong.  Maybe they just heard a rumor made up by some paranoid nut like the Trump moron and just took it at face value and repeated it.  Maybe the CDC did nothing at all.  Maybe we will never know why the Republicans believe the nutty things they believe.

Vegetarian Oatmeal Banana Muffin Things

Not vegan unless butter substitute is used.

4 bananas 

2 tsp vanilla

1 pinch salt

1 measuring unit brown sugar

2 units oatmeal

2 units flour

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp cloves

2 tsp baking powder

3 tablespoons flaxseed meal

1/2 of an orange, juiced

1/2 unit water 

3 tablespoons water (for flaxseed meal)

3/4 stick of butter or substitute.

Prepare flaxseed meal 15 minutes in advance with tablespoons of water in separate container.  Combine everything in a blender or food processor until completely mixed.  If consistency is not right add oatmeal and flour in equal amounts.  Bake in small cake pan(s) (see picture) at 375 for 18 minutes.  Serve warm and with butter if appropriate.

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Incident in Westlake Village

So I am on my back, breathing nitrous oxide, while the dentist uses a hammer and chisel on my teeth, unable to talk, barely even mumble, and the assistants are discussing Halloween movies, and in particular Nightmare Before Christmas. I try to talk but the dentist / torturer tells me to lie still or I will regret it, and when it is over and I can almost talk although its more of a mumble I try to tell them that friends of mine worked on the movie, and that I consider the opening to be among the best openings of any film, animated or live, and how proud I was of them. And one of the assistants says that she was born the month the movie came out and I thought to myself, what should it be, pistols at dawn, or should I just commit ritual suicide right here. Pardon me, but could I borrow that very sharp knife? Thank you. Goodbye cruel world!

Kathleen Quaife Hodge ( ? -- 2021 )

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It seems completely impossible and unfair, but Kathleen Quaife Hodge passed away suddenly in her sleep a few days ago.  I am heartbroken.  She had been in a relationship with Mike Cedeno for 9 years or so and they were going to get married.

I met Kathleen at Roto Effects of America and we hired her as a freelance animator for the motion platform ride "Journey to the 4th Dimension" for Harper Films and Landmark Entertainment. 

The Magnolia is no Garden of Eden

It may look like a garden, but its really more of a snake pit.  Its not the paper thin walls, or the windows that have been painted over so many times that they will never open, or the termites, or the weird (unwritten) rules, or the obsolete electrical system, or the baroque legacy gas system where you are as likely to be paying for your neighbor's utilities as your own.  Its not the suicides of which there have been two in recent years.  Its the people.  The smile to your face, stab you in the back people that is the problem here.  The emotionally-challenged woman who thinks that every man lusts for her calves and complains about invasion of privacy when no such thing has occurred.  Or the neighbor who sang Joni Mitchell  songs at night whenever she got drunk (which was every night) but complained to management that I used the telephone.  I didnt appreciate it when Management threw her out with 3 days notice, I think that she deserved more compassion than that, even if she had stabbed me in the back.  But by far the worse part of this was the new landlady, one of those who is scared of computers and doesnt know much about them, and is willing to say the most appalling things in writing apparently too stupid to realize that she was letting both herself and the Magnolia in for an astonishing lawsuit that they would lose, if I did lawsuits, which I dont.  And neither does my patron, whose guest I was.  And so, may I advise you, dear reader, if you are considering the Magnolia to save yourself some trouble and go elsewhere.  Life is too short.

Who Has the Best Failed State?

I could use some help figuring out what we believe the long term deaths and wounded statistics of the Chernobyl disaster. Chernobyl is the gold standard by which to measure the failure of a government to cope with a crisis and the long term effects of their incompetence. But its hard to get good numbers of the long term deaths and wounded of Chernobyl. There are reasons for this beyond mere suppression of the facts for political purposes (like we find in this country). They may be trying to avoid despair which causes death through other self inflicted wounds such as tobacco and alcohol. If you believe you are going to die of radiation poisoning anyway why not smoke another pack of cigarettes a day and drink more vodka?

I am pretty sure though that America and a few other countries like Brazil can proudly say that their failed governments have been much more incompetent and caused many more deaths than the USSR and successor states. In fact, the Republican response may still be killing a Chernobyls worth of their own citizens every 100 days. Oddly, these deaths of the last six months are restricted almost entirely to the unvaccinated, who are almost all Republicans. This will not affect elections since voter suppression and the supreme court's destruction of voter rights have the intent and effect of delegitimizing elections and installing more right wing thugs like Trump and is self perpetuating. But the reports I have read suggest that the USSR and successor countries have devoted and still devote huge resources to social and medical welfare to people in the various affected regions even when it is likely that they were not affected. Our country, with its corrupt right wing judiciary, throws people on the street if they are 3 days late on rent. I had to hear a lot of shit about how bad communism was and how great western democracy is. Not so sure about the former but about the latter I can be quite sure. We laugh at people saying that under Socialism an NKRP reactor (or whatever) cant explode. Well in this country we have trump and the moron republicans (there are only republicans, the people who oppose them and a third group which is passive) saying the virus is a hoax, that the democrats are using it to defeat trump, who is the chosen one, that the virus is just bad flu, that quinine water or horse tenderizer will keep you from getting bad virus, and that there has never been a time when any american has been forced to exercise basic public health protocols (because the people saying it are too stupid to know about the history in this country of cholera, yellow fever, basic sewage, speed limits and water controls, etc). The Republicans did this, and caused what will be no less than a million unnecessary deaths (we are very close to that number now).

Shouldnt I be hearing a lot of people talking about the failures of the western democracy and capitalism?

 

 

 

Commentary on September 11th

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I was in NYC on September 11th. By far the worst part was not that day, but the months afterwards as my fellow NYers put up posters acknowledging their loved one was missing. Literally everyone I knew in NY either knew someone in the two towers who died or was one person removed. Second, it is probably not well known outside of NY or maybe I am wrong about this: but no one actually knows how many people died in the collapse of the towers. Why is that, you may ask, its because there is illegal immigration in all areas of american life, and the financial industries are far from immune and when something bad happens, the family is not going to go to the police only to have ICE show up in a week or month to deport them. Finally, you make your guess at how many people died, then make a guess as to their average body weight, then realize that the clean up crews had to remove that much dead body parts that was layered through the wreckage. Do the math. You will be surprised.

Dreams and Visions

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I had three dreams last night, each with friends who have passed away.

Today my Instacart delivery person was MacKensie, maybe 24, with tight leopard shorts.

I am off medication until tomorrow.

A Farewell to Scones

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I dont know where this will all end up, but clearly scones, homemade or otherwise, are mostly carbohydrates of one form or another.  And that cant be on my current diet, the diet I am on when I basically die.  I need to lose weight.  Period.

 

Bye bye scones.