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Monday, February 27, 2017

Life in Afghanistan, Random Stuff, and More

On Afghanistan:
- the place reminds me of a lot of other Middle Eastern countries.... Despite this and their internal stability issues clear that they have their own 'identity'. The deeper you look the more you'll realise why the US/West is having such difficulties there
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located within South Asia and Central Asia.[9][10] It has a population of approximately 32 million, making it the 42nd most populous country in the world. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east; Iran in the west; Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in the north; and China in the far northeast. Its territory covers 652,000 km2 (252,000 sq mi), making it the 41st largest country in the world.

Human habitation in Afghanistan dates back to the Middle Paleolithic Era, and the country's strategic location along the Silk Road connected it to the cultures of the Middle East and other parts of Asia. Through the ages the land has been home to various peoples and witnessed numerous military campaigns; notably by Alexander the Great, Mauryas, Muslim Arabs, Mongols, British, Soviet, and in the modern-era by Western powers. The land also served as the source from which the Kushans, Hephthalites, Samanids, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Khiljis, Mughals, Hotaks, Durranis, and others have risen to form major empires.[11]

The political history of the modern state of Afghanistan began with the Hotak and Durrani dynasties in the 18th century. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a buffer state in the "Great Game" between British India and the Russian Empire. Following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, King Amanullah unsuccessfully attempted to modernize the country. It remained peaceful during Zahir Shah's forty years of monarchy. A series of coups in the 1970s was followed by a series of civil wars that devastated much of Afghanistan and continues to this day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan
The written history of Afghanistan can be traced back to around 500 BCE when the area was under the Achaemenid Empire,[1] although evidence indicates that an advanced degree of urbanized culture has existed in the land since between 3000 and 2000 BCE.[2][3][4] The Indus Valley Civilisation stretched up to large parts of Afghanistan in the north, with several sites being known.[5] Alexander the Great and his Macedonian army arrived at what is now Afghanistan in 330 BCE after conquering Persia during the Battle of Gaugamela.[6] Since then, many empires have established capitals inside Afghanistan, including the Greco-Bactrians, Mauryas, Kushans, Hindu Shahi, Saffarids, Samanids, Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Timurids, Mughals, Hotakis and Durranis.[7]

Afghanistan (meaning "land of the Afghans") has been a strategically important location throughout history.[8] The land served as "a gateway to India, impinging on the ancient Silk Road, which carried trade from the Mediterranean to China".[9] Sitting on many trade and migration routes, Afghanistan may be called the 'Central Asian roundabout'[10] since routes converge from the Middle East, from the Indus Valley through the passes over the Hindu Kush, from the Far East via the Tarim Basin, and from the adjacent Eurasian Steppe.

The archaeological manifestation of the Indo-Iranians (Aryans) before their split into separate language groups is generally seen as the Andronovo culture to the north of present-day Afghanistan. The Iranian languages were developed by one branch of these people; the Pashto language spoken today in Aghanistan is one of the Eastern Iranian languages. Elena E. Kuz'mina argues that the tents of Iranian-speaking nomads of Afghanistan developed from the light surface houses of the Eurasian steppe belt in the Bronze Age.[11]

The Arab invasions influenced the culture of Afghanistan, and its pre-Islamic period of Zoroastrian, Macedonian, Buddhist and Hindu past has long vanished. Turkic empire-builders such as the Ghaznavids and Timurids made the region now called Afghanistan of major importance.

Mirwais Hotak followed by Ahmad Shah Durrani unified Afghan tribes and founded the last Afghan Empire in the early 18th century CE.[12][13][14][15][16] Afghanistan's sovereignty has been held during the Anglo-Afghan Wars, the 1980s Soviet war, and the 2001-present war by the country's many and diverse people: the Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Aimak, Baloch and others. The Pashtuns form the largest group, claiming to be descendants of ancient Israelites or Qais Abdur Rashid but scholars believe that they are a confederation of various peoples from the past who united under Pashtunwali.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Afghanistan
- main players are Northern Alliance and Taliban. Get to know them if you want to understand the political landscape in Afghanistan. Northern Alliance is the other group (not Taliban) that exists in Afghanistan. If you know about them you know that they have worked with the USSR/Russia before. Civil war in Afghanistan started with Soviet occupation from 1979. No major ethnic group in Afghanistan, it's a mix Pashtu (~40%), Tajik(~25%), Hazara, Uzbek, etc... Majuhudeen went to war against USSR but also against one another after they left (1979-1988). Northern Alliance (Tajik) was mainly from North while Taliban (Pashtun) based mostly in South. Complete shenanigans. Clear that the Afghans have used foreign backing for their own desires. The Afghan military has been completely politicised? They don't think that Afghanistan has any real energy resources believe that wars are fought for ideology. Most believe in Islamic/Sharia law not secular law. Peace is possible but difficult. The main issue is how to share power. Have always been under occupation or repelling it. Graveyard of empires includings British in 1800s, USSR in 1980s, and possibly US/NATO from 2000-? Many of them don't see the point of 'global economic integration'... Nationalism won't work in Afghanistan, just figure out a way for them to live with one another in peace?
Q&A - Why war persists in Afghanistan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EwxVcMVdWE
Afghanistan report - Government losing ground to Taliban
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7kYeWSP6V8
Afghanistan - Taliban At The Gates - 101 East
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlXwCK8zKfs
Inside the Taliban 06 - N.G.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpQI6HKV-ZY
What Is The Taliban Really Like
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yzCKWkr_qw
- the funny thing about Afghans is that despite their internal tensions they seem united in their deire to use foreigners and to get rid of foreign influence (for those who have a slightly sadist sense of humor internal political stability as well)? Lot of overlaps between Afhgnistan and India. Look around (and from a superficial perspective) it looks like an unstable version of India
MISSION AFGHANISTAN _ Documentary Film HD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h11jAyO0zg
- life in Afghanistan is crazy... Death is an everyday part of life for people living in Afghanistan. Enough footage and you understand why others have such a difficult time 'conquering' Afghanistan. More and more defectors to the Taliban all the time. Weapons in plentiful supply. Government corruption problems across the board. Internal displacement problematic due to fighting. Watch the streets and it reminds you of India in a way. Stuck in the past... Tribal society. Very difficult to see how anyone can turn them into a 'nation' unless they are willing to dig in for the long haul. Most sides basically shoot at anyone suspicious which explains why they have safety issues? Police consuming drugs/hashish? Afghan army outgunned. If Taliban catches you you're basically dead. If Afghan army catches you they'll hand you over to the government. How this plays out in reality I'm not too certain though. It feels like the US/West knows that they have no genuine chance of converting them to their ways of life? The Afghans are simply the way they are and what the most media classifies as 'Taliban' could be anyone from locals, mercenaries, to actual members of the Taliban itself...
Afghanistan - The Fall Of Helmand - People and Power
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZERXm8ts5Yk
Afghanistan - Taliban At The Gates - 101 East
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlXwCK8zKfs
Soviet soldier life in Afghanistan, 1988.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWI1Lhp01Ks
http://russia-insider.com/en/afghanistan-now-safe-haven-isis-and-washington-wants-keep-it-way/ri18908
afghanistan history
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=afghanistan+history
- too unstable generally for others to come into and invest. Lots of basic problems that need to be dealt with for it to really develop. It's almost like going back in time and to other parts of the Middle East and trying to get them to change their ways...
afghanistan economy
The economy of Afghanistan has improved significantly since 2002 due to the infusion of billions of dollars in international assistance and investments,[5] as well as remittances from Afghan expatriates. The help that came from expatriates and outside investments saw this significant increase when there was more political reliability after the fall of the many terrorist groups in the early 2000s such as the Taliban.[6] The recent improvement is also due to dramatic improvements in agricultural production and the end of a four-year drought[7] in most of the country.

The government of Afghanistan claims that the country holds up to $3 trillion in proven untapped mineral deposits, which could make it one of the richest mining regions on earth. However, due to the conflicts, it remains one of the least developed countries in the world, ranking 175th on the United Nations' Human Development Index. The nation's GDP stands at about $34 billion[8] with an exchange rate of $19.85 billion, and the GDP per capita is about $1,150.[1]

About 35% of its population is unemployed[9] and 36% live below the national poverty line,[10] suffering from shortages of housing, clean drinking water, and electricity. The Karzai administration along with international donors have remained committed to improving access to these basic necessities by prioritizing infrastructure development, education, housing development, jobs programs, medical care, and economic reform. Afghanistan is the poorest country in Eurasia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Afghanistan
http://www.heritage.org/index/country/afghanistan
https://www.adb.org/countries/afghanistan/economy
http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/afghanistan/overview
- everything feels incredibly strange? One of the poorest countries in the world. More then 2/3 less then 25 years old. Water an issue in the mountian regions. They create makeshift 'dams' by digging holes (or using existing holes) in rock and collecting water from there. Clear that they have development issues acoss the board if you look at their streets and homes. This isn't about rich and poor. This is a basic question of how to survive. Massive refugee camps internally...
Meet The Real People Of Afghanistan (2014)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB-bqOwmU6I
- music reminds me of that in India/sub-continent. Micro-stores much like in India
Daily Life in Jawzjan Proince Northern Afghanistan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXcVg3KYJck
http://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2017/02/life-in-india-prophetspre-cogsstargate_82.html
- architecture reminds you of other parts of the Middle East and Northen Africa. Street life feels like a less busy India? Very strange seeing donkeys and carts on the streets with modern cars on the roads at the same time. Kids as young as seven years old are working (most get by for less then $1.5 a day). They must combine school and work at the same time for their families to get by. Kids walking 40km+ a day to find scrap wood to heat their homes. ~36% living below poverty line. 500K living in Kabel in 2000 now 5M. It feels like they make do with regards to public amenities? They dig a hole just in the street to dig with water drainage problems. Education is a privilege for them
Life as an Afghan- A documentary filmed in Kabul
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4hGg54qwk8
http://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2017/02/life-in-india-prophetspre-cogsstargate_82.html
- the strange thing about Afghanistan is that unlike other parts of the Middle East US/Western influence on their culture is extremely minimal. Iran and Saudi Arabia are Western paradises compared to Afghanistan. Mountains are what we mainly know it for but there are also flatish areas where people build villages/tribes and even parts that have snow?
My life in Afghanistan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6bveogw6Cg
http://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2017/02/life-in-iran-examining-prophetspre-cogs.html
http://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2017/02/life-in-egypt-life-in-saudi-arabia-and.html
- watch some of the problem countries of the world and it's completely surreal... The strangest thing is when they're out in the middle of nowhere and they use modern electronics such as a computer or DVD player or else your in the middle of a city and a tank, Humvee, or Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) travels by. Most people don't seem much different except they're poorer and have security issues? If you look at the kids who are really young (kids ~5 years of age) it's hard to tell the difference from other kids in the Middle East... It's only when they get older that they start to grow bears...
23 Hours in Kabul
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64o_BZk_kbg
Afghanistan in Focus - Living Through War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQPUTeUkhsE
- perspective of US/Western troops. They feel as though life is easier in Afghanistan then in Iraq where they are less wanted. People appreciate the humanitarian aide. Clear that a lot of the troops are are pretty young. Most miss their families. Others prefer the independence. IED's and guerilla warfare normal part of life
Daily Life in Afghanistan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eplxqnbbn-Q
Daily Life for US Soldiers on the Afghan_Pakistan Border
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHOcIBh6Vc8
This Is My Life In Afghanistan - Marine Lance Cpl. Geoffrey West
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZDdDJrClrI
Soviet soldier life in Afghanistan, 1988.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWI1Lhp01Ks
- problems across the board with refugees because of security, humanitarian, development problems. People are tired of being used for various ulterior motives by both insiders and outsiders
The Stream - Afghanistan’s displaced - The challenges of returning home
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d246W-zqI7k
HRW accuses Pakistan of driving out Afghan refugees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sjY8k7vp3Q
Daily Life in Afghanistan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eplxqnbbn-Q
- apparently, it's difficult to grow food in Afghanistan so many farmers resort to growing opium. Depending on who you listen to either the Afghans are growing opium completely of their volition to help them support themselves, foreigners are helping them to grow it, or the US/West has effectively given up trying to stop Afghans doing this because it's aggravated tensions between them and the locals
Analysis - Afghan opium production up 43 percent
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYSMFnSpHHI
- we all know about the issue of women in Afghanistan. Poverty, forced marriages, abuse, domestic violence, issues with divorce (in Islam technically men are the only ones who can initiate a divorce?), literacy, lack of opportunities, etc... Strange thing for me is that if you know some Muslims you'll know that their religion basically tells them to take care of women in their lives?
Life Behind The Burqa In Afghanistan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otN8QMPrgIs
Afghanistan Full Documentary Film (Half Value Life) By Alka Sadat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwY-BDYoOk8
The Eye-watering Truth About the Taliban's War on Women
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSV7vPN99w4
Afghan women share stories of surviving abuse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X2hGQ7V_Ro
The Girls of the Taliban - Featured Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHWuj0SWs84
Women in Afghanistan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVgCIIAJyog
Women Living and Working in Afghanistan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxdbREAyVW4
- high infant mortality. 3M people internally displaced in Afghanistan currently. Massive refugee camps in the hundreds of thousands range in Afghanistan. No real improvements in a long time. Massive issues with unemployment, healthcare, food, etc... Many struggling to get by. Men just foraging for what they can get. Women and children out begging for $4 a day. Getting thrown in to jail occasionally. ~$60 to bribe their way out. It's like they're stuck several hundred to thousand years in the past. Just waiting in town/markets hoping that someone will want to hire them. Poor getting poorer, richer getting richer. Most foreign aide goes to hiring foreigners not locals. They are building cinemas and hotels but no one can afford to use them? Traders take on casual staff as required. Most kids have no chance at an education. Even those who have an education struggle. They want jobs, they have ideas on how to fix things, very little support in the areas that they need though? Government corruption a common theme. They want foreigners to leave and Afghans (especially those who are wealthy) to come home and help them?
[DOCUMENTARY] Fifteen Million Afghans - Life in Kabul
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8w9FwMZbu4
Afghanistan life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-efk59Piz4
ICRC suspends work in Afghanistan over slain aid workers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYYLalxBwyY
- obviously the big focus of international attention on Afghanistan has been the drone program and the war on terrorism
http://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2015/12/us-drone-warfare-program-financial.html
- lot of people are saying this is a no win situation. The US/West can not win this? A lot of them are saying that foreigners are 'infidels' and it is the duty of Afghans to get them to leave their country. Continual complaints about stories of foreign aide not reaching Afghans? People are so poor that it's difficult for them not to accept bribes. Even foreigners have an issue with this if they've spend enough time there... Divided opinions on whether to accept or reject foreigners in Afghanistan. Security concerns have increased over time for foreigners? One thing that you don't immediately notice is lack of 'traffic lights' and 'zebra crossings' in general. Infrastructure and power issues. Insurgency pulling in supporters from Pakistan (complicated relationship with neighbours. If you ask some people Pakistan supports the Taliban and gives them a secondary based on Pakistan). People are saying repeatedly to help them solve problems by themselves to resolve their difficulties. Don't support one side and hope that they will win. They've tried that in the past and it hasn't worked. Afghans tired of foreign interference. Most of them acknowledge that the Afghan government will fall upon the US/West leaving in quick time
Afghanistan - Outside The Wire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAPfHzKlKEU
Afghanistan report - Government losing ground to Taliban
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7kYeWSP6V8
Afghanistan - Taliban At The Gates - 101 East
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlXwCK8zKfs
Inside the Taliban 06 - N.G.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpQI6HKV-ZY
The Stream - Afghanistan’s displaced - The challenges of returning home
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d246W-zqI7k
What's behind the uneasy ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan - Inside Story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktB_a_vDG8I
Why is Pakistan forcing Afghan refugees back home – Inside Story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qr9jrIh_1A
- strong family focus as is the case in many other Middle Eastern/Islamic cultures. Life is a struggle. Still nomadic/agricultural culture in parts. Islam is a focus
life in afghanistan
http://www.afghanistans.com/Information/People/WayofLife.htm
https://www.britannica.com/place/Afghanistan/Daily-life-and-social-customs
http://www.timeforkids.com/destination/afghanistan/day-in-life
http://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2012/04/30/151535879/a-glimpse-of-daily-life-in-afghanistan
Village men work in the fields, joined by the women during the harvest. Older children tend the flocks and look after the smaller children. The village mosque is the center of religious life and is often used as the village guest house.

Twice a year groups of nomads may pass through villages on their routes from summer highland grazing grounds to the lowlands where they camp during the winter. The villagers traditionally permit the nomads to graze their animals over the harvested fields, which the flocks fertilize by depositing manure. The nomads buy supplies such as tea, wheat, and kerosene from the villagers; the villagers buy wool and milk products from the nomads. For food and clothing, the nomads depend on the milk products, meat, wool, and skins of their flocks; for transportation they depend on their camels. Nomadic women are freer and less secluded than the village women.

A favorite sport in northern Afghanistan is a game called buzkashi, in which teams of horsemen compete to deposit the carcass of a large headless calf in a goal circle. Afghans also play polo and ghosai, a team sport similar to wrestling. The most important holiday in Afghanistan is Eid and Nowruz, or New Year's Day, which is celebrated on the first day of spring.
http://www.afghanistans.com/Information/People/WayofLife.htm
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=life+in+afghanistan
- given the relative isolation of the country over the years it makes sense that things are very much isolated. If anything it's a strange mix of local and regional flavours. You'll notice a lot of overlap in the food ingredients from Afghanistan and it's Middle Eastern neighbours. That said, look through the food and you'll definitely see that it's very much unique. For me, it's Afghan falvours are going to be one that you're going to like or not
afghanistan food recipe
The diet of most Afghan villagers consists mainly of unleavened flat bread called nan, soups, a kind of yogurt called mast, vegetables, fruit, and occasionally rice and meat. Tea is the favorite drink.
http://www.afghanistans.com/Information/People/WayofLife.htm
http://www.sbs.com.au/food/cuisine/afghan
http://www.sbs.com.au/food/article/2013/02/14/about-afghan-food
http://www.afghankitchenrecipes.com/
https://au.pinterest.com/explore/afghan-food-recipes/
http://www.asian-recipe.com/afghanistan
Afghan cuisine is largely based upon the nation's chief crops, such as wheat, maize, barley and rice. Accompanying these staples are native fruits and vegetables as well as dairy products such as milk, yogurt and whey. Kabuli Palaw is the national dish of Afghanistan.[1] The nation's culinary specialties reflect its ethnic and geographic diversity.[2] Afghanistan is known for its high quality pomegranates, grapes and sweet football-shaped melons.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_cuisine
- general lack of information. Lots of animals that you wouldn't expect here? Given it's location it shouldn't be surprising that there is a mix of animals from both Asia and Europe
afghanistan animals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildlife_of_Afghanistan
http://www.afghanistans.com/Information/PlantAnimal.htm
http://www.afghan-web.com/fauna/animals.html
http://www.afghan-web.com/fauna/
- given it's basic economic development issues you wouldn't expect that it would even have local English media. Not so... Languages include Arabic, Dari, English, Persian, Pushto, Russian, Urdu, Uzbek. Feels like almost all of their media is dedicated to local and regional issues. Very little interest about international affairs. Most websites are basic but it's there are some which have more of a media intensive base. The irony is that those that are more media intensive fell like they have a more US/Western orientation (as evidenced by some of the advertising on their websites)
afghanistan media
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_of_Afghanistan
http://www.abyznewslinks.com/afgha.htm
http://www.khaama.com/
http://www.afghanislamicpress.com/en/
http://www.pajhwok.com/en
http://1tvnews.af/en/
http://www.rta.org.af/eng/
http://ariananews.af/
http://tkg.af/english/
http://www.aopnews.com/
https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/
http://www.afghanistannews.net/
http://markazipress.com/en/

Random Stuff:
- the latest in 'show offs' from the animal kingdom...
http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/animals/if-this-isnt-the-cutest-quokka-photo-youve-ever-seen-then-we-dont-know-what-is/news-story/c01eee3c61965c34a980987f71f952d9
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=smart+kitten
http://vinepair.com/booze-news/buzzwinkle-drinking-moose/
https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2017/02/20/does-this-moose-stand-a-chance.html
- it's clear that a lot of people are frustrated by excessive collection of user data. One of the solutions/ideas currently being thrown around is basically throwing in random junk data periodically to make the data useless (I know that even companies such as Facebook themselves admit that a lot of data online is just junk anyhow). Lot of interesting FOSS solutions out there
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/the-algorithm-is-watching-you/517440/?google_editors_picks=true
http://bengrosser.com/projects/go-rando/
http://www.itwire.com/security/76994-more-than-50-of-web-traffic-is-encrypted-eff.html
http://www.itwire.com/open-sauce/76976-lenovo-with-poor-quality-products,-losses-should-not-surprise.html
http://www.itwire.com/strategy/76993-new-digital-marketplace-to-trade-in-renewable-energy.html
http://www.itwire.com/security/76992-microsoft-issues-patch-to-fix-flash-player-bugs.html
https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey
https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2016/04/17-facebook-hacks-everyone-should-know/
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/invite-all-friends-on-fac/inmmhkeajgflmokoaaoadgkhhmibjbpj?hl=en
script post random stuff facebook
http://www.pontikis.net/blog/auto_post_on_facebook_with_php
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/by-site/facebook.com
facebook bot
https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-write-a-Python-script-to-comment-automatically-on-each-post-of-a-Facebook-page
https://blog.hartleybrody.com/fb-messenger-bot/
http://jodd.org/doc/jerry/facebook-bot.html
open source facebook bot
https://gcn.com/articles/2016/10/17/white-house-messenger-bot.aspx
https://botwiki.org/tutorials/facebook-messenger-bots/
open source linux cli facebook bot
https://github.com/lukapusic/fb-bot-bash
https://github.com/lukapusic
http://xmodulo.com/access-facebook-command-line-linux.html
https://github.com/lukapusic?tab=repositories
open source linux cli facebook bot
http://alternativeto.net/software/tweetbot/?platform=linux
https://sourceforge.net/directory/os:linux/?q=facebook%20bot
http://nordicapis.com/12-frameworks-to-build-chatops-bots/
- from time to time there is interesting work from FOSS developers out there. There are those who have created scripts to download the Github repositories of others (mostly based on Python). Am currently working on a more 'portable version' (doesn't require external libraries to be installed). Will post here when I'm done and it's tested
github repository downloader
https://blog.anantshri.info/cloning-github-repositories-user-organization/
caniszczyk/clone-all-twitter-github-repos.sh
https://gist.github.com/caniszczyk/3856584
- can be a frustrating device... Have an issue with mine currently. Am trying to figure out whether it's a hardware flaw or software one. Limited information out there and information online says that the company backing has possibly gone under? More reading for me to do...
Openmoko's WikiReader
https://lwn.net/Articles/366927/
https://github.com/wikireader
https://github.com/wikireader/wikireader
https://github.com/wikireader/wikireader/wiki/flashing-the-bootloader
https://github.com/wikireader/wikireader/wiki/software-information
wikireader hacking
http://toddbot.blogspot.com.au/2010/05/wikireader-forth-and-hacking.html
http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2009-December/058770.html
https://packages.debian.org/gforth
- not a bad game considering it's FOSS (if you've been in the Linux/FOSS community you'll realise how badly Linux/FOSS games are generally compared to their commercial/closed source counterparts)
http://www.flightgear.org/download/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/flightgear/files/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/flightgear/files/release-2017.1/
- some interesting new 'inventions'. Not certain how 'excited' I'd be watching robots racing around based on AI though? Imagine an argument about whose 'bot' is better? My bot is better then your bot, my bot is braver then you're bot, my bot uses less memory then your bot, my bot is faster then your bot, etc...
https://www.rt.com/viral/377974-robot-race-ai-argentina/
http://russia-insider.com/en/russians-just-gave-world-gift-hoverbikes-you-can-thank-them-later/ri18981
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/wtf/the-insane-vagina-glue-no-woman-will-ever-want/news-story/77918aa0c2ae0c982d7a1c3c56556a68
http://www.sciencealert.com/this-new-metamaterial-is-the-first-to-reach-the-theoretical-limits-of-stiffness
https://sputniknews.com/art_living/201702181050826552-russian-scientists-anti-aging/
- a lot of the time I think people just pick 'facts' based on what they like? One of things I find interesting is that in a lot of poorer countries they can be extremely innovative. People in Bangladesh came up with a 'passive air-conditioner' composed of plastic bottles?
creator fridge
http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/inventions/who-invented-the-refrigerator.htm
http://www.whoinvented.org/who-invented-refrigerator/
creator air conditioning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_conditioning
http://www.carrier.com/carrier/en/us/about-us/willis-carrier/
https://mic.com/articles/145762/bangladeshi-inventor-creates-electricity-free-air-conditioner-out-of-plastic-bottles
http://www.themarshalltown.com/scientists-make-thin-material-that-acts-as-air-conditioner/20914
http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/other-industries/from-18-in-the-bank-to-a-multimillionaire-ali-brown/news-story/517fcdfebbd10f5d9c1f3d652d2fccd7
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/cop-it-sweet-australia-needs-a-sugar-tax-20170217-gufkdl.html
- just plugin a pair of headphones to your record socket (or just purchase a really cheap set of headphones from your local $1/$2 store, break off the plug end, and plug that in. It's actually cheaper then purchasing a plug itself from an electronics store)? By default this bypasses the internal microphone... Else, just open the thing up and disconnect/short circuit of what is relevant. Another day, another set of bugs...
http://www.itwire.com/security/76951-hackers-take-over-microphones-on-windows-pcs-to-steal-data.html
http://www.itwire.com/security/76952-trump-tweeting-from-insecure-android-mobile-claim.html
http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/24/us-tanks-arrive-to-take-on-russia-with-dead-batteries-no-gas/
https://newsline.com/u-s-tanks-deployed-to-poland-to-discourage-russia-arrive-with-no-fuel-dead-batteries/
http://www.itwire.com/security/77029-torvalds-patches-git-to-mitigate-against-sha-1-attacks.html
http://www.itwire.com/security/77024-fallout-webkit-repository-broken-by-sha-1-collision.html
http://www.itwire.com/security/77010-survey-most-hackers-break-in-within-six-hours.html
http://www.itwire.com/security/77007-google,-dutch-team-detail-method-to-crack-sha-1.html
http://www.itwire.com/open-source/76922-innovation-hype-bah,-humbug,-says-linus-torvalds.html
- space is difficult no matter how long you've done it...
http://www.space.com/35791-spacex-dragon-aborts-space-station-arrival.html
http://www.space.com/34875-russian-space-cargo-ship-destroyed-in-failed-laun
- latest in news about how humanity has stuff up/fixed the world...
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/614464/atom-thick-circuit-breakthrough-next-revolution-electronics/?utm_medium=rss&utm_source=googlenewseditorspickfeed&google_editors_picks=true
https://sputniknews.com/society/201702181050809390-new-telescope-challenge-einstein-relativity/
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/the-mexican-caves-that-could-hold-clues-to-alien-life-20170219-gugjxn.html
Banned chemicals persist in deep ocean
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38957549
http://www.news-herald.com/general-news/20170217/china-banning-carfentanil-march-1
- if animals are being trained to take down air-borne drones I wonder whether they can be trained to do the same in the sea as well? Whether they can work alongside man to track all enemy threats?
https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/02/22/france-terrorist-drone-eagle-training/
http://www.smh.com.au/world/terrorists-are-building-drones--france-is-destroying-them-with-eagles-20170221-gui8nm.html
https://www.rt.com/viral/378427-siberian-tigers-drone-china/
https://rtd.rt.com/films/isaac-the-story-of-a-little-giant/
- more new stuff happening in the world of defense and geo-politics
http://www.defensenews.com/articles/new-houthi-weapon-emerges-a-drone-boat
https://sputniknews.com/russia/201702251051030712-russia-miliatry-airbase-overhaul/
http://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-jet-downs-hamas-drone-off-the-gaza-coast/
https://sputniknews.com/russia/201702241051003940-russia-camouflage-fabric/
https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201702261051048334-iran-crimea-turbines/
https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201702251051038449-f35-middle-east/
https://sputniknews.com/russia/201702251051039116-russia-assault-rifles/
https://sputniknews.com/military/201609101045170624-rpk-16-ak12-ak15-kalashnikov/
https://sputniknews.com/russia/201612101048402800-russia-su-34-strike-fighter-modernization/
https://sputniknews.com/military/201612221048871795-yars-russia-missile-defense/
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/defence-expansion-would-break-the-budget-if-australia-ditches-us-alliance-angus-houston-20170221-guhrfv.html
http://www.defensenews.com/articles/new-uae-patrol-ship-presents-a-striking-profile
Jordanian F-16 jet crashed in Saudi Arabia, pilot OK
http://www.f-16.net/f-16-news-article5052.html
http://www.smobserved.com/story/2017/02/20/news/suspicions-surround-the-mysterious-death-of-veteran-russian-diplomat-vitaly-churkin/2641.html
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-20/russian-ambassador-un-vitaly-churkin-suddenly-dies-work-new-york
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/02/14/510485/Sukhoi-near-deal-to-sell-Superjet-100s-to-Iran
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/02/24/511901/Yemeni-forces-allies-shooting-down-Jordanian-jet-Saudi-Arabia-Najran
https://www.rt.com/usa/378438-trump-nuclear-increase-interview/
https://sputniknews.com/military/201702241051011355-russia-stealth-bomber/
https://sputniknews.com/military/201606141041316070-next-generation-bombers/
https://sputniknews.com/military/201702211050919791-armata-smart-munitions-commentary/
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/02/14/510591/Trump-wants-Russia-to-return-Crimea-Spicer-says
http://www.wort.lu/en/luxembourg/mysterious-circumstances-employee-from-nato-in-capellen-found-dead-in-belgium-585cdcf153590682caf16a88
F-22 Raptors to deploy to RAAF Base Tindal
http://www.f-16.net/f-22-news-article4837.html
https://www.rt.com/usa/378629-us-jets-middle-east/
http://russia-insider.com/en/churkins-last-interview-russian-diplomats-will-have-busy-year-trying-resolve-explosion-instability
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/02/17/dhs-insider-says-its-spy-vs-spy/
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/02/20/511352/US-Navy-Trident-missile-nuclear
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/02/20/511317/Iran-Zarif-BBC-US-Trump-Saudi-Israel
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/02/23/511750/Iran-IRGC-drill-Taybad-antihelicopter-mine
http://russia-insider.com/en/lavrov-tells-it-right-pences-smug-face-russia-will-end-us-led-world-order/ri18980
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-18/which-nation-do-americans-see-their-greatest-enemy-spoiler-alert-its-not-russia
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-26/donald-trump-post-victory-euphoria-fades-in-russia/8300074
http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/12/14583124/nasa-sidd-bikkannavar-detained-cbp-phone-search-trump-travel-ban
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/18/politics/pence-munich-russia-foreign-policy/
https://sputniknews.com/russia/201702051050367409-russia-tractor-tank-efficiency-market/
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/02/22/511713/turkey-russia-s-400-missiles
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/377066-season-john-oliver-establishment/
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/02/22/511609/Yemen-army-soldiers-Popular-Committees-missile-attack-Saudi-mercenaries-airstrikes-civilian-casualties

Random Quotes:
- With less than two months until the Iowa caucus opens the 2016 primary season, Donald Trump's poll-leading candidacy continues to cause increasing anxiety among Republican Party leaders worried about how he can be stopped from actually getting the nomination. Trump poses two overall problems for the party. One is how freely he insults, denigrates, and offends a variety of groups—to the extent that Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank flat-out calls him a bigot and a racist and criticizes other Republican candidates for being hesitant to call out Trump in the same way. The political problem for the party, of course, is that Trump's ignoble attitudes in this respect will become associated with the party as a whole.
- Senior media operatives are treated as "emirs" of equal rank to their military counterparts. They are directly involved in decisions on strategy and territory. They preside over hundreds of videographers, producers and editors who form a privileged, professional class with status, salaries and living arrangements that are the envy of ordinary fighters.

"It is a whole army of media personnel," said Abu Abdullah, a second defector who served in IS's security ranks but had extensive involvement with its propaganda teams.

"The media people are more important than the soldiers," he said. "Their monthly income is higher. They have better cars. They have the power to encourage those inside to fight and the power to bring more recruits to the Islamic State."
- It is a measure of how cold the West’s relations with Russia have become that NATO’s membership invitation to Montenegro — a small, poor Balkan state with a military force of 2,000 and no strategic significance save putting the last bit of Europe’s Mediterranean coastline under the alliance — would provoke furious cries of “provocation” and “encirclement” from the Kremlin.

Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that NATO is not focused on Russia “per se,” but the inescapable perception is that that’s exactly where the old Cold War alliance is once again. Inviting Montenegro into the alliance at a time when Russia and NATO are pursuing different military goals in Syria was a message to Moscow that it does not have a veto over Western actions.
- In a yellowed letter, nearly a millennium old, a Jewish trader sings the praises of his Muslim business partners; pages from medieval Hebrew and Christian bibles sit side by side with those of an eighth-century Qur’an. Egypt’s history of religious pluralism is rich and nuanced. So too, unfortunately, is the track record of those in power who have exploited and manipulated religious differences down the centuries to serve their own ends.
- France's government published a guide on Friday on how to survive a terrorist attack, coupled with a warning from the prime minister that people must learn to live with the risk.

Advice in cartoon-strip form, to appear on posters in public places like train stations and available online, recommends three key responses: flee, hide and raise the alarm.
- The Saudi-Iranian rivalry plays out throughout the region, the memo said, most recently and strikingly in the Saudi military intervention in Yemen. There, it said, “Saudi Arabia wants to prove that it is ready to take unprecedented military, financial and political risks in order not to fall into a disadvantageous position in the region.”

In Syria, Saudi Arabia’s aim was always to oust President Bashar al-Assad, and that has not changed, the memo said.

But it suggested that the recent shift in Saudi leadership has added new factors in the Middle East. “The concentration of economic and foreign policy power on Mohammed bin Salman contains the latent danger that, in an attempt to establish himself in the royal succession while his father is still alive, he could overreach with expensive measures or reforms that would unsettle other members of the royal family and the population,” the memo observed, adding, “That could overstrain the relations to friendly and above all to allied states in the region.”
- The problem is that there are real challenges in the Vienna process designed for this very purpose. Which of the Syrian opposition groups are terrorists? Could Bashar al-Assad take part in the future election planned for 2017? How can there be any success without the Syrian regime or opposition at the table? This requires real hardheaded diplomacy – the sort that yielded the unlikely agreement between the United States and Iran on the nuclear issue. But such success does not happen without extensive involvement of senior decision-makers from all the key stakeholders, as co-ordinated by world-class negotiators and mediators. The UK has the capability and is well positioned to make a real difference in this non-military sphere. The question is, will it do so?
- “The government doesn’t force its opinion on you,” she said. “What happens is you’re robbed of the ability to form opinions.”
- “Germany is the first country in the world to show they can uncouple growth from burning of fossil fuels,” said Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank. “This is the main task of our generation.”
- “We were on the way to forging a really positive and solid relationship between the US [and Russia], and then in 1996 we announced we were going to expand NATO, which, as I said, I’m not opposed to in general, but it was premature,” said Perry.  “That was the first move down the slippery slope.”

“It’s as much our fault as it is the fault of the Russians, at least originally,” he said. “And it began when I was secretary.”

Although Perry accused Russia for “entering Ukraine [and] threatening Baltic nations,” he admitted that “if you look over a 20-year period and put the scoreboard together, there are at least as many American mistakes as there were Russian.”
- Last year, the Air Force achieved a little-noticed aviation milestone: the first-ever drop of a winged, precision guided aerial mine. Almost fifty years after Texas Instruments slapped a laser guidance kit on a M117 dumb bomb, the Air Force added a guidance kit to a dumb mine, and greatly expanded the potential for aerial mining. The late arrival of precision capabilities to the antiship mine is no less revolutionary than it was for the advent of precision bombs in the first place, allowing precise placement of mines and improving the survivability of the employing platform. This development has the potential to revitalize aerial mining and add immeasurably to joint countermaritime operations.
- ‘What the hell is the EU thinking meddling so openly in our internal affairs. What is the US thinking of meddling in our affairs? Yes, the US has a two term limit for their presidents but look at the EU. Britain does not have a term limit and Blair had three. Germany has no term limits and some of their chancellors, present and past, served multiple terms. In fact few other countries in Europe other than France have term limits on their Prime Ministers or Presidents. What issue do they suddenly have with Rwanda, a strong ally in the fight against terror in Africa, a committed peace keeping supporter for the African Union and the United Nations? Let me remind them that after wiping out what they called pro-Rwanda militias in Eastern Congo they are now literally a year sitting on their hands but have not eliminated the FDLR which is sworn towards aggression against Rwanda and has time and again vowed to repeat and finish the genocide if ever they return to power. Let me be very clear, if the so called West sees more and more African countries look East, it is entirely their own fault. They offend us, treat us like political minnows and minors and try to dictate values and solutions they themselves do not abide by. I do not want to use a four letter word here but ‘Get Lost’ comes nearest’ ranted a regular source from Kigali with dozens of others echoing such sentiments via emails and direct messages.
- Beijing: China has mounted an extraordinary set of attacks against Communist Party members in the troubled western regions of Xinjiang and Tibet, with accusations of disloyalty, secret participation in religious activity, sympathy with the Dalai Lama and even support for terrorism.

The accusations reflect a hardening of the party's stance in Buddhist Tibet and in Muslim-majority Xinjiang, experts said, as well as President Xi Jinping's determination to push for ideological purity within the party nationwide, quashing debate and dissent.

But critics say they also reflect the fact that the party's hard-line approach toward crushing "the three evils of separatism, terrorism and religious extremism" in both regions has not only alienated many ordinary ethnic Tibetan and Uighur people but has also provoked significant disquiet in its own ranks.
- You can't bomb a force to death that exists everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Its idiocy to even try. That's not to say bombing their resources and crippling their supply chain isn't effective. I'm just saying you can obliterate ISIS with bombs. ISIS/ISIL is an idea, in some aspects, its not even physical... let that sink in... we are bombing a force that is, for all intents and purposes, not a physical state. WE ARE BOMBING GHOSTS, and the data effectively substantiates that. 20,000 bombs (roughly $1 billion+) and we MAY have killed 10,000 combatants over the past 3 years. That means at BEST, we are killing one combatant for every 2 bombs... or even more sobering 1 kill cost taxpayers any where from $50-100k for the munitions alone. That's insane.
- The United States should do in 2016 what it failed to do in 1990. It should announce that the world has changed since creation of a U.S.-dominated NATO. It is time to refashion the alliance for a world in which allies had prospered and enemies had disappeared. One possibility for the future would be a European-run NATO, with America perhaps as an associate member. Another alternative would be a continental defense run alongside the European Union. Maybe there’s something else.

But the time for subsidizing, coddling and reassuring the Europeans is over. American taxpayers deserve as much consideration as European ones. U.S. military forces shouldn’t be deployed to advance interests of greatest concern to other nations. Any future alliances forged by Washington should act as serious military pacts, not international social clubs.
- Lt Gen Graeme Lamb, former head of UK special forces, said the playbook carried a warning for current military strategy.

Referring to sections of the statecraft text in which Isis repeatedly claims it is the only true representatives of Sunni Arab Muslims in the region, Lamb said it was all the more important to ensure wider Sunni leadership in the fight with Isis, or risk “fuelling this monster”.

“Seeing Daesh [Isis] and the caliphate as simply a target to be systematically broken by forces other than Middle Eastern Sunnis … is to fail to understand this fight.

“It must be led by the Sunni Arab leadership and its many tribes across the region, with us in the west and the other religious factions in the Middle East acting in support.

“It is not currently how we are shaping the present counter-Isis campaign, thereby setting ourselves up for potential failure.” 
- “Only 6% of Australian businesses engage in international innovation, compared to the OECD average of 18%. Australia could make more of our strong international research reputation and the valuable knowledge and contacts of our diaspora, including by working with organisations such as Advance.”
- “You might think you understand your systems and the security measures you have in place, but how well do you know the security of your suppliers’ systems? Cyber criminals are very aware of these connections and are using them to access networks that are otherwise well-protected.”

So, what are three key ways that BAE recommends so organisations can protect themselves from the potential threats posed by a suppliers’ access to your networks, infrastructure, people or premises?
- “A lot of people believe that if an app is popular or available on one of the big app stores then it must be safe, and we suspected that wasn’t the case,” said Michalis Faloutsos, a computer science professor in UCR’s Bourns College of Engineering.

By developing a tool called Android URL Risk Assessor (AURA), the team identified more than 2,50,000 URLs accessed by the 13,500 apps, which they cross-referenced for trustworthiness using VirusTotal, a database of malicious URLs, and Web of Trust (WOT), a popular website rating system.

The apps tested were created by reputable developers and downloaded by many people, among them popular social media, shopping, news and entertainment apps. At this stage these apps have not been named and shamed.


The team will present their findings at the IEEE Globecom conference in San Diego, US on December 8.

"We focused on a relatively neglected aspect of security research, which is the potential for good apps to leak personal information through the sites they interact with,” Faloutsos said.

    9% of the popular apps interacted with malicious URLs (implicated in distribution of malware)
    15% talked to bad websites (with intentions that vary from harming devices, stealing confidential data or annoying users with spam)
    73% talked to low-reputation websites, the researchers found
    74% talked to websites containing material that is not suitable for children

"The team plans to make AURA available for developers, researchers, android users, and distributors like Google Play," said Xuetao Wei, professor at the University of Cincinnati in US.
- The fundamental questions that need to be confronted are simple but difficult to address. Why is a small but significant segment of Muslim youth in the West—despite having all the trappings of success in society—drawn to the fanaticism of ISIS and other extremist groups? What can American society do about it in a way that is consistent with our interests and values?
- French security forces have drafted proposals that would ban public Wi-Fi and access to the Tor network, Le Monde reports, citing internal documents from the Ministry of Interior. The anti-terror proposals come three weeks after Islamic extremists killed 130 people and injured more than 300 in a series of attacks across Paris.
- Switching between Windows and Linux can be a hassle, with some customers opting to dedicate an old computer to running Linux from the USB stick. Despite the inconvenience, Speak says BankVault is not a hard sell to small businesses considering the rise in banks contesting major fraud reimbursements – leaving affected businesses struggling to pay the bills.

"Everyone assumes that banks compensate you straight away, but they don't," Speak says. "Sometimes businesses are never compensated – we hear about these kinds of business attacks regularly and I can tell you not all of them get their money back from the bank."

"Even if you do get your money in the end, the delay of a large investigation is the pain point for a small business which has lost tens of thousands of dollars. Meantime you can't make payroll, buy stock or pay rent – you might be technically insolvent."
- HALHUL, West Bank — Kalila was 14 years old when she married her 32-year-old second cousin. She was also 14 when she became pregnant. Neither her marriage nor her pregnancy were her decision; ashamed and embarrassed, as well as afraid of giving birth, she decided to get an abortion. It was a harrowing decision, and one she told no one about. At five months pregnant, Kalila — whose name has been changed — climbed atop a 9-foot stone wall in this Palestinian city and tossed herself off of it, belly first.

The pain and bleeding began immediately, and her contractions lasted three days. Finally her mother brought her to the family doctor, who told Kalila that she would have to deliver her dead fetus at home, without any medical assistance. Abortion, after all, is illegal under Palestinian law; while it is technically legal in order to protect the life of the mother, in practice, according to experts, it is impossible to get such a procedure. Especially for those like Kalila, who might want an abortion without the knowledge of their husbands.
- For the hundreds of thousands of Chinese students that comprise that community, years spent in the United States immerse them in a new environment, challenge their understanding of the world, and provide them with new skill sets. And, willing or not, their presence and experiences stateside are often viewed through the prism of U.S.-China rivalry. But for many Chinese students, it’s not that simple. “I like the U.S.,” one survey respondent wrote. “But I love China; it’s my motherland.”
- “We’ve got to work closely with live-and-let-live Muslims because there needs to be, as President (Abdel Fattah) Al-Sisi of Egypt has said, a religious revolution inside Islam,” Mr Abbott said on the program. “All of those things that Islam has never had – a Reformation, an Enlightenment, a well-developed concept of the separation of church and state – that needs to happen, but we can’t do it; Muslims have got to do this for themselves, but we should work with those who are pushing in that direction.

“The other thing that’s needed is a restoration of cultural self-confidence in those who are supporters of Western civilisation. All cultures are not equal and, frankly, a culture that believes in decency and tolerance is much to be preferred to one which thinks that you can kill in the name of God, and we’ve got to be prepared to say that.”
- Simon Hackett, chair of RedFlow —an Australian company that designs off-grid batteries — told Fairfax the Australian energy industry is facing a "perfect storm".

"The combination of high energy prices, widespread deployment of photovoltaic solar panels (PV), a ready supply of sunshine and the looming presence of widespread, affordable and effective energy storage systems is encouraging customers to look for other ways to supply their energy needs," he said.

"If energy companies ignore the opportunity to diversify, by embracing the energy storage revolution, someone else — potentially their existing customers — will eat their lunch. They missed the rapid solar uptake and they cannot afford to miss storage as well."

The chairman says incumbents must "become part of the solution instead of digging their heels in and potentially being seen as a part of the problem".
- China views capital outflows as a problem. Over $500 billion has left China so far this year, according to U.S. Treasury data through August.

China limits the amount of money an individual can move out of the country to $50,000 per year. But this fall, Beijing even clamped down on the amount of cash its citizens can withdraw from ATMs overseas, another attempt to stop money from leaving the country. 
- “We need to distinguish between the mass population and the perpetrators of the terrorism. Pressuring the whole population might be something that is counter-productive. It won’t prevent Palestinians teenagers from attacks.... The answer is societal,” he continued.
- Around 6000 fighters from Tunisia have gone to Syria, 2500 from Saudi Arabia and 2400 from Russia, according to Barrett. Of the roughly 5000 EU recruits, around 3700 come from four countries - France, Britain, Germany and Belgium.

The figure for France may be overstated as officials say 1800 citizens and residents are linked to Islamic State but that this number encompasses those who have been killed, are in prison, returned or may be planning to go.

Recruits from the former Soviet Union, particularly Russia's North Caucasus republics of Chechnya and Dagestan and the Muslim countries of Central Asia, have also dramatically risen.

"As the Islamic State changes its focus from consolidating control of territory to attacking its foreign enemies in their own homelands, or their interests elsewhere, the profile of its foreign recruits will also change," Barrett said.

"The Syrian civil war will not end soon," added Barrett, who between 2004 and 2013 headed the United Nations team that monitored al-Qaeda and the Taliban. 

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Life in India, Prophets/Pre-Cogs/Stargate Program 7, and More

On India:
- your life is very much dependent on how you were born, how much you money you have, etc... In spite of being a capitalist, democracy it still bears aspects of being stuck with a caste/feudal/colonial system. Electrical power stability issues still. Ovens generally lacking. Pollution and traffic problems no matter where you live in India. They have the same number of hours in each school day but everything is shifted forward an hour due to heat (8AM-2PM)? Considered a possible superpower in future.... 0% live in rural areas
What Americans Get Wrong About India
- another one with a colonial background. Continual battles the Mughal Empire, Persians, Europeans, British, etc... Ganges river crucial to country... Dabbled with multiple religions including, Veda religion was replaced with Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism (and Islam if you consider some of Muhammad's conquests).
india background
In 2015, the Indian economy was the world's seventh largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity.[14] Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the fastest-growing major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, and inadequate public healthcare. A nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the third largest standing army in the world and ranks sixth in military expenditure among nations. India is a federal constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system and consists of 29 states and 7 union territories. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and is also home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats.
india history
- three core sectors from which GDP is derived; services, industry, and agriculture. Break down comes down via software, petroleum products, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, textiles, steel, transportation equipment, machinery, leather, cement, mining, construction. World's 2nd largest population but and largish economy. Has issues with poverty at around ~12%
india economy
- Dharavi. Life in slums/shacks are desperate. Tourists interest in slums as destination? 2/3 of people working for less than $2 USD a day? No social mobility for people living in slums. Families basically live in a single room. India wants to become like China and considered to be amongst best of the West. Highly classful society. People living in skyscrapers may never see slums? Indian people proud, want the world to see the best of India not just the worse
Life In The Slums
- India world's 4th largest economy, overtake US in mid-2030s. 42M live in slums. In cities along 87M live below poverty line. DFID does work in India and has helped 7M people in slums thus far...
India's 'Slumdog' Millions - A glimpse of life in Bihar's slums
- Life is tough in other parts of the world... 12 pieces of cow/buffalo excrement for 1 ruppee. Used for burning, cleaning, etc...
Hard life in India
- street market shopping. Their markets reminds me of some other Asian markets. You can get fresh coconuts in the street and have them chopped for you
Bangalore Marathahalli India Indian Shopping Street Life In India
- almost like going back in time several hundred or thousand years. Street bazaars. People still living in straw huts
RURAL LIFE IN INDIA
- rickshaws, animals, cars, etc... all over the roads. Roads often unpaved. Feels desperately poor. Strange thing is that people seem to dress according to Western fashions? Once again like going back in time several hundred years. Open air street markets. People make money any which way they can
Daily life in India - driving in traffic in Delhi ( India )
INDIA everyday life!
- this is what I mean by money making a difference in India. Life in Pune seems drastically different. Look at all of the pictures. It's not so different to others parts of Asia. Homes are constructed in whatever way they can. Makeshift materials such as tent like materials, corrugated iron, tiles found from anywhere. Walls can be made from brick, straw, wood, absolutely anything. You can see that there aren't any real building standards because the lines of some of their building are often 'wonky'
Life in pune, india
TRIBAL INDIA - Village Life in Orissa & HOLI Festival of Colours
- there's actualy quite a lot of variety in Indian food. Once upon a time I thought it was basically mainly down to various styles of curries? You can clearly see influence from other countries now
india food recipes
- heaps of interesting macaques and langurs (look like monkeys), Indian Wild Ass (looks like a donkey)
india animals
- very strange defence setup. Obviously, has a native capability but also deals extensively with Russia, Europe, Israel, US on their needs. Reminds me of Indonesia in a way. Sort of 'neutral'? They have issues mainly with Pakistan in their border area with regards to rebels and terrorists in particular
- plenty of English media options. Media intensive like a lot of US/Western sites though. You can clearly see Western influence on media
india media
The media in India represents a confluence of paradoxes: tradition and modernity; anarchy and order; diversity and unity; conflict and cooperation; news and views; feudalism and democracy; the free market and monopoly.

Economic realities and relationships between press, television and those who own these engines of control and change will eventually determine the future of India's communication culture. India's complex cultural mosaic, especially linguistic and communal, strengthens its diversity. The media and press continue to play a dominant role in deconstructing the diversity discourse that sometimes flares up in explosive situations.

Capitalism, the press, and public hunger for news promote a culture of media that is fast replacing the legacy of a feudal/colonial system. While corporatization and state regulations can muffle free expression, the force of public interest and the market economy strive for greater freedom and openness. Both politics and capitalism thrive on the liberties of a democratic system that continues to evolve into a functional hybrid of chaos and order.

On Prophets/Pre-Cogs. This part is obviously a continuation of this series of posts:
- animals seem to have pre-cog abilities? Maybe animals can smell/sniff certain events (we know that certain migratory birds effectively have a compass in their brain while humans can also smell the scent of salt in the air prior to rain so this isn't entirely out of the question) or maybe they're the only option if no one else is capable of 'receiving a message'?
Are there really spiders out there that react so fast it borders precognition? 
- I wonder how different animals and human really are? Clearly, they have their own saviours as well? Clearly, they haven't discovered 'democracy' yet though (peaceful transition of power). I wonder how long it is before they discover 'vote rigging'? Do they have the same vices that humans do. Apparently, in China zoo keepers have used pictures of Pandas engaged in 'exotic moves' in order to 'get them into the mood'. Are dogs the same? 
Smart Husky - Dog breaks out, helps canine friends to try to escape from vet
It's a Pandaful Life! (RT Documentary) - YouTube
- clearly my implementation of Hyperspace travel seems much more viable then anything currently on offer? The obvious core problems are finding pre-cogs/prophets who offer 1 to 1 correlation between what they see and where they end up. Otherwise, they need a perfect knowledge of how to interpret what they're seeing (some of what I'm hearing says the correlation between what they say and what they interpret is so different it makes it very difficult impossible to develop a proper 'navigation/co-ordinate system'. Either way, I think these people (and animals) maybe more useful to dealing with the FTL drive problem (and de-mystifying of God) then just attacking it via the pure physics methodology alone
- how do you defend against them? You can't since we don't know anything about the science?
- the funny thing is that anything we can't explain using science is pushed towards the 'paranormal/God'. The irony is that if you believe in science you don't necessarily believe in religion and vice-versa
- given the all of the superhero films out there (and the seemingly large amount of evidence for the existence of these people) it makes me believe that they are trying to propagandise these people into helping humanity (should they exist)?
- the irony is that those in power will realise when and if one or more of these people arrive and it's very obvious that they will try to take credit for whatever breakthroughs these people make. The huge irony is that while they can take ideas they can't complete the job because their abilities will be minimal or non-existent and they'll have a much more difficult time making sense of any existing research? What's even funnier is that those in charge would probably have a diminished opportunity for any afterlife (if it exists)/
- one of the laughable things about what security agencies have admitted is that on the one hand they say they didn't find anything useful yet on the other hand they have attempted to make heavy use of them over the years still?
- it's clear that most of the people who have abilities are generally more spiritual? It's also clear that the leadership of some countries and religions have played and continue to play a role in society. Look at Ancient Egypt where the pharoahs were said to have pre-cog abilities, Iran where the language seems to imply that it's leaders possess 'abilities' of some sort, Buddhism where ESP seems to play a role in selecting the new Dalai Lama, Japan thought that it's Emperors were divine in origin, China was much the same, England the same with their Royal Family, etc...
CIA Used Remote Viewing to Learn about Mars Pyramids & Inhabitants
Guess What Remote Viewers Saw in Ancient Egypt Pyramids
- I always thought that Muhammad was sort of 'free of miracles'. Perhaps not?
muhammad miracles
- one of the infuriating things is that many people define the word miracle in many different ways? The irony is that if you understand how things work a lot of the miracles aren't that miraculous?
- there are hysterically funny implications of humans thinking that other humans are divine of origin obviously. Imagine strangers think that you are God or are a representative of God on Earth? Imagine the questions and how do you answer them without a direct line to those 'up above' or if you aren't the 'real deal'? What's the meaning of life? Why doesn't God save everyone? Why are some pre-cogs/prophets while others aren't? How do they explain the miracles?
- I define 70-80% and above to be a success rate worthy of further research? The irony is that a lot of the research is having success rates that are only marginally better then chance (for instance, even on a coin toss experiment even 53% is considered worthy of further research. Seems crazy optimistic? That said it seems obvious that ~90% accuracy seems to be possible and 100% even if two remote viewers are used and the claims are to be believed from those formerly of the Stargate program?)?
‘7yo kid homework assignment’ - Showing top secret CIA psychics’ drawings to New Yorkers
Military Remote Viewing Psychic Training Course   FULL DVD ON YOUTUBE
- if the US experiments are correct then we may be able to exptrapolate results. Maximum of 10K out of ~300M population? That is roughly 0.003333333%. Spread over the entire human population of about 7B that results in about ~23M who could be pre-cogs/prophets (at the upper end)? At the lower end it would be about 10 times less at about ~2.3M. Clearly, most haven't been able to fully take control of their abilities (should they exist) yet otherwise they would be of 'interest' to everyone else?
Uri Geller on the Declassified CIA Stargate Project Documents - The Big Seance Podcast - My...
- you can warp forward back/forward in time and through space arbitrarily but you won't know what you're looking at. With regards to the scientists it's easier to use that 'other space' for thinking. If they can control forward warps then it's easier to see decades or centuries ahead of time. The science is unlikely to make any sense to them otherwise. One of the interesting side effects of navigation via EM and natural phenomena is 
- it feels a lot of the pre-cogs out there don't have a genuine 1 to 1 correlation for their visions? Calibration for navigation via Hyperspace via noetics/lucid dreaming/EM is not possible with these people (or just more difficult). Clearly, the Hyperspace Drive that I've been looking at for complete control over weather, weapons, pretty much all natural phenomena, etc... (should it be possible/viable). The obvious way to use it to create thrust (at sub-FTL level) is to basically create tunnel from space based material of known thrust/power. Then you simply re-direct/control it as you see fit. Negates the need for fuel for propulsion obviously...
- the 'Lights of Pentecost'/animal telepathy thing is likely to be one way? Two way telepathic communication is only possible if the other side also has 'abilities'? Telepathic and direct communication with alien races seems to be mentioned over and over again? Else, it's a case of trying to get inside the body of something/somebody else and trying to sense things out
Experiment on Remote Influencing - Lyn Buchanan
Lynn Buchanan talks about the Doomed Future
Jim Marrs - Remote Viewing Aliens and UFOs [BRILLIANT]
Remote Viewing the Roswell UFO Crash at Corona
Remote Viewer Takes a Look at Planet X
Remote Viewing, Stargate Project And CIA Mind Control, MK Ultra And LSD
Top 10 Weird and Scary CIA Programs
- lose your point of origin and you can use background radiation to navigate back. That's your 'time reference' point within interstellar travel. Star maps only make sense to a certain point because the Universe isn't the way you think. It's imperfect... It's 'ordered chaos'
- curious why they called it the 'Stargate' program? Wonder whether it was for this particular purpose (hyperspace travel)? Assuming that they don't have genuine FTL/gate ability yet else life would be better? They wouldn't spend so much on TECHINT/COMINT/SIGINT/HUMINT if their abilities were fully functional as well?
- if the hyperdrive capability/gate works then how does re-animation of those work as they come across? Surely, they just need a vessel/body and assuming they can transfer themselves into bodies (which we can now 3D print)? Assuming they're like the other pre-cogs/prophets and can move from place to place at will (relative control of time and space)? It's just like the 'Light of Pentocost', telepathy, remote viewing phenomenon... This also explains Jesus' resurrection (if it actually occurred) as well as others. As long as his physical body didn't suffer too much physical trauma then he simply could have separated his body and soul from one another and transferred his 'self' back into his body once repairs were completed (easiest way is to call for help from 'others'. The blunt trauma from cruxifiction would have been too much for him and he have passed out if he remained inside of his physical body? It's easier to understand this if you or you know of someone who has ever attempted to 'divide' their body/soul or had an 'out of body experience') or else another body/vessel. It makes more sense that there is something besides DNA which separates us. After all, think about identical twins who may share identical DNA but are completely/radically different with regards to their characteristics
Uri Geller on the Declassified CIA Stargate Project Documents - The Big Seance Podcast - My...
- the substrate, medium is obviously the problem for any potential 'hyperdrive'. If the pre-cogs/prophets are being categorised as schizophrenics then we shold be looking at them? Their brains/neurochemistry forms the baseline for further investigation. Ironically, the works of those who were interested in 'eugenics' (such as the Nazis) were interested in this as well but they were more interested in proving the 'supremacy' of a single race? Ironically, many races have gone through this period?
Goebbels, The Master of Lies (RT Documentary) 
Joseph Goebbels Final Speech 
- brain structure has to be different (otherwise all of humanity would have them? Pyschotic episodes are fairly high in regularity across the population)? Particular brain wave pattern and frequency is required? Buddhists looked at Gamma brain wave pattern but lucid dreamers are occurring somewhere between full sleep and fully awake so induction of brain wave patterns? Brain state (sleeping, awake, etc...) is obviously critical else they would have visions all the time? Science back when Stargate program was being run was pretty primitive? Rest relies on subject in question? Clear that parts of their schizophrenics are different. Biggest problem is the research seems to be very narrow? Brain mass reduction in temporal and frontal lobe actually makes sense if E=mc^2 theory of of mine is true? Namely, interaction with external signal causes reduction in brain mass
brain wave patterns
The temporal lobe is involved in processing sensory input into derived meanings for the appropriate retention of visual memory, language comprehension, and emotion association.
The frontal lobe contains most of the dopamine-sensitive neurons in the cerebral cortex. The dopamine system is associated with reward, attention, short-term memory tasks, planning, and motivation. Dopamine tends to limit and select sensory information arriving from the thalamus to the forebrain. A report from the National Institute of Mental Health says a gene variant that reduces dopamine activity in the prefrontal cortex is related to poorer performance and inefficient functioning of that brain region during working memory tasks, and to a slightly increased risk for schizophrenia.[1]
schizophrenia brain structure difference
The team found individuals with schizophrenia have smaller volume in the hippocampus, amygdala, thalamus, nucleus accumbens and intracranial space than controls, and larger pallidum and ventricle volumes. The study validates collaborative data analyses can be used across brain phenotypes and disorders, and encourages analysis and data-sharing efforts to further understanding of severe mental illness.
The ENIGMA collaborations include working groups for other disorders such as bipolar disorder, attention deficit, major depression, autism and addictions, who are all doing these same analyses.
Significant Loss of Brain Gray Matter: Individuals with schizophrenia, including those who have never been treated, have a reduced volume of gray matter in the brain, especially in the temporal and frontal lobes. Recently neuroscientists have detected gray matter loss of up to 25% (in some areas). The damage started in the parietal, or outer, regions of the brain but spread to the rest of the brain over a five year period. Patients with the worst brain tissue loss also had the worst symptoms, which included hallucinations, delusions, bizarre and psychotic thoughts, hearing voices, and depression.

Please note that while there is significant loss of brain gray matter, this is not a reason to lose all hope. In recent (September, 2004) group of presentations and discussion we had with Dr. Daniel Weinberger and other leading National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) schizophrenia researchers, we learned that there are reasons to believe that this gray matter loss may be reversable. Moreover, the NIMH is currently researching a drug that seems to have potential for reversing the cognitive decline that is caused by schizophrenia, and there are many drug companies also now researching in this area. It is anticipated that we will see some significant announcements related to these develpments in the next few years.
Structural and Functional Brain Abnormalities in Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is associated with changes in the structure and functioning of a number of key brain systems, including prefrontal and medial temporal lobe regions involved in working memory and declarative memory, respectively. Imaging techniques provide an unparalleled window into these changes, allowing repeated assessments across pre- and post-onset stages of the disorder and in relation to critical periods of brain development. Here we review recent directions in structural and functional neuroimaging research on schizophrenia. The view emerging from this work is that schizophrenia is fundamentally a disorder of disrupted neural connectivity, the sources of which appear to be genetic and environmental risk factors influencing brain development both prenatally and during adolescence.
“Lucid dreaming is a very good tool to observe what happens in the brain and what is causally necessary for secondary consciousness,” says Voss. She has found that the brainwaves produced by people who subsequently report experiencing lucid dreams fall somewhere between those of REM-sleep and wakefulness. The frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, responsible for most of what we think of as higher thinking, show lower frequency gamma waves, 25-40Hz, thought to be associated with conscious attention.
- identifying those who are more 'useful' suddenly becomes much easier. Core to experiments are pre-cog/prophet (raw ability), purity (less inclined to lie. Will allow faster progress), intellect and curiosity (easier to work with as they'll be able to identify more exactly what they are seeing and be able to make use of what it is that they are seeing), age (they tend to lose power/abilities as they grow older as has been seen with other pre-cogs/prophets?), health (pointless working with them if they aren't 'stable'). Despite what is said those who have abilities/borderline schizoprehnia tends to be asset to some people provided that they are stable because it if the balance is correct between intelligence and the 'symptoms' then that other space offers more room to help their understanding of things around them
scientists schizophrenics
- awakening/schizophrenia important? It generally scrambles things but it also allows for connections that they wouldn't normally otherwise make? It's like short circuiting your brain? Signals end up all over the place. Notice accounts all speak of heightened reality as I alluded to earlier which makes it easier to discern between real pre-cog abilities and 'noise'. Hyper-reality is critical for them to distinguish fact from fiction and dreams/nightmares? Notice that brain seems to be sensitive based on age which helps pre-cogs/prophets to distinguish true pre-cog visions from 'noise'? It also explains why things get more difficult to distinguish as they age. Higher incidence during moments of stress and anxiety so assuming neurochemistry and hormonal levels of dopamine and adrenaline important? Animal experiments are useless because we can't understand them?
Additional research done during the past decade has revealed that schizophrenia is caused by a combination of genetic or biological predisposition as well as other factors such as prepregnancy factors, pregnancy stress, other prenatal factors, social stress, family stress or environmental stressors during a person's life. Research has now shown that children's and teen's brains are very sensitive to stress (up to 5 to 10 times more sensitive than adult brains) and can be damaged by frequent or ongoing stress
- the Stargate program (and others) seemed to target those who 'claimed' abilities. It doesn't tell you why they have abilities though? 
- if there is a God, I wouldn't be surprised if there were roughly perfect distribution of particular groups/types of people? People who are more suitable to certain types of occupations in life are in perfect harmony if the system that is implemented is correct much like the global ecosystem before humanity started 'changing things'? 
- assume that if those from above come down lose abilities/memories unless they figure out how to take control of their 'other self/alternate form'?
- one of the things the pre-cogs/prophets seem to understand is the nature of how things unravel/make sense for them. This is why some of the Middle Eastern wars (whatever the reason for them looks odd to everyone/anyone) make sense but no sense? If you look through some of the works of Muhammad and Jesus it's clear that they both have the hallmarks of what would be genuine 'prophets/Messengers of God'. The obvious problem is if they've been mis-identified, mis-interpreted, they were only supposed to play smaller roles in the overall scheme of things, etc... That said, I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't do their best to authenticate/verify them?
hierarchy heavenly
- one of the troubling things for all of these pre-cogs/prophets are what are they? You look through history and the interesting thing is that there are constant difficulties in authenticating pre-cogs/prophets properly? There are even instances of valid pre-cogs/prophets being killed with the evidence of their validity only turning up after their death? What I don't get about them is this? If others have a genuine chance at things 'thereafter' with pre-cogs/prophets who simply need more time to finish things off what's the point? Why take your chances in the life of now if you have to deal with a God that can create infinitely more problems for you thereafter (should he exist)
demon prophets
- can't be as simple as neurochemistry and structure? It's almost like coded messages intended for specific people (think about communication and AESA RADAR on stealth aircraft: http://www.radartutorial.eu/02.basics/LPI%20radar.en.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-probability-of-intercept_radar). Else, they could just 3D print brains, dump the correct neurochemistry in and they'd notice brain mass decreases in the temporal and frontal lobes if it's like my brain as a neutrino detector theory is true? Not that difficult to crate a detector along those lines. Containment of the experiment is the key problem and dealing with biological decay? If broadcast message then all brain matter that is similar should simply break down, if not only certain people receive the messages? What if you clone the brains? Possibly require modulation at Gamma or Theta brainwave patterns as mentioned above?
- history of this research goes into religion as well as military for thousands of years. Unless you have these abilities yourself or know of someone who does it won't make sense. Some of them are particularly good at particular styles of remote viewing. For instance, shapes, colours, etc... Feels like there is common human and alien/ET contact? Many of the people associated with these 'programs' seem to definitely have 'abilities' but probably not to the extent that they could change the world? All of them seem to acknowledge alien contact... 
Beyond Classified - Stargate Program - Multiple Mantis Underground Bases - Lynn Buchanan
Lynn Buchanan UFO weapons
'Grill Flame' CIA files reveal how telepaths worked for US intel
- making the assumption that this is all de-classified else it wouldn't be in public media... Really wierd that they're selling this training or not? Perhaps they also using to find those who also have abilities while also making some money at the same time? Seems to be a whole bunch of different techniques to do this out there? Obviously, very few of them out there. Find is diabolical that they tried killing people via telepathy in the Stargate program? They struggle with maintaining their location in time. Engel Swan. Chinese use psychics/remote viewers, US don't, Israel does and has some really talented ones? US mainly abandoned it because of reputation? Some of them went overboard which made keeping the program around more difficult? Aliens/ET are so far ahead of humanity that we look like neanderthals to them? It's pointless for us to communicate with one another because we're so primitive? Angels exist and stop people from doing bad things to one another? Makes sense if their are pre-cogs/prophets out there and angels exist and are actively blocking them from seeing future numbers? Exactly what I and others have thought, body and soul are different. LOL
Military Remote Viewing Psychic Training Course   FULL DVD ON YOUTUBE
Remote Viewing - Can I win the lottery
Your Third Eye Is A Lie! How To Remote View In 30 Seconds
Lyn Buchanan on Teaching Controlled Remote Viewing - YouTube
PROJECT STARGATE EXPLAINED!!!
King Noble On Why The CIA Had To Reveal The Stargate Project Verification Of Paranormal Activity
Project STARGATE - Psychic Soldiers _ CLASSIC
FarsightPress 
Superhuman Institute
TheGlobalistPlaybookHumanityIsAwakening
Mango & Space Panther Explore the Universe 
- it's clear that religious leaders still play a significant role in the way that society is setup. Despite initial impressions 'liberalism' and 'free market capitalism' is almost like a final semi-desperate solution that looks for answers because they can't establish what the meaning and purpose of individuals in society should be nor have they been able to distinguish true pre-cogs/prophets from false pre-cogs/prophets who are supposedly there to 'guide the way' (the transition from religious feudalism to free market capitalism and the links in how they work aren't obvious but if you examine things in a systemic fashion then you'll realise that for the same input we're getting roughly the same output in either system. Many things are roughly the same if you dig deeper. For instance, wealth distribution, social mobility, etc... http://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2016/11/saving-capitalist-democracy-random.html, http://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2017/01/saving-capitalist-democracy-2-random.html). Fundamental to it's core is the belief that people should know what they are good at and work hard for and society that society should reciprocate
- since most people are imperfect though and the system is imperfect then we have basically ended up where we have ended up with social systems that look different but fundamentally act alike (they simply don't scale upwards). The way some of them think is obvious. If there is a God, they would feel that just like nature everything would be arranged in perfect ratios. Moreover, religious leads see 'abilities/enhancements' as a blessing of some sort and so think that all other things being equal these group of people should rise to the top of society? Sadly, given the state of affairs things don't always work out the way they're supposed to...
- there's a fatal flaw that every single one of the 'enhanced' knows that comes associated with their abilities (if they can control them). They can warp to arbitrary points in time and space which means that there's no 'where to hide' for anyone. This is also the reason why the Hyperspace technology technology that I outlined in one of previous posts is so problematic. If and when the 'final individuals/groups' (required to achieve the complete transcendence of humanity) arrive there won't really be a choice. You can either choose to side with God/Heaven or Satan/Hell (either the person who was in charge of the 'Revelations' was either a philisophical genius or he was 'enhanced' himself). There's in between here. If you choose the former you gain access to all of time and interstellar travel, those in Heaven (should it exist), effectively infinite resources, everything that is available that has been outlined in the Holy Scriptures. Stick with the latter and humanity is stuck where it is and possibly worse in future?
Beyond Classified - Stargate Program - Multiple Mantis Underground Bases - Lynn Buchanan
- it's been said that a 'House divided cannot stand'. My guess is that if the way the pre-cogs/prophets function then things should 'unravel' when the 'final individuals/groups assemble'. The relationship between God, Arch-Angels, Angels, Prophets, and so on feels symbiotic? If real, they know each one serves one another in a way as part of something much greater and that it isn't just the sum of individuals parts that separates them. The role that humanity plays as part of this is entirely up to them...
- it makes sense that the only way this can be completed and works in favour of humanity is if those who have 'abilities' effectively give up their vows to their nations and work only for God? Thus far, it feels as though 
- it's clear through the experiments that they've conducted into these areas. Stimulation via chemical, electrical, EM, meditation, etc..) that they've made progress. Not enough to make a genuine big different though?
bill gates lucid dreamer
- it's clear that religious/political heads have also come to a tacit understanding with regards to PSYOPS, information warfare, propaganda fidei, etc... They're hope is that someone the good, bad, and otherwise people of the world somehow see through all of the messaging to what they are themselves, what others are, etc...
- at times, it feels as though Marx was entirely devoid of religion/spirituality but at others times it feels like he was pretty knowledgeable in this area? Look at the style of his language and writing... He just couldn't make the 'final leap of faith' though?
marx prophet
- the Buddhist/Hindu belief in continual renewal only makes sense if you're 'enhanced' and have ever detected any animal with a 'life signature' that resembles that of a human in a context that they would find otherwise difficult to explain. A good example this was sensing the presence of such animals behind objects/doors that they couldn't use their five senses for (and it's happened on multiple occasions)
- read through Jewish, Islamic, and Christian history and it seems fundamentally obvious (I'm assuming that that Hinduism and Buddhism were just precusors to these Abrahamic religions especially in light of some recent material that I've come across) what many people in these religions were thinking when they were going through difficult times. Somehow they had done something wrong and that God had abandoned them. What feels obvious is how the 'ways of God' and the 'ways of Man' can interfere with one another. As stated in the Quran and in many other religions if you keep on looking on and in the right places you should figure things out (most other religions refer to this as 'faith')?
- the time travel issue/paradox is one that plagues every single one of those who are 'enhanced'. What feels obvious to any of them is that if our time on Earth is about trying to gain/earn the right to 'ascension' then you generally only get one shot at things? Genuine time travel also set's into play a whole bunch of other issues...
The Man Who Took His Pocket Knife Back in Time
- I'm guessing these abilities are like other physical abilities? Some will find it easier then others? If these people have been in use for a long while they have 'limited but still useful' abilities...
- assuming that from all of this that humanity wasn't technically 'born on planet Earth'? It doesn't matter whether you believe in the Holy Scriptures or science. Either way, this seems to be true?
ufo
ufo sightings
aliens
- the problem for those without 1 to 1 correlation of what they are seeing is that they are simply to hard to work with? They need to understand what the correlations and be able to explain them in a way that makes sense. It also harder to factor out if the pre-cog isn't a pre-cog but is just lucking out over and over again
- I'm assuming that some of the pre-cogs/prophets are somehow already 'shielded' (whether by others or they've learnt to protect themselves over time?). That the issue of technique is not really a problem except if you attempt to channel via an entity that doesn't necessarily have your 'best interests' at heart?
How To Hide From A Psychic Attack
- obviously, all of the above sounds crazy unless you have these abilities or have seen someone who has demonstrated it. It's interesting either way... Mixed results. Clear that they haven't figured everything out. The funniest stories are probably about those who have used it to make a little money on the side
1995 Stargate Psychic Spies (NightLine)
Former Director of Project Stargate Speaks Out
Uri Geller on the Declassified CIA Stargate Project Documents - The Big Seance Podcast - My...

Random Stuff:
- a lot of messaging services don't have a picture upload facility. A lot of sites out there have temporary drop box picture/file type facilities if you require to deal with this problem. It's interesting for me in another way because of the way in which some of them work. Since you can upload via various API's should you also be upload remotely from another website that you may have built yourself. Saves a bit on data storage and helps to deal with redundancy issues (as long as the remote website it well coded/structured)? They all work slightly different and it's clear that some of them are even Linux/FOSS based projects as well
temporarily upload file online
online file temporary storage
online file temporary storage github
- found a bug in blogger.com/Google Services a while back. Seems to be browser specific and basically doesn't allow you to logout without deleting specific caching data. A few days ago I noticed that the URL encoding on logout seemed to change to be more inclusive of various services. At the same time, they didn't acknowledge that the bug was there and the forum thread is 'locked' now? Is Google is now part of the 'secret services'? Our failures are never known as well our successes? LOL
- the latest exhibition of FOSS and IT 'alternate facts/news'
- didn't think that pure anti-oxidants alone could slow down aging process to this extent?
- watch them closely enough and it soon becomes clear how crazy the people of this world can get...
- one has to marvel at the things some money is spent on?
- cheap anti-drone capability?
- complete shenanigans in the old Soviet block from time to time... General acknowledgement that they have corruption issues. Can be funny in some respects?
- can't believe we do this in 'peacetime'?
- one of the obvious interesting things for me is if the RCS of the PAK-FA and Eurofighter are roughly the same did the Europeans and Russians come to a tacit agreement so as not to come across as threatening to one another? Knowing USSR/Russian history and what is required to make the PAK-FA stealthier I'm fairly certain it wouldn't take that much to push it to another level? That said, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if this is just a test platform for more interesting things down the line
RAF Typhoon pilot interview
Next Generation Chaff: Brite Cloud
- Wikipedia is unsurprisingly a pretty big download at ~25GB. Most of the applications out there to allow you to access the database are custom made...
- wow! You can get fake Ferraris and Lamborghinis?
Spain Police uncover vehicle assembly manufacturing fake Ferraris and Lamborghinis

Random Quotes:
- In 2009, Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake accused the police of using undercover agents to incite the crowds at the G20 protests in London.

In the US, the FBI ran a secret program called COINTELPRO from 1956 to 1971 which infiltrated groups such as the Black Panther Party and peace activists such as Martin Luther King Jr.

The FBI conducted systematic plots and surveillance to discredit and harass King, including false allegations he was influenced by communists and a threatening letter sent by agents in 1964 calling him “an evil, abnormal beast,” just one year after he delivered his famous “I Have A Dream” speech.
- If Trump and his army of the “forgotten and neglected”, as the man himself puts it, are supremely apolitical – so much so that they can scarcely articulate any specific objectives for his administration other than to “make America great (or safe, or a winner) again” – then the Corbyn army is Politics Unbound. So why do we get the eerie feeling that there is something uncannily – and alarmingly – similar if not in the manifestations themselves at least in the restiveness which has caused them? The facile explanation has been that there is a general, widespread disillusion with the governing class – what Mr Lansmann calls “the political elites” – in advanced democracies. Leftists like Jeremy Corbyn exult in what they see as the final stage of the alienation that Marx predicted. Nationalist demagogues like Trump present it as a betrayal of the trusting folks at home and of the people who thought their country belonged to them.

But the important thing they have in common is the use of demonic enemies: evil employers in the case of Corbyn; evil foreigners in the case of Trump. We have been here before. It was these wicked fables of class and racial enmity that fuelled the terrible ideological crimes of the last century. The democratic process – which was a product of the Age of Reason – is being systematically discredited. The message can be shouted (Trump) or whispered (Corbyn) but it is equally insidious: elected governments do not – cannot – deliver for you. This may be more, God help us, than a fleeting, comic historical moment. It may be the beginning of something truly terrible.
- Effectively, the current Russian Air Force leveraged late Soviet-era investments in advanced technology to field capabilities that had previously been reserved for Western air forces—such precision guided munitions and long-range strike. Moreover, the Syrian operation showed that the Russian forces have reached a level of proficiency where they can generate sustain sorties from an expeditionary base far from home. Indeed, the Russian Air Force will likely continue to incorporate lessons learned from Syria and continue to improve as time goes on. Thus, while not as large as its Soviet predecessor, the current Russian Air Force is in some ways more capable—its crews are better trained and it has much improved technology at its disposal. The question is really how quickly can Moscow afford to modernize given the state of the Russian economy.
- The actual nukes (about 50 of them) stored at the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey are B61 gravity bombs. They are “dumb” bombs first developed back in the days when a tactical nuclear bomber raid of the Soviet Union’s Eastern European flank was a plan kicking around the offices of RAND’s real-life Strangeloves. In other words, they serve no conceivable use in any current day situation.

So of course the US just spent $8 billion upgrading them to B61-12s by adding moving fins so they can be more effectively steered toward their targets after they’re dropped. Controls have also been added so that the bomb’s yield can be adjusted before they’re deployed, all the way down from their full yield of 170 kilotons (11 Hiroshimas) to 0.3 kilotons (a measly 2% of a Hiroshima). The idea is to make these nukes “small” enough so that their use is conceivable and acceptable to the public…the entire opposite of the MAD doctrine that was used to promote their development and stockpiling in the first place.
- An interesting fact about the interviewees that were cited here, Tkacik and Liley, is that they’re both retired. Why, then, do they still keep up the lying front (especially since they’re now feeding myths that could produce a nuclear war)? They’re no longer on the U.S. government payroll. But they do receive income as ‘experts’, based upon their past official positions. How much credibility would they now have if they said: “Oh, it was just lying — that’s what I did for a living”? They’re never really free. They’re always like horses that are harnessed to a carriage of frauds. They’ve simply got to keep pulling this carriage, until they die.
- What is it with Hillary Clinton? What is it about this brilliant and accomplished woman—described by Barack Obama as possibly “more qualified” to be president than anyone in history—that makes so many people certain she is an incurable liar? More than anything else about Clinton—her occasional tin ear for politics, her seeming inability to connect with large crowds, her ultracautiousness—it is the trust issue that could yet cost her a general election she should otherwise win, given her opponent’s vulnerabilities.

Plainly put, Clinton herself has kept the issue alive over 25 years of public life, with long-winded, defensive, obfuscating answers to questions that—in politics, if not in law—cry out for a crisp yes-or-no reply.
- But when the Navy completed its frigate study in November 2014, its recommendation — which Hagel quickly approved — was to simply add a few pieces of additional equipment to the existing LCS variants and remove their modularity capability.

The planned enhancements included a more powerful air-search radar, an over-the-horizon anti-ship missile, a small amount of additional armor, improved electronic jamming, a towed-array sonar and an anti-submarine torpedo launcher — all things the baseline LCSs lacked. But the new frigate version of the littoral warship would not get a long-range surface-to-air missile system nor significant hardening against enemy attack.

In short, the frigate was little more than a “minor-modified LCS,” according to the Government Accountability Office, the U.S. government’s main watchdog agency which, in June 2016, released a scathing report on the Navy and Defense Department’s decision-making processes regarding the frigate.

In the GAO’s assessment, the Navy’s main concern was selecting a frigate quickly and building it at the same yards building the baseline LCSs, so as to protect the shipbuilders Lockheed Martin and Austal — and, in theory, minimize the additional cost. The Navy expects the frigate to cost around $190 million more per copy than the roughly $500-million baseline LCS.
- Moreover, American foreign policy is, from the progressive point of view, based on theft, because America only invades countries like Iraq which have oil, while it never invades resource-poor countries like Haiti or Rwanda. 
- China has banned a number of online news organizations from reporting original news in an effort to suppress non-government approved information.

The Cyberspace Administration of China banned the companies, including Sohu.com, Sina Corp and Net Ease Inc on Friday, telling them to cease their “current affairs news,” according to reports from Chinese media, as reported by Bloomberg.  

The companies are accused of having “seriously violated” internet regulations through their original reporting, which caused “huge negative effects,” state media reported. Violators of these regulations will face penalties.

The ban increases China’s influence over what information its people can access, allowing them to shape and suppress news.

President Xi Jinping has told Chinese media it must work in the interests of the Communist Party. “They must love the party, protect the party, and closely align themselves with the party leadership in thought, politics and action,” he said in February.
- Kadyrov has repeatedly accused the United States and other Western nations of deliberate policies aimed at destroying Muslim countries and the Muslim faith. In February last year he said IS had been “spawned” by the West to incite hatred towards Muslims all over the world. Kadyrov also suggested the West was backing the terrorist group in order to distract public attention from numerous problems in the Middle East, in the hope of destroying Islamic nations from within. In November he accused the Turkish authorities of aiding Western nations’ plot to weaken and destroy Islam by assisting Islamic State and its allies in Syria.

Kadyrov also previously claimed that he possessed information that the Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had been personally recruited to work for the US by General David Petraeus, the former director of the CIA and former commander of coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. At that time, Kadyrov claimed IS “was acting on orders from the West and Europe.”
- It was a remarkable moment: Even at the height of the Cold War, it was hard to find a presidential campaign willing to charge that its rival was essentially secretly doing the bidding of a key American adversary. But the accusation is emerging as a theme of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, as part of an attempt to portray Mr. Trump not only as an isolationist, but also as one who would go soft on confronting Russia as it threatens nations that have shown too much independence from Moscow or, in the case of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, joined NATO.
- The Russians didn’t hack into Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server, as others have reported, according to a very reliable source of mine who has connections with US intelligence agencies.

They didn’t have to.

Clinton was so careless when using her BlackBerry that the Russians stole her password. All Russian President Vladimir Putin’s gang had to do was log into Clinton’s account and read whatever they wanted.

They had to be laughing their butts off. So you can add the Russians to the list of people who know bad and personal things about Clinton that the Democrats will wish remain hidden.

FBI Director James Comey said a few weeks ago that Clinton had been “extremely careless” with her e-mails, but he added that he didn’t think the server she’d been using had been hacked by “hostile actors.”
- The protesters said Mr Xian had violated the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia treaty, a decades-old agreement between Hui people which prohibits anyone from opening a beef noodle restaurant within 400m of an existing one.

The document says this is to promote a "harmonious and stable" noodle market, and that those who do not abide by it will have to face the consequences and accept any financial losses.

Ma Jinglong, a protest organiser and Hui Muslim who owns two nearby beef restaurants, told news outlet The Sixth Tone that the treaty "doesn't have any legal standing" but that most Muslim restaurateurs observe it anyway.

"I have a big family to support. If one restaurant ignores the treaty, the rules will be broken, and more restaurants will follow suit," he said. 
- Following the liquidation of the USSR and the Eastern camp, a unipolar model appeared in the world under which the American dragon reached the peak of its power. Networks of American agents of influence, most often in the form of liberal ideology, but also in more hidden forms mimicking local political and ideological trends, permeated society in practically all countries. The dragon infiltrated political elites, big business, education, the media, and sometimes security circles in European and Asian states.

In Russia, pro-American forces almost openly dominated in the 1990’s, and only in the 2000’s did Putin begin to push aside their authority little by little. These networks spread into Islamic countries where their military wing became radical Islam, a true servant of the American dragon.

But the dragon received a blow, or a series of blows, most likely fatal, at the height of its power. All of the countries which didn’t bow before American hegemony in the 1990’s and did not completely accept the unipolar model of the world as irreversible gradually came to form an informal club and began the process of resisting the dragon. China very carefully played with this line in trying to ride the tiger and carry out modernization and liberalization while preserving and even strengthening national sovereignty.

At the beginning of the 2000’s, Russia began to follow this path. Iran occupied a similar position. Contemplative India tried to escape direct American diktat. Opposition began to form among the dragon’s followers in the EU, Turkey, and even among pro-American Salafi extremists. The most important is that the Americans, having obtained the historic chance to rule the entire world, simply couldn’t handle this task. Perhaps they did not have enough historical, imperial experience, intelligence, or resources. Hegemony overheated. The dragon was then wounded.

Today, we are dealing with a globally wounded monster. The United States is still strong and its networks are still effective. Liberals, Islamic extremists, Atlanticists, and hidden agents of influence are still strong in different societies. But the peak of American dominance is behind us.

The fact that the dragon is wounded became clear already in the early 2000’s when America ceased to impose even a semblance of order and aimed only for controlled, bloody chaos. Color revolutions, putsches, coups, and Western troops’ invasions of the Middle East and post-Soviet space are evidence of this.

The essence of this is that the dragon is wounded. It is still strong and has the appearance of a power that knows its purpose. But in reality, he has gone mad from the pain of his collapsing rule. Hence why the US begins to behave so inappropriately in many cases.

It strikes at its own servants, ruins what could be preserved, and painfully and disproportionally reacts to small attacks.

This is extremely dangerous. The wounded dragon is equipped with nuclear weapons and all of its great power can still send all of humanity into the abyss with one blow.
- "Election days come and go. But the struggle of the people to create a government which represents all of us and not just the 1 per cent – a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice – that struggle continues."

Citing a 40-year decline of the middle class; the 47 million Americans living in poverty and a "grotesque level of income and wealth inequality" that was the worst since 1928, he castigated any who thought they might skip voting – as many of his supporters have indicated they might.

"If you don't believe this election is important, if you think you can sit it out, take a moment to think about the Supreme Court justices that Donald Trump would nominate and what that would mean to civil liberties, equal rights and the future of our country."

Before telling the convention that Clinton "will make an outstanding president", Sanders seemed genuine in celebrating their relationship as a professional success.

"It is no secret that Hillary Clinton and I disagree on a number of issues," he said. "That's what this campaign has been about. That's what democracy is about." 
- In one speech, he argued that it was the British who had been brainwashed by their ruling class. "If the people in this country, or in America, knew that there is a country in the world, where there is a free education, free housing, free medical care, then they'd have second thoughts," he said, to laughter from his audience.

"That is the reason why the mass media creates all those shocking, terrifying stories about my country."

The BBC's diplomatic correspondent James Robbins says it now looks as if Mr Thae's heart may not have been in the task of defending North Korea - one of the poorest and most authoritarian countries in the world.
- A senior diplomat from the North Korean embassy in London has defected, according to South Korean media, in the first case of its kind since official ties were established and the embassy opened 13 years ago.

The diplomat, who vanished earlier this month with his wife and children, was based at North Korea’s suburban embassy in Ealing, west London. He was now seeking asylum in a third country, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said.

One of five officials at the embassy in addition to the ambassador, the diplomat’s job was to keep track of North Korean defectors living in London. He was also tasked with rebutting UK criticism of his country’s human rights record, the reports said.

According to the JoongAng Ilbo, the missing diplomat was likely to be either Thae Yong-ho, a minister, or Ryu Kyong-jun, a third secretary. 
- He says  University of Queensland has spawned 75 start-ups, raised $600 million in capital for them and earned $400 million on them in the last dozen years – a much higher return on its commercialisation activities than most Australian or British universities. 

But the impact on the university's reputation of successfully translating high quality research into commercial outcomes was much more profound.

Dr Moss will be on a panel with Darren Kelly, founder of drug developer Fibrotech, and Vern Boles, founder of head lice treatment company Hatchtech. The two companies came out of the University of Melbourne and were sold in the past two years for up to $500 million and $279 million. 

He says he has heard others saying commercialisation is too hard because time frames are too long, regulatory barriers are too steep, there isn't enough capital and so on. 

"I think there are a lot of people that put  up a lot of perceived barriers, but they are just not committed, they are not focused and they don't have the right people on it, they are sub-scale and it's not strategic to their universities."
- “The reality is there are not enough trains, we need more of them – and they’re also incredibly expensive.” He said the whole experience was a good case for public ownership.

Later, Corbyn said: “Is it fair that I should upgrade my ticket whilst others who might not be able to afford such a luxury should have to sit on the floor? It’s their money I would be spending after all.”

Ellen, a mother-of-two who travelled on the same train and and also had no seat, said: “It was a surprise to see him there, but it was refreshing. It made me realise that it shouldn’t be a surprise to see a politician travelling alongside average commuters. They should be on the same level as the general public.”

It is not the first time Corbyn has experienced the reality of Britain’s transport woes. During the 2015 leadership campaign he was spotted on a night bus after a day’s campaigning:
- When America landed on the moon, the Cold War essentially ended. Russia gave up and ended its space program. We can’t yet know what the West vs Islam version of the Moon landings will be, but it is moments in culture like Neil Armstrong’s first steps which turn the tide of history and create the conditions for popular rebellion. Islam has to be made uncool.

They also need to champion the greatness of western culture and ask more strongly why there isn’t a single world-class university in the Muslim world and why there is no Muslim Shakespeare, Picasso, Mozart or Nietzsche.

This is a war of culture as much as it is a war of politics or faith, and we have to start fighting it now, in music, books, journalism, art and with every other means of creativity at our disposal, demonstrating as we do so what is possible with the free expression we so cherish in the west and which made America the greatest country in the history of human civilization.

But more than that — and this is what they really don’t want to do — our leaders need to talk about what makes Islamic societies bad. Perhaps they can start with Indonesia.
- When Boris Johnson was working for the Daily Telegraph in Brussels in the early 1990s, rival British correspondents dreaded midnight calls from their news desks in London. Sonia Purnell, Johnson’s biographer, who worked with him at the time, recalls that Boris’s stories about the curvature of bananas, the shape of cucumbers and other EU absurdities were known as “duvet blasters”. Despairing reporters were ordered out of bed to write follow-ups. “The stories were almost always wrong but they would still blast everyone’s duvets,” says Purnell. For the young Johnson, it was good journalistic fun.

The Brussels establishment regarded the British hack as an irritant set on lampooning Europe’s institutions at every opportunity. But back in London, John Major’s Tory government, beset by Eurosceptic rebellion, was more worried. The foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd, could see that Johnson was framing a new, populist form of Euroscepticism that was spreading beyond Westminster, by depicting Brussels as power-grabbing and ludicrously bureaucratic. A little noticed historical irony is that a young Tory MP called David Davis, who was a whip steering the vote for the Maastricht treaty before he became Europe minister in 1994, was working hard with the Foreign Office to contain the Eurosceptic rebellions by Tory MPs as Johnson stoked them.

More than two decades on, and two months after the UK voted to leave the EU, partly as a result of his role in the Brexit campaign, Europe is no longer a target for Johnsonian ridicule. The man who arguably did more than any to lead Britain out – and was then stunningly installed by Theresa May as foreign secretary – has been charged with the giant task of shaping a vision of life after Brexit for the British people.
- The free speech think-tank issued a report recently which found eight in 10 universities it examined had policies or had restricted free speech.
“Students should be free to express views, not be interrupted and punished,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the university said it did not seek to avoid politics in lectures.
- A lot has changed in the 100 years since the term "schizophrenia" was first coined, but perhaps not quite as much as you might think. People living with schizophrenia still experience many of the same problems today.

In 1910, Winston Churchill summed up contemporary attitudes when he wrote to the prime minister, Herbert Asquith, arguing for the mass sterilisation of people with severe mental illness.

Churchill warned that the "feeble-minded and insane classes" constituted a "danger which it is impossible to exaggerate", and that "the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed up before another year has passed."
- Trump may well lose the presidential election just as Sanders failed in his bid for the Democrat nomination. But this does not mean that the forces opposed to hyper-globalisation – unrestricted immigration, TPP and TTIP, the free movement of capital and much else – will have lost the argument and are set to decline. In little more than 12 months, Trump and Sanders have transformed the nature and terms of the argument. Far from being on the wane, the arguments of the critics of hyper-globalisation are steadily gaining ground. Roughly two-thirds of Americans agree that “we should not think so much in international terms but concentrate more on our own national problems”. And, above all else, what will continue to drive opposition to the hyper-globalisers is inequality.
- Tardigrades, better known as water bears, are tiny, nearly indestructible creatures with eight pudgy legs and snouts. They’re found around the globe, swimming in pockets of wet moss or in the capillary water between grains of sand. When the water dries up, they retreat into a semi-animate state – a survival mechanism that amazes scientists.

Sam Gon III, a biologist and Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner, began hunting these smaller than 1mm curiosities in the 1980s. His search plot included the moss and lichen-covered lava plains of Haleakalā National Park. Sitting atop a 10,023ft volcano on the island of Maui, the park is subject to intense solar radiation during the day and freezing temperatures at night. Few life forms thrive on this windblown summit, which offers little in the way of food or shelter. But, as Gon discovered, it’s a perfect habitat for tardigrades. He found 31 distinct species in just 50 sq miles.
- In 2005, Vladimir Putin called the collapse of the USSR the greatest geopolitical disaster of the century. The Russian leader has repeated this thesis several times since, and in 2015 explained that he was speaking of the humanitarian consequences to the common people.Putin noted in a public speech that after the crash of the Soviet system 25 million ethnic Russians found themselves living in foreign countries which made the Russian people became the largest divided people in the world.

However, Putin acknowledged that the primary reason behind the collapse of the USSR was the great amount of internal contradictions and general failure of its economic and political systems.
- The Royal Navy’s only vessel capable of repairing British warships on the sea is being offered up for sale by the UK’s Ministry of Defense due to cost-cutting measures, despite a recent retrofitting that extended the life of the RFA Diligence to 2020.

“We can confirm that the out-of-service date for RFA Diligence has been brought forward to the end of 2016,” a naval spokesperson told The Telegraph.

The RFA Diligence was first deployed in 1982 to serve in the Falkland War with Argentina. The ship is the only “Forward Repair Ship” in the UK’s fleet and it was deployed in both Gulf conflicts.

Its sophisticated design allows the RFA Diligence to conduct multitasking at sea, as it is fitted with a wide range of workshops equipped to carry out repairs on hulls and machinery. Its unique design also allows the vessel to generate electricity, water, fuel, air, steam, and supplies for other ships and submarines.

In order to find prospective buyers, the British Ministry of Defense has recently placed an ad in which the multipurpose vessel is listed as “MOD surplus equipment for sale.”

“RFA Diligence is in good overall condition and moored at Bidston Dock, Birkenhead,” the ad reads. “Viewings will take place, Mid/late October 2016.”

Interested parties are urged to provide a summary of “Further Use proposal” outlining how the 111-meter (367-foot) vessel will be used at its new location.

In 2013, the Diligence underwent a major refit to extend the ship’s service life to 2020. The work included modifications that enabled the ship to carry out repairs on Astute-class nuclear-powered attack submarines. However, the vessel has been moored since last year due to manpower shortages, leaving the UK’s Royal Navy without a deployable operational maintenance and repair (OMAR) platform at sea.
https://www.rt.com/uk/356627-royal-navy-repair-vessel/

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Fixing Cheap Hurricane Gen850 and Scorpion ET950L Power Generators, Microwave Rice, and More

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