Jun 28

Today’s News 28th June 2019

  • Melted Motorways, Widespread Nudity, & "Thermal Shock" – Record Heat-Wave Sparks Panic Across Europe

    Record-breaking heat scorches central Europe as many braced Thursday for temperatures above 100 F.

    Wednesday was one of the most sizzling days on record across Europe with average June temperatures and all-time temperature records broken, reported AccuWeather.

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    Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic recorded its highest temperatures ever during June.

    Temperatures were 100.8 F at Radzyń, Poland, on Wednesday, while Coschen station (Berlin-Brandenburg) printed 101.5 F in Germany. However, temperatures in Germany didn’t surpass the 104.5 F all-time high, set in Kitzingen on August 2015.

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    Czech Republic, Doksany recorded 102 F, hitting an all-time high for the country that was previously set at 100.8 F at Brno-Žabovřesky in June 2000.

    Governments across the European Union warned citizens earlier this week about how the heat wave could cause harmful air, increase health-related illnesses at hospitals, and overload power grids.

    The heat wave blasted central Europe on Thursday and will produce 104 F temperatures in France, Spain, and Greece on Friday.

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    French Health Minister Agnes Buzyn told people to prepare for intense heat and expressed some irritation that some aren’t taking government advice of staying indoors during the heat wave.

    “We see citizens who are quite irresponsible and continue to go jogging between midday and 2:00 pm,” she told France 2 TV.

    Grospierres, France, located in the southern region of the country, hit 107.6 F on Thursday, which was a record-breaking high.

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    About two hours south of Grospierres, located on the Mediterranean coast, is Narbonne, which recorded highs near 106.7 F.

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    Friday could be absolute hell for France, as temperatures are expected to approach 110 F across the southeast interior of the country.

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    Final exams for students in France were delayed a week because of the heat wave, while French President Emmanuel Macron promised, “The whole government is mobilized.”

    In France, several elderly swimmers died, apparently of “thermal shock,” after entering the cool seawater after broiling on land.

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    In 2003, caught unprepared by a brutal heat wave, an estimated 20,000 people died in Europe, most of them in France.

    Heat waves are frequent in Europe; it was just that this one was very early in the season.

    As WaPo reports, newspapers in Germany published guides on whether the heat meant that employees could simply skip work (Answer: No) and if wearing shorts at work was acceptable amid the heat wave (Answer: It depends).

    In Switzerland, the heat wave also coincided with the first weeks of basic training for the country’s new military conscripts. To prevent the recruits from overheating, Swiss officials require them to regularly fill in forms to document their hourly water consumption, an official told Swiss media.

    In Germany, heated rows broke out over how much nudity to tolerate in the midst of the heat wave. After a group of women took off their bikini tops in Munich last weekend to bathe along the banks of the city’s Isar River, five security guards ordered them to put their tops back on, citing local public nudity prohibitions. In response, about two dozen women also took their tops off “out of solidarity,” according to the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. The security guards proceeded to call the police, who insisted the women cover their breasts.

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    It wasn’t just the ladies. In eastern Germany, officers pulled over a naked man on a moped; apparently, it was so hot outside so he had to take off his clothes and jump on his moped to catch a breeze.

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    Additionally, law enforcement in Germany have decreased speed limits on several parts of the Autobahn due to fears the hot weather could cause roadways to warp as vehicles pass over.

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    Amid the heat, the worst wildfires in two decades broke out across Catalonia, Spain.

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    Climatologists told Associated Press that weather is becoming more volatile making heat waves more common.

    “This increase in heat extremes is just as predicted by climate science as a consequence of global warming caused by the increasing greenhouse gases from burning coal, oil, and gas,” Stefan Rahmstorf, a climatologist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said.

    Numerous studies have shown that extreme heat waves could be connected to human-caused global warming – while none of that has been officially confirmed – we certainly must say that weather across the world has become more volatile than the past.

  • The European Union In The Pentagon's Nuclear Strategy

    Authored by Manlio Dinucci via VoltaireNet.org,

    France no longer possesses the nuclear triad (land, sea and air vectors) since 1996, and the United Kingdom has never had such weaponry. Only the United States, Russia and China enjoy this privilege. In a new document, the commander of the Committee of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff confirms his intention to disarm his allies of their nuclear weapons – thereafter, they will no longer have the right to use their own, but will have to use US bombs.

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    The NATO Ministers for Defence (Elisabetta Trenta, M5S, for Italy, and Florence Parly, LREM for France) were convened in Brussels on 26 and 27 June to approve the new measures of « dissuasion » against Russia, which has been accused – with no proof whatsoever – of having violated the INF Treaty. Basically, this means they will fall into step behind the United States, which, by withdrawing definitively from the Treaty on 2 August, is preparing to deploy in Europe ground-based intermediate range nuclear missiles (a range of between 500 and 5,500 kilometres), similar to those from the 1980’s (the Pershing II and the cruise missiles) which were eliminated (with the Soviet SS-20’s) by the Treaty signed in 1987 by Presidents Gorbachev and Reagan.

    The major European powers, increasingly divided within the EU, are re-grouped in NATO under US command in order to support their common strategic interests. At the UNO, this same European Union – of which 21 of its 27 members are part of the Alliance (as is the United Kingdom although it is leaving the EU) – rejected the Russian proposition to maintain the INF Treaty. On a matter of such importance, European public opinion is deliberately left in a state of ignorance by their governments and the major medias. In this way we do not notice the growing danger which is threatening us all – the increasing possibility that we may one day suffer the use of nuclear weapons.

    This is confirmed by the latest strategic document from the US Armed Forces, Nuclear Operations (11 June), written under the direction of the President of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

    Given that « our nuclear forces offer the USA the capacity to pursue our own national objectives », the document underlines that they must be « diversified, flexible and adaptable » to a « wide range of adversaries, threats and contexts ». Despite Russian warnings that the use of even one low-power nuclear weapon would begin a chain reaction which could lead to large-scale nuclear conflict, the US doctrine is beginning to orient itself on the basis of a dangerous concept – « flexibility ».

    The strategic document affirms that « US nuclear forces give us the means to apply force to a wide range of targets at the time and with the means decided by the President ». Those targets (specifies the same document) are in truth chosen by the Intelligence agencies, who evaluate their vulnerability to a nuclear attack, and also calculate the effects of radioactive fallout. The use of nuclear weapons – emphasises the document – « can create the conditions for decisive results. In particular, the use of a nuclear weapon would fundamentally transform the context of a battle by creating the conditions which would enable the commanders to win the confrontation ».

    Nuclear weapons would also enable the USA to « reassure their allies and partners » who, trusting in these weapons, « would give up the idea of possessing their own nuclear weapons, thus participating in the objective of the United States, which is non-proliferation ».

    However, the document indicates that « The USA and certain selected NATO allies would be able to keep aircraft capable of carrying both nuclear and conventional weapons ». This is an admission that four countries of the EU which are officially non-nuclear – Italy, Germany, Belgium, Holland – and also Turkey, in violation of the non-proliferation Treaty, are not only storing US nuclear weapons (B-61 bombs which from 2020 will be replaced by the more destructive B61-12), but are prepared to use them in a nuclear attack under command of the Pentagon.

    All of this is kept secret by our governments and parliaments, televisions and newspapers, with the guilty silence of the vast majority of politicians and journalists, who nonetheless repeat day after day how important « security » is for we Italians and other Europeans of the Union. It will apparently be guaranteed for us by the US deployment of other nuclear weapons.

  • New Video Shows China Simulating Hypersonic Missile Attack On Enemy Forces 

    An animated video published by China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) showcased hypersonic boost-glide vehicles (HBGV) in a four-minute war propaganda video, reported Global Times.

    Chinese media said the weapon might be Dong Feng (“East Wind”), DF-17 for short, is designed to fly at hypersonic speeds and evade existing missile defense systems, such as America’s anti-ballistic missile defense system called: Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD).

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    Experts told the Times Monday that the HBGV would be impossible for the world’s most advanced missile shields to detect.

    The animated video, posted on CASIC’s social media platform Douyin on Friday, shows warfare capabilities of the company’s missiles.

    According to the Chineses video captions, translated by the Daily Mail, it described several missiles, including subsonic submarine cruise missiles, subsonic and supersonic anti-ship missiles, supersonic cruise missiles and HBGVs.

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    Passion News, a media outlet under k618.cn, said the promotion video was the first time a simulated animation of an HBGV has ever been released to the public.

    Wei Dongxu, a Beijing-based military analyst, told the Times Monday that HBGV “is essentially a warhead, is stored in the nose of a missile, and will be released once the rocket booster sends it fast and high enough. It will then fly over the upper edge of the atmosphere, changing directions frequently, which makes it very difficult to intercept by anti-missile systems.”

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    In a December report, the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF), said China conducted two separate tests of the HBGV in November.

    China just showed its hypersonic-BGV in a vid on 08 Oct. Probably a test design model, but AFAIK this is first pics of an actual object 1/ pic.twitter.com/EXIMHkXTEA

    — Raymond Wang (@soraywang) November 5, 2017

    QQ.com speculated the HBGV could be an aircraft carrier killer with a range of 1,533 miles, enough distance for Mainland China to guard its militarized islands in the South China Sea from American naval forces.

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    The Pentagon recently sounded the alarm on the proliferation of hypersonic technological advances that are being made around the world.

    “Although hypersonic glide vehicles and missiles flying non-ballistic trajectories were first proposed as far back as World War II, technological advances are only now making these systems practicable,” Vice Admiral James Syring, director of the US Missile Defense Agency, said in June, during testimony before the US House Armed Services Committee.

    In 2015, Lockheed Martin upgraded its THAAD missile system to counter Chinese HBGV threats.

    That said, China is a rising power with hypersonic technologies, could deploy HBGVs around the South China Sea as soon as 2020. This move would undoubtedly complicate US naval fleets operating in the western Pacific.The countdown to World War III has started. 

  • US Army Officer Urges "Swift, Responsible Disengagement" From Afghanistan, Part 2

    Authored by Danny Sjursen via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

    Read Part 1 here…

    Since the supposed end of the American combat mission in Afghanistan in 2014, the primary mission of U.S. military forces has been to train, support, and bolster the ANDSF (Afghan National Defense and Security Forces) in order to ensure their long-term success and ability to secure the country.

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    This effort is at least sixteen years old, but the outcomes have been disappointing. The negative metrics are simply overwhelming. At present, the following conditions prevail in the ANDSF:

    • There are high rates of absenteeism and 35 percent of the force is not reenlisting each year.

    • Widespread illiteracy remains rampant.

    • Inconsistent leadership pervades and so does a “deficit of logistical capabilities.”

    • Senior U.S. commanders have admitted that casualty rates within the ANDSF are “unsustainable” — numbering 5,500 fatalities in 2015, 6,700 in 2016, and estimates (the number is newly classified) of “about 10,000” in 2017. The 2018 estimates run even higher.

    • Between casualties and desertions, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) estimated an overall 10 percent attrition rate for the ANDSF in 2017.

    • The U.S. Congress has appropriated about $72.8 billion to this failing force since 2002, with 75 percent of the estimated annual ANDSF budget of $5 billion coming from the United States (the rest pro-vided by America’s international allies, mostly NATO).

    • Credible allegations of child sexual abuse and other human rights abuses perpetrated by ANDSF personnel continue to be reported.

    • The Afghan National Army (ANA) component of the ANDSF is more than 30,000 troops under its authorized size and actually down 8,000 personnel since May 2017.

    • The Afghan Air Force (AAF) component of the ANDSF faces “equipment, maintenance, and logistical difficulties,” and has only 104 total rotary and fixed-wing aircraft — a completely insufficient number to provide tactical air support nationwide — and comparable to just the number of rotary aircraft in a single U.S. Army Aviation Brigade.

    • The Afghan National Police (ANP) component of the ANDSF (not strictly police in the American sense of the word, but rather a well-armed paramilitary army) has even higher attrition and desertion rates. Two percent of policemen desert each month and overall attrition stands at about 25 percent annually.

    The candid assessments of several U.S. military commanders and advisors are correct — none of the above metrics is sustainable. In spite of optimistic and sanitized assertions from top policymakers, the ANDSF appears on the verge of a veritable breaking point. Seventeen years of American military training, support, and mentoring have, ultimately, been unable to avoid this outcome.

    U.S. and NATO troops levels and missions

    U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan have fluctuated for nearly two decades, reaching a high of 100,000 in 2011 — when the author served in Kandahar Province — and standing today at about 14,500. Nevertheless, this sustained commitment and sacrifice (to the tune of 2,419 dead as of mid January 2019) has not meaningfully staunched the tide of Taliban gains. The question at hand is this: what can about 15,000 U.S. troops accomplish in 2019 that 100,000 could not achieve in 2010-11?

    NATO provides limited support to the U.S. mission but the American military still contributes the vast majority of troops. While NATO leaders have publicly committed to support the mission through 2020, it is unclear what will occur if or when NATO countries lose interest or patience with the two-decade war. Furthermore, it is clear that the ANDSF is still highly reliant on the logistical support, air cover, and special-forces raids of U.S. and NATO troops. That, too, is unsustainable.

    Much of the current U.S. mission — in addition to training and advising the ANDSF — is dedicated to combatting the relatively new Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan — the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). That said, ISKP is mostly limited to a few districts in the country’s east and has, according to U.S. military estimates, been attritted from 1,300 fighters in September 2016, to 700 in April 2017, with the pressure only increasing. Furthermore, ISKP is as much a branding slogan as a genuine ISIS identity and, at times, ISKP and the Taliban have clashed over territorial or political control. That presents an opportunity to divide the two groups with little effort or commitment and demonstrates the eminently containable nature of the Afghan ISKP threat.

    President Trump’s instincts to withdraw from the country are commendable and he ought to follow them. His “new” compromise strategy, which defined his first two years in office, on the other hand, represented little more than a paltry synthesis of old Obama- and Bush-era thinking on the intractable problem set in Afghanistan.

    Unsustainable: Economics and corruption in Afghanistan

    Decades of brutal warfare have “stunted the development of domestic industries,” including the vital mining sector. Afghanistan’s GDP (according to 2015 estimates) tops out at only $62.62 billion. Foreign aid accounts for more than 95 percent of the national GDP. Furthermore, annual Afghan government revenues amount to only $2 billion, despite the country’s having a $7.3 billion annual budget (the remainder is picked up primarily by the U.S. taxpayers and other foreign partners). Afghan revenue mostly comes from taxation, but that is also tied to the security crisis, as enemy-held districts are difficult to effectively tax, even with the new computerized system. Afghanistan’s government is also stagnant. Despite initial annual GDP gains of about 7 percent per year from 2003 to 2013, growth has dropped to about 1 and 2 percent from 2014 to 2017.

    The costs to the United States to maintain this unsustainable economic status quo have been immense. Congress has appropriated more than $126 billion in aid to Afghanistan’s government (62 percent for security, 38 percent for development) since 2001 — and that doesn’t count U.S. military operational expenses, which run to at least $752 billion over the last seventeen years. Furthermore, despite recent improvements, corruption runs rampant in Afghan government industries. Owing to concerns about fraud, waste, and abuse (including losing billions), the FY2008 defense authorization bill mandated the establishment of a Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), which has churned out one pessimistic report after another ever since.

    The economic bottom line is as simple as it is stark: The Afghan GDP is largely based on foreign aid; and domestic revenue is insufficient even to fund the security sector (which runs at $5 billion annually against $2 billion of domestic revenue). That is an unsustainable formula for perpetual U.S. involvement in the conflict. Afghanistan’s government (and economic sector) has an incentive to maintain the status quo in order to ensure continued U.S. funding and thereby propping up the economy; that also fuels and feeds ongoing problems with corruption.

    Come home 

    The prudent course for the United States is to swiftly and totally disentangle from the Afghan maelstrom and immediately bring all U.S. troops home. Afghanistan has been at war, persistently, for 39 years. In 2001, the United States entered a nation already long at war and the U.S. portion of the mission has covered only 17 of those 39 years of Afghan conflict. Afghanistan was broken when the United States arrived; it will, undoubtedly, remain at war when America departs — whether that is now or in a generation.

    The United States, which has already spent nearly a trillion dollars and 2,500 lives in this land-locked backwater, should pivot instead to homeland defense from any actual existential threats to American security. Here it is vital to remember that contemporary transnational terror does not require the safe haven of the ungoverned caves and valleys of Afghanistan — even 9/11 was largely planned from Germany and within the United States itself. Finally, the opportunity costs and tradeoffs inherent in the expenditure of $1 trillion in a losing and futile war must be understood. Resources are limited.

    Countering critiques

    Undoubtedly, some readers will counter with certain common, if worn out, counterarguments. Each is rather easily refuted:

    • If the United States leaves, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State will enjoy a “safe haven” from which to plan the “next” 9/11-style attack on the United States. At this point, the safe-haven myth belies reality. Transnational terror groups populate portions of countries from Niger to Pakistan, yet the United States has neither the capacity nor intent to indefinitely occupy them all with military forces. Indeed, Afghanistan has fewer al-Qaeda and ISIS fighters than several other countries in the Greater Middle East.

    • If the withdrawal of American troops hasn’t brought stability, perhaps a greater infusion of troops and counterinsurgency saturation will bring victory. Beyond the questionable definition of what exactly would constitute victory, the United States possesses neither the resources nor the national will to militarily pacify Afghanistan. How many troops would it take? That is a difficult question, but it’s possible to estimate. In 2003, Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki estimated — correctly — that it would take “several hundred thousand troops” to occupy and stabilize Iraq — far more than the Bush administration (incorrectly, as became obvious) argued were necessary. If one defines “several hundred thousand” as 500,000 troops, takes into account that Iraq is about two-thirds the size of Afghanistan, and that the Afghan terrain is far more mountainous and imposing, an estimate of 750,000 troops on the ground is not inconceivable. Considering that the entire U.S. Army numbers fewer than 500,000 soldiers, it becomes obvious that the United States lacks the necessary resources to achieve “victory.”

    • Still, won’t there be chaos in the wake of American withdrawal? Yes! There will, but that is inevitable no matter when the U.S. military departs. First off, the chaos and insecurity are already worsening even with U.S. troops still on the ground. Indeed, the outcome in Afghanistan will very likely be ugly, but matters in this troubled country have long been ugly. The likely reality is that an Afghan equilibrium will eventually be reached. That may mean a new national partition along ethnic and geographic lines, with a Taliban-influenced south and a Northern Alliance-like federal government in Kabul and in the country’s north. The question is what, exactly, the U.S. military can do — short of perpetual occupation — to reverse that likely outcome?

    Disentangle from Afghanistan

    There is no military solution to the Afghan War. An Afghan settlement to the ongoing Afghan conflict will be ugly, but that is an inevitable, irreversible reality the United States must accept and immediately end its costly and futile, indefinite intervention.

    The “melancholy fact,” according to long-time regional specialist Ahmed Rashid, “is that the American public is not much engaged with what happens in Afghanistan, either way.” That, in itself, is a persuasive argument for military disengagement. The American people may, in fact, be way ahead of Washington policymakers in realizing the futility of continued U.S. engagement. When announcing his “new” strategy in August 2017, Trump candidly admitted that his “original instinct” was to pull out of Afghanistan. He, and the American people, were correct — and he should follow those sound instincts.

  • Pilot Labeled As "Mercenary" Captured In Libya Said To Be US Air Force Veteran

    The US media identified Jamie Sponaugle as a fighter jet pilot that was shot down and captured by one of Libya’s rival governments on May 7, according to a new report from RT. The pilot had been previously reported as a Portuguese national.  

    The pilot was captured by the Libyan National Army (LNA) near Tripoli when his Mirage F1 was shot down. The LNA claims he was “conducting bombing raids against its troops on behalf of Libya’s internationally-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA)” and referred to him as a mercenary. 

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    He was called a Portuguese national named Jimmy Reiss at the time of his capture, when the LNA released photos of him.

    The Washington Post said that Sponaugle enlisted as an airman in 2006, worked as a mechanic until 2013 and served in the Florida Air National Guard before retiring in 2016. The paper claims that he didn’t have pilot training and that U.S. officials didn’t know what he was doing in Libya. 

    He was released with the help of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, though the Saudis have said they did not pay for his release. He was flown to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to meet with US officials and undergo medical examination. 

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    Task and Purpose gave a different spin on Sponaugle’s service record, claiming merits that indicate deployments to Iran and South Korea, as well as involvement with the US Air Force’s nuclear deterrence operations.

  • China's Rogue Regime

    Authored by David Archibald via American Thinker,

    It is commonly accepted now that China is using its trade with the United States and other OECD countries to increase the size of its economy, which in turn will allow it to build its military to the point where it can attack the United States and other countries and hope to win. At its simplest, every Chinese container landed at the Port of Los Angeles contributes to a U.S. combat death at some point in time of China’s choosing. Every item of injection-moulded plastic from China picked off the toy shelves at Walmart contributes to a future U.S. combat death.

    Some of our leaders seem to comprehend this but speak in a kind of code. Thus,Vice President Mike Pence told the West Point graduating class last month, “You will lead soldiers in combat. It will happen.” General James Mattis has made similar remarks. How can they be so certain that the size of the U.S. military won’t be enough to discourage a belligerent from disturbing the peace of the world?

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    National emblem of the People’s Republic of China (source)

    Because that belligerent country is China and their intentions are as plain as day. Would a peaceful country continually bait Japan as China does?  This graph from the Japanese Foreign Ministry shows Chinese incursions into Japanese waters.

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    The sudden leap in incidents in 2012 was due to the rise of Xi Jinping as Supreme Leader, later uprated to Core Leader. All these incursions by Chinese fishing vessels are funded by the Chinese Government; it seems the budget is for 12 per month. This is the steady heartbeat of Chinese hate and enmity while they wait for the moment when they can attack.

    All this is known, but still Chinese goods and people enter the country. There is a certain amount of inertia in the system while Trump’s tariffs reach their full effect. But each day’s delay in bringing in those tariffs likely will result in more U.S. combat deaths.

    Perhaps a more personal aversion to the Chicoms is needed to speed things up and reduce U.S. combat deaths. What will help to that end is reading this interview of incontrovertible China expert Steven Mosher. Mr. Mosher begins with some interesting economic observations, including that if Hong Kong loses its special trade status with the United States due to the suppression of rights there, then this will be a big hit to the Chinese economy. Tariffs are our best tool in defanging the monster:

    “If the tariffs come into play across the whole gamut of Chinese imports, then the export sector of the Chinese economy will be devastated. Remember that the export sector of the Chinese economy is the only sector of the economy that operates according to market principles and makes money. The rest of the economy is an old Stalinist state-planned nightmare. The Party itself consumes probably $1 trillion a year in wealth just on its salaries, on its resorts, on its vacations, on its foreign junkets, on the rest. So the Party itself is a great hurdle or handicap for the Chinese people that they have to carry a cross, carry through life.

    The second burden the Chinese people have to bear of course is the state-owned sector which loses trillions of dollars a year. All of the state-owned economic enterprises lose money. China Railway, for example, is $750 billion in debt. They built beautiful high-speed rail all over China. Not one of those high-speed rail lines is making money. Not one of them is paying back the money it took to construct the rail line, which was probably two or three times what it should have cost because of corruption — officials on the take at every level of government.”

    There are some parallels with the leadup to World War II in the Pacific. Roosevelt put an oil embargo on Japan in response to Japanese aggression in China. The Japanese Navy did their sums and calculated they had nine months before they ran out of fuel. So they moved up their war timetable. Mosher’s opinion is that tariffs will cause China to burn through their $3 trillion of foreign exchange reserves very quickly. They are now the world’s largest oil importer. If Xi Jinping thinks his window of opportunity is closing he might move up his war timetable even if the chance of success is much less than what he would prefer it to be. The Germans made the same tradeoff in starting World War I.

    And then Mosher tells a tale which reveals the Chinese Communist Party is as repugnant as ISIS was when they were chopping heads of two-year-old girls for being Christians. The Chicom organ harvesting industry started innocently enough back in the 1960s with senior party officials receiving blood transfusions from young people, which does have a life-lengthening effect. Mr Mosher continues the story:

    “And then they moved into transplants in the 1980s, and I think it was originally senior Party officials who were the beneficiaries of the transplants. The prisoners who were executed were those who were at that time being given this horrible sentence of immediate execution with a two-year suspended sentence. And that meant that they were on the chopping block at any given time. And when their tissue was a match to the tissue of a Party leader who was in need of an organ, they would be executed by a single bullet to the back of their head. And they would be, their body would be transported to a medical van and their heart or liver would be extracted immediately.”

    Then the Chicoms expanded the operation to make money selling to wealthy transplant tourists from all over the world:

    “The Party authorities realized that foreigners were willing to pay $150,000 for a heart, $180,000 for a liver. The price varies. And so they began developing transplant centers throughout the country. I think the People’s Liberation Army were the leaders in this regard because first of all, they had a ready source of prisoners through the police state that they help to run, and they had army hospitals in existence.

    So as the traffic ramped up, and more and more transplant tourists began to come to China, the advantage of coming to China was not just the cost, which was lower than the cost of getting an organ overseas. The advantage was that you could get a transplant almost immediately.”

    They have also become more efficient by using extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO).  Mosher continues:

    “Now with this extracorporeal membrane oxidation, this heart lung machine, you can harvest all of the organs. And the worst part of it is this: They can actually put a balloon catheter in the carotid arteries going to your brain and block the blood flow to your brain, while they keep the blood flowing to your organs. So they kill the brain at the same time that they keep blood flowing to the organs and can harvest them one by one. So they’re able to make not just $150,000 off a single killing. Now they can make $750,000 off a killing because they’re harvesting both kidneys, both lungs, the heart, the liver.”

    Despite the likes of Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia with his advocacy of infanticide and Planned Parenthood with its trade in fetal tissue, we have better standards than the Chicoms. As Mosher’s interlocutor asks, “why isn’t the CCP just generally considered a pariah regime?”

    Well, yes – good question. Their true nature is readily apparent. Let’s not wait until they start killing American troops or drowning American sailors to bestow pariah status. The Chicoms are aggressive, amoral barbarians. Let’s treat them as such which starts with not allowing them into this country for any reason.

  • Russia Unveils New Military Drones At Army Forum

    TASS News reports Russia has just unveiled its most advanced Korsar reconnaissance drone at the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation’s Army 2019 International Military Techincal Forum on Tuesday.

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    The Korsar belongs to the class of short-range reconnaissance drones. It has a maximum takeoff weight of 440 pounds and has a 74.5-mile range. It can maintain speeds of 70 mph to 95 mph at an altitude of 16,700 feet.

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    The Korsar is powered with a 50 horsepower piston engine. An upgraded version of the drone will offer additional horsepower.

    The military forum began at the Patriot Congress and Exhibition Center outside Moscow on Tuesday and will last through June 30.

    The forum’s events will be held in the exhibition center and other regions in Russia. According to government estimates, the forum will host 1,500 defense companies that will demonstrate more than 27,000 products and technologies.

    The defense ministry said 60 units of weapons, military, and specialized equipment would be tested in the Western Military District at the Alabino training ground near Moscow during this week.

    These are the newest modifications of T-90A, T-80U, T-72BZ tanks, self-propelled artillery mounts 2S19 SAU “Msta-S”, volley fire systems 2B17 “Tornado-G”, infantry fighting vehicles BMP-2, BMP-3, armored personnel carriers BTR -82A, reconnaissance strike complex 1L261 “Zoo-1M”, as well as modern automotive and robotic technology

    The ground component of the forum will be demonstrated in the framework of static and dynamic shows. In the course of the latter, viewers will see the running, maneuverable and fire capabilities of the new Russian weapons.

    The international military-technical forum “Army-2019” will last from June 25 to 30 not only in the Moscow region, but also in military districts and in the Northern Fleet. As part of the business program of the main forum, practical conferences, seminars, round tables and presentations of new technologies of the military-industrial complex are planned, the defense minstry tweeted. 

    A journalist from Al-Mayadin News Network tweeted pictures of several exhibits showing new tactical vehicles.

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    Another journalist stood in front of a combat robot used for reconnaissance and support missions in Syria.

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    A defense writer had her pictures taken in front of an S-400 missile system.

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    Defense World tweeted a photo of a model of Russia’s next nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

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    Sputnik shows one exhibit that had a drone with an optical sensor that looked like a snowy owl.

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    Army Recognition found one display that had an unmanned ground vehicle, used for storage and helps alleviate the weight from paratroopers in the field.

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    Live Journal was another source that has been covering developments at the forum:

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  • How To Destroy A Civilization

    Authored by Jeffrey Harding via The Mises Institute,

    There are lots of ways to kill off a civilization. Wars, politics, economic collapse. But what are the actual mechanics? It might be a useful thing to know whether or not we are killing ourselves off.

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    Ancient Rome is a good place to start. They had an advanced civilization. They had running water, sewers, flush toilets, concrete, roads, bridges, dams, an international highway system, mechanical reapers, water-powered mills, public baths, soap, banking, commerce, free trade, a legal code, a court system, science, literature, and a republican system of government. And a strong army to enforce stability and peace (Pax Romana). It wasn’t perfect, but they were on their way to modernity.

    One of my favorite quotes is from Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator and writer (106-43 BCE):

    Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

    If that isn’t a mark of a civilized society I don’t know what is.

    But Rome collapsed. I often wonder what would have happened if it hadn’t. Could we have avoided a thousand years of the Dark Ages. Could we have been flying airplanes and driving cars in the year 1000?

    What the hell happened to Rome?

    Dictators. After 500 years, the famous Roman Republic ended with the dictator Julius Caesar taking power. Four hundred years later his progeny and usurpers ran the Empire into the ground and Rome fell to invading barbarians.

    The standard explanation for Rome’s decline and fall is that they devolved into dictatorships (true, but not the cause of their fall). Or they became decadent and corrupt (true, but not the cause of their fall). They fell to barbarian invasions (true, but not the cause of their fall).

    Rome fell because the dictators ruined the Roman economy and the institutions that had made it prosperous. Rome was falling apart before the barbarian invasions.

    How did the Caesars do that? They were profligate spenders. As emperors with absolute power usually do, they thought big: infrastructure (roads, temples, palaces), a huge bureaucracy, and, as the key to maintaining their power they had a very large, loyal, and well paid army. As a consequence, massive government spending far outstripped revenue. They had what today we call a deficit problem.

    They did two disastrous things to solve their deficit.

    First, they kept raising taxes which became punitive. Not caring much about the consequences to the merchants, small farmers, and peasants, they came up with new ways to squeeze money out of their citizens. Onerous taxes led to tax evasion. The government’s response was to double down and implement laws that restricted economic freedoms in order to raise even more taxes. Heavy taxes forced property owners, small and large, off the land. Large feudal estates run by political cronies arose in their place. Laws were enacted that forced peasants into virtual serfdom. Business owners and their children were prevented from changing jobs or towns. And, taxes had to be paid either in gold or in kind or they would lose everything. Gold became scarce. Gold money was only lawfully available to the government, army, and bureaucrats.

    Second, they debased the currency which led to inflation. It was the equivalent of printing money to pay for things. The resulting bouts of high inflation destroyed much of commerce and agriculture. Like most dictators they thought they could stop rising prices by implementing price controls, but that just led to gold and goods disappearing from the economy. Black markets grew despite threats of capital punishment. Unemployment and homelessness rose. Their large welfare system kept running short of money. Commercial, legal, and moral institutions were falling apart. Corruption was endemic. The resulting booms and busts and depressions were destroying the economy.

    By the time the Goth and Visigoth invaders came along, Rome was so weakened that they could not hold back the waves of invasions. At the end, Roman citizens saw the government as the enemy and the invading barbarians as their saviors. Rome fell in 410 CE. What emerged was what we now know as the Middle Ages — it lasted for a thousand years. You know what that was like. They didn’t call it the Dark Ages for nothing.

    Much of Rome’s economic history is quite familiar in modern times. Even after thousands of years of evidence of repeated failure, bad ideas simply don’t die. Proponents of bad ideas are either ignorant of history or just ignorant. Or they are politicians (as Mark Twin said, “But I repeat myself.”).

    One bad idea with ancient precedents is Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). MMT is the New Thing among Progressives in America. Politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Bernie are quite excited about MMT. They think they have discovered the Holy Grail of economics.

    Progressives believe that government can and should cause economic growth and prosperity. They believe government can do this by various controls, regulations, spending programs, and monetary manipulation. They believe proper government spending will stimulate demand, generate consumer spending, kick-start production, and, voila! we have full employment and prosperity. Along the way we can solve various social problems.

    The idea of MMT takes this one step further. They believe that the government can spend/buy whatever it wants and print pieces of greenish paper to pay for it. Government doesn’t need to tax us or borrow money to do this — it can print whatever money it needs to pay for it. Deficits don’t matter because by printing money to pay for stuff they instantly solve the deficit problem. MMTers claim, with no shortage of arrogance, that they, Oz-like, can fine-tune the mechanics of how the economy is to be run and generate prosperity, prevent inflation, end inequality, and save the planet.

    In other words, everything will be perfect; “just trust us” to run things. It sounds too good to be true.

    AOC and Bernie Sanders and their supporters heartily embrace MMT. They want to break free of old-fashioned concepts such as fiscal integrity, balanced budgets, and monetary stability because they want no limits on their utopian schemes.

    MMT is a crackpot idea. It is the monetary equivalent of the Perpetual Motion Machine — it ignores the laws of economics. It’s like asking third graders to invent money. (“I’m gonna print me a bunch of money and buy me a Ferrari an’ a jet an’ all the coolest video games an’ …”). Proponents confuse pieces of greenish paper with wealth and, as history has repeatedly proven, you can’t print your way to wealth and prosperity.

    There is nothing “modern” about Modern Monetary Theory. It has been tried many times over the centuries and it has never worked. In every case where governments have printed money to pay for things, the result has been cycles of boom and bust, inflation (and hyperinflation), economic stagnation, and social disorder. MMTers simply don’t understand what money is or the mechanics of the business cycle or the concept ofmalinvestment and the destruction of capital.

    Why is it not possible that we could go the way of Rome? Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal resulted in 25 years of economic stagnation. Only post-FDR deregulation, more economic freedoms, capital investment, and fiscal and monetary sanity led to economic growth.

    AOC’s Green New Deal plus MMT would be worse than the old New Deal in that it places no limit on government’s ability to spend which means government can command economic resources and control the direction of the economy. History has shown that governments aren’t very good at that. Absolute power in the hands of the few is a bad idea.

    How much destruction could MMT and utopian Progressive schemes like AOC’s utopian Green New Deal inflict on our civilization? It is hard to tell, but I hope we don’t have to look back some day and say the end started now.

  • Life On Mars Gets A Head Start In Utah Desert

    Since 2001, the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS), a facility simulating Mars analog habitat owned by the Mars Society, has allowed thousands of space enthusiasts from countries around the world to put on a makeshift spacesuit and live in a space station for an extended period, reported the Los Angeles Times.

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    The station was built near Hanksville, Utah, in the early 2000s, and is visited by engineers, physicians, geologists, astronomers, and biologists.

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    NASA aims to send astronauts to Mars by 2033, and the buzz about commercial space travel has made MDRS much more popular than ever before.

    Last month, 500 college students from ten countries gathered at MDRS for the annual University Rover Challenge, designed at developing space vehicles for use on Mars.

    “I could run two of these programs side by side, and there would still be a demand,” said station director Shannon Rupert.

    “You no longer have to work at NASA to go into space, and a lot of people want to go into space.”

    Many of the visitors are forking over $1,500 per person for a two-week stay. Each visitor can perform their own experiments as long as they observe one protocol: don’t leave the station without a spacesuit.

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    MDRS includes a two-story habitat, a greenhouse, a robotic observatory, an engineering pod, and a science dome. Above-ground walkways connect all buildings except the robotic observatory allow crews to travel between buildings without a spacesuit.

    Camila Castillo, a 23-year-old biologist from Peru, was on her second mission when the Times interviewed her. She said she was made commander of a seven-person team.

    “As commander my role is to keep people calm,” she explained. “We are all passionate, but I must make sure we observe the protocols.”

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    Two Italian engineers, Vittorio Netti, 29, and Paolo Guardabasso, 27, spent their time operating a drone that could one day fly on Mars.

    “We can use them to photograph the area around the station in a short time rather than send people out on potentially dangerous missions,” Netti said.

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    One of the walkways led the Times to the greenhouse was overseen by Hector Palomeque, a 28-year-old from Mexico who investigates life in harsh climates.

    “The first people on Mars will be more farmers than astronauts,” Palomeque said.

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    Mariona Badenas, 25, of Spain, was in command of a special telescope that allowed her to look at the sun’s chromosphere.

    “Observing the sun on Mars would be critical to understanding how it would affect the crew and possibly interfere with communications,” she said.

    The creator of the MDRS is 67-year-old, Robert Zubrin, the president of Mars Society and owner of Pioneer Astronautics in Lakewood, Colorado.

    Zubrin, a nuclear engineer and NASA contractor, told the Times he believes a trip to Mars could be completed today in six months with existing technology.

    “NASA had plans in 1969 to land on Mars by 1981; then Nixon canned the whole thing. We had a total failure of leadership,” he said. “If that plan had carried through, we would have landed on Mars in 1981, had a permanent base on Mars by the late 1980s, and the first children born on Mars would be graduating from high school this June. That was the future not taken.”

    MDRS recently received donations from SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

    Musk in a series of cryptic tweets around 4:20 pm Sunday hinted at his plans on colonizing the red plant

    “Accelerating Starship development to build the Martian Technocracy,” Musk tweeted on Sunday.

    About an hour later around 5 pm, he tweeted “OCCUPY MARS” and an image of the moon.

    Mars seems like the next place where humans will travel in the next decade.

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