The CIA thought the USSR would overtake the US as the world’s largest economy in 1992. The article tries to understand how such a tremendous intelligence failure could take place. Part of the reason was because the wrong estimates were ‘secret knowlege’ and therefore they must be true. It was secret baloney. Errors do not …
Author Archives: Richard Fernandez
Designated target
The irony in the story that the Sri Lanka church attacks were a retaliation for NZ is the New Zealand attacker was neither a Christian nor a New Zealander. The ‘Easter Worshippers’ are just a designated target. So what happens? The New Zealanders get their guns confiscated and the Sri Lankan Christians are bombed. Yet …
The saga of “Fort Trump”
Since 2014, NATO strategists have focused much of their attention on a forty-mile-wide stretch of border between Poland and Lithuania called the Suwalki Gap (pronounced ‘Soo-vow-kee’). The gap’s two highways are the only land corridor by which NATO troops could reinforce its Baltic member states in event of a conflict with Russia. …To the west …
The Hanson video: Mueller Probe Could Backfire
The rises of fanaticism
“Secularism” is on the decline in the West too. It’s full of fanatics. Secularism requires not the absence of belief, but the absence of fanaticism. Odd that it should have reached its peak in the early 2000s when much that is now deemed anathema was prevalent. “JAKARTA, Indonesia — The deadly attacks in Sri Lanka …
Runaway train
If the investigation based on the Steele dossier represents a ‘coup attempt’ has it started a runaway train by provoking a backlash? Or is there some way of getting the locomotive back on track? But they felt as an insurance policy that Donald Trump for a variety of reasons–culturally, politically, socially–was unacceptable as president. And …
Open borders suck the lifeblood from poor countries
The solution to failing states is to fix them in situ. It’s not always compassionate to turn 3rd world doctors into taxidrivers. The open borders philosophy may designed for the elites more than the poor. Across the region, governments are struggling to deal with the consequences of many of their most talented young people leaving …
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UK Women Promote ‘BirthStrike’ Baby Ban to Prevent ‘Eco-Armageddon’
“It is basically a scientific consensus that the lives of our children are going to be very difficult, and it does lead young people to have a legitimate question: is it OK to still have children?” the Democrat representative wondered aloud. Bristol-based eco-activist Alice Brown, who was one of the first to sign up to …
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New at Belmont: So you don’t believe in the devil
But do you believe in memes? Belmont Club There’s something on the loose As Christians in Sri Lanka gathered on Sunday morning to celebrate Easter Mass, powerful explosions ripped through three churches packed with worshipers, leaving hundreds of victims amid a havoc of splintered and blood-spattered pews.New York Times. Convincing the world he doesn’t exist is …
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“Deniers” win in Alberta
Alberta’s new premier plans to abolish the carbon tax. Jason Kenney, the newly elected premier, is set to clash with Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister Economist Canada’s opposition conservatives won a clear victory in provincial elections in oil-rich Alberta Tuesday, in a setback for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his environmental policies just six months …
Trump reverses Obama era Cuba policies
From the new basing plans in Poland, to the rebuild of the US military, to a hardline vs Cuba it’s getting harder to see Trump as Putin’s stooge. The Trump administration on Wednesday rescinded several Obama-era policies toward Cuba, while imposing tough sanctions against Venezuela and Nicaragua – as part of a new crackdown on …
Regulatory capture
A Florida man was convicted Friday of running an 18-year, $1.3 billion health-care fraud that prosecutors called the largest such scheme ever charged by the Justice Department. Philip Esformes, a 50-year-old Miami Beach resident, used a network of nursing homes and assisted-living facilities in South Florida to defraud U.S. government health-care programs while providing inadequate …
Former Peruvian president kills self while being arrested
Caught up in Operation Car Wash, which has rocked leaders in Latin America. Peru’s former president Alan Garcia, 69, died in hospital after taking his life as police were about to arrest him at his home in a sprawling corruption case. The health ministry said Garcia died at 1.05am Thursday of “a massive cerebral haemorrhage …
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You can be equally slaves
The fundamental challenge that Tocqueville’s book poses to American dogma arises from his refusal to assume that equality and freedom are always mutually reinforcing. The American creed since the Declaration of Independence and especially since Lincoln has linked the two values, assuming that an increase in one naturally accompanies an increase in the other. Tocqueville …
Meme extinction
The definition of a meme Dilbert walks into a meeting and asks, “Who called this meeting?” The male coworker replies, “We thought you did.” The coworker continues, “I think we should discuss issues and assign tasks so it’s not a complete waste of time.” Dilbert responds, “Maybe meetings have become a lifeform capable of calling …
Until the correct results are obtained
ISTANBUL — The party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey applied to the country’s election commission on Tuesday for a rerun of the Istanbul mayor’s race, after two weeks of appeals and recounting of ballots still showed the opposition candidate ahead. NYT
Why not tax the snow?
Maybe the biggest existential danger to humanity are UN bureaucrats with trillion dollar terraforming schemes. As a result of global warming, winters are only going to get more severe, but there’s at least one silver lining as researchers from UCLA have come up with a way to harness electricity from all that snow. Gizmodo
Even Jaws flees
Ever since the 1975 movie “Jaws,” great white sharks have been considered the most fearsome predators in the ocean. But new research published Tuesday shows that may not be the case. Mercury News
Go thermal to find dangerous asteroids
Instead of using visible light to spot incoming objects, Mainzer’s team at JPL/Caltech has leveraged a characteristic signature of NEOs—their heat. Asteroids and comets are warmed by the sun and so glow brightly at thermal wavelengths (infrared), making them easier to spot with the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) telescope. “With the NEOWISE …
If you see a glowing impact crater be careful
The man who argues interstellar object Oumuamua could have been an alien spacecraft now says a meteor that hit Earth’s atmosphere in 2014 also came from elsewhere in the Milky Way, perhaps carrying life with it. … “The reported meteor entered the solar system with a speed of 60 km/s (134,216 mph) relative to the …
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