I am still recovering. It’s a long slow climb. But I have hope.
Please enjoy today’s post.
HK Protest-related detention: Transforming young offenders into decent citizens
Between June 2019 and September 2020, over 10,000 people were arrested over their involvement in protest-related crimes. The trials of those prosecuted, often students, have now concluded, and many have been convicted. Given the severity of their crimes, sentences of detention, of one sort or another, have often been unavoidable.
In 2020, the Hong Kong Association of the Heads of Secondary Schools, the largest grouping of secondary school principals, called for students arrested during the protests to be treated leniently. It said it was important for young people who had got into trouble to know that society had not given up on them. Even after conviction, they still had to be educated and cared for, and the Association told the government that leniency facilitates rehabilitation.
However, the sentencing of young offenders is entirely a matter for the courts, not the government, and they exercise their own independent discretion when it comes to penalties. If crimes are grave, the Judiciary may have no choice but to impose condign punishment, youth notwithstanding. As the Court of Appeal has explained, if young offenders are convicted of serious crimes, it means that “the courts must steel themselves, unless there are particularly powerful and peculiar contrary reasons attaching to the circumstances of the offender and his involvement in the offense, to the imposition of substantial prison terms” (CACC 97/2001).
Although the criminal justice system invariably tries to be as merciful as possible to young offenders, there is always a risk that undue leniency sends out the wrong message. If an offender has, for example, thrown petrol bombs at police officers, torched MTR stations or engaged in violent rioting, they cannot expect to get away with a rap across the knuckles. Although alternatives to imprisonment, like detention centers, rehabilitation centers and training centers, can sometimes be deployed, in many cases imprisonment will be necessary, although it may not be as grim as it sounds.
As the Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance (Cap.383) indicates, young offenders “shall be segregated from adults and be accorded treatment appropriate to their age and legal status” (Art.6). This means they are kept away from the hardened criminals, and are provided with appropriate training. In other words, they do not face the full impact of incarceration, and as much emphasis as possible is placed upon rehabilitation, with skills being taught that will hopefully assist them in their future lives.
On Dec 7, the secretary for security, Chris Tang Ping-keung, told the Legislative Council that up to 1,315 people are currently incarcerated because of their involvement in the “black-clad violence cases” of 2019-20, with 345 of them being aged 21 years or under. When asked what was being done to help young persons in custody, he said the Correctional Services Department (CSD) was providing halfway education for young people.
Although, given security concerns, detainees could not conduct online searches directly, Tang said e-learning corners had been available since 2015, and this enables them to access materials for distance learning courses. The CSD was also planning to introduce an online learning platform for people in custody, and they would be given a tablet to access learning materials through its intranet.
He also indicated that the CSD was helping inmates to enter various public examinations, and that, through liaison with local educational institutions, it was seeking to help them to complete their interrupted studies.
As regards vocational training, Tang said the 13 courses currently available cover business practices, image design, beauty care, coffee shop operation and other industries, and these would be reviewed based on such things as the background of the detainee and the requirements of prospective employers. He assured legislators that the CSD would “continue to actively promote diversified and appropriate services in facilitating the rehabilitation of persons in custody, and their reintegration into society.”
By the end of October, moreover, Tang disclosed that 677 detainees, of whom 474 had been convicted of protest-related crimes, had participated in the Project PATH program, launched in November 2021, and designed to help “rebuild positive values” (this is achieved through the holistic development of young adults). He advised that the program was producing a “satisfactory outcome”, that participants found it useful and were remorseful for past misdeeds, and that none of them had reoffended after release, at least so far.
Earlier, in April, the Security Bureau had also briefed the Legislative Council’s finance committee about the CSD’s voluntary “deradicalization” program for those convicted of involvement in the protests. As of February, 250 people had, it said, participated in the program, which is designed to help inmates to “disengage from radical thoughts, and re-establish correct values”, through lessons about Chinese history, the Basic Law and the National Security Law for Hong Kong. The program, moreover, is allied to related initiatives to help detainees to enhance their sense of national identity and their appreciation of what it means to be law-abiding. Therapy is also available to help those with extreme anti-social and violent mindsets, and, during the sessions, demons will hopefully have been purged.
The CSD says a “core mission” is the successful reintegration of inmates into society, and, after release, the private sector, with job opportunities, then steps up to the plate, and the trends are encouraging. Whereas, between 2009 and 2018, the overall recidivism rate fell from 33 percent to 22.5 percent, the rate for young offenders aged below 21 more than halved, from 23.2 percent to 10.2 percent, and there is every reason to suppose that, once available, future statistics will be equally positive, if not more so.
Tang disagreed with suggestions that local employers are reluctant to offer opportunities to former inmates, and insisted there were numerous openings available. Whereas around 470 corporations had agreed to provide up to 800 job opportunities to released persons, three were also offering employment in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. He also pointed out that, apart from promoting diversified vocational training for those in custody, the CSD also monitored the employment status of people after their release with a view to constructive guidance.
What is clear, therefore, is that everything possible is being done by the CSD to rehabilitate young offenders detained because of protest-related crimes, and to assist them once released. It is going the extra mile to correct perverted attitudes, and to provide inmates with rational perspectives. Although there were initially concerns that extremists might try to radicalize them yet further, this has not been a significant problem, and, with the support of business, rehabilitative measures are bearing fruit.
It seems clear that most of those involved in the insurrection are genuinely trying to reform themselves, with many now wanting to help society. The CSD, with Tang’s encouragement, is clearly doing great work, but the community as a whole must also rally round. When sinners repent, it is in everybody’s interest, but they still need maximum support in carving out decent futures for themselves.
No, Higher Taxes DON’T Cause The Wealthy To Move!
Most People Are Simply Not Ready For The Economic Chaos That Is Coming In 2023
Have you noticed that a lot of big companies have been conducting mass layoffs recently? At this point, it has become exceedingly clear that a major economic slowdown has begun, and payrolls are being feverishly slashed at a rate that we haven’t seen in a long time. In fact, the number of job cuts in November 2022 was 417 percent higher than it was in November 2021. Unfortunately, what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning. We are being warned that a couple million more Americans could lose their jobs in 2023, and the vast majority of the population is simply not prepared for such a scenario. In fact, a new survey that was just released found that 63 percent of all Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck…
As of November, 63% of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck, according to a monthly LendingClub report — up from 60% the previous month and near the 64% historic high hit in March.
Even high-income earners are under pressure, LendingClub found. Of those earning more than six figures, 47% reported living paycheck to paycheck, a jump from the previous month’s 43%.
When you are just barely scraping by from month to month, a job loss can be absolutely debilitating.
Sadly, this year many large corporations aren’t even waiting until after the holidays to give the axe to thousands of highly dedicated employees…
There is arguably no good time for companies to lay off employees, of course, but as farewell-to-my-job posts continue to populate LinkedIn, many are wondering, why did they have to do this the week before Thanksgiving or right before Christmas?
Despite the job market’s overall strength, big names in tech including Meta Platforms Inc., Salesforce Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. have all laid off workers or announced plans to do so in recent months. Thousands of job cuts have also hit other industries, with Ford Motor Co., Walmart Inc. and PepsiCo Inc. all reducing their head counts, leaving many employees to wonder: Could I be next?
Are things really so bad that these giant firms couldn’t have waited a few weeks?
“Happy Thanksgiving! By the way, you’re fired.”
When I was growing up, big companies at least pretended to be compassionate.
But now corporate giants seem to feel free to let workers go the instant that their usefulness is over…
Layoffs around the holidays are a relatively recent phenomenon. In the 1970s and 1980s, companies were more cognizant of the optics of putting people out of work during the most wonderful time of the year, says Andy Challenger, a senior vice president with Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a career services and executive-coaching firm.
That sentiment has passed, he says. “Today we tend to see companies making the cuts when they feel like they need to.”
Apparently the Washington Post will also be laying off quite a few workers in the days ahead.
When staff members learned that job cuts would soon be coming, they were not happy.
In fact, several other very large media companies have also recently announced cutbacks…
Of course, the news of the layoffs comes amid a horrible backdrop for the media industry at large. In recent weeks, CNN has laid off hundreds of staffers, Gannett has cut 200 staffers, NPR has said it needs to find $10 million in savings, and other organizations have implemented moves to slash costs.
Even though so many big names have been slashing workers, the government has continued to insist that everything is just fine.
And each month they have told us that the U.S. economy has continued to gain jobs.
But now the truth of what has really been going on is starting to become quite obvious. In fact, even the Philly Fed is now publicly admitting that the number of jobs in this country has been overstated by the government by at least a million…
Remember what we said in July when we first looked at the March-June divergence between the Household and Establishment survey: we said that “since March, the Establishment Survey shows a gain of 1.124 million jobs while the Household Survey shows an employment loss of 347K!” Said otherwise, we found that payrolls “calculated” by the Establishment Survey were overestimated by 1.5 million. Shockingly, the Philly Fed seems to agree, and reports that instead of the roughly 1.1 million jobs reported by the BLS, only 10,500 new jobs were added!
As the tsunami of layoffs continues to accelerate, it is probably just a matter of time before the U.S. economy starts losing large numbers of jobs every month.
That is exactly what several of the largest financial institutions on Wall Street are now projecting, and we continue to get more evidence that economic conditions are really starting to slow down.
On Thursday, we learned that U.S. retail sales actually declined during the month of November…
U.S. retail spending and manufacturing weakened in November, signs of a slowing economy as the Federal Reserve continues its battle against high inflation.
November retail sales fell 0.6% from the prior month for the biggest decline this year, the Commerce Department said Thursday. Budget-conscious shoppers pulled back sharply on holiday-related purchases, home projects and autos. Manufacturing output declined 0.6%, the first drop since June, the Fed said in a separate report.
But apparently economic conditions are not yet bad enough for the officials at the Federal Reserve, because they just decided to raise interest rates even higher…
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised its benchmark interest rate to the highest level in 15 years, indicating the fight against inflation is not over despite some promising signs lately.
Keeping with expectations, the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee voted to boost the overnight borrowing rate half a percentage point, taking it to a targeted range between 4.25% and 4.5%. The increase broke a string of four straight three-quarter point hikes, the most aggressive policy moves since the early 1980s.
What the Federal Reserve is doing is absolutely suicidal.
They have just ensured that unemployment will go even higher, that our new housing crash will get even worse and that a very painful economic downturn is coming in 2023.
In the aftermath of the Fed’s decision, the Dow was down 764 points on Thursday…
Investors dumped stocks on Thursday as more headwinds emerge for the U.S. economy as the Federal Reserve stays the course in raising interest rates.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 764 points, or 2.2%, as the broader markets faced the worst session since November.
The mood on Wall Street is quite glum right now.
The outlook for 2023 is not good, and the outlook for the years beyond 2023 is even worse.
Our leaders have been making incredibly bad decisions for decades, and now we are starting to pay the price.
There is going to be so much pain during the year ahead, and the vast majority of the population is not prepared for what is coming at all.
Bread – The Guitar Man LIVE FULL HD (with lyrics) 1978
30 Minute Chicken and Dumplings
“This is a Rachel Ray recipe I had in my file for quite awhile, and had to try it recently to satisfy a craving. It turned out really well. I used made from scratch biscuit recipe as I couldn’t locate the jiffy mix in my area, I made about 6 biscuits. Also, I think the refrigerated biscuits would work as well. Otherwise I followed the recipe pretty much exactly.”
Ingredients
- 1 1⁄2 lbs chicken breast tenders
- 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1 turn of the pan
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 russet potato, peeled and diced
- 2 medium carrots, peeled and diced or thinly sliced
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 1 stalk celery, diced
- 1 bay leaf, fresh or dried
- salt & freshly ground black pepper
- 1 teaspoon poultry seasoning, 1/3 palm full
- 2 tablespoons flour, a handful
- 1 quart chicken broth or 1 quart chicken stock, canned or paper container,preferred brand kitchen basics
- 1 (8 ounce) box biscuit mix (preferred brand Jiffy Mix)
- 1⁄2 cup warm water
- 2 tablespoons flat leaf parsley, handful,chopped
- 1 cup frozen green pea
Directions
- Dice tenders into bite size pieces and set aside.
- Wash hands.
- Place a large pot on stove over medium high heat.
- Add oil, butter, vegetables and bay leaf and cook 5 minutes, stirring frequently.
- Season mixture with salt, pepper and poultry seasoning.
- Add flour to the pan and cook 2 minutes.
- Stir broth or stock to the pot and bring to a boil.
- Add chicken to the broth and stir.
- Place biscuit mix in a bowl.
- Combine with 1/2 cup warm water and parsley.
- Drop tablespoonfuls of prepared mix into the pot, spacing dumplings evenly.
- Cover pot tightly and reduce heat to medium low.
- Steam dumplings 8 to 10 minutes.
- Remove cover and stir chicken and dumplings to thicken sauce a bit.
- Stir peas into the pan, remove chicken and dumplings from heat and serve in shallow bowls.
Why is Patient Zero a state secret
Godfree Roberts 20DEC22
“The results of that study showed beyond a reasonable doubt that this virus had been spreading in America by at least November 2019. Lockdowns marketed to “slow” or “stop” the “spread” of this virus could not have achieved this objective”. Bill Rice.
Covid-19 came from Italy in 2019, spread to France, to both US coasts, then to China at the International Military Games, a spreader event in Wuhan.
We won’t know the whole story until we locate Patient Zero and therein lies a problem: after WHO inspectors dated China’s earliest case to September, 2019, Western nations reneged on their promised inspections and shaped our attention on wunderwaffen vaccines. The media, having pinned Covid’s tail on the Chinese donkey, cooperated enthusiastically and there, as far as the general public is concerned, the matter rests.
Revenge of the Geeks
Happily, researchers in government labs dodged the censors and published their findings in medical journals. A CDC team checked the seropositivity of Red Cross blood samples from November, 2019 and concluded, “SARS-CoV-2 may have been introduced into the United States prior to 19 January 2020”. Their figures suggest that millions of Americans were infected in late 2019, but the media evinced zero interest in the findings and their implications.
An NIH team certified Lovell ‘Cookie’ Brown as the first person to die of Covid – in Kansas, on January 9, 2020 – two days before China’s first fatality. Media ignored the story, despite the fact that death doubling times (44-50 days) show Covid established in the US in 2019. The mysterious respiratory deaths of that summer supports the NIH’s date.
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Over in Italy..
Italian researchers found similar patterns. Initially skeptical, they verified their results with a Netherlands reference lab before concluding, “This study shows an unexpected, very early circulation of SARS-CoV-2 among asymptomatic individuals in Italy several months before the first patient was identified, and clarifies the onset and spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic”.
National labs found similar patterns in Brazil, Spain, and France: “Analyzing Covid genomes using the k-mer natural vector method, we conclude that the virus likely already existed in France, India, Netherlands, England, and the US before the Wuhan outbreak”.
So why is Patient Zero a state secret? Clearly, the fat lady has yet to sing the final Covid aria.
From this article by Mike Whitney
A section of the 2022 National Defense Strategy :
“These documents, which were not seriously discussed in the US media, make clear the fundamental falsehood that the massive US military buildup this year is a response to “Russian agression.”
In reality, in the thinking of the White House and Pentagon war planners, ***the massive increase in military spending and plans for war with China are created by “dramatic changes in geopolitics, technology, economics, and our environment.”
These documents make clear that the United States sees the economic rise of China as an existential threat, to be responded to with the threat of military force.
The United States sees the subjugation of Russia as a critical stepping stone toward the conflict with China.
From the article by Andre Damon (“Pentagon national strategy targets China” published on Oct 28, 2022 on the World Socialist Web Site/WSWS.ORG) ) quoted in this article by Mike Whitney :
The US military published three strategic documents Thursday (Oct 27, 2022) outlining plans for conflict with China and Russia and declaring that NUCLEAR WEAPONS FORM THE “BEDROCK” OF US MILITARY STRATEGY.
The publication of the NATIONAL DEFENSE STRATEGY, the NUCLEAR POSTURE REVIEW (NPR) and the MISSILE DEFENSE REVIEW comes less than two weeks after the Biden administration published its National Security Strategy, which pledges that the United States will “win” in conflict with Russia and China in what it called a “decisive decade.”
The documents double down on the fundamental assertions of the Trump administration’s 2018 National Defense Strategy, which declared that “INTER-STATE STRATEGIC COMPETITION, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in US National security.” Introducing the National Defense Strategy, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called China America’s “PACING CHALLENGE” while Russia was an “IMMEDIATE AND SHARP THREAT.”
Austin said China remains the one adversary “both with the INTENT to reshape the international order and increasingly the POWER to do so.
The National Defense Strategy calls China the “most comprehensive and serious challenge to US National security” and the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) asserts that “by the 2030s, the United States will, for the first time in its history, face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries.”
Commenting on the SIGNIFICANCE of the documents, the Atlantic Council made clear that the documents’ references to “conflict” should be understood as references to “kinetic conflict”-i.e., SHOOTING WAR.
*** CONCLUSION : ***
Diplomacy is always needed of course but SI VIS PACEM, PARA BELLUM (TINA)
Ol’ Jack
Otter
My kitty Otter was a dog tamer. My daughter had dripped off a husky mix named Jackson at the house who would have been otherwise euthanized. This happened while I was on a trip. This dog had supposedly killed a cat before (don’t know if that was true) and my cats were on the refrigerator.
Well I let him know the kitties outranked him and gradually Otter would challenge him by walking by. They never were best buds but they tolerated each other.
Fast forward a couple of years. Jackson, who was fairly old when he entered our lives got cancer. His appetite left him. So Otter, who had absolutely NO interest in his food would go over and pretend she wanted to eat it! He would trot right over, get territorial and eat his dinner. It was so sweet. He died a few month later. They were more like buddies at the end. Otter lived until she was 18. She was the best cat I ever had. Owned her from the day she was born. She was always courageous and had a beautiful cat heart.
Jack Back
How Extreme Has The Dumbing Down Of America Become? You Might Want To Brace Yourself For This One
Everyone knows that the quality of education in our American public schools is declining. We continue to fall behind the rest of the world, and this is particularly true in science and in math. Personally, I am a product of the public schools. I attended public schools all the way through high school, and I earned three degrees at public universities. And I have to admit that the quality of the education that I received was terrible. If I had not spent a great deal of time and effort educating myself, I would not be able to do what I do today. Sadly, things have gotten even worse in recent decades. Today, a large proportion of our young people are not even equipped to function on a very basic level in our society once they graduate from high school, and that has huge implications for the future of our country.
When I was growing up, kids would start learning algebra before they even got to high school.
But these days many of our college students can’t even handle algebra. In fact, the Kansas Board of Regents is actually considering dropping algebra as a requirement at the state’s six public universities because so many students are failing the basic algebra course…
The Kansas Board of Regents is considering stripping specific university math requirements after it was found that a significant percentage of college freshmen fail algebra, NPR affiliate KCUR reported.
The Regents, who oversee the system’s six public universities, are considering implementing the Math Pathways approach which matches students to a math course based on their major instead of mandating algebra for all incoming students. While many universities require that all freshmen pass algebra as a prerequisite for graduation, one in three Kansas students reportedly fail the course, which could delay a student’s graduation.
Are they serious?
Apparently they are. One academic official in Kansas insists that for a majority of the students in the system algebra is simply “not relevant for their fields”…
“We’re sending the majority of students down the college algebra road, which is really not necessary,” said Daniel Archer, vice president of academic affairs for the Kansas Board of Regents. “It’s not practical. It’s not really needed. And it’s not relevant for their fields.”
I have an idea.
Instead of having our college students deal with hard stuff like quadratic equations, perhaps we can just design a course where they just watch videos of Count von Count from Sesame Street count things.
Or will that be too difficult for them?
If we aren’t teaching our high school kids the basic math skills that they will need once they get to college, what are they actually learning?
Well, one thing they are learning is how to use all of the new pronouns correctly. This is very important for life after high school, because using the wrong pronoun at the wrong time can get you into all sorts of trouble these days.
For example, just look at what happened to one middle school teacher in Ohio…
A middle school teacher in Ohio alleges in a lawsuit against her former employer that she was forced to resign after refusing to refer to students by their preferred pronouns.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court on behalf of former Jackson Memorial Middle School teacher Vivian Geraghty by the Alliance Defending Freedom, states that her school district required teachers to participate in the “social transition” of students in her class who have “‘transitioned’ to a gender that was inconsistent with their sex.” Jackson Memorial Middle School is in Massillon, Ohio.
Geraghty, however, refused to participate in the policy because of her Christian religious beliefs. The lawsuit alleges that the school “ejected her” within two hours of Geraghty telling principal Kacy Carter about her reservations to the policy.
In the years ahead, we will have lots of young people that don’t understand math and science, but at least they will be well versed in the intricacies of modern pronoun usage.
Needless to say, many of them will have to be supported by the government because they won’t be of much use to society.
In fact, the U.S. already “redistributes more to the bottom 50% than Sweden or Norway”.
At this point, we truly do live in an “idiocracy”, and every single day we see even more signs of this.
Earlier today, I came across a story about someone that decided to shoot a KFC employee because “the restaurant was out of corn”…
Police in St. Louis are investigating after a KFC employee said a customer shot him because he was angry the restaurant was out of corn.
According to a St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department incident report, the shooting took place just after 6 p.m. Monday at the fast food chain in the city’s Central West End.
You would have to be really stupid to do something like that.
If they are out of corn, just ask for an extra biscuit.
Don’t go to jail for the rest of your life just because you are feeling a little frustrated.
Sadly, today we have vast hordes of young people that cannot handle their emotions, and that is because they have never been equipped to handle life.
But if they can’t even handle current conditions, how will they respond when things get really rough?
Please don’t get me wrong. I am certainly not lumping all of our young people into a single category.
There are some young adults that are doing more than fine.
But in general, we have a real mess on our hands, and our system of education just continues to deteriorate with each passing year.
If you support Taiwan’s independence, China won’t let you into the mainland, Hong Kong, or Macau
China says it will make people who support Taiwan independence criminally liable for life, a spokeswoman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office has said.
Key points:
- China says it will enforce punishment on those on its list of people who are ‘pro-Taiwan independence’
- People on the list will also be forbidden from benefiting monetarily from the mainland
- China considers Taiwan a wayward province to be reunified with the mainland
This is the first time that China has spelt out concretely punishment for people deemed to be pro-Taiwan independence, as tensions rise between the mainland and the self-ruled island China claims as its own.
The office named Taiwan’s Premier Su Tseng-chang, Parliament Speaker You Si-kun and Foreign Minister Joseph Wu as people who are “stubbornly pro-Taiwan independence”
, and made public for the first time it has drawn up a list of people who fall into this category.
It says it will enforce punishment on the people on the list by not letting them enter the mainland and China’s Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau, said spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian in a statement on Friday.
The blacklisted people will also not be allowed to cooperate with entities or people from the mainland, nor will their companies or entities who fund them be allowed to profit from the mainland, she said.
Taiwanese politicians typically rely on donations from companies to fund their election campaigns.
Many Taiwanese companies derive profits from doing business with the mainland.
China will also take “any other necessary measures” against these people, Zhu said.
She said the message China wants to send to supporters of Taiwan independence is:
"Those who forget their ancestors, betray the motherland and split the country, will never end up well and will be spurned by the people and judged by history."
China upping the pressure on Taiwan
The question of Taiwanese sovereignty is sensitive in China.
The Chinese government considers Taiwan a wayward province and seeks “peaceful reunification”.
Taiwan has long sought to join the United Nations, but China has blocked the attempt, saying Taiwan is not sovereign but a part of China.
The island is currently self-administered and has complained for over a year of repeated Chinese air force incursions into its Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ), many in record numbers
Can I bring my Bible to China?
In fact, you needn’t take such a heavy book with you.
Because you will find that you could get much cheaper and better quality Bible in China everywhere.
1/3 of the world’s Bible were published from China.
Updated 1：
Chris Ward said that there was no way to buy the Bible in a bookstore.
“I have lived in China for years, I have never seen one on sale in a book store. You have to go to a government church and give your ID.”
In fact, you can’t buy the Bible directly from online or bookstores, but you can get it for free at any church near your home. The following is a new bible printed in 2018.
First Reacting To BABYMETAL // HEADBANGER!!
Once he sees the first one minute, he has to restart and get into the music.
https://youtu.be/ro82xwtix9Q
U.S. Vegetable Prices Increased By A Whopping 38 Percent In November, But They Say Inflation Is “Under Control”
The mainstream media is trying really hard to convince all of us that inflation will soon no longer be a problem, but meanwhile food prices continue to soar to absolutely absurd levels. In fact, we just learned that vegetable prices increased by a whopping 38 percent in November. When I originally saw that number, I thought that it must represent the change from 12 months ago. But that is not the case. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, vegetable prices jumped 38.1 percent from October to November, and they are up a total of 80.6 percent over the past 12 months…
The price of vegetables from producers shot up 38% on a monthly basis in November — and jumped over 80% compared to November 2021 — according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics latest Producer Price Index.
Even after reading that, a lot of you are still going to have a very difficult time believing that these figures are actually real.
So I would encourage you to go to the official BLS website and see the numbers for yourself.
This isn’t an Internet rumor.
This is real.
As you can see from this chart, egg prices are also going completely nuts.
The price of eggs shot up 26 percent last month.
And over the past 12 months the price of eggs is up an astounding 244 percent.
The bird flu is the primary reason why eggs have become so expensive. More than 50 million chickens and turkeys in the United States are already dead, and it is likely that millions more will die in the months ahead.
As for vegetables, the endless drought in the western half of the nation has absolutely crippled production. In fact, one recent survey discovered that 74 percent of farmers in 15 western states “saw a reduction in harvests” in 2022…
A recent survey about the drought by the American Farm Bureau Federation of more than 650 farmers in 15 Western states found that 74 percent saw a reduction in harvests and 42 percent switched crops.
No matter how high the Federal Reserve hikes interest rates, food prices are going to continue to go up.
We all have to eat, and it appears that food supplies will get even tighter in 2023…
U.S. domestic supplies of key crops including corn, soybeans and wheat are expected to remain snug into 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency is forecasting U.S. corn supplies to fall to a decade low before the 2023 harvest, while soybean stocks were seen at a seven-year low and wheat ending stocks are forecast at the lowest in 15 years.
I am particularly concerned about the outlook for wheat.
The two largest wheat exporters in the world are projected to have very disappointing harvests in the months ahead, and this should deeply alarm all of us…
While flooding in Australia, the world’s second largest wheat exporter, in recent weeks has caused extensive damage to the crop which was ready for harvest, a severe drought is expected shrink Argentina’s wheat crop by almost 40%.
This will reduce global wheat availability in the first half of 2023.
A lack of rainfall in the U.S. Plains, where the winter crop ratings are running at the lowest since 2012, could dent supplies for the second half of the year.
So what does all of this mean?
The bottom line is that the global food crisis that erupted in 2022 is likely to intensify quite a bit more in 2023.
Food prices have already risen to very painful levels, and those that are being hit the hardest are those that live in the poorest countries…
With food prices climbing to record peaks this year, millions of people are suffering across the world, especially poorer nations in Africa and Asia already facing hunger and malnutrition.
Food imports costs are already on course to hit a near $2 trillion record in 2022, forcing poor countries to cut consumption.
Every single day, more precious people are dropping dead from starvation.
Things are particularly bad in nations in eastern Africa such as Somalia…
More than 200,000 Somalis are suffering catastrophic food shortages and many are dying of hunger, with that number set to rise to over 700,000 next year, according to an analysis by an alliance of U.N. agencies and aid groups.
But most Americans don’t even know that this is happening because they don’t see images of people suffering and dying on the nightly news.
If the mainstream media is not making a big deal out of this crisis, it must not be important.
Right?
Here in the United States, our politicians are trying to paper over our impending problems by borrowing and spending colossal mountains of money.
The national debt just crossed the 31 trillion dollar threshold, and the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the budget deficit for the month of November alone was a staggering 249 billion dollars…
The monthly federal deficit was a record-setting $249 billion in November, $57 billion wider than the same month last year, as Republican control of the House puts the government’s finances back in the political spotlight.
As the Fed raises interest rates, it is also raising our borrowing costs.
So the Fed can only go so far, because if they push rates too high it will literally collapse the finances of the federal government.
What this means is that the Fed is almost out of ammunition in their war against inflation.
And our politicians in Washington are ensuring that more inflation is on the way by borrowing and spending money at a pace that we have never seen before.
Meanwhile, the bird flu plague, endless droughts and bitterly disappointing harvests all over the planet will continue to suppress global food production.
What all of this means is that food prices are going to go a lot higher than they are now, and many of the famines that we are already witnessing all over the world will become quite serious.
Even though food prices are ridiculously high right now, I would encourage you to stock up while you still can.
Things are only going to get crazier in 2023, and most people will find themselves completely unprepared as conditions deteriorate all around them.
Ukraine – Is There Really A Change Of The Narrative?
In Alastair Crooke’s latest piece he discusses the change of narrative that occurred due to The Economist‘s recent Ukrainian interviews:
The Economist leads with interviews with Zelensky, General Zaluzhny and Ukraine’s military field commander, General Syrsky. All three are interviewed – interviewed in The Economist, no less. Such a thing does not occur by happenstance. It is messaging intended to convey the Ruling Class’ new narrative to the ‘golden billion’ (who will all read and absorb it).
On the surface, it is possible to read The Economist piece as a plea for more money and many more weapons. But the underlying messaging is clear: “Anyone who underestimates Russia is heading for defeat”. The Russian force mobilisation was a success; there is no problem with Russian morale; and Russia is preparing a huge winter offensive that will start soon. Russia has huge reserve forces (of up to 1.2 million men); whereas Ukraine now has 200,000 who are militarily trained for conflict. The ‘writing is on the wall’, in other words. Ukraine cannot win.
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Scott Ritter, in discussion with Judge Neapolitano, believes that The Economist interviews reveal the West pushing aside Zelensky – as Zaluzhny administers his large dose of reality (that will be shocking to many sherpa loyalists). The Economist interview emphasis thus was unmistakably on General Zaluzhny, with Zelensky pointedly de-emphasised – which Ritter suggests indicates that Washington wishes to ‘switch leadership horses’. Another ‘message’?Just to be clear, General Zaluzhny once said he considers himself a disciple of Russian General Gerasimov, the Chief of General Staff. Zaluzhny reportedly is familiar with the latter’s writings. In brief, Zaluzhny is known in Moscow as a professional soldier (albeit one committed to the Ukrainian nationalist cause).
So, is the West preparing its narrative to cut from this unwinnable conflict –Ukraine – and to move on?
That might indeed by a possibility. Could the U.S. and NATO just limp out of the situation and leave it to Zaluzhny to negotiated his defeat with Russia?
But haven’t Biden, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg and Germany’s chancellor Scholz said that Russia ‘can not be allowed to win’? Sure, they have.
But Crooke points to Afghanistan and how fast the chaotic retreat from Kabul has vanished from the media and is now mostly forgotten. The Taliban were another enemy that could not be allowed to win. They won. And no one cares about it.
I dearly hope that the scenario, as Crooke lays it out, will soon come true in Ukraine. But alas I am a realist. Russia will not stop the war without achieving its aims. Zaluzhny will not be allowed to negotiate for peace.
M. K. Bhadrakumar notes that any peace negotiations depend on Biden’s agreement:
The clearest indication that the US is far from in a hurry to negotiate comes from none other than the White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan whose visit to Kiev last month (just before the US midterms) had triggered a flurry of speculations that Washington was pressuring President Zelensky to negotiate.
Now, Sullivan’s remarks at an appearance at the Carnegie last weekend made it clear that the US is in Ukraine for the long haul. He said:
“We don’t know when this is going to end up. What we do know is that it is our job to continue to sustain our military support to Ukraine so that they are in their best possible position on the battlefield, that if and when diplomacy is ripe, they will be in the best possible position at the negotiating table.
“That moment is not ripe now, and so, as a result, we’ve gone to Congress and asked for a substantial amount of further resources to be able to continue to ensure that Ukraine has the means to fight this war. We’re confident we will get bipartisan support for that…
“I am not going to precept the future, I’m only going to assure that in the present we are doing everything we can to maximise Ukraine’s chances of defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity… yes, it is likely to go on for quite some time…”
Basically, the US claims to have a winning hand in Ukraine.
The Economist interviews were published on December 15. The Sullivan talk at Carnegie was held a day later. If there had been a change of mind in the White House it would have been part of that interview.
I also think that Zaluzhny is not the kind of leader who is likely to organize, or allow himself to be drawn into a coup. In fact it may well be that the rumors from Kiev are true and that Zelensky and his staff are working to push him out. He would be replaced by the other Ukrainian general The Economist had interviewed:
On several occasions, [General Syrsky] was actually senior in the chain of command to Valery Zaluzhny, appointed to be the commander-in-chief of the entire armed forces in July 2021. Some political actors behind the scenes may be using that fact in an apparent attempt to foment tensions between the two. Rumours even persist that the presidential administration might be inclined to replace the popular but independent-minded General Zaluzhny with his former boss. Cracks of disunity have high-placed Western military officials worried. The two generals on their part say they fully trust each other and wish to stay out of politics. General Syrsky is uncomfortable with the conversation. “The army is outside of politics,” he says. “It is how it should be, and how the law demands it to be.”
Neither Zaluzhny nor Syrsky are men for a coup. If Zelenski is to go, some other politician, probably a more radical one, is likely to take the lead.
As Bhadrakumar concludes:
Therefore, in the prevailing circumstances, Russia’s option narrows down to inflicting a crushing defeat on Ukraine in the coming months and installing a government in Kiev that is not under Washington’s control. But that requires a fundamental shift in the Russian military strategy, which would factor in the real possibility of a confrontation with the US and NATO at some point.
Even while they are still deluded about Ukraine’s chance for success, neither NATO nor the White House have shown any appetite for war with Russia. They have likely come to understand the real meaning of General Zaluzhny’s request:
I know that I can beat this enemy. But I need resources. I need 300 tanks, 600-700 IFVs, 500 Howitzers. Then, I think it is completely realistic to get to the lines of February 23rd.
At the start of the war Ukraine had, at least on paper, a well equipped military:
Ukraine has a lot of tanks and is ranked 13th across the globe with 2,430. In terms of armored vehicles, Kiev also ranks high, occupying the seventh spot globally with 11,435. Kiev’s artillery power is also formidable at 2,040 batteries.
That General Zaluzhny requested all that new stuff is a confession that most if not all the old stuff is gone. That includes the weapons he received after the war started. If the 20 percent of the Russian military that was used in Ukraine could do so much material damage in such a short time how long would a NATO army in a war against Russia survive?
Posted by b on December 19, 2022 at 17:15 UTC | Permalink
A Wall Street Bank Is Warning That Millions Of Americans Will Lose Their Jobs In 2023
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Is your job secure? Over the past couple of years, American workers generally didn’t need to be concerned about job security. Even if someone got fired unexpectedly, it was just so easy to find new employment because there simply was not enough able-bodied workers out there. But now everything is changing. Some of the largest corporations in the entire country are starting to conduct mass layoffs as the U.S. economy steadily slows down. Unfortunately, it appears that a lot more pain is ahead. In fact, as you will see below, one of Wall Street’s biggest banks is ominously warning that millions of American workers will lose their jobs next year.
Stories about mass layoffs are hitting the news at a fast and furious pace these days. For example, we just learned that a factory that makes Jeep Cherokees in northern Illinois will be laying off 1,350 workers…
The company, which employs about 1,350 workers at the plant in Belvidere, Illinois, said the action will result in indefinite layoffs and it may not resume operations as it considers other options.
Stellantis said the industry ‘has been adversely affected by a multitude of factors like the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the global microchip shortage, but the most impactful challenge is the increasing cost related to the electrification of the automotive market.’
I was very sad to see that happen.
Those that work in our automotive factories are some of the hardest working people in the entire nation.
Other types of workers are losing their jobs in very large numbers as well.
Earlier today, I came across a story about layoffs that will affect 1,800 employees that worked in phone kiosks inside Costco stores…
Over 1800 employees were laid off at Wireless Advocate which operates the phone kiosks inside Costco Wholesale stores.
A local Costco representative said staff is just becoming aware that all their phone kiosks abruptly ceased operations at all Costco Warehouses on December 5, 2022.
If you lose your job, I would try to find another one as rapidly as possible, because the longer you wait the more people you are going to be competing against.
As I mentioned earlier, even some of the largest corporations in the U.S. are now laying off large numbers of people. In a previous article I discussed the layoffs that are coming at Amazon, and now it appears that those layoffs will be even larger than originally anticipated…
It appears that Amazon plans to fire 20,000 people, which is twice as many as previously estimated. Workers from distribution centers, IT professionals, and corporate leaders will all be let go by Amazon across a number of areas. According to those with knowledge of the situation, Amazon layoffs will happen in the upcoming months. Staff at all levels are likely to be impacted because Amazon workers are ranked from level 1 to level 7. The NYT originally revealed that Amazon plans layoffs in mid-November, citing sources who said that as many as 10,000 workers would be let go.
Sadly, the truth is that we are still only in the very early stages of this new crisis.
Many more layoff announcements will be coming in the months ahead, and at this point a division of Citibank is projecting that the U.S. economy will lose approximately 2 million jobs next year…
The group said in its latest outlook report published this week that the economy could lose an estimated 2 million jobs in 2023 as the jobless rate climbs to 5.25%.
“We believe that the Fed’s rate hikes and shrinking bond portfolio have been stringent enough to cause an economic contraction within 2023,” the economists said in the report. “And if the Fed does not pause rate hikes until it sees the contraction, a deeper recession may ensue.”
If we actually lose that many jobs, it will be catastrophic.
Meanwhile, Americans are steadily getting poorer.
From January to September, U.S. household wealth plunged by a whopping 13.5 trillion dollars.
Part of the reason this is happening is because home values are starting to fall quite rapidly.
And they are going to fall even more if the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates.
Unfortunately, Fed officials just keep telling us that more rate hikes are coming.
Homebuilders are being hit extremely hard as well. They started lots of new houses when times were still good, and now they have lots of inventory and very few buyers…
If a homebuilder cannot sell their ballooning inventory of unsold new houses to households, at current prices and mortgage rates, amid plunging sales and soaring cancellation rates of signed contracts – topping out at 45% in the Southwest and at 38% in Texas – despite aggressive incentives such as mortgage-rate buydowns to stimulate sales and prevent cancellations, well, whom are homebuilders supposed to sell those houses to?
Thanks to the Fed, the entire housing market is a giant mess at this point.
Hundreds of thousands of homeowners are now underwater on their mortgages, and the early payment default rate has risen to heights that we saw back during the peak of the last housing crash in 2009…
Digging deeper into the month’s data, Black Knight found that, while still relatively low among conforming loans, the early-payment default (EPD) rate – which captures mortgages that have become delinquent within six months of origination –– has risen among FHA loans for much of the past year to reach its highest level since 2009, excluding the months in the immediate wake of the pandemic.
Economic conditions are already really bad, and they will soon get a whole lot worse.
Signs of trouble are erupting all around us. For instance, I was deeply alarmed when I read that Orlando International Airport is experiencing a very serious fuel shortage…
The Federal Aviation Administration is warning pilots that Orlando International Airport (MCO) is running low on fuel, and that could mean hiccups in the days ahead for travelers.
In an official notice, the agency said that the airport could continue having supply issues through about 7 p.m. Tuesday, and suggests that airlines should be prepared to operate flights into the airport with enough fuel on board to fly back out.
I have never heard of an entire airport being short on fuel for an extended period of time before.
Hopefully this is just a temporary setback.
But what isn’t temporary are the long-term economic trends. They have all been going in the wrong direction for a long time, and now a moment of reckoning has arrived.
Enjoy the next few weeks while you still can, because it appears that 2023 is going to be a very painful year.
A truth
Hospitals Are Overflowing With Patients As Multiple Pestilences Sweep Across America
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Winter hasn’t even begun yet, but cold weather diseases are already spreading like wildfire all over the United States. The flu has returned in 2022 with a vengeance, new strains of COVID are reportedly starting to emerge, and RSV has hit some areas of the nation extremely hard.
I don’t ever remember seeing anything quite like this, and the weather is only going to get colder in the weeks ahead. Normally, most people would be able to fight off such diseases fairly easily, but at this point so many have weakened immune systems after everything that has transpired over the last few years.
As a result, millions of Americans have been getting really sick, and CNN is reporting that U.S. hospitals “are more full than they’ve been throughout the Covid-19 pandemic”…
Hospitals are more full than they’ve been throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a CNN analysis of data from the US Department of Health and Human Services. But as respiratory virus season surges across the US, it’s much more than Covid that’s filling beds this year.
More than 80% of hospital beds are in use nationwide, jumping 8 percentage points in the past two weeks.
Please take the time to read those two paragraphs again.
At no point during the past several years have our hospitals ever been as full as they are right now.
And this has happened even though the proportion of COVID patients in our hospitals has been steadily shrinking…
Back in January, about a quarter of hospital beds were in use for Covid-19 patients. But now, only about 6% of beds are in use for Covid-19 patients, according to the HHS data.
We are being told that some of the new strains of COVID that are now emerging represent a potent threat, but obviously it isn’t COVID that is causing the massive surge in hospitalizations that we are currently witnessing.
Instead, confirmed cases of the flu are absolutely exploding right now. For example, just check out what is going on in Massachusetts…
Illnesses caused by the flu are surging in Massachusetts, according to the latest weekly report from the Department of Public Health.
The report issued Friday, which covers the week from Nov. 27 through Dec. 3, included 5,462 cases that were confirmed by laboratory testing. That’s nearly double the 2,846 cases confirmed during the week covered by the previous report.
Sadly, we are seeing similar numbers nationwide.
In fact, the number of Americans admitted to the hospital with the flu roughly doubled during Thanksgiving week…
The number of people admitted to the hospital for flu during the week of Thanksgiving was nearly double the number of admissions during the week before. And the latest surveillance data probably does not reflect the full effects of holiday gatherings, as it captures only through November 26, two days past Thanksgiving.
Meanwhile, RSV continues to rip across America at a breathtaking pace, and very young children are being hit particularly hard.
In some cases, hospitals are actually transferring sick kids out of state because they are so overloaded with patients…
To cope with the flood of young patients sickened by a sweeping convergence of nasty bugs — especially respiratory syncytial virus, influenza, and coronavirus — medical centers nationwide have deployed triage tents, delayed elective surgeries, and transferred critically ill children out of state.
Unfortunately, it appears that this is just the beginning.
Winter will officially start later this month, and so it is likely that things will only get worse in the months ahead.
That is not good news at all, because we are already facing significant shortages of key antibiotics all over the country…
“We are so busy we can’t keep up with the phone calls and sick kids,” said Dr. Josie Stone, a pediatrician with Advanced Pediatrics of Boca Raton. While most of the respiratory illnesses Stone sees are viral, children often get complications such as ear, sinus and throat infections that require antibiotics, she said. With children all over the country suffering from the same complications, South Florida pharmacies have a limited supply of many of the most common antibiotics.
The antibiotics in short supply include Amoxicillin and Augmentin to treat ear and skin infections as well as Azithromycin (referred to as a zpack) used to treat certain bacterial infections, such as bronchitis and pneumonia. It also includes medications such as Albuterol to treat asthma or breathing problems.
As I recently covered in another article, the official FDA website says that more than 100 prescription drugs are in short supply right now.
Of course this is something that is not just happening in the United States. Over in Europe, shortages of many important drugs are also becoming quite widespread…
Countries across Europe are reporting shortages of antibiotics as demand for the medicines rises and manufacturers grapple with supply-chain snags.
Amoxicillin, cephalosporins and other widely used antibiotics are in short supply, data from various countries show, raising concerns among doctors and officials about the availability of drugs that are relied on to treat conditions ranging from ear infections to pneumonia.
If supplies of drugs just keep getting tighter and our hospitals just keep getting fuller, it is probably just a matter of time before authorities in many areas will want to impose new health restrictions.
In fact, officials in New York City are already “strongly urging” residents to wear masks.
I thought all of that was behind us, and I don’t think that any of us want to go back again.
Hopefully, the flu and RSV will be the worst diseases that we have to deal with this winter.
Because the truth is that we have been perfectly primed for more outbreaks, and a truly killer virus could easily sweep through the general population.
As I keep warning, we have now entered an era of great pestilences, and if you are expecting the government to save you from what is coming you are going to be deeply disappointed.
No matter what authorities have tried, multiple diseases just keep spreading all around us.
What we have been through so far is just the tip of the iceberg, and so many people are going to die in 2023 and beyond.
The O’Jays – Back Stabbers (50th Anniversary Concert)
Six B-52 Bombers ‘Shot Down’ In One Night: How Russian Missiles Created Havoc On Mighty US Warplanes
Fifty years ago, 200 American B-52 bombers flew 730 sorties over 12 days. They dropped over 20,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam in what was considered the heaviest aerial bombing by the US since World War II, claiming nearly 1600 Vietnamese lives.
Just over a month before the operation, former US President Richard Nixon had secured a second term of presidency based on a promise to end the American involvement in the Vietnam War that had become very unpopular in the US.
The US had been fighting in Vietnam since 1965, and while the US was engaging in peace negotiations with the USSR and China-backed Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) as part of what was known as ‘Paris Peace Negotiations’ but those talks had suddenly fallen apart.
Nixon warned the North Vietnamese government of dangerous consequences if it did not return to the negotiating table and called upon the US Air Force (USAF) to save the situation, which it did so by conducting an 11-day strategic bombing campaign called Operation Linebacker II, which later came to be known by several names such as ‘The December Raids’ and ‘The Christmas Bombings.’
From the start, the USAF had advocated for such a strategic bombing in Vietnam, and the service finally had the chance to execute the strategy.
Until then, US air campaigns in Vietnam were limited to interdicting the overland routes by which North Vietnam was resupplying its forces and Viet Cong forces operating in South Vietnam.
However, Linebacker II was different, as it intended to destroy high-value targets such as vital military installations, railway lines, energy plants, factories, etc., to shake the Vietnamese “to their core,” in the words of the then US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger.
This is precisely what Russia has been trying to do in Ukraine since early October, through repeated missile and drone strikes against Ukraine’s energy grid and critical infrastructure.
“They’re going to be so god damned surprised,” US President Richard Nixon said to Kissinger on December 17, and the next day, 129 B-52s took off from Guam and Thailand to obliterate the Hanoi and Haiphong areas in North Vietnam.
The Formidable B-52s Vs. The Formidable S-75 Anti-Aircraft Missiles
The legendary B-52 Stratofortress has been a bastion of the USAF’s bomber fleet since it was first introduced in the 1950s during the height of the Cold War. Seventy-six B-52Hs are still in service, with another 12 in reserve storage.
Of late, the nearly 70-year-old bomber has begun to show signs of aging, but the USAF remains determined to continue to fly the B-52s for decades to come, and as part of that, the aircraft has been going through continuing reforms to stay viable.
This is because, despite its age, the B-52 remains the USAF’s leading strategic nuclear and conventional weapons platform. It can carry more weapons than any other USAF jet and fly long-range missions from bases in the Pacific.
The bomber can carry 32,000 kilograms of nuclear or conventional weapons and fly at high subsonic speeds at altitudes of up to 50,000 feet (15,166.6 meters), beyond the range of naked eyesight, making its attacks both physically and psychologically catastrophic.
“(Nixon) wanted maximum psychological impact on the North Vietnamese, and the B-52 was airpower’s best tool for the job,” TW Beagle wrote in his thesis, dated June 2000, submitted to the faculty of The School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Air University.
However, it was not going to be easy for these B-52s, as what awaited them were the formidable Soviet-made S-75 Dvina (NATO reporting name SA-2 Guideline) high-altitude air defense systems that could fire a 195-kilogram warhead up to altitudes of 30,000 meters at more than Mach 3 speed – 3 times the speed of sound.
North Vietnam had fielded around 26 S-75 surface-to-air missiles (SAM), of which 21 were employed in the Hanoi/Haiphong area, with a heavy concentration of anti-aircraft artillery and a complex, overlapping radar network.
Also, the radar network had secretly been improved by introducing a new fire-control radar (FCR) that is said to have improved the accuracy of the S-75 weapons.
The B-52 fleet employed in Operation Linebacker II comprised G and D models. All the D models were upgraded with the latest electronic countermeasures modifications, but only half of the G models had been modified until that time which mainly made them vulnerable to SAMs.
Also, the tactics employed by the B-52s had not changed much since World War II, which also proved fatal.
The Operation Linebacker II Commenced…
On December 18, 1972, 87 B-52s took off from the Andersen Air Force Base (AFB) in Guam. They were joined in the attack by 42 additional B-52s flying out of U Tapao Royal Thai Airfield, Thailand, marking the beginning of Linebacker II. This was the largest attacking bomber force assembled since WWII.
From Guam, the mission would run for about 12 hours, and it required in-flight refueling, while from U Tapao, it would take only about three to four hours without the requirement of in-flight refueling.
On the first night of Linebacker II, North Vietnamese forces reportedly fired 200 of S-75 surface-to-air missiles at the attacking B-52s, of which at least five were able to find their targets. Three B-52s were shot down, and two others were damaged.
“It almost felt like you could walk across the tips of those missiles in the sky; there were so many fired at you,” recalled one retired US airman, interviewed by CNN.
The airman said the flak was so bright that you could “read a newspaper in the cockpit.”
The disastrous losses of the B-52s on the first night of the campaign hurt the crews’ morale back at Guam and U Tapao, whereas, in Hanoi, it boosted the confidence of the North Vietnamese forces.
“We all feared the B-52 at first because the US said it was invincible,” Nguyen Van Phiet, a North Vietnamese missile gunner credited with downing four B-52s during Linebacker, told Smithsonian magazine in 2014. “But after the first night, we knew the B-52 could be destroyed just like any other aircraft,” he added.
On the second night, the B-52s performed better, with only two damaged and none lost, out of the total 93 that flew the mission. But by the third night, the North Vietnamese gunners had seen through the US tactics and knew them just as well as the B-52 crew.
The bombers would fly in long columns over predetermined tracks and, following the release of their payloads, make turns – involving the plane inclining, usually toward the inside of the turn – to return home.
While making these banked turns, their electronic jamming equipment would face skyward, leaving them vulnerable to SAMs.
“We were told for the last two minutes of the bomb run to stay straight and level, which means you are a sitting target,” said Wayne Wallingford, an electronic warfare officer based in U Tapao who flew on seven of the 11 raids B-52s undertook over Hanoi.
Wallingford further said that opening the doors to the bomber’s bomb bay increased its radar signature even further.
This meant the raids were “so predictable that any enemy would be able to knock you down kind of like the arcade at the carnival,” Ron Bartlett, another B-52 electronic warfare officer, told a Distinguished Flying Cross Society podcast.
On the third night, six B-52s were shot down. The burgeoning losses infuriated Nixon, who “raised holy hell about the fact that [the B-52s] kept going over the same targets at the same times,” according to Beagle.
Nixon feared that “a heavy loss of B52s—America’s mightiest war planes—would create the antithesis of the psychological impact [he] desired,” Beagle wrote in his thesis.
From the following night, the bombers were instructed to approach their targets from varying altitudes and directions and not to fly single file or over the targets they had just struck. Nevertheless, two B-52s were lost on the fourth night of the 30 bombers that flew.
On the following three nights – 5th, 6th, 7th – the USAF improvised on new tactics, making good use of their experience, and not a single B-52 was lost.
After that, the US bomber forces stood down on Christmas Day to give planners a chance to review events and provide the crews with some rest. In the final four days, only four B-52s were lost, two each on the 8th and 9th nights.
Death And Devastation On Both Sides
A total of fifteen B-52s were lost, with 33 airmen losing their lives.
Because the bombings were conducted at night, and the Bombers that made it back to base would land in darkness, the crew would not realize until the following day who among their colleagues had failed to return.
“You’d see the trailer next to yours with doors open on both ends and airmen loading (the occupant’s) personal belongings into a trunk to be shipped back to their families, so you knew that crew didn’t make it,” said Wallingford.
“It was pretty sobering to see that,” he said.
Over 12 days, that unpleasant ritual was performed 33 times.
The losses suffered by the USAF were unprecedented, and so was the devastation in Vietnam caused by the B-52s.
An estimated 1600 Vietnamese lost their lives in the bombings, of which 287 people were killed in one night alone in Kham Thien, an area in Hanoi, the majority of which were women, children, and elderly, according to the Vietnamese newspaper VN Express International.
An Agence France Presse journalist, who visited Kham Thien shortly after the US bombing, described a scene of “mass ruins … desolation and mourning.”
“On Kham Thien, some houses still stand, but many are without roofs or windows. Dozens of craters, some 12 yards in diameter and three yards deep, pockmark the area,” Jean Leclerc du Sablon wrote in a dispatch in The New York Times on December 29, 1972.
One survivor, in particular, caught his attention.
“On a pile of ruins, an old woman held her hands to her face and chanted hauntingly, in a near-religious tone: ‘Oh, my son, where are you now? May I find you to bury you? Americans, how savage you are.’”
According to Vietnam War historian Pierre Asselin’s book, ‘Vietnam’s American War: A History,’ “1600 military installations, miles of railway lines, hundreds of trucks and railway cars, eighty percent of electrical power plants, and countless factories and other structures were taken out of commission.”
Who Won The War?
Ten days following the end of Operation Linebacker II that is on January 8, 1973, the peace negotiations resumed, which culminated in the signing of the Paris Peace Accords on January 27 between the US government, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), as well as the Republic of South Vietnam (PRG) that represented South Vietnamese communists.
The accords marked the beginning of the end of the US involvement in the war.
However, both Washington and Hanoi claimed to have come out on top, with the former saying that Operation Linebreaker II brought the North Vietnamese back to the table for peace talks, whereas the latter portrayed it as a heroic act of resistance in which it took everything its enemy had and remained standing.
In Hanoi, “the story of the events of late December 1972 was a tale, not of massive loss and destruction, but of heroic resistance by Northerners,” wrote the historian Asselin.
Eventually, as it turned out, all Operation Linebacker II achieved was allowing the US a face-saving exit from the Vietnam war.
Three years down the line, with the majority of US forces out of Vietnam and the Communist forces largely replenished, Hanoi launched a large-scale invasion of South Vietnam which led to the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.
Therefore, several experts and historians doubt that the operation had any significant influence on the broader conflict, and all the death and destruction inflicted by the “Christmas Bombings” did not bear any gifts for the US strategically.
U.S.-made Missiles SHOT DOWN over Belgorad, Russia
Ukraine is now openly attacking inside Russia. Four US high-speed AGM-88 anti-radiation missiles (HARM) were shot down by Russian air defense systems over Russia’s Belgorod region today. The American-made missiles were fired by Ukraine aircraft.
“Four US HARM anti-radar missiles were shot down in the airspace of the Belgorod region,” the Russian Ministry of Defense confirms.
In mid-August, Washington supplied AGM-88 HARM missiles to Ukraine. According to open sources, the missiles are used by the Ukrainian MiG-29 and Su-27 aircraft.
“These missiles showed actually zero effectiveness in the framework of the hostilities in Ukraine – most of them were shot down by Russian anti-aircraft missile systems, another part was suppressed or set aside by means of electronic protection of air defense systems,” a source said, adding that some of these missiles also failed or missed the target.
The source noted that the low efficiency of HARM missiles is due to their mediocre maximum speed, which is a little over 600 meters per second (1342 miles per hour), and high visibility.
According to the source, Ukrainian aviation uses these missiles from a long-range to avoid destroying the aircraft, which allows the Russian military to detect missiles long before they approach the area where Russian air defense systems are located.
At the same time, the source added that HARM missiles create certain difficulties in time-coordinated combined strikes because air defense systems are automatically redirected to them as a priority threat.
“However, Ukrainian troops have not yet been able to hit a single radar of the Russian air defense system, as well as illumination and engagement radars in the area of the special military operation with HARM missiles,” the source said.
The HARM missile was adopted by the US air force in 1983. The maximum speed of the missile is declared at 2,280 kilometers per hour or 630 meters per second, while the launch range is up to 100 kilometers when used from high altitudes.
For comparison, the maximum speed of the Russian AS-17 Krypton and AS-11 Kilter anti-radar missiles exceeds 1,000 and 1,100 meters per second, respectively, and the launch range is over 200 kilometers.
Metallica
Another truth…
Spinach and Cheese Stuffed Chicken Breast
“Ready, Set, Cook! Hidden Valley Contest Entry. I love creating my own recipes and menus for people. I have been doing this since I was about 12 years old. I put together a birthday party with lots of freshly prepared food and cake that I prepared for my mom. I had help from my cousins and friends who were my assistants and servers. The party was a great success and I have been doing this ever since. I made this chicken dish 8 years ago and it was the only thing different my mom would eat so I made sure I perfected the dish just for her and of course others. I usually brine my chicken in a mixture of salt, brown sugar and water for at least 45 minutes”
Ingredients
- 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 Hidden Valley Original Ranch Seasoning Mix
- 1 lb fresh spinach
- 1⁄2 cup parmesan cheese
- 1⁄2 cup mozzarella cheese
- 1⁄2 cup seasoned bread crumbs
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 1 (6 ounce) can black olives, sliced (optional)
Directions
- Butterfly chicken breast and drizzle with olive oil.
- Sprinkle chicken breast with Hidden Valley Seasoning and Dressing Mix and set aside.
- In a saute’ pan cook spinach until spinach has started to cook down. Remove spinach from heat and add to a medium bowl with Parmesan cheese, half of the mozzarella cheese, bread crumbs and beaten egg and olives. Mix all ingredients until well incorporated.
- Place a large spoonful of spinach mixture in the middle of each chicken breast and fold over, covering the spinach mixture completely.
- Sprinkle with remaining cheese and place on baking sheet and bake on 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until thermometer reaches 165 degrees when chicken is tested.
BabyMetal Legend of 1997 Headbanger First Reaction
What is the most selfless or caring thing you have ever seen a cat do?
We had a cat named Nova. She was a tortieshell cat and was very much a “love me for 30 seconds and then leave me alone for the rest of the day’ type of cat. She was always very shy around strangers and typically ran and hid when anyone came over. Once we had kids she would tolerate them for a few minutes at a time, but invariably found a hiding spot where she couldn’t be bothered.
One night around my son’s first birthday, he got really sick, which was exceedingly unusual for him. It was the first night that he was up literally ALL night crying, coughing, and just feeling generally miserable. We felt so bad for him as there was nothing we could do for him other than give him meds and be there with him.
After a few hours of him crying, and us feeling like terrible parents for our lack of capacity to help, this extremely anti-social cat jumped up on the bed and crawled on top of him and just sat there with him, purring. As soon as she sat with him, he started petting (slapping and grabbing, more accurately) her and stopped crying. She stayed there for hours comforting him, through all the infant abuse. And it allowed us to get a few winks of sleep here and there.
I’ve never seen a character-shift so rapidly in an animal like that before but it absolutely made us flabbergasted (and grateful)
The Emotions – Don’t Ask My Neighbor (Live in Concert)
A Day Of Tremendous Joy For The Entire World
We needed a moment like this. Needless to say, the past several years have not been easy for humanity. 2020 was worse than 2019, and then 2021 was worse than 2020, and then 2022 was worse than 2021. Unfortunately, 2023 is going to be significantly worse than 2022 was. But for a few glorious hours on Sunday we were able to forget about our troubles for a while. The greatest World Cup final ever to be played was watched by more people than any other television program in the history of the world, and it all came down to the very end. When Gonzalo Montiel’s penalty kick hit the back of the net, shouts of exultation erupted literally all over the world.
Argentina had done it.
This was probably Lionel Messi’s last chance to win a World Cup, and they pulled it out.
When it was all over, tears of joy streamed down the faces of the Argentinian players. They had been carrying around the weight of the world on their shoulders, because they knew how much this meant to the people of Argentina.
But this wasn’t just about Argentina.
Other than in France, fans across the globe overwhelmingly wanted Messi to win a World Cup.
And in the stadium in Qatar, the crowd was an overwhelmingly pro-Messi crowd.
It would be difficult to overstate what Messi means to kids all over the planet. To say that he is one of the greatest players of all-time would be stating the obvious. But Messi’s popularity goes far beyond what most other great players ever achieve.
When people watch Messi play, they see pure joy in action. He is an artist, a magician and a maestro all rolled into one. He has done things on the field that we have never seen anyone else do, and no matter what he accomplished over the years he always did it with humility and style.
But now he is 35 years old, and his prime years are well behind him.
And coming into this tournament, I felt like there were several other teams that had more talent than Argentina did.
So even though many of us were strongly rooting for Argentina, it seemed unlikely that Argentina would actually win it all.
But Messi believed. In fact, after the final was over he admitted that he somehow knew that God was going to give him this opportunity…
After a dramatic penalty shootout victory over France, the No.10 says he knew that God would reward him with the ultimate prize in Qatar.
“It’s impressive that I can finish like this,” Messi told reporters. “I knew that at some point God was going to give it to me and I don’t know why, but I felt it was going to be like this. Once again he made me very happy.”
This certainly was not an easy tournament for Argentina.
There was the first game against Saudi Arabia, there was the near loss to the Netherlands, and then in the final there were moments when it seemed like France was destined to win.
Thankfully, Argentina refused to give up.
For much of the final, France seemed to be asleep. Argentina pulled out to a 2-0 lead, and that lead seemed quite secure.
But then in the 79th minute the French finally woke up.
Nicolas Otamendi has been a tremendous player over the years, but at this point in his career he really lacks pace.
I had been concerned about this throughout the tournament, but it wasn’t until the final that this really became a major issue.
In the 79th minute Randal Kolo Muani threatened to blow past Otamendi, and Otamendi ended up committing a foul in the penalty area as he desperately attempted to stay with the attacker.
Kylian Mbappe converted the penalty, and all of a sudden it was 2-1.
At that point I started to get real nervous.
Then when Mbappe scored again shortly after that, I hurled the ball that I was holding across the room in frustration.
It was 2-2.
I could hardly believe it.
Hundreds of millions of fans (including myself) desperately wanted Messi to win, and now a certain victory had evaporated right in front of our eyes.
I was pleading with Argentinian coach Lionel Scaloni to get some fresh legs in there, because his players were dead tired.
Throughout the game the Argentinian midfielders had played like wild animals, but as the game approached 90 minutes the fatigue was showing.
France had the momentum, and it looked like they might be able to complete a comeback for the ages.
But thankfully the break before the first overtime period seemed to give the Argentinians new energy, and they regained the initiative.
Argentina had more of the ball than France did during the first overtime period, but there were no goals.
In the second overtime period, Argentina threatened numerous times, and then a scramble in front of the French goal in the 108th minute resulted in Messi putting the ball across the line.
At that moment, hundreds of millions of fans started jumping up and down all over the planet.
Messi had done it.
The game was over.
But it wasn’t.
Just prior to the end of the second overtime period, a desperate shot by Kylian Mbappe hit the arm of Gonzalo Montiel.
A penalty shot was awarded, and Mbappe converted once again.
It was 3-3, and it seemed like we were headed for penalty kicks.
Of course the action wasn’t over yet. Both teams raced up and down the field as they attempted to win the game, and there were golden chances at both ends.
But neither team was able to score, and so the game would be settled at the penalty spot.
Ironically, the player that scored the decisive penalty kick for Argentina was also the player that had given France the penalty that had tied the game during the second overtime period.
So Gonzalo Montiel went from being a national scapegoat to a national hero in a matter of just a few minutes.
But this day was not about Gonzalo Montiel.
Ultimately, this day was about Lionel Messi and the hundreds of millions of fans that love him all over the world.
Messi had won every other major trophy that he could have possibly won throughout his career, but he had never won a World Cup.
And if Argentina had not won on Sunday, that fact would have haunted him for the rest of his life.
Messi didn’t just have a monkey on his back. He had a giant gorilla on his back, and the rest of the team could feel it too.
The entire Argentina team wanted to win this one for Messi.
And most of the fans on the entire planet wanted them to win this one for Messi.
Thankfully, they did it.
They pulled off a miracle, and they made a lot of us extremely nervous in the process.
Today was a day that reminded so many of us why we truly love this sport, and this World Cup final was an instant classic that will never be forgotten.
MM. As mentioned before, it will take approximately 10 Days. Your body will do its work as intended to do.
It can’t be that bad as you are crunching away with your articles. These days, being slightly sick is the new dying.
People in the USA are kept dumb by design. This for a obvious reasons. This downwards spiral will continue. A great nation the US of A.
Anyway, soon you will be 100% again.
Regards,
Bas.