Yet more problematic stuff

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Sean Hayden
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Re: Yet more problematic stuff

Post by Sean Hayden » Thu Sep 23, 2021 9:31 pm

Throughout the 1990s, even as America’s spy agencies warned of al-Qaeda’s growing danger, these institutions were stuck in the Cold War. Money poured into technological platforms that could count Soviet warheads from space instead of human intelligence efforts better suited for penetrating terrorist groups on the ground. George Tenet, the CIA director on September 11, had tried but failed to upgrade his agency’s counterterrorist capabilities and better coordinate counterterrorism intelligence across the federal government. Although the FBI formally declared terrorism its No. 1 priority years before 9/11, in 2001 only 6 percent of FBI personnel were working on counterterrorism issues and FBI special agents received more time for vacation than for counterterrorism training. A massive effort to reform the bureau’s counterterrorism capabilities across the FBI’s U.S. field offices ended in disaster: Just weeks before 9/11, an internal report gave all 56 offices failing grades. The assessment was considered so embarrassing, it was highly classified and only a handful of copies was ever produced.


I found that organizational weaknesses led the CIA and the FBI to miss 23 opportunities to penetrate and possibly stop the 9/11 plot. Among them are the facts that CIA officers had identified two suspected terrorists attending an al-Qaeda planning meeting in Malaysia, learned their full names, and discovered that one held a U.S. visa and the other had traveled to the United States. More than 50 CIA officials had access to this information, yet nobody told the State Department or the FBI for more than a year. Until 9/11, there was no formal training, no clear process, and no priority placed on warning other government agencies about dangerous terrorists who might travel to the United States. When the CIA finally did tell the FBI, 19 days before 9/11, the bureau designated its manhunt for the two suspected terrorists as “routine,” the lowest level of priority, and assigned it to a special agent who had just finished his rookie year. This wasn’t a mistake, either: For the FBI, catching perpetrators of past crimes had always been far more important than gathering intelligence to stop a potential terrorist attack.


The pair should not have been that hard to find. They were hiding in plain sight inside the United States, using their true names on identifiers such as rental agreements and credit cards. One was even listed in the San Diego telephone directory. And while living in San Diego, they made contact with several targets of FBI counterterrorism investigations, at one point living with an FBI informant.

The two operatives went on to crash American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. They didn’t need secret identities or clever schemes to succeed. They just needed the CIA and the FBI to operate as they usually did.
But what about your adversaries difficulties? It seems odd to always be sounding the alarm without first accounting for not only what they would like to do, but also what might stop them even without an intervention.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... en/619781/

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Re: Yet more problematic stuff

Post by L'Emmerdeur » Thu Sep 30, 2021 5:13 pm

He was just protecting his family, you know?

'He Ran Over BLM Protesters—but Apparently That’s Not a Crime'
Jared Benjamin Lafer, who last September drove his SUV through a tiny assemblage of Black Lives Matter protesters in Johnson City, Tennessee, and then sped away — leaving behind a man with a concussion, brain bleed, and two broken legs — will face no charges.

On Monday, a Tennessee grand jury returned a “no true” bill — a declaration by jurors that there was not enough evidence to indict the 27-year-old even after a judge had reduced the charges against him from aggravated assault, a Class C felony, to reckless aggravated assault, a Class D felony. Among the materials that apparently left the grand jurors unmoved was cellphone video documenting Lafer rolling over the protester with his truck, narrowly missing the protester’s dog, and almost striking a second person who jumped out of the car’s unswerving path before it accelerated away from the scene.

The same footage made the rounds on social media last year as Tennessee police conducted a two-day manhunt for the hit-and-run driver, who they identified as Lafer after witnesses identified his out-of-state licence plate number. Lafer never returned to the scene to check on his victim, but instead drove to his home state of North Carolina, hired a lawyer to talk with the cops on the case, and turned himself in two days after committing the crime.

By the time of the arrest, Lafer’s earlier social media posts joking about running over protesters had been scrubbed from the internet, preserved only in screengrabs captured by a local progressive news site.

Victoria Hewlett, who was sitting in a parked car with her husband at an intersection just yards from the scene, told The Daily Beast that protesters were crossing the road in a pattern consistent with the walk signal. She says that Lafer pulled up behind her car, then swerved around her vehicle “pretty aggressively,” before rounding the corner and driving “directly into where the protesters were in the crosswalk.” She says — and Jonathan Bowers, Lafer’s primary victim, also states in a hospital-bed affidavit and subsequent testimony — that Lafer rolled slowly, without braking, into the intersection, “bumped” him with his truck, and then suddenly “floored” the vehicle, running him over and leaving him unconscious in the road.

Bowers, Hewlett recalls, regained consciousness shortly thereafter, “screaming in pain” and asking about his dog. Hewlett and her husband, who had already begun filming, caught the scene and immediate aftermath on camera. She told me she saw no one beating on or otherwise attacking Lafer’s car, which comports with what’s captured on video.

“The only thing that had occurred” before Lafler ran over Bowers, Hewlett recalls, was that protesters “kind of looked at him like, what the fuck? That’s where he apparently feels threatened. After he drives into people and they’re stunned and throwing their hands up, like what are you doing, that’s what he’s trying to construe as being in danger,” Hewlett told me.

This issue of safety, Lafer’s in particular, is where defense lawyers centered their argument, claiming that Lafer “found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, faced with what he perceived as a dangerous condition, dangerous situation,” according to defense attorney Mac Meade. “His entire family, his wife and his three young kids under the age of six were all in the car with him. And he did what he felt was necessary to get out of a situation that he felt was dangerous to his family.”

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Re: Yet more problematic stuff

Post by Sean Hayden » Thu Sep 30, 2021 6:47 pm

Just one of the many pitfalls of juries. You can probably find another inmate in the same jail this clown only spent the night in waiting months for a trial for the exact same crime under even less clear circumstances. But you'll go mad wrestling with that shit.

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Re: Yet more problematic stuff

Post by Scot Dutchy » Fri Oct 01, 2021 12:03 pm

World corruption.

PNG admits Maserati purchase was ‘terrible mistake’ as they go on sale at discounted price
Fleet of luxury cars, purchased for the 2018 Apec summit in a move that prompted widespread outrage, has been put up for sale
Another headline from PNG:

Women in Papua New Guinea are suffering an epidemic of violence – the government must act
A woman is beaten every 30 seconds in Papua New Guinea, and more than 1.5 million people experience gender-based violence in the country each year.

On 3 September in Mt Hagen, one of the country’s largest cities, three men were released from prison after being accused of murdering a 31-year-old woman, Imelda Tupi Tiamanda. One of the men was her husband.
"Wat is het een gezellig boel hier".

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Re: Yet more problematic stuff

Post by Sean Hayden » Fri Oct 01, 2021 1:17 pm

FIDE Picks Breast Implants as a Sponsor for Women's Chess
Last year, the FIDE Council decided that 2022 would be the “Year of Women in Chess”. And a few months before this banner year, they announced their sponsorship deal with a “global medical technology company” - words carefully chosen, presumably, so as not to have to type out the words “a company specialising in breast implants”.

It seems incongruous that FIDE would appoint 2022 as the year to celebrate women in chess, and to then choose a sponsor whose business model is reliant on female insecurities: 92% of cosmetic procedures are performed on women [1]. There are few sponsorships that seem, at first glance, less appropriate.
continued... https://lichess.org/blog/YVWlhhIAACUAp9 ... mens-chess

World Women's Team Championship 2021

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Re: Yet more problematic stuff

Post by laklak » Fri Oct 01, 2021 2:06 pm

To be fair "chess" and "chest" are pretty similar.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: Yet more problematic stuff

Post by Scot Dutchy » Sun Oct 03, 2021 12:00 am

"Wat is het een gezellig boel hier".

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Re: Yet more problematic stuff

Post by rainbow » Mon Oct 04, 2021 11:59 am

Scot Dutchy wrote:
Sun Oct 03, 2021 12:00 am
...so much like Holland.
I call bullshit - Alfred E Einstein
BArF−4

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Re: Yet more problematic stuff

Post by Scot Dutchy » Mon Oct 04, 2021 4:48 pm

Unsupported claim. More like a corrupt dump in Africa.
"Wat is het een gezellig boel hier".

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Re: Yet more problematic stuff

Post by Sean Hayden » Mon Oct 04, 2021 4:54 pm

I'd rather be in Africa. --bumper sticker?

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Re: Yet more problematic stuff

Post by laklak » Mon Oct 04, 2021 5:02 pm

Sean Hayden wrote:
Mon Oct 04, 2021 4:54 pm
I'd rather be in Africa.
Me too.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: Yet more problematic stuff

Post by Sean Hayden » Thu Apr 07, 2022 10:33 pm




"There is no antidote"

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Re: Yet more problematic stuff

Post by laklak » Thu Apr 07, 2022 11:56 pm

I was married to one. Ask me anything.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: Yet more problematic stuff

Post by Sean Hayden » Fri Apr 08, 2022 1:49 am

I don't believe in a death drive. --I'll need some convincing.

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Re: Yet more problematic stuff

Post by Brian Peacock » Fri Apr 08, 2022 6:55 am

Yeah. That seems a bit of a leap. But then again, at the level of society, we seem to have systems which actively resent those who have a meaningful life or who do real, meaningful work - like public/civil service workers for example - and system that seem to act aggressively towards them. A case can be made that this is detrimental to the general well-being of society, which is the same society in which the resentful aggressors also live. Therefore those who feel a drive to exert a limiting control over others, to visibly socially defeat others, or even to make others suffer emotionally/physically, are ultimately working against there own intrests - making these kinds of behaviours a pernicious form of self harm. Self harm is the embodiment of individual suffering, and the ultimate act of self harm is suicide. So if you're driven towards your own annihilation && you're a malignant narcissists, then you're probably going to want everyone to take the trip to oblivion with you - it's just that everyone else has to suffer more than you along the way.

We'll, it's a hypothesis I guess.
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