Details are few but Army CID definitely rolled up a dozen-plus Special Forces soldiers last week in connection with a major narcotics investigation at Fort Bragg.

Quote:Panic grips Special Forces community amid investigation into drugs, human trafficking

Panic and fear spread throughout the special operations community at Fort Bragg and Fayetteville, North Carolina as CID and FBI agents investigated members of 3rd Special Forces Group and Delta Force who allegedly were involved in drug and in one instance human trafficking, according to nearly a dozen current and former military sources.

The arrests began Thursday, Jan. 5 and culminated with a 100% recall and accountability formation for 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group yesterday.

It is unknown when the investigation into drug and human trafficking in the Fort Bragg area began, but it is known that the FBI became involved in investigating the deaths of Timothy Dumas and Delta Force operator Billy Lavigne in 2020 when both were found shot to death at a training site on Bragg.

Last week's arrests began with investigators receiving more evidence after an undercover law enforcement officer posing as an underage girl helped arrest a member of 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group back in December. That individual was known to moonlight as a bouncer at a bar in Southern Pines frequented by the Special Forces community, a military source close to the situation explained to Connecting Vets. The Green Beret is alleged to have been pimping underaged girls to the Special Forces community at drug-fueled parties in Southern Pines.

Well, this is a wild quote:

Quote:"This is what happens when there is no war, no direction, and an 18-month red cycle with no mission," a Special Forces soldier said. "So dudes are fucking around with young kids and the craziest drugs. All these lives ruined because people are just bored."

Whether the individual rolled on his accomplices or law enforcement ripped the data from his cell phone, it quickly led to the arrest of another Green Beret involved in drug trafficking in 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group.

With the information of additional suspects in hand, CID and military police set up shop at one of the main bottlenecks to entering or exiting Fort Bragg: the Longstreet gate between the post and Southern Pines.

"It was a trail of tears and douche bag cars," said a Special Forces member who witnessed the scene late last week while each soldier stopped for questioning had their vehicle parked along the street.

One of those stopped at the gate was a member of the Army's elite counter-terrorism unit called Delta Force who had recently been picked up by the unit after serving in 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group. The Physician's Assistant at 3rd Special Forces Group was also questioned, according to the source.

The dragnet led to the questioning of 15 service members in total regarding drug related allegations, spread across various special operations commands on Fort Bragg.

The drugs allegedly distributed amongst the special operations community include cocaine, ecstasy, fentanyl, fentanyl lollipops, and the "date rape drug" Rohypnol often known as roofies.

"The U.S. Army Special Operations Command is aware of the allegations of drug involvement from Soldiers assigned to USASOC units on Fort Bragg," USASOC Public Affairs Officer Lt. Col. Mike Burns said in a statement to Connecting Vets.

"I can confirm that 15 Soldiers assigned to USASOC were questioned and released to their command. Two of those Soldiers have been cleared of any wrongdoing," according to Lt. Col. Mike Burns' statement.
....

As requested by @Rodinus:

Quote:Would you happen to have a home recipe for STOVIES please? IF SO could you possibly create a thread? THANKS

https://www.yahoo.com/news/federal-agenc...57325.html

Quote:Federal agency considers ban on gas stoves following report linking them to childhood asthma
A study released last week found gas stoves were the cause of 12.7% of childhood asthma cases in the United States.

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[url=https://www.yahoo.com/author/david-knowles]
David Knowles
·Senior Editor
Tue, January 10, 2023 at 4:30 AM GMT+7·4 min read



A blue flame from the burner of a natural gas stove. (David McNew/Getty Images)
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is considering a federal ban on gas stoves in response to a growing body of scientific research has linked them to a variety of health problems.
“This is a hidden hazard,” Richard Trumka Jr., an agency commissioner, told Bloomberg in an interview. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”
The agency will begin public comment sessions this winter as it begins weighing restrictions on emissions from gas stoves that have found to be harmful to human health.
Last week, a study in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health concluded that gas stoves, which are used in roughly 40% of U.S. homes, were responsible for 12.7% of childhood asthma cases in the country. In all, the study found, gas stoves are responsible for giving asthma to 650,000 children in the U.S.
“When the gas stove is turned on, and when it’s burning at that hot temperature, it releases a number of air pollutants,” Brady Seals, a co-author of the study and the carbon-free buildings manager at the energy policy think tank RMI, told Yahoo News. “So these are things like particulate matter, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide, along with others. So, for example, nitrogen dioxide is a known respiratory irritant. And the EPA, in 2016, said that short-term exposure to NO2 causes respiratory effects like asthma attacks.”
The dangers of using gas stoves have long been known. In 2013, a meta-analysis published in the International Journal of Epidemiology found that children living in homes with gas stoves were 42% more likely to experience symptoms of asthma than those that lived with electric ranges and ovens, while 24% were more likely to be diagnosed with lifetime asthma.
“Cooking with gas stoves creates nitrogen dioxide and releases additional tiny airborne particles known as PM2.5, both of which are lung irritants. Nitrogen dioxide has been linked with childhood asthma,” Wynne Armand, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, wrote in September at Harvard Health Publishing. “During 2019 alone, almost two million cases worldwide of new childhood asthma were estimated to be due to nitrogen dioxide pollution.”

"The Southern Television Interruption of 1977 was a bizarre incident where the mysterious voice of "Vrillon from the Ashtar Command" broke onto an English television station. For forty-five years, it has remained unsolved. But I have made a number of major breakthroughs..." Intro vid:



Fascinating GenZ research story teller.

The Interruption Podcast on Spotify (8 episodes) | Also at Stak London.





Spoiler::

His detective work solving the case was added on wiki Southern Television Interruption, but the trolls promptly removed for total BS reason. His post on Reddit.

If the world is not Dystopian enough for you...another conspiracy coming to light:

Quote:Scientists Want to Use People As Antennas to Power 6G (Popular Mechanics, Jan 6, 2023)

Why? Because your body is pretty great at harvesting wasted energy.

• The future of 6G telecommunications could come from Visible Light Communication.
  
• Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst believe using humans as part of the antenna system offers the most efficient way to harvest waste energy.
  
• In the process, humans could wear coiled copper.
  

We don’t yet know exactly how 6G wireless technology is going to work. But researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst believe using humans as antennas to power 6G may be the most viable way to harvest additional energy that would otherwise get wasted.

In the always-present effort to speed up informational exchange, scientists have already started investigating Visible Light Communication (VLC), basically a wireless version of fiberoptics, that uses flashes of light to transmit information. Adding VLC to 6G spurred the UMass Amherst team to dig even deeper.

First, some background on 6G. As a refresher, 5G—what is considered the fifth, and most recent generation of cellular broadband networks—is still in its infancy. True 5G networks operate in millimeter-wave frequencies between 30 and 300 Gigahertz, which are 10 to 100 times higher frequency than previous 4G cellular network. (Some cell phone providers cheat, however, by claiming the upper end of the 4G spectrum as 5G).

The definition of these cellular generations are defined by a global partnership known as 3GPP. Given the history of the never-ending march of technology, it’s inevitable that 5G will be replaced by a new network in the future. It just isn’t entirely clear what 6G will be.

In the meantime, in the new study, the UMass Amherst scientists found that humans can play a crucial role in making VLC more efficient by using their bodies as a carrier for coiled copper to catch waste energy from VLC. Lead study author Jie Xiong, UMass Amherst professor of information and computer sciences, explains:

Quote:“VLC is quite simple and interesting. Instead of using radio signals to send information wirelessly, it uses the light from LEDs that can turn on and off, up to one million times per second.”

LEDs bulbs can then transmit data, and “anything with a camera, like our smartphones, tablets, or laptops could be the receiver,” Xiong says.

The downside of VLC comes from a high rate of “leakage” of energy with the emitting of side-channel radio wave signals. The researchers believe that if they can harvest the wasted radiofrequency (RF) energy, they can put it to good use by powering small electronic devices.

After experimenting with wires, coils, and backgrounds, the scientists realized the human body offers the best medium—up to 10 times better than any other setting tested—for amplifying a copper coil’s ability to collect leaked RF energy. They then built the Bracelet+—an inexpensive gadget that is meant to be worn on the forearm, but can adapt into a ring, belt, or necklace—to harvest lost energy. The coiled copper Bracelet+ can reach up to micro-watts, enough to support on-body health monitoring sensors, which require little power to work, the team says.

Coupling the copper coils with VLC systems uses humans as antennas to power up the technology they use.
“Ultimately,” Xiong says, “we want to be able to harvest waste energy from all sorts of sources in order to power future technology.”

Pakistan is now in the cross hairs by the Taliban .. I have never understood why the USA CIA thought they could buddy up to Pakistan... Yes they the CIA was hoping to defeat Russians in the region but...

Good video ! The pendulum of freedom will swing back or there will be mayhem as more are fed up with the WEF guidelines and the governments who support their efforts.

I’ve seen this item sitting on a shelf here at the antique store for years. I finally got around to asking what it is and the owner doesn’t know. He said nobody he asked knew either. So now it’s bugging me. 

My husband and I knocked around a few theories but we couldn’t find anything on the net that looks like it.

We did find a wick inside of it…

Anybody have any ideas? So far we have discarded smoker, burner, old bug sprayer, part of a whiskey still and even hookah lol.

Quote:

Most of the Ukrainian gains were against lightly defended positions that the Russians quickly abandoned because they were not worth fighting to defend.

Those Russian troops (really Donbas militias) were ordered to retreat to fortified Russian lines while Ukrainian forces rushing to fill the void were slaughtered by Russian artillery bombardments.

Most people think of war in terms of territory. If you lose territory, it must mean you’re losing the war. But it’s not always that simple.

The Russian Strategy

The Russians will willingly cede territory in order to fight again at a later time under more favorable circumstances. They’ll simply retake it when the terms favor them. They’re not primarily concerned about the territory per se. The primary Russian objective is to grind down and destroy the Ukrainian armed forces.

And if the Ukrainians want to keep hurling themselves against Russian positions in order to recapture land and score a propaganda coup, that’s fine with the Russians. They’ll just grind the attacking forces down with heavy artillery fire (artillery kills far more people in war than bullets or bombs).

And despite Ukrainian government claims, the best intelligence says Russia is presently enjoying an 8–10:1 casualty rate. In other words, Russia is inflicting eight–10 casualties on Ukraine for every casualty it’s suffering.

That kind of ratio isn’t sustainable for Ukraine.

Russia Prepares to Lower the Boom on Ukraine

Meanwhile, Russia has reinforced its positions with 300,000 or more fresh troops (about 30 divisions) who are rested and resupplied. That’s in addition to the number of troops already in Ukraine.

Evidence indicates they’re backed by at least 1,500 tanks, 5,000 armored fighting vehicles, 1,000 rocket artillery systems, hundreds of fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters plus thousands of tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones.

At the same time, all indications are that Russia is changing its strategy.

The initial Russian invasion was ill-conceived and took place in a piecemeal fashion. Contrary to mainstream opinion, Putin never intended to conquer Kyiv and occupy Ukraine. The invasion force was far too small to accomplish those objectives.

Also contrary to mainstream opinion, Putin didn’t target Ukraine’s civilian population. He wanted to avoid civilian casualties to the greatest possible extent. Of course some civilian targets were hit, but that’s going to happen in war.

Putin instead believed that the “special military operation” would tell Kyiv and Washington that Russia was serious about enforcing its red lines in Ukraine, that it was willing to use force. But he thought his show of force would bring them to the negotiating table.

He badly miscalculated. Rather than bring Kyiv and Washington to the negotiating table, they resolved to aggressively defend Ukraine. Russia’s ill-prepared forces were pushed back and routed in many instances.

“Russia Means Business This Time”

But now Russia is taking the gloves off. It’s already launched heavy, sustained attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, including the power grid and energy nodes. Its army is also regrouping and preparing for massive counteroffensives.
It won’t make the same mistakes it made during last February’s ill-planned attacks. Russia means business this time.

It’s not interested in bringing Ukraine to the negotiating table anymore. It’s focused instead on destroying Ukraine’s military forces and imposing a settlement on Kyiv.

A major winter offensive will begin soon, likely when the ground in southern Ukraine is fully frozen (muddy ground will bog down Russian forces). A successful counteroffensive will consolidate Russian control of Donbas (the heartland of Ukrainian industry and natural resources), give Russia control of Zaporizhzhya (the largest nuclear power plant in Europe) and possibly include the conquest of Odessa, the most important Ukrainian Black Sea port.

The cost on the rest of Ukraine from Kyiv to Lviv will be horrendous, including the near-complete degradation of its power-generating capacity, transportation lines and food supplies. U.S. and U.K. weapons supplies won’t mean much because they are too little, too late and the Ukrainians are scarcely trained to use them.

But these prospects make no impact at all on the anti-Russian warhawks, both Democrat and Republican, who are determined to prolong the war at all costs — even if it means fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.

A Great Deal for the Military-Industrial Complex

It seems that every week or so the U.S. announces a new multibillion-dollar package of aid for Ukraine. These aid packages fall into two categories: Some are simple financial transfers to keep the oligarchs in Ukraine supplied with funds to keep their government going.

Others consist of weapons including drones, anti-missile batteries like the Patriot, long-range artillery and most recently an announcement that the U.S. may supply Ukraine with Bradley Fighting Vehicles, or BFVs.

The total of such Ukraine aid, including the $1.7 trillion budget boondoggle passed by the U.S. Congress two weeks ago, is now approaching $100 billion.

When it comes to weapons, there’s a lot less than meets the eye in terms of helping Ukraine. It appears that Ukraine is getting billions of dollars in equipment, but in fact, Ukraine is getting castoffs from U.S. inventories.

What’s really going on is the U.S. is dumping old or obsolete systems on Ukraine (the original BFV was built in 1981, over 40 years ago) and then using the appropriations to order new weapons for itself.

Meanwhile, the U.S. will likely send Ukraine an older version of the Patriot air defense system — and only one battery at that, consisting of eight missile launchers. It’s not the game-changer many seem to think it is. The Russians will simply overwhelm the system with numbers, and then take it out. It probably won’t last long whenever it’s deployed, which could be several months from now.

The real winners of these weapons transfers will be U.S. defense contractors like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, who are getting the money to build new advanced systems for the U.S.

The real losers will be the Ukrainian people, who will continue to die needlessly in the absence of a negotiated settlement that recognizes the reality on the ground.

How Much Western Military Aid Actually Makes It Into the Field?

To make this racket even more absurd, much of the equipment that does make it to Ukraine is quickly blown up by Russia.

Russia has very good intelligence on the whereabouts of these weapons systems once they reach Ukraine. Using global satellite imaging, laser guidance and a blend of drones and cruise missiles, Putin has had success preventing these weapons from reaching the battlefield or destroying them if they do.

But the U.S. has already spent so much money on Ukraine and committed itself so strongly to a complete Russian defeat, a Russian victory would represent another strategic defeat for the U.S., still smarting from the debacle in Afghanistan.

What remains of U.S. credibility is on the line.

Brinksmanship

What happens if Russia brings Ukraine to the verge of defeat? Will Biden and his strongly anti-Russian administration simply throw up their hands and concede victory to Russia? Based on their maximalist rhetoric and commitment to Ukrainian victory, that appears unlikely.

Biden has shown no signs of relenting and recently said he will supply Ukraine with weapons as long as it takes. On the other hand, Putin will also not back down and seems determined to secure the entire seacoast of Ukraine, including the critical port of Odessa.

The great danger could arise if the U.S. foolishly continues escalation to the bitter end in order to stave off a Ukrainian defeat. I’m not predicting it’ll happen, but things could escalate to the point where tactical nuclear weapons are employed out of desperation. From that point, it’s a short step toward the broader use of strategic nuclear weapons.

Again, I’m not specifically predicting that will happen. But it is a realistic possibility based on the logic of escalation, and we seem to be sleepwalking into a nuclear confrontation unless we wake up.
Will we?

Daily Reckoning

TIME is kicking off their 100th year and a reminder of history’s rhymes: On the cover of the first issue:

Quote:“Uncle Joe” Cannon, whose 1923 retirement set off the last instance of multi-ballot mayhem in choosing a Speaker of the House.

Joseph Gurney Cannon, grand old man of Congress, will retire from public life. At the age of 86, having served 23 terms in the House of Representatives, he feels that he has earned the right to spend the rest of his life in the quiet seclusion of Danville, Illinois. Uncle Joe is something more than a politician with an age-record. He is the embodiment of a tradition, a political theory, a technique of party government and discipline that is fast perishing. He represents the Old Guard in the very flower of its maturity, in the palmy days of McKinley and Mark Hanna, when " a little group of wilful men " did more than make gestures of government; they actually ruled Congress, shrewdly, impregnably, and without too much rhetoric.

Uncle Joe in those days was Speaker of the House and supreme dictator of the Old Guard. Never did a man employ the office of Speaker with less regard for its theoretical impartiality. To Uncle Joe the Speakership was a gift from heaven, immaculately born into the Constitution by the will of the fathers for the divine purpose of perpetuating the dictatorship of the standpatters in the Republican Party. And he followed the divine call with a resolute evangelism that was no mere voice crying in the wilderness, but a voice that forbade anybody else to cry out—out of turn.

On March 4 Uncle Joe will be gone and Henry Cabot Lodge alone will remain to carry on the banner of the ideal. To the American people, however, the senior Senator from Massachusetts must perforce seem a little too genteel, too cold, too Back Bay to serve as an adequate trustee for the Old Guard tradition. They will long for the homely democracy of Mr. Cannon, so often expressed by those homely democratic symbols—Uncle Joe's black cigar and thumping quid.

Quote:The Story Behind the First-Ever Fact-Checkers

Here's how they were able to do their jobs long before the Internet.

At TIME Magazine’s 20th anniversary dinner, in 1943, the magazine’s co-founder Henry Luce explained to those gathered that, while “the word ‘researcher’ is now a nation-wide symbol of a serious endeavor,” he and co-founder Briton Hadden had first started using the title as part of an inside joke for a drinking club. “Little did we realize that in our private jest we were inaugurating a modern female priesthood — the veritable vestal virgins whom levitous writers cajole in vain,” he said, “and managing editors learn humbly to appease.”

Luce’s audience nearly 75 years ago is not the only group to wonder about the origins of fact-checking in journalism, though the casual sexism of the 1940s would no longer fly. Today, especially amid concern over so-called “fake news” and at a time when it may seem inconceivable that checking an article would be possible without the Internet, it remains a natural question: How did this journalistic practice begin?
And, as it turns out, that story is closely linked to TIME’s past.

First Facts

In the years between 1923, when TIME’s first issue was published, and Luce’s speech, journalistic fact-checking had gone from a virtually unknown idea to standard practice at many American magazines. (These days, journalistic practices aren’t necessarily country-specific — Der Spiegel, for example, is known for having one of the world’s biggest fact-checking departments — but that wasn’t the case a century ago, and this particular kind of checking was an especially American phenomenon.)

Of course, well before any separate job of “fact-checker” existed, editors and reporters would have had their eyes out for errors — but it was around the turn of the 20th century, between the sensational yellow journalism of the 1890s and muckraking in the early 1900s, that the American journalism industry began to really focus on facts.

Quote:Research: Fact-Checking: History of Fact-Checking

An early use of the term fact-checker can be found in an ad for TIME magazine in 1938 which mentions the expansion of "its researchers and fact-checkers from ten to twenty-two."  Nancy Ford was the first Time fact-checker and she extensively consulted the New York Public Library Information Desk to perform her work.   By the 1930s, the "checkers" were entirely drawn from young women graduating from college.   Their research work was rigorous and involved the "process of surrounding a story", making sure every detail was correct and incorporated into the final story.  If errors were made, the female checkers were generally held responsible, not the male authors of the piece.

In 1971, after  the women at Newsweek filed a successful  complaint with the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the sex-segregation of the magazine departments,  the TIME magazine research manual was rewritten to incorporate these workplace changes.  The fact-checkers were renamed "reporter-researchers" and  the job was opened to men.  In  later decades, the duties of the checkers gradually evolved: reporters did some of their own fact-checking and the checkers expanded their responsibilities to include reporting.

Fact-checking at other publications

 The  New Yorker has a longstanding reputation for its fact-checking department.  The German newsmagazine Der Spiegel once had the largest and most respected fact-checking operation in the publishing world.   But in 2018 , a celebrated reporter was exposed for fabricating stories which the fact-checkers never caught.