Assange Extradition
Sep 11, 2020Unfortunately, you can’t trust the United States government when it comes to extradition. Just ask Austria:
Exorcism or Prosecution? The Nimitz Loses a Sailor
Sep 11, 2020USS Nimitz Loses Sailor, Time for an Exorcism
A sailor assigned to the USS Nimitz, an American aircraft carrier on patrol in the Arabian Sea, was lost overboard on August 6th. The Nimitz is assigned to the Fifth Fleet, headquartered in Bahrain.
The Fifth Fleet certainly has been the victim of bad luck in the past few years. Perhaps a limpieza (a santería excorcism) would help. Or perhaps it is the ghost of Thao Suranari, demanding justice.
Her killer was not punished for the crime.
“*Phi Tai Hong
One of the most feared and most dangerous ghost types in Thailand is that of the Phi Tai Hong. Said to be ghosts of people who suffered violent or sudden deaths, Phi Tai Hong are angry and dangerous in their afterlife.*
[https://theculturetrip.com/asia/thailand/articles/13-terrifying-ghosts-thai-folklore/]
In view of the Fifth Fleet’s troubles, a Buddhist ceremony to propitiate her angry, dangerous ghost might be a solution. The justice obtained through a nolle pros decision or a transfer to CONUS or even a general discharge is not enough to satisfy a phi tai hong.
Prosecute her killer. That’s what we do in the West when we don’t believe in ghosts.
What's the Difference between Indie Publishing and Vanity Publishing?
Sep 6, 2020
The difference is sales to strangers. Vanity publishing means printing and ordering books. After giving a few copies to friends and family, the undistributed books sit on a pallet in the garage. Indie publishing means getting a book into a distribution channel, like Amazon, where it can be bought by anyone. Sales to strangers is the key difference.
In the U.K., at least in the non-fiction and specialty markets, an author is often required to fund publication in part. It’s pay to play. So there at least, the distinction between paying for publication and being paid for publication breaks down. There is a lot of blurring at the edges of these definitions. Is a bookstore owner who publishes his friends (and himself) a self-publisher? What about City Lights Books?
The Drug War and Napoleon
Sep 4, 2020No one anticipated that a wealthy Saudi who took up our invitation to throw the Russians out of Afghanistan would turn against us and cross oceans to wage war in New York. After 2001, the drug war became an afterthought; like the empty Venetian courtrooms after Napoleon put an end to the thousand-year Venetian republic, the new fourth courthouse would be mostly unused.
M. Duras Spoke Vietnamese
Sep 3, 2020
Marguerite Duras, author, film director, Resistance fighter grew up speaking Vietnamese. Though she wrote many works in French, she never wrote in Vietnamese.
Discuss.
Sturgis v. Peru in the CoronaBowl
Sep 2, 2020(From David Stockman)
“Finally, there’s this. When over 460,000 motorcyclists descended upon Sturgis, South Dakota in the Black Hills for the annual Sturgis motorcycle rally, it was the largest event in the entire country this year – without masks or sacred social distancing protocols.
Yet no epidemic of coronavirus was ignited by this mother of all mass gatherings, contrary to media predictions. As one astute analyst observed,
‘So where is the monumental imprint on the country? There are zero deaths reported, and I have only seen one hospitalization alleged to be associated with Sturgis attendance. The epidemic generated by the rally was so powerful that they evidently had to conduct mass testing to discover a “CASEdemic” of over 100 cases – and all those tested in one city were asymptomatic at the time of testing.
If Sturgis in South Dakota broke every rule of the COVID-19 cult with success, then Peru is the polar opposite. The country used heavy-handed law enforcement to force one of the longest and most draconian shutdowns. In mid-March, President Martín Vizcarra ordered all cars off the road and an 8 p.m. curfew, and residents were only allowed to leave their homes even during the day for food or medical care. Mask-wearing was 100% mandated everywhere. This was imposed for 15 weeks. In other words, everything the media and leftist politicians have asked for.
The result? Peru has now surpassed Belgium as the country with the most deaths per capita in the world. At 871 COVID-19 deaths per 1 million people, Peru has 4.6 times the number of deaths per capita of South Dakota, which had no lockdown or mask mandate.‘”
Low Level Persistent Spread
Sep 2, 2020Low-Level but Persistent Spread
Like Cuba, Bahrain is an island. Like Cuba, Bahrain has closed off its airport to visitors. Unlike Cuba, Bahrain has an artificial land bridge to Saudi Arabia, but traffic has been and remains exit only. Both countries have low levels of infection. In Havana, the authorities have ordered a modified lockdown because of the “low-level but persistent” spread of the Sickness. This is exactly the situation in Bahrain. A low-level but persistent spread keeps the number of cases hovering around 3000.
A lockdown is one way to stop the spread.