Category: Radioactive

Margin Of Fraud

Margin Of Fraud Radioactive 51 Comments

Via Zerohedge: Just twelve hours after it was filed, the US Supreme Court has officially put Texas’s lawsuit against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on the docket, meaning the case will be heard.
UPDATE: Louisiana has signed on to the Texas suit.

Also: Michigan House Chairman Tells Dominion CEO to Appear or Be Subpoenaed

Evening update: *I think* SCOTUS has voted 6 -3 to hear the Texas case, now joined by at least 7 other states. GA, MI, WI, and PA have until Thursday at 3pm to respond. There are numerous reports on it, but also confusion.

This appears to be a useful thread from Ron Coleman. Start here.

“Father Of The Iranian Bomb” Assassinated Near Tehran

Radioactive Terrorism 40 Comments

Timing is everything;

Iran’s most senior nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh has been assassinated near the capital Tehran, the country’s defence ministry has confirmed.
 
Fakhrizadeh died in hospital after being attacked in Damavand county.
 
Iranian news agencies said assailants targeted his car with a bomb before shooting at him.
 
Western intelligence agencies view him as the mastermind behind Iran’s secret nuclear weapons programme.
 
He was reportedly been described as the “father of the Iranian bomb” by diplomats.

I mean, maybe it’s just coincidence, or maybe it’s cleaning up odds and ends.

Speaking of cleaning up odds and ends, I believe this is unrelated: The directive, which the Pentagon’s White House liaison Joshua Whitehouse sent on Wednesday afternoon, removes 11 high-profile advisors from the Defense Policy Board, including former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright; retired Adm. Gary Roughead, who served as chief of naval operations; and a onetime ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman. Rudy De Leon, a former chief operating officer at the Pentagon once considered by then-Defense Secretary James Mattis for a high-level policy role, will also be ousted.

Macleans: The Nova Scotia shooter case has hallmarks of an undercover operation

Radioactive 63 Comments

What?

The withdrawal of $475,000 in cash by the man who killed 22 Nova Scotians in April matches the method the RCMP uses to send money to confidential informants and agents, sources say.

 

Gabriel Wortman, who is responsible for the largest mass killing in Canadian history, withdrew the money from a Brink’s depot in Dartmouth, N.S., on March 30, stashing a carryall filled with hundred-dollar bills in the trunk of his car.[…]
 

A Mountie familiar with the techniques used by the force in undercover operations, but not with the details of the investigation into the shooting, says Wortman could not have collected his own money from Brink’s as a private citizen.
 
“There’s no way a civilian can just make an arrangement like that,” he said in an interview.
 
He added that Wortman’s transaction is consistent with the Mountie’s experience in how the RCMP pays its assets. “I’ve worked a number of CI cases over the years and that’s how things go. All the payments are made in cash. To me that transaction alone proves he has a secret relationship with the force.”
 
A second Mountie, who does not know the first one but who has also been involved in CI operations, also believes that Wortman’s ability to withdraw a large sum of money from Brink’s is an indication that Wortman had a link with the police. “That’s tradecraft,” the Mountie said, explaining that by going through CIBC Intria, the RCMP could avoid typical banking scrutiny, as there are no holds placed on the money.
 
“That’s what we do when we need flash money for a buy. We don’t keep stashes of money around the office. When we suddenly need a large sum of money to make a buy or something, that’s the route we take. I think [with the Brink’s transaction] you’ve proved with that single fact that he had a relationship with the police. He was either a CI or an agent.”

Read it all.

Wuhan Flu

Radioactive Wuhan Flu 28 Comments

This sounds promising.

Researchers at Emory University Hospital, led by Dr. Mohammad Khan, Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology, treated five COVID-19 patients with severe pneumonia who were requiring supplemental oxygen and whose health was visibly deteriorating. Their median age was 90 with a range from 64 to 94, four were female, four were African-American, and one was Caucasian.
 
These patients were given a single low-dose of radiation (1.5 Gy) to both lungs, delivered by a front and back beam configuration. Patients were in an out of the Radiotherapy Department in 10 to 15 minutes.
 
Within 24 hours, four of the patients showed rapid improvement in oxygenation and mental status (more awake, alert and talkative) and were being discharged from the hospital 12 days later. Blood tests and repeated imaging of the lungs confirmed that the radiation was safe and effective, and did not cause adverse effects – no acute skin, pulmonary, gastrointestinal or genitourinary toxicities.
 
The gray (Gy) is a dose unit of ionizing radiation defined as the absorption of one joule of radiation energy per kilogram of matter. The Gy replaces the older unit of the rad, and 1 Gy = 100 Rad.

It’s cheap, easy, and most hospitals already have the equipment. It’s going nowhere.

We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans

Alternative Subsidy Radioactive 19 Comments

Germany, the poster child for renewable energy, sourcing close to half of its electricity from renewable sources, plans to close all of its nuclear power plants by 2022. Its coal-fired plants, meanwhile, will be operating until 2038. According to a study from the U.S. non-profit National Bureau of Economic Research, Germany is paying dearly for this nuclear phase-out–with human lives.

The deaths attributed to “pollution from coal power generation” are also agenda-driven statistical extrapolation bullshit.

It’s Probably NOTHING

Ethical Energy It's Probably Nothing Radioactive 52 Comments

WSJ;

Saturday’s attack on a critical Saudi oil facility will almost certainly rock the world energy market in the short term, but it also carries disturbing long-term implications.
 
Ever since the dual 1970s oil crises, energy security officials have fretted about a deliberate strike on one of the critical choke points of energy production and transport. Sea lanes such as the Strait of Hormuz usually feature in such speculation. The facility in question at Abqaiq is perhaps more critical and vulnerable. The Wall Street Journal reported that five million barrels a day of output, or some 5% of world supply, would be taken offline as a result.
 
To illustrate the importance of Abqaiq in the oil market’s consciousness, an unsuccessful terrorist attack in 2006 using explosive-laden vehicles sent oil prices more than $2.00 a barrel higher. Saudi Arabia is known to spend billions of dollars annually protecting ports, pipelines and processing facilities, and it is the only major oil producer to maintain some spare output. Yet the nature of the attack, which used drones launched by Iranian-supported Houthi fighters from neighboring Yemen, shows that protecting such facilities may be far more difficult today.
 
There are countries that even today see their output ebb and flow as a result of militant activity, most notably Nigeria and Libya. Others, such as Venezuela, are in chronic decline due to political turmoil. Such news affects the oil price at the margin but is hardly shocking.
 
Deliberate attacks by actual military forces have been far rarer, with the exception of the 1980s “Tanker War” involving Iraq, Iran and the vessels of other regional producers such as Kuwait. When Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait in 1990, removing its production from the market and putting Saudi Arabia’s massive crude output under threat, prices more than doubled over two months.
 
Yet Saturday’s attack could be more significant than that. Technology from drones to cyberattacks are available to groups like the Houthis, possibly with support from Saudi Arabia’s regional rival Iran. That major energy producer, facing sanctions but still shipping some oil, has both a political and financial incentive to weaken Saudi Arabia. The fact that the actions ostensibly were taken by a nonstate actor, though, limits the response that the U.S. or Saudi Arabia can take. Attempting to further punish Iran is a double-edged sword, given that pinching its main source of revenue, also oil, would further inflame prices.
 
While the outage may not last long given redundancies in Saudi oil infrastructure, the attack may build in a premium to oil prices that has long been absent due to complacency. Indeed, traders may now need to factor in new risks that threaten to take not hundreds of thousands but millions of barrels off the market at a time. U.S. shale production may have upended the world energy market with nimble output, but the market’s reaction time is several months, not days or weeks, and nowhere near enough to replace several million barrels.
 
After the smoke clears and markets calm down, the technological sophistication and audacity of Saturday’s attack will linger over the energy market.

The things that happen when I’m busy working. More links at Drudge and photos here.

Hong Kong

Radioactive 15 Comments

Michael Yon, via Instapundit;

Yesterday’s protest was massive. I have not even slept yet. Estimated 1.7m people. Crowds are notoriously difficult to estimate, but I will confirm it was absolutely massive, stretching for miles in pouring rain. Massive.
 
Hong Kong is China’s brain tumor. Do nothing…tumor grows. Operate…the procedure could kill the communist party.
 
This is very serious, Gentlemen. Do not underestimate what is happening here.

You can follow his reports on FB here.

Only Trump Can Go To The DMZ

Radioactive Trump 73 Comments

News of this broke early this morning as the plans were in the works, but I went to bed.

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un’s first two summits were highly choreographed affairs but their third date was an unscripted event seemingly arranged on a social media whim — and threatened at times to descend into chaos.
 
Trump admitted he did not know whether Kim would spurn his advances, delivered via Twitter. “When I put out the social media notification, if he didn’t show up, the press was going to make me look very bad,” the US president said.
 
“So you made us both look good,” he told Kim.
 
The optics of their DMZ dalliance stood in sharp contrast to the made-for-TV blockbusters in Singapore and Hanoi, where everything was precisely arranged down to the last detail.

Video of the meeting and more at Althouse.

This aged well.

“The Vatican Had No Comment”

Radioactive 59 Comments

Catholic Cold War turns hot.

One of the enduring mysteries of the contemporary Catholic Church is why so many priests know about practicing homosexuals in the priesthood, but don’t do anything about it. An egregious example comes to mind from when I lived in New York City under Cardinal John O’Connor, and then Cardinal Edward Egan. A gay-friendly parish downtown used to hold pro-gay events all the time, many of which could not be justified in any authentically Catholic sense. I recall them once advertising an LGBT-oriented sex toy event in the church basement, though I can’t remember whether that was under O’Connor’s reign or Egan’s. It didn’t matter. That parish was going to do what it was going to do no matter what, and the chancery wasn’t going to stop it.

 

There are a liberal Catholic priests, both gay and straight, who know who the sexually active conservative closet cases are, and won’t out them. There are conservative Catholic priests, both straight and chastely gay, who have no obvious interest in protecting the closet, who nevertheless don’t out liberals who are sexually active. Why is that?

 

A gay Catholic friend told me that it’s because both sides live under a Cold War policy of Mutually Assured Destruction. They will snipe at each other in proxy wars, but when it comes right down to it, they will not turn on each other directly, because once the first missile is fired, there’s no stopping them. Both sides know that such warfare could destroy the institution that they both depend on. So they practice restraint, despite mutual loathing.

 

An interesting theory. Made sense to me when I heard it.

 

If it’s true, though, then we have to see conservative Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano’s statement over the weekend as a nuclear bomb going off in the enemy’s capital.

Read Vigaron’s  statement here.  Yowza.

Background: Why did Pope Benedict Resign? McCarrick, Vigano and Vatican Bank Scandals Explained in Detail

Update, from the informative Twitter feed of Fr. Kevin Cusick.

 

“The Vatican had no comment.”

It's Probably Nothing Radioactive 36 Comments

Richard Fernandez – [Archbishop Viganò] says a gay and left wing mafia has been trying to take over the church; that Benedict acted vs McCarrick but it was subsequently overruled by the left and gay mafia. I was reading the PDF yesterday now the WaPo has it.

Viganò, 77, was the Holy See’s apostolic nuncio, or ambassador, in Washington from 2011 until 2016. He has been a lightning rod within the Vatican who lost a power struggle in Rome under Benedict, emerged as a Francis critic and reportedly ordered the halt of an investigation into alleged sexual relations between an archbishop in Minnesota and seminarians.
 

Jason Berry, who has written several investigative books about the Vatican, said he believes this is the first time a pope has been accused from within.
 
“From within the Vatican hierarchy, from within the Roman Curia, I don’t think anyone has ever publicly accused a pope of covering up for a sex abuser,” Berry said. “That’s why this is such a big deal.”
 
[…]
 
Viganò’s letter says that in 2013, he met Francis and told the new pope face to face that there was “a dossier this thick” about McCarrick. He says he then told Francis about Benedict’s order that McCarrick remove himself from public life.
 
“He corrupted generations of seminarians and priests and Pope Benedict ordered him to withdraw to a life of prayer and penance,” Viganò says he told Francis. “The Pope did not make the slightest comment about those very grave words of mine and did not show any expression of surprise on his face, as if he had already known the matter for some time, and he immediately changed the subject.”
 
Barry Coburn, McCarrick’s lawyer, said in a statement: “These are serious allegations. Archbishop McCarrick, like any other person, has a right to due process. He looks forward to invoking that right at the appropriate time.”
 
The letter also includes an allegation against Wuerl, D.C.’s current archbishop and McCarrick’s successor. He is a close ally of Francis and is already under scrutiny following a grand jury report in Pennsylvania about clerical child sex abuse and an alleged coverup. Wuerl for years led the diocese of Pittsburgh.
 
Viganò is vague in the allegation against Wuerl. The letter says “obviously” Wuerl knew about Benedict’s restrictions on McCar­rick because the then-ambassador, Pietro Sambi, was “responsible, loyal and direct” and must have told him. Viganò says he brought up the subject himself with Wuerl, and he writes that Wuerl “was fully aware of it.”
 
Wuerl’s spokesman, Ed McFadden, denied the report.

It’s behind a paywall, but the story is available if you haven’t run out of “free” visits.

“A Glimpse of Europe’s True Face”

Radioactive Trump 34 Comments

Caroline Glick;

[European Union’s foreign policy chief Federica ] Mogherini’s summit in Vienna was a statement of deep contempt for the US. Days before US President Donald Trump was scheduled to arrive on the continent, the leaders of Europe publicly colluded with Iran, China and Russia to undermine and weaken America. While shocking in and of itself, Europe’s behavior didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.

 

Mogherini has been publicly attacking the US for walking away from the nuclear deal and declaring her allegiance to the pact three times a day, every day since May 8 when Trump announced he was pulling the US out of it and reimposing sanctions on Iran.

 

What we didn’t know until recently is why Mogherini and her colleagues have chosen to stand with Iran against America.

We got the answer on June 30.

 

Six days before the Vienna summit, Belgian security forces arrested members of an Iranian terror cell as they made their way to Paris to blow up a rally held that day by the Iranian opposition movement Mujahedin e-Khalq. The cell was led by Asduallah Asadi, the head of Iran’s intelligence network in Europe. Asadi is registered as the Iranian intelligence attaché at the Iranian embassy in Vienna. He is an officer of the Revolutionary Guards’ al-Quds Brigade, which is responsible for Iran’s foreign terror operations.

 

Thousands attended the rally in Paris. Among the many VIPS present were former prime minister Ehud Barak, former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.

 

The arrests in Belgium drove home the fact that Iran has developed a massive terror infrastructure in Europe. The terror operatives who were arrested lived and operated in at least four countries: Germany, Austria, Belgium and France.

 

On the face of it, it is amazing than right after terrorists under the direct command of the Iranian regime were caught en route to carrying out an attack in Paris, Europe’s top diplomats sat down with the leaders of the regime and brainstormed how to shower them with cash in open defiance of the United States.

 

[…]

 

As with Iran, so with Russia, when you see the full spectrum of European actions, you realize there is no connection whatsoever between European rhetoric and European policy. As with Iran, so with Russia, Europe’s actual policy is to appease Russia by paying it off. As with Iran so with Russia, Europe expects the US to pull its fat from the fire when the going gets tough – and pay for the privilege of doing so.

 

Trump scares the Europeans. He doesn’t scare them because he expects them to pay for their own defense. All of his predecessors had the same expectation. He frightens the Europeans because he ignores their rhetoric while mercilessly exposing their true policy and refuses to accept it. They are scared that Trump intends to exact a price from them for their weak-kneed treachery.

h/t Larry

 

Big Red Button

Radioactive Trump 14 Comments

Fox 40;

A team of US officials led by envoy Sung Kim met with North Korean officials Sunday at Panmunjom, the border village between North and South Korea in the demilitarized zone, senior State Department officials told CNN.
 
The talks were the first face-to-face conversations between the two countries since the summit last month between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and were held to work on implementing the agreement reached between the two leaders, the officials said.
 
Kim is the US ambassador to the Philippines and has been one of the key US officials dealing with the North Koreans leading up to the Trump-Kim summit.
 
National security adviser John Bolton said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” earlier Sunday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would communicate with the North Koreans in the near future about the dismantling of their weapons of mass destruction as well as their nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

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