riggerrob

Negativity sells 100 times faster than love. It is always easier to blame your problems on some outsider, instead of inventing ways to improve yourself and become your best possible you. That attitude leads to bullying, because bullies have abandoned efforts to achieve their best possible self and instead seek to improve their status by debasing others. Warfare is the same attitude on a national level. How well did that work for Adolf Hitler back in 1945? How well did that work for the Argentine ruling military junta back in 1982? How well is it working for Hamas today?

There is a fine line between freedom of speech and slander. Sadly, this distinction has disappearred from modern social discourse.

Yes Gerry, Any information that time-sensitive would have been sent via three couriers ... on three different routes.

30 years ago, I retired USAF Combat Controller told me that he and his buddies had been surveying airstrips in North Africa. They sent one CC home with the survey results. He was travelling in that 747 that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland. A couple of Libyan military intelligence officers were eventually arrested and jailed, but released early. Lockbie was a military hit .... with 300 collateral casualties.

My impression - during the 1970s - was that Western pressure to eliminate apartheid in Rhodesia and South Africa was more about domestic politics in the USA. Kennedy and Johnson were trying to encourage American blacks to lift themselves out of poverty and become tax-paying middle-class workers. They failed on all three counts. Rhodesia was a net agricultural exporter in 1970, but now they have to import food. South Africa has a prosperous, advanced economy - the most technologically advanced in Africa - but now it is a poor Third-World country with a high crime rate. Granted, some American blacks have moved up into the middle class, but there are still millions stuck in poverty ... on the dole .... in prison .....

Many of the airplanes that Dause operated were managed by Flanagan Enterprises of Nevada. I suffered multiple injuries when one of those King Airs crashed in 2008. Lawyers dragged out the misery for another 9 years. Even though WCB's lawyers "won" the first part of the lawsuit, it was a net loss for the wounded. I only collected one year's salary. Too bad that I was unemployed for 15 months during the trial. WCB imposed a 2 year delay for surgery, infection, deep vein thrombosis, withheld settlement funds for a year, 2 counts of contempt outside the court, PTSD, etc. But that decision forced Flanagan to divest some assets. Then another one of their airplanes (Caravan) crashed near Lodi in August of 2016.

The sad thing is that those North Korean soldiers will be purely cannon-fodder. They can never go home again because they might tell family and friends about the high standard of living in Ukraine. Any stories that under-mine faith in the Supreme Leader of North Korea will be quickly crushed. Compare this with Soviet soldiers who conquered Berlin at the end of World War 2. Because they had seen the luxurious living standards of Berliners - compared with the average Russian peasant. From Stalin's perspective it was better for those soldiers to die in battle. Surviving soldiers got diverted to Siberia for a few years.

Peter Zeihan and some generals.

Blame that on management and manifest.

Many strategists believe that Mr. Poutine's latest military adventures are ploys to re-capture the Polish Gap (near Warsaw) and the Bessarabian Gap (Carpathian Mountains Southwest of Odesa). The rest of Ukraine is needed for defense-in-depth. I seriously doubt if Mr. Poutine really cares about de-nazifying Ukraine.

russia was small a thousand years ago ... just a few forest villages surrounding Moscow. Too bad Moscow is located on the North European Plain which extends from Northern France all the way to the Ural Mountains, with few defensible rivers of mountains. Over the last thousand years Moscow has been over-run by Swedes, Lithuanians, Poles, Germans, French, Mongols, Huns, Sythians, etc. more times than anyone can count. That is why Moscow is paranoid. All of their later conquests were to provide strategic depth to their defenses. The current invasion of Ukraine is all about the Russian Army regaining control of the Bessarabian Gap in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. The Russian Army need to control the Bessarabian Gap to prevent another invasion by Muslim Turks. Ukraine just happens to the be on the road towards the Carpathian Mountains.

Hot enough to melt the surface of nylon risers. If you jump partially-melted risers long enough, they will eventually fail. Statistically they are most likely to fail during opening shock. In the worst case scenario, they fail during your last turn onto final approach. No need to take a well-understood risk. Budget the money to replace tandem risers every 300 to 600 jumps.

Granted, we do need to listen to minority opinions. BUT! I draw the line at political violence.

The scariest thing is when fascists and communists go full circle and meet at the bottom. Then they both look like violent thugs who oppress anyone not playing their tune. I fear the current generation of "antifa" as much as I fear Hitler's Brown Shirts or Mussolini's Black Shirts or any version of Russian secret police.

Back when I moved to California - in 1992 - I read a thick book called "Cadillac Desert"' 'which spelled out the folly of Colorado River water rationing. The start of the problem was issuing more "water rights" than there were gallons in the river .... it got worse from there. After 6 years, I concluded that it was foolish for white men - like me - to live in a desert. Now I live in a rain forest ... er ... rain forest 6 months out of the year. It is raining cats and dogs today.