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Cake day: November 30th, 2023

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  • “Mosaic defence” is an Iranian military concept most closely associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), particularly under former commander Mohammad Ali Jafari, who led the force from 2007 to 2019.

    The idea is to organise the state’s defensive structure into multiple regional and semi-independent layers instead of concentrating power in a single command chain that could be paralysed by a decapitation strike.

    Under this model, the IRGC, the Basij, regular army units, missile forces, naval assets and local command structures form parts of a distributed system. If one part is hit, others keep functioning. If senior leaders are killed, the chain does not collapse. If communications are severed, local units still retain the authority and capacity to act.

    The doctrine has two central aims: to make Iran’s command system difficult to dismantle by force, and to make the battlefield itself harder to resolve quickly by turning Iran into a layered arena of regular defence, irregular warfare, local mobilisation and long-term attrition.

    That is why Iranian military thinking does not treat war primarily as a contest of firepower. It treats it as a test of endurance.







  • In the request, Tri-State and Platte River say they’ve built sufficient solar and wind farms, and no longer need Craig 1. By forcing the power plant to stay open, the plant owners say they’ve been forced to buy coal and invest in maintaining the facility, unnecessary expenses that amount to an “uncompensated taking” of their property in violation of the Constitution.

    The U.S. Department of Energy declined an interview request for this story. In an emailed statement, Caroline Murzin, an agency spokesperson, said the U.S. needs vast amounts of additional electricity generation to support domestic manufacturing and the ongoing artificial intelligence boom.

    “Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, the Energy Department is unleashing energy dominance to reduce energy costs for American families and strengthen the electric grid,” Murzin said.

    So you want to keep a coal power plant that even the operators don’t want online, and violate the constitution again, so you can support your pedo-tech buddies and shove AI down our throats?

    https://www.gem.wiki/Craig_Station










  • I see and partially agree with what you mean, but I don’t agree that those actions don’t so anything. Partially it’s having worked for change in Washington and walked away burnt out, that I know how much DC is a bubble that has cascading impacts to everyone.

    In some ways yes shutting the government down means services don’t happen, but you are wrong about not getting paid. While they aren’t paid at the time, they have regularly gotten back pay after the shutdown. Some lower level may quit anyway, but often the government job is just to good at a high GS level to really give up, due to the healthcare and retirement. So it’s not easy, but it’s a paid time off.

    The real impact is as you mentioned that services aren’t processed. This has a ripple impact across the world due to trade, and finance markets. This in turns puts pressure on politicians to compromise, as a slowing of the economic makes everyone upset, and that is a lever.

    So it’s about finding levers that are more than show, like this current “shutdown” as many agencies have already been funded prior to this and the stopgap is likely to get passed shortly, but without longterm DHS funding. Schumer calling it a win, is just for show. DHS will continue, when they could have put their foot down and stopped everything.

    Where I agree with you is that the ideal of the conservative movement is to make government small and privatize it. They can only do so much though, as the US federal government is a behemoth, and even what DOGE did–while stuipid, and short sided–barely impacted the overall long term budget. If they were really after shrinking it, they’d cut the military. DOGE claimed they cut around 55 billion, but the senate just passed a 1200 billion dollar budget. And remember the US GDP is 31 Trillion, and the 1.2 Trillion wasn’t all of the budget, just most of it.

    I don’t think we need it all, but changes and improvement, especially in governments, tend to be slow and deliberate. Rash acts cause disruptions which have profound impacts, and we’ll see those.

    All of which is to say yes, I agree those actions don’t seem like much, but they have more impact than you think.



  • How about standing for something and sticking to it. One of our senators could filibuster, much like Strom Thurmond did for 24 hours during the civil rights movement.

    Or even if you shut the government down for the ACA, you get what you were asking for rather than giving in when it “looks” like you have won the propaganda battle.

    Basically they need to put inspiring acts of policy in front of rational reasoned policy, as no one think rational and reasonable is going to work with the Republican Nazis.


  • Hours after Pretti was killed, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was in Washington, DC, visiting the White House for a screening of Melania, a documentary produced by First Lady Melania Trump. As Jassy and other guests entered, a military band played “Melania’s Waltz,” a song composed for the film. Guests received “glossy, commemorative black and white popcorn boxes for guests, served by gloved waiters.”

    Amazon paid $59 million for the rights to the vanity project, most of which went to Melania Trump herself. According to Matt Belloni, Amazon is paying another $35 million to promote the film. Despite the massive budget, Amazon “has not shared the film with critics, and won’t before its release.”

    Although Melania will almost certainly lose tens of millions of dollars for Amazon, it is a small price to pay to stay in the good graces of President Donald Trump and his administration. Amazon has billions in government contracts and provides much of the technological backbone for ICE’s surveillance and deportation activities.


  • “The best they can do is shoot the guy in the back?” That’s not the voice of some liberal commentator. That’s what a homeland security officer told me this weekend, one of over half a dozen who have reached out to express their alarm over the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and beyond.

    I’ve listened to the stories and the beefs of immigration officers in Minneapolis across the country, and to a person, they all blame the shooter, one of their own. The major media is stuck on framing the killing of Alex Pretti as some national and partisan battle, highlighting Republicans breaking ranks, the NRA protesting, MAGA wavering, and Chuck Schumer doing whatever he’s doing, but no one is really capturing what the federal law enforcement officers on the ground are thinking. The truth is that they’re fed up and have been for weeks.

    They paint a picture that is more Police Academy (or even Reno 911!) than a Gestapo on the march. Yes, they agree that Washington is a huge problem and are uncomfortable with the mission creep that is taking them away from actual immigration enforcement. But internally? Theirs is also a story of gung-ho 19-year-olds, drunken stakeouts, and senior officers disappearing into meetings and all of a sudden needing time off.

    An ICE agent was even more critical. “Yet another ‘justified’ fatal shooting … ten versus one and somehow they couldn’t find a way to subdue the guy or use a less than lethal [means],” the agent said. “They all carry belts and vests with 9,000 pieces of equipment on them and the best they can do is shoot a guy in the back?”

    As the meetings are held, the ICE agents and others I’ve talked to say the government versus terrorists narrative is having a tangible (and negative) impact on the ground.

    “Lots of people are freaking out,” one ICE agent told me. “Agents are getting seriously paranoid, afraid of being targeted by ‘retaliators.’”

    Several agents described receiving briefings about retaliatory threats to ICE inspired by the Minneapolis shooting. “Guys take it really serious, like we are fighting insurgents,” as if Minneapolis is Baghdad, an ICE officer said.

    Though all of the federal agents I’ve spoken to this weekend support immigration enforcement, they indeed see the Minneapolis operation as something else entirely — an open-ended counterinsurgency in a faraway land and under an out-of-touch leadership in Washington more concerned with optics than immigration.

    “This is a no-win situation for agents on the ground or immigration enforcement overall,” a Border Patrol agent said in the private group chat shared with me.

    He closed on a plaintive note: “I think it’s time to pull out of Minnesota, that battle is lost.”




  • The NRA waded into the national dialogue over Pretti’s killing after Bill Essayli – who was appointed by Trump to temporarily serve as a US attorney in California in 2025 – posted on social media: “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.”

    In response, the NRA posted: “This sentiment … is dangerous and wrong. Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens.”

    Don’t discount their self-interest in this. They don’t want their members to be summarily shot, arrested, or under suspicion just for owning a weapon.