@jbob No way to minimize the smoke on a motorcycle. Thanks for the fire update.

I've been getting a lot of email updates on the Ferguson fire to the west of Yosemite N. P. near the town of El Portal. The smoke impact at the park is bad. After living in the town of Wawona inside the park last year I know how bad the smoke can get there. When they say the air quality is hazardous they mean it! He should be through Yosemite and on to other adventures by now. The entire west has a bad fire problem so I'm hoping he has had good luck for his ride. Here is a link to the web site from CalFire with info on the Ferguson Fire

@detroitmechworks

It makes me happy that the classics are getting read again.

It gives us an opportunity to think comprehensively into the nature of humans and societies cycle of problems without immediately pointing fingers at each other.

I keep seeing more and more people talking about Greek concepts these days. It's a nice change, and It makes me happy that the classics are getting read again.

I hope that the American conception of heroism can change, because while the Americans idolize the mavericks and the outsiders, they actually pay tribute to the guys who string those guys up.

@The Aspie Corner videos and bring a select few here to share. I do not have the extra time time to watch a wide range of videos. Liked his intelligent discussion to regarding organized disruption of socialist movements using Venezuela as an example. We need to be very aware of how centralized product distribution can be used to disrupt societies to foster political upset.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le86H7Xfjrc]

@enhydra lutris efficient and totally ignore ecological effects if not part of their goals.

Last November the announced a dredging ship that would complete its testing this year.

“With a full displacement of 17,000 metric tons, the 140-meter-long ship is capable of dredging as much as 6,000 cubic meters of sand or clay per hour from 35 meters below the water’s surface, a capacity that means it could dig three standard swimming pools in an hour,” the paper said.

Named the Tiankun, the vessel “is the best of its kind in Asia,” according to the ship’s designer, the Marine Design and Research Institute in Shanghai, and “can be used to conduct coastal/channel dredging and land reclamation operations even in bad weather at sea.”

building soil over generation after generation, the Chinese are fully capable of patience, and of working with nature and acting similar to nature.

Though USAns, in general, can patiently await the great ever postponed day of salvation, they are otherwise impatient. Dynamite and doze the rocks and then haul in truckloads of soil purloined from someplace else where its purpose is beyond our ken. It is also a land and culture of bluff, braggadocio and bluster which, when thwarted, indulges in endless petty sniping, harrassment, sabotage, subterfuge and skullduggery. Witnedd Cuba, or Hillary and the Hillerites.

@eyo cause disruptions and monitor.

Some Uyghur Muslems are influenced by Fethullah Gülen. The same Islamic Pastor, residing in Pennsylvania, Turkey wants to extradite for the 2016 coup attempt.

CIA and Gülen in Central Asia
During the 1990s Gülen’s global political Islam Cemaat spread across the Caucasus and into the heart of Central Asia all the way to Xinjiang Province in western China, doing precisely what Fuller had called for in his 1999 statement: “destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia.”

Gülen’s organization had been active in that destabilizing with help from the CIA almost the moment the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, when the nominally Muslim Central Asian former Soviet republics declared their independence from Moscow. Gülen was named by one former FBI authoritative source as “one of the main CIA operation figures in Central Asia and the Caucasus.”

Resistance fighters in Tibet

Tenzing's father, Lhamo Tsering, was a senior resistance leader and the CIA's chief coordinator for the Tibet operation. In 1958, he was trained at CIA camps in Virginia and Colorado's Rocky Mountains. He documented the entire movement, writing at length on the subject. Though he died on January 9 this year without realising his dream of a free Tibet, The Shadow Circus stands tribute to the man.

Cia and Tiawan

Known as "The Black Bats," they say they were working for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, a claim backed up by a photo of them posing with the CIA's then-station chief. Between 1953 and 1967, they flew more than 800 sorties over the Chinese mainland, dropping agents, testing radar responses, even collecting air samples from suspected nuclear test sites.

After decades in the shadows, they are coming forward, encouraged by the planned establishment of a museum honoring their exploits in this high-tech center that was once the base of their operations.

More Recent CIA Operations from New York Times 2017.

The Chinese government systematically dismantled C.I.A. spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward.
...
The previously unreported episode shows how successful the Chinese were in disrupting American spying efforts and stealing secrets years before a well-publicized breach in 2015 gave Beijing access to thousands of government personnel records, including intelligence contractors. The C.I.A. considers spying in China one of its top priorities, but the country’s extensive security apparatus makes it exceptionally hard for Western spy services to develop sources there.

At a time when the C.I.A. is trying to figure out how some of its most sensitive documents were leaked onto the internet two months ago by WikiLeaks, and the F.B.I. investigates possible ties between President Trump’s campaign and Russia, the unsettled nature of the China investigation demonstrates the difficulty of conducting counterespionage investigations into sophisticated spy services like those in Russia and China.

Looking at China response to their citizenry and CIA actions is not because of admiration, but to review tactics. Ones that intelligence agencies are probably using domestically to spy on citizens and shape public opinion, or wishing they could. Most of the worst practices of the Chinese has been used by our agencies in foreign countries and on domestic populations. Domestically most of the population is unaware.

The newest technique in China - don't send the Uyghurs to a re-education camp send a trainer to their home.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNKV3wvYGME]

That is War of Terror talk, outside the asylum. I would be indoctrinated to death in the communist gulags, I'd starve rather than stop thinking for myself, I cannot admire the re-education camps, past present or future. Capitalist gulags are bad too, not saying they are good.

https://www.thechinastory.org/keyword/xinjiang/

Overview
Although not as well known outside China as the question of Tibet, the conflict over Xinjiang appears to be equally as intractable, and similarly grounded in conflicting accounts of both the past and the present.

Xinjiang Population Statistics (2010 Statistical Yearbook)
Uyghur 10,019,758 46.4%
Han 8,416,867 39%
[...]
Total 21,586,300

Xinjiang is an autonomous region within the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Its immediate precursor was a product of the expansion of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) during the eighteenth century. Xinjiang was transformed from being a dependency into an imperial province in the 1880s. It reverted to semi-independent warlord control for much of the Republican period (1912-49), and was incorporated into the PRC by the People’s Liberation Army in 1950. At that time it was home to a large Uyghur majority, with smaller communities of other Central Asian peoples (e.g., Kazakh, Kirghiz, Mongols, Tajik), as well as Han and Hui migrants from Chinese provinces to its east. Recent immigration has seen a rapid rise in the Han Chinese population; factoring in the floating population of migrant workers, this population is now believed to exceed that of the Uyghurs.

The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) dates from 1955. It comprises roughly one sixth of China’s total landmass, borders on eight neighbouring countries, and contains the largest remaining reserves of oil and gas thought to exist on Chinese soil.

Ding! Hello Bueller. heh

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the declaration of a ‘War on Terror’ by the United States in 2001, Uyghur opposition has been cast by China as one wing of an international terrorist conspiracy. This manner of framing issues related to Xinjiang has helped China win endorsement for its definition of the internecine struggle in some circles. The presence of Uyghur militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan cannot be denied, however their numbers, level of organization, and their efficacy inside Xinjiang are all disputed both by Chinese and by foreign observers.

--- Arbeit macht frei
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-education_through_labor

Re-education through labor (RTL; simplified Chinese: 劳动教养; traditional Chinese: 勞動教養; pinyin: láodòng jiàoyǎng), abbreviated laojiao (simplified Chinese: 劳教; traditional Chinese: 勞教; pinyin: láojiào) was a system of administrative detention in the People's Republic of China. The system was active from 1957 to 2013, and was used to detain persons accused of minor crimes such as petty theft, prostitution, and trafficking illegal drugs, as well as political dissidents, petitioners, and Falun Gong adherents. It was separate from the much larger laogai system of prison labor camps.

Sentences under re-education through labor were typically for one to three years, with the possibility of an additional one-year extension. They were issued as a form of administrative punishment by police, rather than through the judicial system. While incarcerated, detainees were often subject to some form of political education. Estimates on the number of RTL detainees on any given year range from 190,000 to two million. As of 2013, there were approximately 350 RTL camps in operation.[1]

On December 28, 2013, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress abolished the re-education through labor system and detainees were released.[2][3] However, human rights groups have observed that other forms of extrajudicial detention have taken its place, with some former RTL camps being renamed as drug rehabilitation centers.[4]

huh

Peace

@lotlizard and NASA activities.

Central Oregon had rather a lot to offer the astronaut-scholars, so they spent a lot of time here. They studied Hole in the Ground, Fort Rock, the Newberry Crater — and, of course, the McKenzie lava fields.

Bend, being a relatively decent-sized town in the middle of all these features, naturally became a sort of field headquarters for NASA scientists and astronauts.

Astronaut Jim Irwin left a piece of local lava rock from Devil's Lake on the moon.

And indeed, NASA officials were at first skeptical about the claim of Oregon lava on the moon.

“I don’t recall any stories about Jim Irwin taking a rock from Oregon and placing it on the surface of the moon,” NASA historian Glen Swanson told Central Oregon journalist Melany Tupper in a 2002 letter. “I think this is pretty unlikely due to the severe weight restrictions and time limitations that the crew had on the lunar surface.”

However, perhaps the letter got NASA thinking about it, because a few years later the space agency got a similar request from Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter Sierra Jenkins, and Eric M. Jones, editor of the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, took a closer look at some of the photographs from the mission. Cross-referencing them with Irwin’s letter to Watson, he was able to identify the rock, and confirmed the story as almost certainly true.

Thus, we can consider — with apologies to martyred Great War poet Rupert Brooke — that there’s some corner of a foreign world that is forever Oregon.

What, like with a cloth or something? </hillary>

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/jul/16/moon-landing-tapes-erased