Category: current events

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Elon Musk recruits quadriplegia subjects for brain-computer interface

Elon Musk, the Tesla, X and SpaceX owner, 52, set up Neuralink to connect human brains to computers and to test the technology on people with paralysis.  A robot will help implant a BCI (brain-computer interface), which will let them control a computer cursor, or type, using thoughts alone.

Neuralink’s study will see a robot surgically place 64 flexible threads – which are thinner than a human hair ¬– on to a part of the brain that controlled “movement intention”.  The wires will allow Neuralink’s experimental implant, powered by a battery that can be charged wirelessly, to record and transmit brain signals wirelessly to an app that decodes how the person intends to move.

The company says people may qualify for the trial if they have quadriplegia due to injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Elon’s company faces rivals including Blackrock Neurotech, which implanted its first of many BCIs in 2004.

Two separate recent studies in the US saw implants used to monitor brain activity when a person tried to speak, which could then be decoded to help them communicate.

Dr Adrien Rapeaux, a research associate in the Neural Interfaces Lab at Imperial College London, told the BBC: “Neuralink no doubt has an advantage in terms of implantation”, as their procedure was robotically assisted.

But Dr Rapeaux – who is also a co-founder of a neural implant start-up Mintneuro – said it wasn’t clear how their method for converting brain signals into useful actions would do better than that used by the likes of Blackrock Neurotech.

According to “bio-conservatives”, the “Neuralink”‘ brain implant suppresses the frontier between natural/artificial, human/machine, living/no-living. Thus, the merger of human intelligence and artificial intelligence sought by Musk would be as much an artificialization of the human as a humanization of the machine.

Elon Musk’s brain chip startup Neuralink has raised $280 million in a funding round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Google Ventures, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman months after securing approval for its first in-human clinical trial. Musk’s companies had received an estimated $4.9 billion in government support by 2015, and they’ve gotten more since even though he pretends to oppose government subsidies when talking to his fanboys and doing his tit talking to the media.  It is not known at what point Elon Musk will market his Neuralink Technology to the Pentagon, but his history suggest if they are buying, he will be selling.

The company did not reveal the valuation at which the funds were raised. In June, Reuters reported that the company was valued at about $5 billion after privately executed stock trades.

“We’re extremely excited about this next chapter at Neuralink,” the company said in a post on Musk-owned social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.  It is not known how proud he is in the number of monkeys Neuralink has killed in trying to rush experiments to get FDA approval for testing his AI “Frankenstein Monster” designs on human subjects.

 

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In The News 4-10-2023

WTI crude oil floats above $80.00 as US Dollar rebound jostles with supply crunch fears

From Article:

On the other hand, geopolitical fears surrounding China, mainly after the dragon nation’s military drills near Taiwan, join the last week’s surprise OPEC+ output cut to keep the Oil buyers hopeful.

Elsewhere, China’s readiness to defend the global economy via strong monetary and fiscal easing at home also allows the Oil buyers to remain hopeful amid optimism at the world’s biggest Oil consumers.

Link: https://www.fxstreet.com/news/wti-crude-oil-floats-above-8000-as-us-dollar-rebound-jostles-with-supply-crunch-fears-202304100542

Comment: China is stimulating its economy while the US FED continues to pretend to fight inflation by raising interest rates.  Meanwhile oil suppliers are supporting inflation by cutting back oil production.  This is not a good formula.  This is a formula to hurt the middle class.

American offices are half-empty. That could be the next big risk for banks

From Article:

Work-from-home bill comes due

Commercial real estate — which spans offices, apartment complexes, warehouses and malls — has come under substantial pressure in recent months. Prices in the United States were down 15% in March from their recent peak, according to data provider Green Street. The rapid increase in interest rates over the past year has been painful, since purchases of commercial buildings are typically financed with large loans.

Office properties have been getting hammered the hardest. Hybrid work remains popular, affecting the rents many building owners can charge. Average occupancy of offices in the United States is still less than half March 2020 levels, according to data from security provider Kastle.

Link: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/10/business/commercial-real-estate-banks-offices/index.html

The world’s busiest airport is Atlanta, once again

From Article:

 

In 2022, around 93.7 million people traveled through Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL), a 23.8% increase in passenger traffic from 2021, according to a report released by Airports Council International.

Link: https://thepointsguy.com/news/atlanta-busiest-airport/

Comment: The article mentions that Chinese Airports temporarily took the top rank during the Covid Hysteria.  My phrasing.  Not theirs.  But American Airports and travel are now coming back strong.

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GOP Leader & Polio Survivor remains in hospital after concussion

Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was being treated Thursday for a concussion and is expected to remain in the hospital for “a few days” after he tripped and fell at a hotel dinner the night before, his spokesman said.

The Kentucky senator, 81, was at a Wednesday evening dinner after a reception for the Senate Leadership Fund, a campaign committee aligned with him, when he tripped and fell. The events were at the Waldorf Astoria Washington DC, formerly the Trump International Hotel.

Read More At the AP

Notes:

I am not sure which hospital he is at.

From Article:

None of the senators had talked to McConnell, though several said they had reached out to wish him well. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said he had sent a note but that it was his understanding that McConnell was not taking calls.

Most of the article implies he is doing well and is conscious but that he is not taking calls is kind of curious.  Also, he didn’t fall at the function he was attending but later, somewhere, in the hotel.  It is not clear, who, if anyone was present when he fell.  It is not the first time he has fallen since his having polio as a child has made stairs difficult for him as an adult.   The articles do not make it clear if police were called when his medical emergency was being handled.  Whether they were or weren’t doesn’t imply anything.  It is just a question to which I don’t know the answer.

I am not criticizing the linked or other articles but it is something of a puff piece that distracts from unanswered questions and seems to fall back to the “on file” information.

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Book

The Noise of Typewriters: Remembering Journalism Hardcover by Lance Morrow

Editorial Reviews
Review

“Terrific!”

—Gay Talese, author of The Kingdom and the Power

“With his preternatural memory, powerful prose, and puckish wit, Lance Morrow brilliantly evokes the highs and lows of twentieth century journalism. He revisits the big stories and creates unforgettable portraits of influential characters, chief among them TIME’s founder Henry Luce, ‘a preeminent American mythmaker’ with ‘a warlord’s air.’ Luce, Morrow writes, ‘had a way of being vindicated by the passage of years.’ This engrossing and highly original book asks hard questions, doesn’t flinch from discomfiting answers, and offers insights for our times. As he writes, ‘Be tolerant of chaos. Be patient. Wait for stillness.’”

—Sally Bedell Smith, author of George VI and Elizabeth: The Marriage That Saved the Monarchy

“This sort of writing is the reason that Morrow is in that exceedingly small club of journalists worth rereading. One looks in vain online these days for anything even close to this kind of prose. This is not the language of the ephemera of the internet.”

—Gregory J. Sullivan, America Magazine

Book

The Best Year of Their Lives: Kennedy, Nixon, and Johnson in 1948: Learning the Secrets of Power

Amazon.com Review

The Best Year of Their Lives is not a typical presidential biography in that it forgoes the comprehensive approach to history. Instead, Lance Morrow shows why 1948 was a watershed year not just for John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon personally, but for the nation as well. That is the year that Johnson, in his bid for the Senate, used huge sums of corporate money to bombard the media with lies about his opponent, finally stealing the election by 87 votes by having a ballot box stuffed (thus earning the nickname “Landslide Lyndon”). Had he lost, he would have arguably been out of politics forever and the course of history would have been changed. At the same time, Nixon, as a freshman congressman, launched his political career by using his seat on the House Un-American Activities Committee to relentlessly pursue Alger Hiss, making himself a prominent national figure in the process. (Four years later he became Eisenhower’s running mate.) Meanwhile, Kennedy was working hard to suppress the fact that he had Addison’s disease. He continued to lie about his health for the rest of his life just as he later hid his reckless personal behavior. Through anecdotes and analysis (including personal contact; all three were presences in Morrow’s childhood), Morrow shows how secrets and lies were to shape the behavior of all of them. This “convergence of personal ambition with secrecy, amorality, and a ruthless manipulation of the truth” would have tremendous implications for the country. The events of 1948 also foreshadow the tragedies and scandals that would end all three of their administrations.Externally, the three presidents were radically different. Internally, argues Morrow, they were identical in many ways in that they “shared a tendency toward elaborately deliberated amorality; all three behaved as if rules were for others, not for them.” Along with a rapidly changing American society, the start of the Cold War, and looming atomic destruction, 1948 ushered in modern politics and these men were the embodiment of it. Absorbing and unconventional, The Best Year of Their Lives adds to the considerable bodies of work already available on all three presidents. —Shawn Carkonen

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Star of TV Show Baretta and One of the Little Rascals dies at the age of 89

Robert Blake Dead At Age 89

Robert Blake died from heart disease at the age of 89.

As a child actor, he starred as Mickey Gubitosi in the “Our Gang” comedies and acted in a movie classic, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” As an adult, he was praised for his portrayal of real-life murderer Perry Smith in the movie of Truman Capote’s true crime best seller “In Cold Blood.”

His career continued with the 1975-78 TV cop series, “Baretta.” He starred as a detective who carried a pet cockatoo on his shoulder and was fond of disguises. It was typical of his specialty, portraying tough guys with soft hearts, and its signature line: “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time,” was often quoted.

In 1993, Blake won another Emmy as the title character in, “Judgment Day: the John List Story,” portraying a churchgoing man who murdered his mother, wife and three children.

In April of 2002, Blake, himself was accused of killing his wife Bakley. He was acquitted of the murder charge but the expense of the trial and then the following civil trial by our corrupt Civil Court System destroyed him financially.

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Our American Injustice System: A Toxic Waste Dump Also Known as the World’s Largest Crime Syndicate Kindle Edition

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$34 Billion Later Georgia Nuclear Plant Begins Splitting Atoms In New Reactor

ATLANTA (AP) — A nuclear power plant in Georgia has begun splitting atoms in one of its two new reactors, Georgia Power said Monday, a key step toward reaching commercial operation at the first new nuclear reactors built from scratch in decades in the United States.

The unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co. said operators reached self-sustaining nuclear fission inside the reactor at Plant Vogtle, southeast of Augusta. That makes the intense heat that will be used to produce steam and spin turbines to generate electricity.

Read More of Story At Yahoo

More Information:

“The average LCOEs for existing coal ($41/megawatt-hour), CC [combined-cycle] gas ($36/MWh), nuclear ($33/MWh) and hydro ($38/MWh) resources are less than half the cost of new wind resources ($90/MWh) or new PV solar resources ($88.7/MWh) with imposed costs included,” the report states. Imposed costs include the need to keep baseload energy like coal or natural gas idling in case the wind or solar are not producing enough energy to meet demand; such costs are often ignored by advocates of wind and solar.

Source: https://www.mackinac.org/blog/2022/nuclear-wasted-why-the-cost-of-nuclear-energy-is-misunderstood

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Books on Nuclear Power

Meltdown: Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima Hardcover – February 23, 2021

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Deadly lake-effect blizzard buries Buffalo in nearly 4 feet of snow

The massive amounts of snow have caused major travel problems throughout the city and resulted in at least multiple fatalities this Christmas, 2022.  The same powerful storm that brought blizzard conditions and severe cold to a large portion of the central United States generated a major lake-effect snow event prior to Christmas. Conditions have turned deadly, with at least 17 fatalities reported in the greater Buffalo area amid nearly 4 feet of snow.

Members of the National Guard were dispatched to Erie County Saturday morning to get people out of stranded cars, targeting the hardest-hit spots in the Buffalo metro area.

Read Full Article at accuweather.com

Active Airport Events at FAA

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Bob Iger Brought Out of Imaginary Retirement and named Disney CEO Replacing Bob Chapek, who replaced Iger in 2020 as CEO

The company is coming off a lackluster earnings report, while growing its streaming business, its streaming business lost $1.5 Billion in the fourth quarter.

Iger has an almost mythical, some might say exaggerated, status as the leader of Disney (DIS). He spent 15 years as CEO and was instrumental in acquiring major brands like Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm, the home to Star Wars. Iger also closed the $71 billion deal to buy most of 21st Century Fox and kicked off the streaming revolution at Disney (DIS) with the creation of Disney (DIS)+ in November 2019.

Disney said Sunday that Iger has agreed to serve as CEO for two years with “a mandate from the Board to set the strategic direction for renewed growth and to work closely with the Board in developing a successor to lead the Company at the completion of his term.”

CEO Bob Chapek isn’t very liked by people on the right or the so called nerd community.

I think the more complex something is, the more you really have to drill down into the basics and we want our content to reflect the rich, diverse world that we live in. And, again, I guess that’s another way of saying, ‘Catering to your audience.’ But the world is a rich, diverse place and we want our content to reflect that. And we’re so blessed to have the greatest content creators and they see it similarly.

“I always say, when someone walks down Main Street and look at the castle, you’re not thinking ‘I’m on one side of the political spectrum or the other,’ You have a shared belief in all the wonderful aspects of what Disney is. I want to use Disney to bring people together, and I think we’ll do that by diverse stories and diverse characters.”

And of course if you are too stupid to know that identity politics does not bring people together but instead segregates and divides people into groups, then you don’t belong in politics or the movie business. The elite media’s agenda to change America from a melting pot where groups share the best of their cultures into a divided society screaming “cultural appropriation” is not good business. And more to the point, if you are too stupid to correctly cast a movie where the actor can be accepted as a given character, again, you don’t belong in the movie business. Although Disney has a disgusting history of being a government propaganda arm in helping the government to hypnotize the masses into believing what the government wants them to believe, at least in the past the propaganda did not stand in the way of entertaining people. Very few people of any background are much entertained by token characters either playing a stereotype or the anti-thesis of a stereotype or seeing white replacement theory being played out right before their eyes.

War movies can be entertaining. Identity Politic Movies can make you to never want to see a movie again but instead make you want to watch someone playing a war game while screaming the n word against their white or black or who cares what their race is, opponents.

Movies should help you to escape reality and make you feel good or perhaps think a little bit in an entertaining way. It is even okay if a movie moves you to the point of wanting to cry. But movies should never try to make you apologize to any group of people who hate you and want you dead.  And anyone who makes such a terrorist propaganda film should be put on a no fly list.

Will Iger turn Disney around? No. Behind the scenes he had already cut Bob Chapek’s balls off and made him cry. Iger never really stopped running the company into the ground. Many if not most of the mistakes made at Disney were not made by Chapek though he defended those mistakes because he wanted to keep his cock from being cut off by Iger. But make no mistake, those mistakes made at Disney were Iger’s mistakes. Stockholders should fire the entire damn board and hire a new board to bring in new leadership.

This article is high in opinion.  It may contain errors. You may know the facts better and have a different opinion. That is cool.

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Google Stadia Will Shut Down in 2023, All Purchases to Be Refunded

Stadia is being discontinued

Google initially announced Stadia during the Game Developers’ Conference in San Francisco in 2019. Via Stadia, Google claimed, it would allow users to play video games via almost any networked device, via cloud access to Google’s servers.

The pitch to consumers was that you don’t have to spend thousands on high-end consoles or PCs to play video games when you can log into Stadia via your current tablet or phone and run the newest Assassin’s Creed on maximum settings.

Now four years later, or there about, it is being discontinued.

People using Stadia will still to be able to access to their game libraries, including Pro games if you had an active Pro subscription as of Thursday. In an email sent to players, Google warned that publisher support for games may vary, and it’s possible that your gameplay experience may be affected during the shut-down period (suggesting that some games could vanish or lose features early).

Explaining the move, Stadia vice president and general manager Phil Harrison noted Google’s investments in gaming through its Google Play digital distribution service, its cloud tech and YouTube streaming.

“A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia,” he said in the blog post. “And while Stadia’s approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service.”

Many employees on the Stadia team will be reassigned to other roles within Google, the blog post noted.

Opinion:

Google could not deliver a healthy user base or eco-system for game developers. Stadia never had a huge number of users and the warnings and bannings did not help Stadia. Imagine if youtube were just starting today under its current censorship cloud, does anyone think they would succeed? Remember Google Video also was failing even before they bought and turned their focus toward youtube. And remember how google attempted to strong arm their users into using google plus and yet it also failed. I can’t remember the name of it but there was even a google version of twitter that didn’t survive. Right now, because of censorship, google search is crippled and in time even that may fail. It certainly is not what it was in 2018.

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In The News 9-28-2022

Bank of England will buy UK bonds at ‘whatever scale’ necessary to halt crash

London CNN Business —

The Bank of England said Wednesday it would buy UK government debt “on whatever scale is necessary” in an emergency intervention to halt a bond market crash that it warned could threaten financial stability.

Investors have been dumping the pound and UK bonds since the government of new Prime Minister Liz Truss on Friday unveiled a huge package of tax cuts and increased borrowing aimed at getting the economy moving and protecting households and businesses from sky-high energy bills this winter.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/28/investing/bank-of-england-uk-bond-market/index.html

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Storm Ian strengthens to Category 4 hurricane as millions urged to evacuate Florida Gulf Coast

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned that people in Collier, Lee, Charlotte and Sarasota counties were no longer safe to evacuate and urged people to get off the roads and stay inside.

“You need to get to higher ground, you need to get to structures that are safe,” DeSantis said, adding that widespread power outages would leave millions without electricity once the storm strikes.

U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Deanne Criswell said she worried that too few Florida residents were taking the threat seriously. [opinion: Apparently women in the Biden administration are too stupid to know that evacuation requires gasoline and in many areas around Tampa, even yesterday, it was nearly impossible to buy gas. Or maybe evil Connecticut Yankees like Biden want Southerners stranded on the side of the road as a huge storm approaches.]

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/millions-urged-evacuate-florida-gulf-coast-braces-hurricane-ian-2022-09-28/
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The 30 Deadliest U.S. Mainland Hurricanes

Rank Name/Area Year Category Deaths
1. Great Galveston Hurricane (TX) 1900 4 8,000
2. Lake Okeechobee (FL) 1928 4 2,500
3. Katrina (LA/MS/FL/GA/AL) 2005 3 1,200
4. Cheniere Caminanda (LA) 1893 4 1,100-1,400
5. Sea Islands (SC/GA) 1893 3 1,000-2,000
6. GA/SC 1881 2 700
7. Audrey (Southwest LA/North TX) 1957 4 416
8. Great Labor Day Hurricane (FL Keys) 1935 5 408
9. Last Island (LA) 1856 4 400
10. Miami Hurricane (FL/MS/AL) 1926 4 372
11. Grand Isle (LA) 1909 4 350
12. FL Keys/South TX 1919 4 287**
13. New Orleans (LA) 1915 4 275
14. Galveston (TX) 1915 4 275
15. Camille (MS/LA) 1969 5 256
16. New England 1938 3* 256
17. Diane (Northeast U.S.) 1955 1 184
18. GA/SC/NC 1898 4 179
19. TX 1875 3 176
20. Southeast FL 1906 2 164
21. Indianola (TX) 1886 4 150
22. MS/AL/FL 1906 3 134
23. FL/GA/SC 1896 3 130
24. Agnes (Northeast U.S.) 1972 1 122
25. Hazel (SC/NC) 1954 4* 95
26. Betsy (Southeast FL/Southeast LA) 1965 3 75
27. Great Atlantic Hurricane 1944 3* 64***
28. Carol (Northeast U.S.) 1954 3* 60
29. Floyd (NC) 1999 4 56
30. NC 1883 2 53

* – Moving more than 30 miles an hour

** – Over 500 of these lost on ships at sea; 600-900 estimated deaths

*** – Some 344 of these lost on ships at sea

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New malware can steal your credit card details — and it’s spreading fast

Initially spotted in August 2022 by Cyfirma, the malware, hidden away within game cracks, has a lot of power. It can steal data found within Chromium and Gecko-based browsers, including passwords, cookies, form autofill information, and credit card data. Moreover, it targets cryptocurrency users by attempting to steal data from their wallets as long as they’re installed as a browser extension.

If you want to make sure you’re not at risk, right now, all you have to do is not download any illegal files (such as cracked games or bots for games). However, it’s a good idea to stay vigilant and also make sure you’re using one of the best antivirus software, keeping it updated, and scanning each file you download. If you own cryptocurrency, consider moving your funds to a fully-offline cold wallet as opposed to a desktop wallet.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/erbium-password-stealing-malware-subscription/
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Self-proclaimed ‘incel’ charged with pepper spraying women in hate attacks in Costa Mesa

https://abc7.com/incel-hate-attack-johnny-deven-young-costa-mesa/12273895/

Young is charged with four counts of assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury, four counts of illegal use of tear gas, all felonies, and four misdemeanor counts of violation of civil rights. He also faces sentencing enhancements for hate crime and personal use of a deadly weapon.

Young faces up to 13 years in prison if convicted at trial. He has a prior misdemeanor hate crime conviction in Nevada, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors said Young is a self-proclaimed “incel,” a member of an online community of men who call themselves involuntary celibates and express rage against women.

“No one should have to live in fear that they could be indiscriminately attacked and then publicly humiliated on the Internet because of their gender,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said. “This behavior is disgusting and the celebration of this behavior by like-minded individuals is completely unacceptable. These charges send a very strong message to that entire community that we will not tolerate violence against women in any form.”

Opinion: Obviously, I am not defending what this guy did. No!!! But this shows how stupid it is for the government to label anything a hate crime and prosecute it as a hate crime. The prosecutor in this case is in his self guilty, from a moral perspective if not a legal perspective, of a crime. He hates incels and has grossly overcharged the case. And a reminder, the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution is being gutted by both the left and the right. From hate crime laws, to reversing Roe v. Wade, to trying to force employers to force their employees to get an untested vaccine, the Fourteenth Amendment to our Constitution is being gutted.

And let me repeat, I am not defending what this guy did. But the elite and social media treating men, especially white men like second class citizen, is part of what has fed this movement of self-avowed celibate men. And contrary to what the idiot prosecutor says, overcharging this case does not send a message to discourage this man’s unacceptable behavior but simply makes the point of why these young men are so fucking angry against those they perceive as their enemy. It doesn’t help the situation but makes the situation worse, which I suspect is actual agenda of the prosecutor so he can lock even more young white men up … and have all the Karens to himself. LOL

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Syrian Girl: 2020 Is 2003 All Over Again

I don’t really fully agree with this, but there are some points.  It is a different perspective.  I am not going to do an analysis on this because I could be wrong on some things and it in itself covers different perspectives.

Syrian Girl joins The Alex Jones Show
There is also an interesting caller that really throws some major information out.

Continue reading Syrian Girl: 2020 Is 2003 All Over Again