Ned retweeted
WHO DESTROYED FRANCE? 🇫🇷
Yes. EVERYONE did.
1. Emmanuel Macron, a man who thinks he's Jupiter but governs like a McKinsey intern who accidentally became emperor. He promised a French Renaissance and delivered a complete disaster. His solution to every catastrophe is another speech about the future of Europe.
2. The ENA Elite, Sciences Po, and the Grandes Écoles, the world's most sophisticated factories for producing highly educated incompetence. They can explain the collapse of French industry in seventeen PowerPoint presentations without ever having entered a factory. They invented a system where the same people run the state, destroy it, and then get promoted to investigate what went wrong.
3. François Hollande, the socialist who declared war on finance and then appointed Emmanuel Macron economy minister. His presidency was so spectacularly mediocre that even his own party eventually pretended not to know him. He managed to make political paralysis look like an exhausting full-time occupation.
4. Jacques Chirac, who promised reform, encountered a demonstration, and immediately discovered the virtues of doing absolutely nothing. He spent twelve years as president shaking hands with farmers while the national debt continued its agricultural expansion. His greatest political achievement was making immobility look presidential.
5. François Mitterrand, who tried socialism in 1981, and discovered economic reality in 1983. He nationalized companies, reversed course, and built a pyramid at the Louvre. Appropriate architecture for a president who occasionally treated the French economy like a pharaoh's burial chamber.
6. The Socialist Left, which believes money grows on government decrees. Their economic model consists of taxing the rich, subsidizing the poor, employing the middle class in public administration, and borrowing whatever remains. When the money runs out, they accuse arithmetic of being fascist.
7. The French Trade Unions, which defend public services by making sure nobody can use them. They stop trains to save the railways, close schools to defend education, and block refineries to protect purchasing power. Their greatest contribution to French productivity is ensuring that nobody produces anything without their permission.
8. The French Right, which has spent forty years promising to reduce public expenditure, reform the state, restore authority, and liberate the economy. Then it wins an election, appoints seventeen ministers, creates four administrative agencies, and discovers that cutting public expenditure might upset somebody. French conservatives defend free enterprise in speeches and administrative regulation in practice. They want a smaller state, provided nobody removes their subsidies, pensions, privileges, public contracts, or favorite government department. Their economic program was essentially socialism with better tailoring.
9. The French Boomers, who inherited affordable housing, expanding industries, and economic growth, then converted everything into pensions and real estate. They bought apartments for the price of a used Peugeot and now explain to young people that homeownership requires sacrifice. They spent their youth demanding revolution and their retirement demanding that absolutely nothing change.
10. Pétain and Vichy, who responded to the greatest military humiliation in modern French history by deciding that collaboration with the occupier was an excellent national recovery strategy. France had already lost the war. Pétain somehow found a way to make losing considerably more embarrassing.
11. The French Generals of 1940, who built the Maginot Line and apparently forgot to tell the Germans they were supposed to attack it. They prepared brilliantly for the First World War, only to discover that the enemy had inconveniently arrived in the Second.
12. The Republican Idealists, who believe France isn't a country but a philosophical concept. Other nations build institutions. France proclaims Values. When schools fail, they organize republican ceremonies. When public order collapses, they deliver speeches about citizenship. When reality contradicts their principles, reality is clearly insufficiently republican.
13. Saint-Simon, Fourier, Cabet, and the French Utopian Socialists, who looked at humanity and decided the problem was insufficient central planning. Fourier imagined communities organized around human passions. Saint-Simon dreamed of society directed by enlightened productive elites. Their descendants now occupy French ministries, designing national happiness through administrative circulars. Two centuries later, the happiness is still missing, but the paperwork is magnificent.
14. The French Revolution, which promised Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, then introduced mass executions, revolutionary tribunals, civil war, and political terror. The revolutionaries liberated France from monarchy, discovered that citizens disagreed about liberty, and began executing one another. France has spent two centuries celebrating this as the birth of political enlightenment. Apparently, mass killing becomes progressive when accompanied by the correct slogans.
15. The Enlightenment, Libertinism, and the Marquis de Sade, who began by liberating humanity from superstition and ended by demonstrating that intellectual sophistication is no guarantee against moral insanity. Voltaire mocked religious authority, Rousseau dreamed of remaking society, and Sade turned transgression into an entire literary industry. Their descendants now believe that every inherited institution is oppressive and every new social experiment is automatically progress.
16. The English, who spent centuries sabotaging French ambitions, financing France's enemies, and preventing French domination of Europe. The Hundred Years' War was essentially a prolonged British property dispute conducted on French territory. Every time France attempted to become a continental superpower, England appeared with a navy, a coalition, and a remarkably enthusiastic willingness to pay somebody else to fight.
17. The Habsburgs, who surrounded France with territories acquired through marriage, inheritance, and a family tree resembling a biological experiment conducted without ethical supervision. They conquered half of Europe through weddings while French kings bankrupted themselves trying to escape the encirclement. The Habsburgs invented geopolitical domination through matrimonial administration.
18. The English, Again, because centuries of warfare were apparently insufficient. After defeating Napoleon, they conquered global commerce, international finance, and eventually the English language conquered French business. Today, French executives speak English to other French executives in Paris. England finally conquered France without deploying a single soldier.
19. The Romans, who conquered Gaul, introduced taxation, centralized administration, and the idea that provincial populations should be governed by distant officials convinced of their intellectual superiority. Two thousand years later, Paris continues to administer France like a Roman governor collecting taxes from barbarians. Rome collapsed. French bureaucracy survived. Live like Rome, die like Rome.
20. Darth Vader, the ultimate French technocrat. He believed every problem could be solved through centralization, intimidation, and an enormous publicly funded megaproject. His Death Star was essentially the French Ministry of Finance equipped with a superlaser. It cost a fortune, concentrated all power in one place, and exploded because nobody listened to the engineers.
21. Saruman and Sauron, the spiritual ancestors of French industrial planning and European centralization. Saruman wanted to replace forests with factories. Sauron wanted to unite the continent under one supreme administrative authority. Both believed that enough central planning could overcome reality. Both were eventually defeated by small provincial creatures who refused to follow instructions.
22. Satan, who has reportedly retired from corrupting France because the competition has become unbearable. He spent centuries encouraging pride, vanity, envy, and destructive political passions, only to discover that French politicians could produce the same results without supernatural assistance. He applied for a position at the Ministry of Finance but was rejected for insufficient administrative experience.
And the French people?
They have spent more than two centuries overthrowing kings, emperors, republics, governments, and presidents, convinced that the next political arrangement would finally solve everything.
They have tried absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, revolutionary dictatorship, empire, parliamentary republics, presidential republicanism, socialism, liberalism, conservatism, and technocracy.
Every generation announces that France needs a revolution.
Every revolution promises to put an end to the failures of the previous regime.
And every new regime eventually discovers that it has inherited THE FRENCH.
Ned retweeted
Five years ago, an important miscarriage of justice occurred.
The story began in April 2018 when David Sabatini, an MIT, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), and Whitehead Institute scientist and professor began a consensual intimate relationship with Dr. Kristin Knouse, a principal investigator with her own lab at the Whitehead.
By January 2020, David sought to end the relationship, but Knouse apparently did not want it to end. When David thereafter started a new relationship and Knouse learned about it, she began a secretive campaign to destroy him by attempting to end his career as a scientist. She did so by damaging his name, reputation, and that of his family with false sexual harassment and other claims, thereby making him unemployable.
Knouse conspired with Dr. Ruth Lehmann, the then- and still current Director (i.e., President) of the Whitehead Institute, in her efforts to destroy Sabatini.
The record presented in court demonstrated that Dr. Lehmann committed to Knouse in October of 2020 that she would fire David. Dr. Lehmann made this commitment to Knouse before any investigation of the facts had taken place.
Seven months after committing to fire him, in March of 2021, Dr. Lehmann, on behalf of the Whitehead, hired the law firm of Hinckley, Allen, Snyder (HAS) to undergo an investigation of David. By July 2021, HAS shared a draft of its conclusions with MIT, HHMI, and the Whitehead, but not with David or his lawyers.
On the morning of August 19, 2021, David for the first time received the more than 200-page investigative report and a calendar invite for a meeting the following day with Dr. Lehmann, the president of HHMI, and the HR directors of both institutions. The report was riddled with errors and unsupported claims about David and his relationship with Knouse.
When David's lawyer immediately thereafter reached out to Whitehead counsel to ask whether David was about to be fired, they confirmed that he would be terminated at the meeting.
On the advice of his lawyer, David immediately resigned from HHMI and the Whitehead rather than attend the meeting. HHMI did not accept his resignation, choosing instead to fire him. MIT put David on leave and ultimately revoked his tenure. David thereafter resigned from MIT.
On August 20, 2021, one day after sending David the HAS report and before David had the opportunity to dispute the facts and the conclusions of the investigation, Dr. Lehmann emailed all employees at the Whitehead informing them that David had violated a number of Whitehead policies "including policies concerning sexual harassment."
The Lehmann public email, David's resignation and firing, and Dr. Lehmann's claims about David's sexual harassment exploded into a major global scandal covered in mainstream, social, and scientific media around the world as it had all of the requisite ingredients:
An attractive target with David, one of the most important scientists of his generation in line for the Nobel Prize, a purported inappropriate sexual relationship with a younger female colleague, and a political and institutional environment where punishing a man for sexual harassment advanced the career and reputation of the person and/or institution that destroyed the career and reputation of the accused, regardless of the validity of the allegations.
As a result of Knouse's claims, Lehmann's sham investigation, and the media onslaught that followed, David lost all sources of income and his reputation was destroyed. All prizes he had been previously been awarded were withdrawn. He was removed from all scientific advisory and other honorary roles other than as a member of our family foundation's (the Pershing Square Foundation's) scientific advisory board.
When I initially learned of the news about David in the summer of 2021, I hired him as a consultant to the Pershing Square Foundation as I believed our small foundation team would benefit greatly by his insights (and he now had the time to help us), and he needed the money to support his family.
At my request and under a confidentiality agreement, David provided us with many hundreds of pages of documents including texts and other communications with Knouse, the investigative report, and David's responses to the allegations so that we could do our own evaluation of Knouse's claims.
I and a member of our family office's legal team carefully reviewed the documents. After a careful review of the empirical documents -- in particular the texts between Knouse and David -- it became abundantly clear that Knouse's actions were that of an angry and jilted lover, not those of a sexually harassed junior colleague. And the investigative report appeared designed to deliver a pre-ordained conclusion rather than a dispassionate fact-based analysis.
The impact of the firings and the destruction of his career and reputation on David and his family was extraordinarily devastating, so much so that we became increasingly concerned that he might commit suicide.
[In order to make sure that David's important scientific research would continue, in February 2023, in partnership with an anonymous donor, we funded $25 million to support David launching a new lab. As you might expect, I was reviled in the press, in scientific journals, and on social media for doing so and for supporting a so-called sex offender.]
On October 20, 2021, David filed suit against Knouse alleging defamation and tortious interference in his career and his contractual arrangements. Thereafter, Knouse brought counterclaims against David.
Today, nearly five years to the date of the filing of the suit, he has finally received justice.
Today, a 13-person jury (seven men and six women) of David Sabatini's peers (12 jurors plus an alternate) unanimously determined that David proved that Kristin Knouse defamed him, tortiously interfered with his contractual relationships (his entire career as a scientist), and tortiously interfered with his prospective advantageous relationships (his future employment). The jury awarded him nearly $10 million in damages including interest.
The jury rejected all of Knouse's claims including her claims that David engaged in quid pro quo sexual harassment and created a sexually hostile work environment.
While five years is a very long time to live under a reputational cloud, justice was finally served today for David, but not completely in my view.
To this day, Dr. Ruth Lehmann remains Director of the Whitehead Institute. Dr. Lehmann worked alongside Dr. Knouse to destroy David Sabatini, an acclaimed scientist and professor. She did not follow due process before she intentionally destroyed David's career and reputation.
Dr. Lehmann nearly killed David with her actions, as had we not rescued David by finding him employment, supporting him publicly to buffer the reputational damage, and supporting his recovery, he could have ended his life and left his son without a father before the world understood what had transpired here.
And the reputational damage was not just to David.
David's brother, Bernardo Sabatini, is one of the most important neuroscientists in the world. To this day, he has had to deal with a large cloud over his family name and reputation. Recently, when the new CEO of our brain institute mentioned that Bernardo Sabatini was on our board, he was asked: "Wasn't he involved in some kind of sex scandal?"
For obvious reasons, the character of the person who runs a scientific institute is of utmost importance. Among other failures here, Dr. Ruth Lehmann committed to Knouse that she would fire David many months before an investigation was even launched and without consideration of the empirical facts.
How can one trust research produced by a scientific institute if its leader is not committed to observing the empirical facts before reaching conclusions that have life-threatening import? We have unfortunately seen massive amounts of scientific fraud which has harmed innumerable human lives and wasted billions of dollars of research funding and time.
For her ethical breaches here, Dr. Lehmann should be fired from the Whitehead. Based on her actions in this case, she is in no position to serve as the leader of an important scientific institute.
I speak with some perspective on how scientific and other institutions should be led. Including the recent launch of the Ackman Oxman Institute, we have funded approximately $1 billion of scientific research and institutions over the last decade or so, and this experience has given us the opportunity to meet the leadership of many of the most important scientific institutions in the world.
To put it plainly, we would not give a dollar to a scientific institute whose leader compromised basic moral principles as has happened here.
At an absolute minimum, the board of the Whitehead should immediately launch a detailed and independent investigation of Dr. Lehmann's actions in the Sabatini case. I would encourage the investigation, among other considerations, to carefully exam all of the correspondence between Lehmann and Knouse, as well their correspondence with the HAS law firm on among other areas, the various drafts of the Sabatini investigative report.
Alternatively, Dr. Lehmann could resign, minimize further distraction for the Whitehead, and save institutional time and resources that would be better spent on research that benefits humanity.
Ned retweeted
My rough assessment of BC municipal election results: The cities being *most* ruined by street disorder and anarchy enthusiastically begged for more.
Ned retweeted
I want to update my original post which was based on another post that laid out the scenario & location of the incident.
I accepted the scenario & questioned the location. In fact I’ve now received a great deal of new information from soldiers who were there & want to correct the record.
So here’s what I know: the location is correct, the scenario (an artillery round caused the explosion) was totally wrong.
Soldiers on the ground are saying 2 training scenarios were happening in that location simultaneously.
First there is lots of static ranges that face the second lake from rifle ranges to a 60 mm mortar range to a grenade range to an antitank range limited to the M72 & 84 mm Carl Gustov. These hand held shoulder fired anti armour weapons have been used by CDN infantry platoons for 4 decades now. They are generally very effective & reliable.
I’m told a Carl G was being fired at a target some 300 metres away from a static cement bay using the standing position. The safety officer stands about 18” away in a cement bay observing every action taken by the loader & gunner. This is very basic infantry training & carried out at least annually.
In this case a high explosive (HE) round was being fired.
Apparently shortly after the HE round was fired it malfunctioned & dove at full speed into the ground striking either a buried natural gas wellhead or pipeline which exploded. There were casualties at this range caused by the blast wave.
Simultaneously there were some 150 soldiers training in fighting in built up areas (FIBUA or Urban Warfare) using blank ammo or just running through the basic drills using dry fire. No live ammunition, no explosives of any type, certainly no live indirect fire. There were 3 wooden structures being used & all three were completely destroyed by the blast. A significant number of casualties occurred here.
The explosion led to a grass fire which was whipped up by strong gusts of wind which blew directly through the units bivouac site (tented area where troops sleep, rest, park vehicles etc) casing additional casualties. The fire then continued on & went beyond the training area into the municipality of Wainwright.
At this point, it appears that this series of incidents began with a round malfunctioning & doing damage that never could have been imagined let alone predicted or prevented.
As was the case last night, the fog of war/crisis still exists so information may still change.
This is not because of a cover up or some imaginary conspiracy.
If the casualty count is only half as high as some are claiming you will have to go back to the darkest days of WWII to find similar numbers & never has a training exercise seen anything like this so a great deal must be done in the immediate aftermath before making definitive public statements so please have patience, please believe everyone is trying to get this right & those who really care are more than willing to correct their earlier errors as the newest information comes in.
Think long & hard about what you post…thousand of soldiers & their families are watching! Please keep them all including the military & civilian first responders in your prayers.
I hope this helps & I’ll potentially post more as it becomes available.
I have no direct knowledge about what happened but based on this post, I think I can add some clarity to things I read in the comments.
There are many types of ranges within the CFB Wainwright training area & there is an attached permanent base area that has training & administrative buildings, dining halls, barracks & even a whole community of houses for married permanent staff members. All ranges are in the training area several kms from the base area.
Some ranges are permanent & fixed in place, some amount to an area on the map & range orders that tell the user what types of weapons can be fired within that designated area. This type of live fire range is likely where this incident took place.
Once you decide that a live fire range is going to happen a Range Safety Officer must be designated. The RSO works with Assistant RSO’s who are qualified to template (safely determine where a weapon can be fired from based on its maximum range, if it’s an indirect fire weapon like an artillery or mortar shell, there’s lots of added factors to be considered) the different weapons that will be used from rifles to medium & heavy MG’s to anti tank weapons to 2 calibres of mortars to artillery. All these folks work with a permanent base organization called Range Control who ensure all the templates are properly done, all the safety rules are understood, all the temporary safety staff are qualified for their jobs & that flags, road barriers & guards on the outer perimeter have been assigned & are in place so no one just wonders into a shit storm.
They assign a safety frequency separate from the tactical frequency. Whenever any obstacles or sensitive things are located within a designated live fire training area or range, they are made known to the range safety staff by Range Control so that buffer or restricted zones can be placed around them.
The area indicated (see the map) near the 2 lakes was never authorized for indirect fire & if my memory is correct, it was never authorized for any form of live fire training.
It should also be noted that prior to any live fire range involving multiple weapons systems (especially indirect fire) & movement by troops, the safety staff would not just rely on maps & templates & written rules, they would be walking the ground repeatedly so they were 100% familiar with what is referred to as the trace, which is just another way of saying, the direction the training troops would generally follow.
A good range gives as much latitude to the tactical officer or NCO in charge to fire & maneuver using the ground to their advantage but still ensuring that their weapons are staying within the safety arcs. This takes a lot of effort by a very large safety team & must also stand up to the inspection by a full time Range Control Officer.
Typically indirect fire is tightly controlled both by the safety staff assigned to monitor the tactical fire controllers requesting the indirect fire & by the safety team at the gun or mortar line positions to ensure the rounds will land safely & avoid any potentially dangerous targets such as a gas well. This is double checked by those doing the firing & their safety monitors several kms away.
So two things jump off the page with this report. One based on my years of working in Wainwright both as a trainee, as permanent staff & as a safety officer for indirect mortar fire countless times including on static & maneuver ranges, I can’t imagine this part of the training area ever being used for any form of live fire let alone indirect fire.
And two, the idea that at least 6 people would have had to miss the fact that a restricted target had been selected or the folks at the gun line had entered the coordinates incorrectly into the targeting computer or set up the gun line incorrectly is beyond imagination.
There are so many safety redundancies built into using indirect artillery fire with troops on the ground it’s nearly impossible to believe.
Hope this helps!
Ned retweeted
The Federal Liberals Want To Restart Full Blown Immigration SOON
Which is the WORST possible outcome for Canada
It's so ridiculously obvious that the only people who benefit from mass Immigration are Big Business & the Rich
The Psyop begins, news items & "experts" commenting
Ned retweeted
So back when I was growing up in the 80s I had this rich friend who had satellite TV. This was pre-Dish Network satellite. It was one of those big as dishes in the backyard.
So we'd be hanging out in his rumpus room trying to find different channels, moving the dish from satellite to satellite and we'd find some strange things.
One strange thing was raw news footage. The overseas stringers would send their unedited raw footage from some shithole country thru the satellite. It was the full tape of whatever they happened to shoot that day.
So you'd see things like an "angry" protest from somewhere in the Middle East. Angry people would be shouting and maybe they'd burn an effigy of Ronald Regan.
Then they camera would pull back, and it was only 10 or 12 guys. And THEN the camera would turn around, and instead of scenes of chaos it was shots of everyday normal life. Stuff like kids playing soccer, ladies hanging laundry, old guys sitting around smoking cigarettes--all of them were seemingly oblivious to the "angry" protestors across the street.
The normal life people acted like the protest wasn't important. Probably because it wasn't important.
BUT the 15 seconds of angry shouting and flames ended up on the nightly news. Because that was the most compelling thing on the tape. And news networks aren't in the business of showing the mundanities of everyday life, so they air the most violent stuff.
So is shit going down in Paris?
Yup, it looks like something is happening and it's not good.
But there's only so much you can glean from a short video clip👍
Ned retweeted
I am sorry man, I will never blame anyone for taking a break. Just remember the algorithm is traitorous, it will show you what you look at the most so if you argue with dumbs it will mostly show dumbs
Treat the like & repost and reply function as a way of "programing" the algo!
Just finished sorting a bunch of once fired 6.5x55 brass and I’m guessing the owner was running some of it through an AG-42B.
Ned retweeted
For many of our friends, democracy = politics
Then they find out democracy is fake, so they assume politics is fake
But actually democracy being fake means that politics is way more real than you thought
A good friend of mine is Indian. Nobody hates Indians more than he does.
Why the fuck are Indians hated so much? What have they done to deserve this level of hatred?
Have Indians promoted terrorism? Have they colonized your countries? Enslaved your people? Stolen your homes? Taken away your families? Kidnapped your children? What exactly have millions of ordinary Indians done to deserve this much racism and hostility?
Is it because they're educated, intelligent, ambitious, hardworking, and competing for the same jobs as you? Since when did intelligence and ambition become crimes? Since when did working hard to build a better life become a reason to be hated?
If your problem is job displacement, then why aren't you directing the same anger toward artificial intelligence?
Why not question AI? Why not question ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Anthropic, OpenAI?
AI has the potential to displace far more jobs than Indian immigrants ever could. Yet somehow, the Indian engineer, the Indian student, the Indian doctor, and the Indian worker become your enemies.
Why? Because it's easier to target a human being with a different skin colour or accent than to confront the actual economic forces changing your world?
And understand one thing clearly.
If an Indian refuses to engage with your racism, if they ignore your insults, if they choose not to respond to your hatred, it doesn't mean they lack a spine.
It means your hatred isn't worth their time.
Indians don't owe you an apology for being educated, ambitious, hardworking, successful, or simply existing.
Being Indian is not a crime. Being successful is not a crime. And your insecurity is not a justification for racism.
Ned retweeted
In 1992, an AA employee called Jason Pegler was walking home from work in Dover, England, when he walked past a public telephone box. As he did so, the phone started ringing.
His curiosity piqued, he decided to answer it. To his absolute astonishment, the call was for…him
On the other end of the line was his colleague, Sue Hamilton. She apologised for disturbing him and asked for help with the office fax machine, which she couldn’t get to work. Jason was dumbfounded.
‘Hold on Sue, how could you possibly know I was beside this particular phone box?’, asked Jason.
Confused, Sue didn’t understand the question.
‘What do you mean,’ she replied. ‘Isn’t this your home number?’
Jason explained that he was still on his way home, and that he’d simply heard a public phone ringing as he walked past and decided to pick it up. (And this is where it gets genuinely bonkers.)
When Sue checked the number she’d dialled, she finally worked out what had happened. She had mistaken his AA *staff* number for his home telephone number!
By what must be the maddest coincidence of their respective lives, that staff number was also the number of the public phone box in Dover that Jason was passing just at the moment she called.
Sue had dialled the wrong number, but reached the right person.
