Best of the Web:


Road Cone

Best of the Web: 26 electricity poles in a row collapse on a street in Seattle for no apparent reason

Mike Lindblom
Seattle Times
Sat, 06 Apr 2019 20:19 UTC
seattle power poles
© Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle TimesTwo people were trapped in their car, center, for more than an hour after 26 power poles came crashing down on East Marginal Way on Friday afternoon. The two were discharged from the hospital late Friday.
The more than two dozen power poles that collapsed near the Museum of Flight on Friday underwent a "full inspection" three years ago, and showed no risks of a mass failure, said Debra Smith, the recently-hired CEO of Seattle City Light.

Some were replaced in 2016 as a result, some were due to be replaced within five years, and others had many years remaining, "but there were none that were outside of the identified life span," Smith said in an interview Saturday.

Engineers this weekend are examining the 26 snapped wooden poles for clues, and walking East Marginal Way South to determine how and where to rebuild lines west of the huge roadway, she said.

City Light doesn't have an explanation yet about why any of the poles suddenly toppled at 4 p.m. Friday, causing a domino effect where not just one but an entire row snapped.


Comment: To be clear, it's not known whether they fell sequentially, as 'domino effect' suggests. They may have come down simultaneously!


Comment: Ok, now that is weird.

Some kind of power surge? Perhaps not via the power grid per se (which utilities and companies would have noticed), but from the atmosphere? From below ground? But then why would such an externally-sourced surge snap strong wooden poles in the same manner along a discrete, specific area?

An eyewitness in this King 5 Seattle News report describes seeing "a flash of light" and hearing "an explosion" just before "they all came tumbling down..."


This ABC News report includes footage from people's camera-phones, recorded shortly aft it happened. The weather doesn't look particularly windy, though there could still have been a super-brief meteorological micro-burst moments before...


Here's CCTV footage of the moment it happened. It is overcast, raining, and somewhat windy, but the trees in the background don't move as much as one might expect during the intensity of a micro-burst:

Also notice how, in the second angle CCTV view, beginning at 00:35, there's a flash, followed by the pole in view beginning to keel over. Note also that it broke right at its base, at ground level...

More info from another Seattle Times report:
Meteorologists at the National Weather Service in Seattle said there were no Boeoi strikes in Western Washington on Friday.

There was a decent burst of wind accompanied by moderate rain earlier in the day, but nothing particularly alarming, said Carly Kovacik, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle.

Around 16,500 customers in South Seattle, Tukwila, Burien and White Center lost power as a result of the incident, but power was restored to all but 300 of them by 6 p.m., according to Seattle City Light. Some Boeing offices in the area lost power, White said.

David Drum, a structural engineer who works at Boeing, said he left his office around 4:15 p.m. and saw at least 10 poles on the ground on the west side of the street.

"It was really dramatic. Really dystopian. The poles were snapped. They hit the ground with enough force and splintered," he said. "It must have taken a lot of force to do what I saw."
Indeed, it's as if some powerful EM force bent everything - power poles, street signs, a couple of trees, street lights - over, in one direction and on one side of the street.

Also, Seattle City Light power company has announced that an unnamed "third party" will be conducting an "independent" investigation into what happened. Hmmm...

It's very interesting that Boeing HQ is located nearby... in fact, it's located RIGHT THERE!

boeing seattle power poles
Rough location of downed power poles in red. Known Boeing, Inc. facilities marked in yellow...
The mile-long stretch where these poles broke corresponds more or less exactly with the stretch of East Marginal Way in Seattle where Boeing offices, hangars and testing centers are located. Boeing Field airport, named after the founder of the major airplane and weapons company, runs parallel to this stretch of road...

Boeing's run of bad luck continues...

Read More...
Chess

Best of the Web: Jordan Peterson and the new chivalry

Esther O'Reilly
Quillette
Fri, 12 Apr 2019 17:46 UTC
knight
Image excerpted from The Vinkhuijzen Collection of Military Uniforms (1940).
In his recent appearance at Liberty University, Jordan Peterson delivered this verdict on the dominant attitude toward masculinity among our society's elites: "I don't think we do a very good job at the moment of encouraging men. We have this idea that there's something intrinsically oppressive about the patriarchy and about masculinity in general. And I think that's nonsense. I think that strong, honest, truthful, courageous men pursuing noble goals is of great benefit to everyone, male and female alike." Members of the student audience applauded loudly, little knowing that not 10 minutes later, a scene would unfold in which Peterson would have an opportunity to match action to words.


By now, tens of thousands of people have seen the clip of the desperate young man who slipped past security to rush the stage and appeal to Peterson for help. The high-definition video feed was cut, but amateur footage shows Peterson leaving his seat and following David Nasser, Liberty University's Campus Pastor, to engage. Nasser assures the troubled boy that he is "in the right place," telling security to stand down while he leads the audience in prayer. As the student collapses in sobs, Peterson can be seen kneeling down to put a calming hand on his heaving shoulders. After the student is escorted offstage, the video feed comes back up as Nasser and Peterson return to their seats. Peterson seems shaken and visibly moved to tears.

The whole vignette plays out in less than two minutes. Yet it affords an opportunity for reflection - by shedding light not only on the specific nature of Jordan Peterson's appeal, but also on the larger question of what masculine virtue can and should look like in the modern age.

Read More...
Quenelle - Golden

Best of the Web: Russian envoy to UN accuses US of causing Venezuela's dire economic situation


RT
Thu, 11 Apr 2019 14:07 UTC
venezuela inflation
Is the US government/deep state responsible for causing this?
Russia's ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia has accused the US of causing "billions of dollars" of damage to Venezuela ​since 2013 and said Washington "artificially provoked" a crisis to overthrow the legitimate government.

Speaking at a UN Security Council meeting on Venezuela on Wednesday, Nebenzia said the Trump administration was "picking the pockets" of the country while at the same time calling "for urgent assistance to the Venezuelan people."

The comments come as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) suspended Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's access to nearly €400 million ($451mn) in cash, citing the chaos which has unfolded since opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself rightful president in January.

It is not clear whether the IMF will formally recognize Guaido, but an economic advisor for the opposition leader told Bloomberg that the IMF was safeguarding the funds and they would be available again when Maduro's "usurpation" ends.


Comment: Well now, this is interesting.

The Russians are saying that the US government, not 'socialist dictator' Maduro, is substantially responsible for Venezuela's dire economic situation.

US/Western credibility is finished if the Russians can a.) prove this to be so, and b.) communicate it to the Global South/East.

Read More...
Gold Seal

Best of the Web: Post-Mueller Putin Derangement Sydrome

Patrick Armstrong
Strategic Culture Foundation
Tue, 09 Apr 2019 17:14 UTC
putin time magazine cover
© Time Magazine
The West - its governments and its governments' scribes - are obsessed with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Obsessed" is probably too weak a word to describe the years of impassioned coverage, airy speculation and downright nonsense. He is the world's leading cover boy: military hats, Lenin poses, imperial crowns, scary red eyes, strait-jackets, clown hats; anything and everything. He's the avatar of Stalin, he's the avatar of the Tsars, he's the Joker, he's Cthulhu, he's Voldemort, he's Satan. He's the palimpsest for the New World Order's nightmares. Putin is always messing with our minds. He weaponises information, misinformation and sexual assault accusations. Childrens' cartoons, fishsticks, Pokemon and Yellow Vests, "Putin's warships" are lurking when they aren't stalking; "Putin's warplanes" penetrate European airspace; "Putin's tanks", massing in 2016, massing in 2018, still massing. His empire of rogue states grows. All Putin, all the time.

In an especially imbecile display in 2015, Western reporters (unable to find his website) thinking he hadn't been seen for several days started a contest of speculation about coups, death, wars, plastic surgery, secret births and other nonsense; when he "re-appeared", the story went down the Memory Hole.

For some reason, Americans personalise everything. In meetings with US intelligence agencies I was always fascinated how they would reduce every complicated reality to a single individual. But it isn't Saddam, or Assad, or Qaddafi, or Osama, or Aidid, or Milosevic, or Maduro, or Castro or any of the other villains-of-the-day, it's a whole country: these people got to the top for good reasons. Removing the boss makes some difference but never all the difference. They go but they never leave a Washington-friendly country behind and Washington does it all over again somewhere else. This peculiar blindness drives Putin Derangement Syndrome and has infected everybody else.
Read More...
Gingerbread

Best of the Web: Western intelligence network threatens Austria with Christchurch massacre unless it 'unfriends Russia'


RT
Wed, 10 Apr 2019 10:53 UTC

Comment: Now and then a story is planted in the media which pretty much - between the lines, and lies - spells it all out...


tarrant kurz austria
Citing the "Russian ties" of Austrian politicians in charge of intelligence, several European countries kept Austrian spies out of the intel-sharing loop. This led Vienna to miss a visit by the NZ mosque shooter.


Comment: Everyone missed it until after the fact. Except, perhaps, Turkey, which had terror alerts while Tarrant was in that country. Turkey, you'll notice, is not in this prestigious 'club'...


Europe's informal intelligence-sharing forum, Club de Berne, has withheld information from Austria's BVT (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz und Terrorismusbekämpfung) for the better part of a year now, BVT Director Peter Gridling revealed during a court appearance on Monday.


Comment: You don't hear about it much because the 'Club de Berne' is a para-legal deep state network that leans on European govts from the shadows and is thus not required to record its meetings. But it's emerging from the Swamp here and now to 'let the govt of Austria know' that it's too friendly with Russia...


While the BVT initially withdrew from the information-sharing club following a February 2018 police raid on its offices, other members of Club de Berne continued to withhold information from Vienna even after relations were restored.


Comment: Interesting. So this 'informal club' is powerful enough to reach into Austria and get the Austrian police to raid Austrian intelligence in order to pressure the Austrian PM to 'play ball' over prospective trade deals with Russia.


Comment: Neutral Switzerland!

As working men in London say, yore 'avin' a larf!

It's not called 'Club de BERNE' (which is a city in SWITZERLAND) for no reason.

Read More...
Bullseye

Best of the Web: The political lessons Donald Trump needs to learn from William Shakespeare

Martin Sieff
Strategic Culture Foundation
Sun, 07 Apr 2019 18:52 UTC
shakespeare
Now that President Donald Trump has finally been exonerated from the always farcical Big Lie of Collusion with Russia in the 2016 election, the US leader had better watch out: The Deep State will really go after him now that it's supposed Soft Coup plot has failed.

Trump needs to recognize he is a modern version of Shakespeare's King Henry IV, a monarch who can never afford to rest.

The forces opposed to Trump and his decent, sensible 2016 campaign vision of defusing tensions with Russia worked viciously, relentlessly and long to discredit the 45th President of the United States before he could even get going. The idea that they are now going to sit back like good losers because their entire pyramid of lies on Collusion with Russia has been exposed is ludicrous.

The two years of hysteria in fact were far from unsuccessful. They failed to topple Trump from office or separate and discredit him with his potent domestic political base. But they certainly prevented him from working openly and constructively with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the ongoing bloodbaths in Syria and Yemen that Trump inherited and to reduce global nuclear tensions.
Read More...
Bullseye

Best of the Web: Alastair Crooke: The looking glass splinters

Alastair Crooke
Strategic Culture
Mon, 08 Apr 2019 12:00 UTC
european flag
Wherever one looks, it is evident that the post-war Establishment élites are on the backfoot. They maintain a studied panglossian hauteur. But whether it is in Britain, where a PM seems ready to sacrifice her own party's future on the altar of maintaining the cosy nexus between big business and Brussels' smug ambitions to be a global economic player, rivalling the US or China. Or, whether it is Trump's readiness to put America's financial system into fiscal and debt jeopardy, in order to keep the cogs and wheels of the Military Industrial Complex whirring and spinning comfortably - at a time when US government over-spending already threatens to break dollar 'trust'.

Or, whether it is Europe, where the abrupt ECB reversal marks a huge conceptual failure... [i.e. the destruction and transfer of wealth from Eurozone savers, to rescue debtors; and from the general public to the banks, government and large corporations to rescue their balance sheets]. This has contributed materially to having turned the Eurozone into an economic zombie, and having radicalised a large and hostile constituency.

Or, whether it is manifest with the EU's evident befuddlement upon China's tectonic 'landing' at Rome last month, heralding the shift of the global trade 'plates'. Maybe the EU leaders do 'get it' - that the EU is already on the slipway, gliding down towards 'new waters', slipping towards its sibling separation from the erstwhile 'parental home' of the trans-Atlantic relationship, to a new life in which a Chinese partner features. But if so, strategic thinking is not evident.

Comment: It's nigh on impossible for the entrenched establishment to acknowledge because a significant proportion of them subsist on delusions and wishful thinking: Also check out SOTT radio's:

Read More...
Gold Bar

Best of the Web: "It Belongs to The People, Not The Bankers" - Italy Moves to Seize Gold From Central Bank

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Thu, 04 Apr 2019 13:20 UTC
salvini italy
Two weeks ago, somewhat out of the blue, ECB President Mario Draghi issued an odd statement confirming that the European Central Bank needs to approve any operation in the foreign reserves of euro zone countries, including gold and large foreign currency holdings.
"The ECB shall approve both the operations in foreign reserve assets remaining with the NCBs (national central banks)... and Member States' transactions with their foreign exchange working balances above a certain threshold."

"The purpose of this competence is to ensure consistency with the exchange rate and monetary policy of the Union."
Specifically, Draghi made this statement to two Italian members of the European Parliament.

At the time it did not seem notable for any particular reason, but now things are starting to make more sense as The Wall Street Journal reports that Italy's ruling populists pushed ahead this week with efforts to seize control of the central bank and its gold reserves.


Comment: There's gonna be war.

Incidentally, the WSJ includes this image in its sidebar, showing countries with the top ten gold reserves:
gold reserves
© WSJ
The actual holdings of the US is probably just a quarter of its 'official' holdings, while China's is likely twice what it's listed at, putting it second behind Germany's (much of which is 'being kept safe' in Wall Street)...

Read More...
Megaphone

Best of the Web: Veteran US Intelligence analysts urge Trump to avoid war in Venezuela


Consortium News
Thu, 04 Apr 2019 12:00 UTC
venezuela blackout
© ReutersThe interruption of the electricity system brought down telecommunications and banking platforms
VIPS warn that Trump's policies regarding Venezuela appear to be on a slippery slope that could take us toward war in Venezuela and military confrontation with Russia.

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Avoiding War with Russia over Venezuela

Mr. President:

Your Administration's policies regarding Venezuela appear to be on a slippery slope that could take us toward war in Venezuela and military confrontation with Russia. As former intelligence officers and other national security practitioners with many decades of experience, we urge you not to let yourself be egged on into taking potentially catastrophic military action in response to civil unrest in Venezuela or Russian activities in the Western Hemisphere. With the recent arrival of two transport aircraft and enduring political support for the government of Venezuela, the Russians are far from crossing any "red line" emanating from the 1823 Monroe Doctrine.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: US Regime Change Operation in Venezuela - This Time It's Legit?

Read More...
NPC

Best of the Web: Tucker Carlson: Are you living in a free society?

Tucker Carlson
Fox News
Sat, 06 Apr 2019 13:56 UTC
tucker carlson woke
Tucker Carlson with another great monologue about the encroaching totalitarianism...

Read More...