Recalled to life

View whatever, Sunday, January 04, 2015

I am attempting to get back to writing View essays, and resuming  Chaos Manor Reviews.

It will not be easy and may take some time, but I will get there.

I go home Friday, which seems a long time, but I am learning a lot – odd to learn to walk again – and the staff here is very good. There may be no better place to be after the kind of stroke I had. I advise you not to have one –Harlan Ellison says I did not get the right message from him – but if you do, get to St Josephs for treatment and then to Holy Cross for Rehab. They’re good, and as you see I can type again. I started with one finger, but am now up to two hands, not touch typing – I still look at the keyboard, not the screen –but faster than two finger for me. Painfully slow compared to what I used to do, but better than yesterday.

Alex is off to CES. When he gets home things at the house will be more stable. But we will also have Marsha and her brother Joe to help. Plan is to go home Friday as I said above.

I am now going to try to post this. I am writing in Word as usual. I will post as I usually did. Let’s see what happens, and if it Works I will have advice to the hospitalized..  So far so good I have in live writer…

 

OK it posted. Slow as the net in hospital is slow, but I am alive again

 

 

Things I am learning in stroke rehab

First, Hitchhiker’s Guide is correct, always know where your towel  is – amend that to never let go your old towel until they give you another.  To staff there is an infinite supply, but to you only with help from staff, who must be summoned from something they were doing. No matter how pleasant they are (and you are if you have any sense) it is better to disturb them as little as possible, and you WILL need a towel… 

{More later, this is tiring}

 

 

Big News: Six North Caucasus Insurgency Commanders Transfer Allegiance To Islamic State

I’ve wondered how far the Islamic State might actually spread. I read about inroads in Malaysia. I know Muslim populations exist in Indonesia in significant numbers and we have considerable populations in Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, and India.

The actions of six North Caucasus insurgency commanders could portend a shift:

<.>

Over the past six weeks, at least three Chechen and three Daghestani commanders have retracted their oath of obedience (bayat) to Umarov’s successor as Caucasus Emirate leader, the Avar theologian Sheikh Ali Abu-Muhammad (Aliaskhab Kebekov), and pledged loyalty to Islamic State leader Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi.

How many more rank-and-file fighters have done likewise is unclear, but Kebekov’s warning of an imminent split within the insurgency ranks suggests the number is not insignificant.

</>

http://www.rferl.org/content/islamic-state-north-caucasus-insurgency-commanders-allegiance/26773615.html

The article does not offer data on the size, strength, or disposition of the forces under the various commands mentioned; I assume we could gather this data through Google, Janes, or Stratfor and I may look into it if I don’t see someone else publish meaningful commentary within due course.

But, this is sets an precedent that could prove problematic if it becomes a trend. However, were the Islamic State to spread across a vast area, the expansion could present geopolitical opportunities.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

That was always the significant danger. Recall it was the Kurd Saladin who united Islam against the Kingdom of Jerusalem in Richard Lionheart’s time.   Success brings followers. American Black Muslim’s say that can’t happen, but they do not say it loudly. We live in dangerous times, and the end of history has not happened. Christianity is decadent and not united.

 

* * *

 

The following is as good an analysis of jihad as I know. This is the inevitable result of ISIS Caliphate success.

What, really, has changed?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Broken_Hill

 

One Hundred Years of Jihad in Australia

by Mark Durie

Markdurie.com

<http://blog.markdurie.com/2014/12/individual-jihad-comes-to-australia.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MarkduriecomBlog+%28markdurie.com+blog%29> January 1, 2015

http://www.meforum.org/4947/one-hundred-years-of-jihad-in-australia

Share: <http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.meforum.org%2F4947%2Fone-hundred-years-of-jihad-in-australia>

Be the first of your friends to like this.

Originally published under the title, "From Broken Hill to Martin Place: Individual Jihad Comes to Australia, 1915 to 2015."

Jihadist gunman Man Haron Monis, seen through a window holding a hostage during the December 15 siege at Martin Place, Sydney.

One hundred years ago today, a lethal jihad attack was staged against New Year’s Day picnickers in Broken Hill, Australia. This attack and the recent Martin Place siege, events separated by almost exactly a century, show striking similarities.

For Australians, the anxious question about the Martin Place attack, which has grabbed the attention of everyone, is whether this atrocity is but a harbinger of a further series of deadly attacks on Australian soil, or whether it will pass into memory as an exceptional one-off event, much as the 1915 New Year’s Day massacre in Broken Hill did.

The Broken Hill Massacre

On New Year’s Day, 1915, two Muslim men, Bashda Mahommed Gool and Mullah Abdullah, shot and killed four people and wounded several others before finally being killed by police. They had both come to Australia more than a decade previously.

I won’t include the rest but do go read it.  I recommend it to you as it shows the influence  of the idea of the Caliphate

Dear Jerry,

Your continued recovery is great news indeed. When you wrote (regarding

bitcoin) to the effect that -in an emergency, paper money would at least be useful for starting fires, and that should worse come to worse, .22 shells would perhaps be the best currency of all- you proved in less than a whole sentence that both your wit and your intellect have come unscathed through your recent ordeal.

From the "Department of Absurdity Department," I offer the following:this link (google offers several to the story)

www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-tsa-screening-2014-2

tells the story of TSA agents searching luggage for bitcoin…

All the best to you and yours,

Dave (in Detroit)

Heck, they probably reported finding some..  

 

 

“It’s a golden period to be a leftist in China. Xi Jinping has ushered in a fundamental change to the status quo, shattering the sky.”

<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/05/world/chinas-maoists-are-revived-as-thought-police.html>

—–Roland Dobbins

 

‘That would seem to suggest that the FBI has determined that simply making a call while walking down a city street is enough to free federal law enforcement from its internal restrictions on digging into your phone data.’

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/01/02/senators-question-fbis-legal-reasoning-behind-cell-tower-spoofing/>

———

Roland Dobbins

 

“Two U.S. senators are questioning whether the FBI has granted itself too much leeway on when it can use decoy cellphone towers to scoop up data on the identities and locations of cellphone users. The lawmakers say the agency now says it doesn’t need a search warrant when gathering data about people milling around in public spaces.

“Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman and ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee respectively, have written a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Department of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson about the use of the surveillance technology called an IMSI catcher, though also referred to by the trade name “Stingray."

“Cell tower simulators work by mimicking the legitimate cell towers used by companies like Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint. They catch the signals emitted from cellphones and other mobile devices and extract insight into who owns the phone, his or her location, and other details. That’s a bit like someone setting up a big blue box, posting a United States Postal Service logo on the side, copying information from the letters fooled users deposit in it, and then soon after dumping the accumulated mail into a real mail box. No one need be the wiser.”

Does this make us more secure?  It certainly makes us less free. but that s not the fault of government. Indeed we have power to do things we never could before, even as government uses it to track us. I do not believe anyone has thought this through. After all, you do not have to use a cellphone.  If you do not, this is irrelevant.  If you do, are you less free?  As I sadi, it must be thought through.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.