Truman was involved in a collision with a freighter.

Even though I'm just a dumb civvie, it looks impossible for something like that to happen without a LOT of screw-ups.

How did the freighter end up within the carrier exclusion zone? How could it get THAT close to such a critical asset? With Truman involved in the strikes not too long ago in the Red Sea against Yemeni targets, and Yemen being the site where the suicide boat attack occurred against the Cole, why wasn't the whole group on a heightened state of alert for potential problems?

I hope this doesn't violate Politics protocol here on The Boards, but there are so many screw-ups involved in this incident that it looks like a whole system of incompetence, and I won't be happy until EVERY last one involved in this gets scalped!

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Friday, February 14, 2025 - 11:16 am: Edit

It's a crowded area right at the exit of the Suez Canal into the Med. You look at the AIS and there are a LOT of ships out there. And for some reason Truman wasn't broadcasting AIS.

Bet OD, CO, XO and others are relieved of command in the near future.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Sunday, February 16, 2025 - 04:44 am: Edit

Well - it looks like the US with VP Vances comments at the Munich Security meeting - the US is going to play very hard with NATO and the support of the Ukraine.

So, whats the Peace deel going to look like?

CLearly, Ukraine will not want to be ignored (like the French/UK v German Munich Peace and Czechoslvaikia) and be told 'what the deal is, if they want future support'.

Russia keeps the Crimea and a strip of land makig a land bridge to it - plus some of the Donbas reggion (25% of it??).

Ukraine gives up the small Russian land areas it gained - and Russia gives up the rest?


Althugh NATO membership may or may not be on the table - no doubt some security agreement could be included in the deal (US Bases some 'Peace Keeper' troops there) - to give the Ukraine some protection against an invasion in 5 years time.

Clearly, if the US feels either side isn't playing fair, it can threaten to give massive aid to the Ukraine if "Russia's request" is felt to be too greedy and equally can threaten to withdaw all aid if "Ukraine's response" is felt to be too inappropriate?

If the Ukranian Counter-attacks had been more succesful, they might have been in a stronger position (I think corruptuon issues remain a concern - what has happened with all the equipment sent) and although the rest of NATO might be willing to send more good money, I think even those in public who are promsing more help, behind closed doors there is a certain level of disappointment - and so although Russia will not get all that it might want - it certainly can get enough to claim a 'win' (for it's domestic consumption)?

Post War, I think the Russian armed forces might have some simple questions to ask (with the wrong answer being if your luckty, which Gulag would you like to stay in and if your in the wrong, here is the bill for the bullet...).

Who lied (or pocketed) the most?

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Sunday, February 16, 2025 - 08:18 am: Edit

Well, you may recall recent discussion of continued US military aid for Ukraine in exchange for some form of mining concessions regarding rare-earth minerals, yes? The idea was raised (in large part because China has banned export of rare-earth minerals to the U.S.), and Zelenskyy was enthusiastic about hammering out an arrangement.

Well, the administration tried it, and did so in the most ham-fisted way possible: they demanded HALF of Ukraine's mineral resources -- all mineral resources, not just rare-earth minerals -- in exchange for continued military aid...and offered NO security guarantees to back it up.

For obvious reasons, Zelenskyy declined.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Sunday, February 16, 2025 - 12:29 pm: Edit

I am concerned that the bullying and ham handed "negotiations" will lead our allies to work to shut the US out. Cars, agriculture, etc.

NATO without the US is still pretty powerful. trump is right that the NATO members have been freeloading for a long while.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Sunday, February 16, 2025 - 12:55 pm: Edit

Wonder if any country might make a covert deal with Ukraine to supply "mercenaries." Then a lightning campaign to "liberate Kallingrad." Given its size I can't imagine a well prepared force taking more than 24 hours.

Step 1) SF supported by armored columns seize the armories where the "average" Russian infantryman has his rifle (etc). I sincerely doubt the Russians let Ivan Ivanov take his rifle and RPG home with him. 2) Laagers where any armored vehicles are parked are taken immediately. 3) EVERYONE in the place has their ID checked. If they have a military ID, POW status in Ukraine. If their address is not in Kallingrad, they get politely "repatriated" back to mother Russia on a train. 4) Any nuke storage is taken in the first hour. 5) Ships get taken at anchor... If they try to leave they get met at the exit by a few submarine launched torpedoes. 6) Closing any airfields shouldn't be hard.

And of course, large scale exercises in Latvia/ Lithuania, Estonia, Finland and Norway keep alive the idea of "Liberating" St Petersburg.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Sunday, February 16, 2025 - 02:31 pm: Edit

Mike

Other than announcing it here.... what chance is there that it would kept secret for more than 6 hours, with 1,000's of 'merceneries' arriving in Ukraine?

All those snaps of Men sending pictures of where they are going .... appearing on Facebook???

Plus - any base with Nukes, I would not not want to live within 100 miles of it, incase the base commander DOES follow their (probabaly reasonable) orders and defends the base with Nuclear force?

By Dana Madsen (Madman) on Sunday, February 16, 2025 - 08:32 pm: Edit

A lot of people, including senior leadership of countries, have a misunderstanding of rare earth minerals. The offer the US made to Ukraine is another example. Or maybe they do understand, and have some other agenda.

One, rare earth minerals aren't particularly rare, different ones exist in many places around the world, including in the US, Canada, Australia, Nordic countries, (including some in Greenland), Ukraine, as well as many countries that aren't aligned with the western democracies (parts of Africa, Russia, China, etc). They are called rare earth because even in a place that has them, the percent of the mineral in the surrounding soil/rock is very small.

So if they are in many places, what's the issue. First to mine them you need to mine large tonnages of the surrounding rock and process it to get out the less than 0.1% rare earth, ie output in the pounds. Two, processing the minerals is environmentally unfriendly, lots of other bad chemicals are needed through multiple steps to extract the mineral you want. This is a solvable engineering problem, but in Western societies we don't like poisoning rivers, landfills, tailing waste, so we have to add a lot of extra expensive steps to have a clean environment at the end. Again solvable, you could set up a refinery outside Houston, or any major city, but it would be expensive to have a clean output. China doesn't worry about this as much, so they process rare earth minerals for a fraction of the cost that we can in the west. It's not just cheap labour, they are willing to accept environmental issues. For us, even in poor African countries, we in the west don't allow our mining companies to just set up mines that are completely environmentally irresponsible, even if we could bribe the local leaders to let us.

So almost no major western mining company will mine rare earths, if China will process them for $X per pound produced, and it costs $5X or $10X in the west, it's a money loser. There are many different types of rare earth, and the odd one can be profitable, but by and large that's the deal.

There has been talk about subsidizing production by Congress, but the methods offered aren't interesting for mining companies (who like to make money for their shareholders). They offer initial tax credits or short term purchase agreements, but the mining company goes, it's going to cost me in the range of 0.5 billion to 2 billion to set up a mine & processing plant, and you might subsidize it for a bit, and then maybe the next congress will stop the subsidy and leave me with a major unprofitable operation and capital loss. So uh, thank you but no.

The next item to understand on the problem. While rare earths are rare, and absolutely required for some modern technologies, including in military programs. They don't need a lot of them. Some of the minerals only sell a couple hundred pounds a year for total prices of couple hundred million. Ie when they say billions of $'s of rare earths, that's 30+ years of production. So billions comes from combining multiple types together. Compared to the oil marker, or the iron ore, or copper, aluminum, etc, this is tiny, tiny small potatoes.

So China has a near lock on supply, they only sell the minimal amount needed by western industry for that years production, not letting us build up a stockpile. This gives them the option of threatening to cancel shipments. Our setting up a mine in short order isn't possible. Probably takes at least 2, more likely 3 to 5 years to set up a processing plant (assuming no time for permitting/environmental), FYI, my day job is planner for large construction projects for an engineering company in the Canadian mining industry. I haven't specifically worked on one of these, but the principles of building a processing plant are going to be similar.

So, please, save your money, don't invest in a rare earth mine in Greenland. The only advantage there is maybe the west could force through minimal environmental standards and the local greenlanders would allow toxic waste to flow out to the ocean to get into the food supply of the fish / seals they eat. Denmark wouldn't let that happen, maybe as a US protectorate, and no EPA reviews, it could. other than that, I could think of many better places to build a large project. The cost of building a plant there would be a lot higher, brutal cold weather, no infrastructure, no work force (anyone have experience trying to pour concrete foundations when it's -40 degrees outside, I do, it sucks), or are you only going to work the 4 months of summer and spend 6 years building the place.

So Ukraine, well, if Ukraine is willing to accept processing plants with no environmental protections, maybe. But again, there is probably no money to be made unless someone is willing to guarantee prices greater than the Chinese. Like, maybe you could get the cost down so it's only 2 to 3 times more expensive than Chinese production. Also, I've seen a map, a lot of the rare earth mineral deposits are currently in Russian held territory. Not all, but a lot.

Is the problem solvable? Sure go to the biggest western mining companies (BHP, Rio Tinto, Vale, Glencore), ask them for proposals to provide a supply of 50 years of mineral X. They will say, here, sign a guaranteed, not cancelable $20 billion contract, it will take us 10 years to go through permitting and build a mine, and then over the next 10 years we'll give you your 50 year supply. You say, over the next 50 years we could buy this from the Chinese for $2 billion, provided they don't stop selling at some point but now they will no longer have a hold over us. Also, expect them to limit supply or increase price over the 5 to 10 years it takes us to get to production.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, February 16, 2025 - 08:32 pm: Edit

It has been said that the US doesn't want to put its own troops into Ukraine, but others might.

NATO membership is a non-starter, but a security arrangement will be part of things.

I think the tough nut will be the land strip.

Jessica's characterization of the mineral deal offered to Ukraine doesn't seem to be completely accurate, but is the usual "worst possible light" version of what was really discussed and is still being discussed.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Monday, February 17, 2025 - 12:46 am: Edit

Nato membership without the US but with Ukraine, is not unlikely. After all, alliances only work if the members share a common enemy, a common threat to their existence. That is now in doubt with the US.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, February 17, 2025 - 06:49 am: Edit

I don't think anyone can have any doubt Russia is the enemy of the US. China is the #1 enemy, but Russia is definitely #2. Then North Korea and Iran.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Monday, February 17, 2025 - 07:56 am: Edit

Well, it looks like 'Europe' is scrabbling for a place at the peace talks table - although Russia seems to have said only the US is now relevant (which mirrors what the US more or less said last week)?

Providing the required Peace keeper force is perhaps about the best Europe can now get - once the big boys have decided what the peace deal will be.

Interesting that the intiai main 'peace talks' are taking place in Saudi Arabia- perhaps they want a seat at the Peace table too?

So whats the guessing - the US and Russia agree the terms and a 'smiling' (that fake smile everyone knows is for the cameras) Ukraine accepts the terms of the deal??

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, February 17, 2025 - 08:16 am: Edit

Your guess is as good as mine. Europe always wants to be relevant without actually paying for the privilege.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Monday, February 17, 2025 - 09:05 am: Edit

SVC - absolutely agree and the BBC has a really good article about this on one of their feeds at the moment.

They have 2014 and 2024 Defence Spending as a % of GDP..... only the US and UK was over 2% back in 2014 (so, the UK can hold it's head up high and say 'we spent what we was required to do').

Italy and Spain are still well below 2% - but most naions are over 2% now (noting the Poles are top of the list now at 4.12% - amazing what money you can find down the back of the Sofa when the Wolf comes knocking).

Hardly surprising the US has get fed up with paying the Bar Bill - for some Europeans to get drunk at the US expense!!

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Monday, February 17, 2025 - 01:35 pm: Edit

I dunno about leakage.

Poland has plenty of troops and hates Russia. "Mercenaries" are just not Ukrainian/ Russia troops. Like North Korean. So a couple brigades and zing!

As for nukes being detonated, it doesn't work that way. The base commander probably doesn't have the codes or chain of command to give the go to use a nuke. There are all kinds of safeguards, both physical, mechanical and electronic. Stuff like special padlocks, permissive action links, vaults, multi factor authentication. etc. Of course, since the US just FIRED all the NNSA experts, there may be some people with the necessary expertise looking for work.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Monday, February 17, 2025 - 03:06 pm: Edit

Mike

Codes etc - not the sort of risk I think we want?

But with the NNSA - it just shows what decions can have unforseen consequences.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, February 17, 2025 - 04:59 pm: Edit

I am going to try to explain something that is very controversial in a non-partisan way. There will be no discussion or further posts. This is a news item buried so deep I found it only because of old connections to people in dingy offices, but it is true and you each need to decide how you feel about it.

A foreigner walks up to a border gate and says "I am persecuted at home. I want asylum. If you send me home I will be murdered." There are two things that can be done under US law.

CHOICE ONE-IMMIGRATION HEARING: The individual is due a hearing so a judge can determine if he is a legitimate asylum seeker or a just another economic refugee. Under RED's "remain in Mexico" plan, they wait a week or two for a hearing where 98% will be rejected and told they don't get in. Under BLUE's "Catch and release" plan, the refugee (and his wife) are given a hearing date months or years in the future (to give them time to meet with a government-funded lawyer and "gather evidence" of their persecution at home), and are then flown to a random city around the country and allowed to collect assistance, get a job, produce anchor babies, contact legal aid groups to be coached in how to convince the court, etc. Something over 80% skip the court date and become "illegal aliens" while those who do show up are, 98% of the time, rejected and told to leave in 30 days (90% or more of them don't leave but become illegal aliens if they haven't managed to produce an anchor baby).

CHOICE TWO-EXPEDITED REMOVAL: Two ICE agents interview them, one as the prosecutor and the other as the "judge". The refugee does not get time to gather evidence, consult a lawyer, or meet with a legal aid society. His hearing is held within a day of his arrival and 99% are rejected and are escorted directly to the border, no hearing, no delay, no order to self-deport, they are just GONE and are banned from trying to re-enter within five years. (If they try again, they are rejected without any hearing and might even be prosecuted.) A very few are scheduled to meet a real lawyer and a real judge at some future point (see above).

That's how things are at the moment. Note that Obama and Clinton and Bush and Trump-45, and pretty much every president has used #2 many times. That is how Obama and Biden claimed to deport more than any other president; those "deportees" are turned away by an expedited removal hearing and never actually "arrived".

Recently, RED signed an executive order which used presidential discretion within existing law to direct that everyone who arrives be screened for expedited removal right away (as opposed to almost none of them). The vast majority of them will be turned away on the spot and escorted out of the US immediately. Some of them will then hire coyotes to slip across the border.

Then we have illegals of all types (slipped across the border, ignored a deportation order, skipped a court date, visa overstays) found inside the US. In theory, any of these caught can then (if they get in touch with a legal aid society) try to argue their way to an immigration hearing. RED has directed that all of these be treated by expedited removal which has been happening for three weeks. Anyone deported this way is banned for five years (or permanently if an actual criminal).

Just to make things fun, RED fired 20 brand new immigration judges hired by BLUE during the last month of his term. Seems that some of these new judges let it slip that they were going to find just about everyone who came before them as a legal refugee no matter what story he told (or maybe this was just obvious or just assumed to be obvious). This has outraged BLUE pundits on TV. It has also made the backlog of actual hearings worse.

Then we get to the issue that is likely to cause a BLUE riot. Rumor has it that once we get the criminals out, those "applied for refugee status" people who have future court dates will be brought to an expedited removal hearing and kicked out. This is going to cause a wave of lawsuits trying to delay the plan at least until the mid-terms. Not every RED supporter thinks this is fair; those would rather that the refugees be brought in for a real judicial hearing right away after RED hires 50 new immigration judges.

AGAIN, this is just information you should have that you might not have seen without digging. No replies, no discussion. I tried to be fair and note that not everyone agrees with any of the various steps and actions above. You are now informed. If you have something to say, email me and if I really did miss something I will note your point in a later post.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, February 18, 2025 - 01:06 pm: Edit

Jean, I've got this today, you take care of the Orions.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, February 18, 2025 - 03:45 pm: Edit

THE STORY: Twenty million people 100-159 years old are getting social security checks, which is obvious fraud. Either nobody told the government that granny died or the government didn't notice.

THE REALITY: Well.... it turns out that when the government doesn't know the actual birthday for someone for whatever reason the software defaults to to 20 April 1875 or in some cases 1885, 1895, etc. So there just might not be any vampires drawing social security checks but people in their 80s who are incorrectly listed with a 19th century birthday. This opens more (and more complicated) questions (you can imagine why), and there may still be fraud, incompetence, dead people, etc., but it's not quite a clear cut as DOGE reported.

I know from my grandfather's decades of genealogical research that it wasn't that uncommon for people born in the 1800s and earlier to have no real idea when they were born in some backwoods cabin in a county where only 3 people could read. It wasn't unknown for people born during 1900-1920 to not actually know their birthday.

So more fascinating and curious than outrageous. There may still be fraud, dead people cashing checks, but it might be more complicated.

I will note that I only heard a treasury official explain this once on the news channel I watch and the talking heads have studiously ignored that information since that time. On the news channels I rarely watch they are more concerned with Elon getting people's social security numbers than with the fact that there really are not any people 150 years old in this country. Nobody really seems to care about the truth.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, February 18, 2025 - 05:17 pm: Edit

UKRAINE PEACE TALKS
The result was ... well, not much, only to create a US-Russia working group to look into it.
Ukraine is hurt that they were not invited. Trump says too bad they feel hurt but they could have negotiated a deal on their own any time.
Putin says no NATO troops in Ukraine; Trump says NATO troops will be in Ukraine. Zelensky says "did anyone ask me what I think?"
Trump agrees with Putin that Ukraine needs to hold new elections. Zelensky says Russia needs new elections.
Everyone agrees that the war needs to end, but both sides think the other side is on the verge of collapse.
Trump thinks that the EU owes Ukraine $250 billion to make up for not giving Ukraine as much as the US gave them.

By Jason E. Schaff (Jschaff297061) on Tuesday, February 18, 2025 - 06:50 pm: Edit

A couple other issues with "150-year old people getting social security checks"

First, if you read the finer details of the story, the 20-ish million people number was obtained by searching SSA databases for people >100 years old for whom the value of the "dead" field was FALSE. It doesn't mean that the person is receiving social security payments, only that SSA has no record of the person's death.

Second, the first national database of death records (CDC's National Death Index) was only created in 1979. Any death records prior to that are purely a result of voluntary reporting.

Put together, it is entirely reasonable that there are many millions of people in SSA records who are dead but for whom SSA has no record of their death. It could be argued that there should be some age (130?) at which the database automatically sets someone's record to a "presumed dead" status. However, that would probably require some sort of rulemaking within the CFR, which is a long and convoluted process.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, February 18, 2025 - 09:33 pm: Edit

And the question that matters is not "are there dead people in the database" but "are there dead people receiving checks that are fraudulently cashed by relatives or criminals?" I suspect there are, but I doubt it's 20 million, or 2 million, or 200,000.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Tuesday, February 18, 2025 - 10:19 pm: Edit

One of the Soviet Republics had an inordinate number of citizens over a hundred years of age, according to one old story I vaguely recall.

The investigation discovered a number of younger people, back in the early days of Soviet integration, had assumed the identity of older relatives (who were no longer with them) as a way of avoiding conscription into the Soviet military.

I don't want to go TOO far out on a limb, here, but I wonder if some of these cases might be similar, and I think it might be more likely than vampires or Highlanders.

(Of the latter, there can be only one)

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Tuesday, February 18, 2025 - 11:22 pm: Edit

I could believe, before the age of Computers (considering the ages), there are millions of people without any family/kin, the report of their death never made it into the database.....
Then people disappear all the time and are never declared dead.....

There are numerous reasons, which in time could add up very quickly, especially with lazy and incompetent people working in the system....

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Wednesday, February 19, 2025 - 03:12 am: Edit

Fair to say - these issues are all 'first world problems'.

I occasionaly come across clients from the Indian Subcontinent, who was born or married prior to the seperation of India and they have zero formal documents showing they was 'born or married'.

The first of a month is therefore a fairly common day to be noted in Western documents.

(There is a long winded way in getting documents, if the Village Elder in effect kept records - but thats not easy and locating where they was born is even harder, due to the Seperation).

So UK Insurance Companies don't always require such documents - if they can't be provided and there is enough evidence to support who they say they are (they usually have lived 60+ years in the UK, so if fraud was intended, thats a fairly long time period before enabling it!!!)

So it's alot easier to provde who is alive or dead in the West - but Fraud will always happens.

Where there is 'money' - there is a way.