The failure of the western intelligence services

[xul]

19 hours ago, WestCanMan said:

Everything you said there is wrong xul.

1) blocking flights from China obviously wasn't useless, that's nothing more than an idiotic partisan political attack with no basis in reality. The whole concept of quarantining people is based on the fact that keeping sick people where they are, and not letting them mingle in unaffected populations, is THE KEY FACTOR in slowing the spread of a virus. 

2) The US didn't ban their own people from coming back to the US at any point, and yeah, being quarantined sucks but the CEO of 3M is just a person and a potential carrier. 

3) Canada has less covid patients because NYC has 1/5th of our population living in 800 sk qm, and the population of BC crams into the NYC subway every day. The population of NYC actually gets as high as 11M sometimes, if you count visitors. That's almost 1/3rd of our population in EIGHT HUNDRED sq km instead of ELEVEN MILLION sq km. You're comparing The Big Apple to a blueberry.

4) We didn't have a massive outbreak because of our geography, not because of anything that we did right. Taiwan has a massive, dense population and they did things right. South Korea has a massive, dense population and they did things right. Canada didn't screen passengers, we allowed people to come here and voluntarily self-quarantine, and we got lucky. 

5) the timing of spring break had a lot to do with infection rates, because Canadians mingling in international airports was a key factor in bringing the virus home. Quebec had their spring break before they started social distancing. BC's spring break came after the province was already shut down, and our densest city only has 700,000 people in it. Population density is a key factor in virus spread. I don't know why Alberta was disproportionately affected. 

1) How could Trump quarantine all travelers from China by merely banning the flights from China? Anyone who wants to enter US from China just needs to fly to another country first then fly into US. Unless US bans all flights, not only from China but also from other countries entering US, the ban isn't effective on blocking travelers from China entering US. 

2) Trump didn't ask anyone to be quarantined in US except American citizens who were directly evacuated from Wuhan by US government. Instead on Jan 31 US government announced all travelers from China should go to a third country and stay there for 14 days first before entering US. Trump saw this as a quarantine measure because if the person was infected in China, he or she would show symptom within 14 days and was treated in another country instead of in US, which means "Other countries first" on eating "Chinese virus". But there is a flaw in his brilliant scheme. If a person who wasn't infected in China, but was infected in the third country during the 14 days staying, he or she might not show any symptom at all before he was qualified to entering US. On the contrary, Canada asked travelers to be quarantined in Canada, which gave Canada the better control on the effectiveness of the quarantine measures.

3/4) I agree that the density of population may contribute a lot on Canada's performance. But still there are some megacities  in Canada and obviously the situations in these cities are not as worse as in NYC.

5) I'm under the impression that how many cases a province gets depends on what kind of industry it has. Saskatchewan and Manitoba have far less cases than ON or QC because their major industry is agriculture. Farmers needn't international travel to sell their products and by supplies for their farms but manufacturing needs a lot of international travelling.

Edited April 19, 2020 by xul

[Marocc]

2 minutes ago, Tdot said:

I'm, lost, about what caused you to start namecalling me or falsely accusing me here .

I haven't called you names and I think it is socially acceptable in this environment to tell another they're lying. You say you're not - ok. Then you're drawing strange conclusions that if two sources say the same thing it means that thing is the truth.

I only asked you to not lie to me because I'm not interested in such discussions. I ask that from people who frequently say things I have reason to belive are lies.

 

[Tdot]

28 minutes ago, Marocc said:

 it is socially acceptable in this environment to tell another they're lying.

This is unfair.

As it impresses that you feel I have some sort of control over your, refusal, to believe what is a factual truth.  You can't fairly post insults at, me, all because you do not like that some statement is true where you hoped it would be false.

I support the info at both links because I watched the South Carolina rally myself, that day, so I heard him with my own ears when he deemed the hoax as the politicization of the fight against CoronaVirus. 

...

Maybe you should go review/rewatch the speech when Trump made the "hoax" comment? Then you'll see it for, yourself, that he was referring only to the politicizing of the fight against COVID 19.

[Tdot]

On April 17, 2020 at 4:07 PM, Independent1986 said:

 did the western intelligence agencies failed in regards to the coronavirus pandemic...

You probably could have decided on the correct slogan, first, before you created this thread.  Because you can't have it both ways.

You say western intelligence agencies on one hand, but then you only focus on the USA intelligence to blame here as if "western" only encompasses the USA but not Canada Mexico South America etc. ...

Plus the Dems' complaint has been that President Trump ignored and downplayed USA Intelligence Agencies reporting the COVID 19 in late-Dec/early-Jan, whereas your thread here claims that intelligence agencies failed altogether.  Which one is it?

[xul]

Even if CIA did have the information of the outbreak before the outbreak, its director would find that it would be very hard for him to convince his president and the president's supporters, just like Joe Bauers tries to convince President Camacho and his voters on using fresh water to grew plants in 2006 film Idiocracy...

 

 

[bush_cheney2004]

2 minutes ago, xul said:

Even if CIA did have the information of the outbreak before the outbreak, its director would find that it would be very hard for him to convince his president and the president's supporters, just like Joe Bauers tries to convince President Camacho and his voters on using fresh water to grew plants in 2006 film Idiocracy...

 

It wouldn't matter who the president was, as CIA directors are responsible for intelligence collection, analysis, and execution of policy direction.   The CIA provides many, often competing options.   Congress is also informed by the CIA through select committees.  Congress did not pass any legislation to force the issue either.

Did CSIS drive Trudeau's decisions in Canada ? 

 

[Tdot]

19 minutes ago, xul said:

Even if CIA did have the information of the outbreak before the outbreak...

 

 

Remember too, for many weeks now the Dem's media outlets have screamed that President Trump disregarded USA Intelligence Agencies in late-Dec/early-Jan when they reported the CoronaVirus to him.

So how did the "western intelligence Agencies fail" if the USA CIA reported the disease to Trump, as late as the first week of January? 

[Argus]

10 hours ago, Tdot said:

And?   

What it has to do with western intelligence agencies, is that the thread's OP gave an impression that western intelligence agencies failures' are somehow motivated by words within a false statement he made about President Trump here.  Which then opens up possibilities that he also used false statements to conclude there were western intelligence failures. True?

From all reports, the only intelligence failures were the failure of the intelligence of western idiot leaders like Trump and Trudeau to pay any attention to what their intelligence agencies were telling them.

[Argus]

2 hours ago, OftenWrong said:

And finally, let's call it as it is then on a day-by-day basis. Now we hear that the virus is not so bad after all. In one week the US is going to start going back to work again.

The only place you heard the virus isn't so bad are from conspiritards and trump cult members.

2 hours ago, OftenWrong said:

So now, with this hindsight is Donald Trump right today, or not?

Donald Trump remains an infantile moron with the morals of a pimp.

[Argus]

20 hours ago, WestCanMan said:

Everything you said there is wrong xul.

1) blocking flights from China obviously wasn't useless,

The US did not block flights from China. It blocked foreigners who had been to China. Since Trump issued his block nearly half a million people have entered the US on flights from China. And virtually none were screened or ordered into quarantine.

[Tdot]

18 minutes ago, Argus said:

From all reports, the only intelligence failures were the failure of the intelligence of western idiot leaders like Trump and Trudeau to pay any attention to what their intelligence agencies were telling them.

True, indeed.  although you did conveniently leave out the Democrats in the House. Why? ... They have an Intel committee/would have got the cia report right around the time Trump got it.

[Argus]

2 hours ago, OftenWrong said:

It is the narrative now rising in the US media. Whatever is decided by the politicians is the truth, and this is now being decided.

Uhm, no. Only the fat idiot in the oval office is claiming that, along with the usual grifters and lickspittles around him. And yes, fat boy is inciting people to protest against the lockdown, and his grifter friends, possibly the Russians, are all over the internet helping him to incite people against the lockdown. Came across this interesting discussion the other day about astroturfing on the subject. It was enlightening.

 

level 2

Dr_Midnight

 

1.0k points · 21 hours ago · edited 9 hours ago

212

There's an imperial ton of astroturfing going on, and it's quite visible in how those groups popped up literally overnight (hint-hint). The thing is that they targeted groups who were... how does one say... more receptive to the message who wouldn't be inclined to look any deeper into what they were joining.

As an example, right now, this is happening in Orange County, CA.

Now, here's a screenshot of the description of the "Operation Gridlock Los Angeles" group when it was first spotted by Buzzfeed News.

Concurrently, here's a screenshot of the description of the "Operation Gridlock Tennessee" group.

But, hey... it's Buzzfeed News right? Cool-cool-cool-cool-cool...

Here's a link to the group "Pennsylvanians Against Excessive Quarantine" - sitting 55,281 members deep at the time of this post.

Okay...

Now here's a link to the group "Minnesotans Against Excessive Quarantine" - presently with 18,938 members.

Why do these groups have the exact same description?

Let's not stop there. Following their own links: one is from the "Pennsylvania Firearms Association", and the other is from the group "Minnesota Gun Rights" - both with the exact same layout.

Both of these domains are registered with the same registrar and were registered on the exact same day at the same time.

[ ~]$ whois reopenmn.com
[Querying whois.verisign-grs.com]
[Redirected to whois.godaddy.com]
[Querying whois.godaddy.com]
[whois.godaddy.com]
Domain Name: reopenmn.com
Registry Domain ID: 2512322197_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com
Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com
Updated Date: 2020-04-08T14:39:18Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-08T14:39:17Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2021-04-08T14:39:17Z

[ ~]$ whois reopenpa.com
[Querying whois.verisign-grs.com]
[Redirected to whois.godaddy.com]
[Querying whois.godaddy.com]
[whois.godaddy.com]
Domain Name: reopenpa.com
Registry Domain ID: 2512322050_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com
Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com
Updated Date: 2020-04-08T14:37:30Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-08T14:37:29Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2021-04-08T14:37:29Z

The rest of the whois information is obscured by a proxy organization that provides privacy for whois records (I even use them myself as do many others for privacy reasons), so I cannot tell who owns these domains.

Following the pattern of their sites, I checked for "reopenmd.com", but it never resolved to anything. That said, the DNS lookup itself didn't result in a NXDOMAIN error which tells me the domain does exist.

[ ~]$ whois reopenmd.com
[Querying whois.verisign-grs.com]
[Redirected to whois.godaddy.com]
[Querying whois.godaddy.com]
[whois.godaddy.com]
Domain Name: reopenmd.com
Registry Domain ID: 2515645280_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com
Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com
Updated Date: 2020-04-17T04:19:17Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:19:16Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2021-04-17T04:19:16Z
Registrant Organization:
Registrant State/Province: Florida
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Email: Select Contact Domain Holder link at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?domain=reopenmd.com
Admin Email: Select Contact Domain Holder link at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?domain=reopenmd.com
Tech Email: Select Contact Domain Holder link at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?domain=reopenmd.com

Registered a little more than week later with the same registrar. The thing is, they didn't actually complete their whois information this time, and whoever set it up cheaped out or forgot to pay for the Domains by Proxy service. Although whois information is literally a public record, I'm not inclined to place my account at risk by opening myself up to accusations of doxxing. That said, anyone who feels inclined to can go to https://whois.godaddy.com and search for reopenmd.com. I myself would be personally curious as to why someone in Florida is registering domains claiming to be gun rights organizations in other states.

Seriously, even without that information - who or whomever is responsible for this astroturfing couldn't make this more obvious if they tried. It honestly took me longer to type all of this up to present here than it did for me to find this all. Yet people have taken the bait hook-line-and-sinker.

Meanwhile, the President then starts tweeting "LIBERATE MINNESOTA", "LIBERATE VIRGINIA...", and "LIBERATE MICHIGAN"; and one of the major forces behind the group in Michigan was a political group that has direct ties to and has historically been heavily funded by the family of the Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos (though said family denies direct involvement in last weeks protest)?

In that regard, I'm not alleging some major conspiracy here, but l-o-fucking-l.

---

Edit: for the record, reopenva.com also exists and has the exact same registry info as reopenmd.com.

[ ~]$ whois reopenva.com
[Querying whois.verisign-grs.com]
[Redirected to whois.godaddy.com]
[Querying whois.godaddy.com]
[whois.godaddy.com]
Domain Name: reopenva.com
Registry Domain ID: 2515650132_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com
Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com
Updated Date: 2020-04-17T04:43:47Z
Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:43:46Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2021-04-17T04:43:46Z
Registrant Organization:
Registrant State/Province: Florida
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Email: Select Contact Domain Holder link at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?domain=reopenva.com
Admin Email: Select Contact Domain Holder link at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?domain=reopenva.com
Tech Email: Select Contact Domain Holder link at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?domain=reopenva.com

---

Edit 2: Apparently, others have found that a domain for pretty much every other state was registered in the same pattern at the same time.

 

[Argus]

3 minutes ago, Tdot said:

True, indeed.  although you did conveniently leave out the Democrats in the House. Why? ... They have an Intel committee/would have got the cia report right around the time Trump got it.

What exactly did you expect the democrats to do? They can't order testing. They can't order screening at the borders. They can't buy medical equipment.

[Tdot]

29 minutes ago, Argus said:

What exactly did you expect the democrats to do? They can't order testing. They can't order screening at the borders. They can't buy medical equipment.

And they can make sure Pelosi does not say "Come to Chinatown!" In opposition to actions that President Trump took.

Like some member here alluded to, the House of Reps has an Intel committee which CIA would have sent this same (COVID 19) report to in late December. That committee did nothing.

No they didn't dispute Trump's 'do nothing attitude' nor did they call him names like you are doi---oh, wait! that's right!! The Dems couldn't dispute Trump's do nothing approach, because they were too busy ---occupying the nation with an impeachment hoax, on the day the CIA reported the COVID 19 crisis to their committee and to Trump! lol

You seem to have no problem with that.

Edited April 19, 2020 by Tdot

[Argus]

2 minutes ago, Tdot said:

But they can also make sure to not say "Come to Chinatown!" In opposition to actions that President Trump took.

Like some member here alluded to, the House of Reps has an Intel committee which CIA would have sent this same (COVID 19) report to in late December. That committee did nothing.

That committee doesn't have the power to do anything in this example.

2 minutes ago, Tdot said:

No they didn't dispute Trump's 'do nothing attitude' nor did they call him names like you are doi---oh, wait! that's right!! The Dems couldn't dispute Trump's do nothing approach, because they were too busy ---occupying the nation with an impeachment hoax, on the day the CIA reported the COVID 19 crisis to their committee and to Trump! lol

You seem to have no problem with that.

Trump deserved to be impeached. He is without question the most incompetent, corrupt and dishonest man every to sit in the oval office.

[bush_cheney2004]

2 minutes ago, Argus said:

That committee doesn't have the power to do anything in this example.

Trump deserved to be impeached. He is without question the most incompetent, corrupt and dishonest man every to sit in the oval office.

 

So the committees did have the power to investigate Trump and impeach him, but nothing for COVID19 ?

You just cratered your own argument.

[Tdot]

18 minutes ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

So the committees did have the power to investigate Trump and impeach him, but nothing for COVID19 ?

You just cratered your own argument.

Niiice.

[Argus]

4 minutes ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

So the committees did have the power to investigate Trump and impeach him, but nothing for COVID19 ?

You just cratered your own argument.

It had the power to investigate Trump. I'm not sure what you're point is in what you expect it to have done about warnings of the virus in China. It can't make that knowledge public. All it can do is ask the white house what they're doing, and perhaps encourage them to do more. But the relationship between congress and the administration has totally broken down in that the administration is no longer cooperating with anything congress does or asks about. They're even ignoring subpoenas for information, and ignoring subpoenas for administration people to testify. The position of the administration appears to be that congress has no right to question what they do or how they do it. And no right to information of any sort on any subject.

Edited April 19, 2020 by Argus

[Tdot]

I figured it went, unsaid, in light of what an Intel committee always does.

[OftenWrong]

29 minutes ago, Argus said:

The only place you heard the virus isn't so bad are from conspiritards and trump cult members.

No, that's not the only place. I heard that a US study has found almost 100 x more people are infected than being counted. For those people who care about ratios, it means the virs is not as deadly as first thought. But ratios are not the only thing. Forecasted deaths are now being adjusted downwards accordingly.

I read these things, I don't make them up.

[Tdot]

17 minutes ago, Argus said:

 All it can do is ask the white house what they're doing, and perhaps encourage them to do more.

I agree.  And since it did none of that, then once again, you have imploded your own argument.

[OftenWrong]

25 minutes ago, Argus said:

Uhm, no. Only the fat idiot in the oval office is claiming that, along with the usual grifters and lickspittles around him. And yes, fat boy is inciting people to protest against the lockdown, and his grifter friends, possibly the Russians, are all over the internet helping him to incite people against the lockdown. Came across this interesting discussion the other day about astroturfing on the subject. It was enlightening.

 

level 2

Dr_Midnight

 

 

Thanks. I certainly don't have time to read all that drivel. I hear that people in the US are protesting in the streets. They may see the virus as bad, oh so bad, yes, but they disagree that total shutdown is the only option. I wholeheartedly agree with them.

[Argus]

1 minute ago, Tdot said:

I agree.  And since it did none of that, then once again, you have imploded your own argument.

You don't know what it did or didn't do. Yes, it was busy with impeachment hearings, but what was Trump busy with?

 

[bush_cheney2004]

Just now, Argus said:

It had the power to investigate Trump. I'm not sure what you're point is in what you expect it to have done about warnings of the virus in China. It can't make that knowledge public. All it can do is ask the white house what they're doing, and perhaps encourage them to do more.

 

Nonsense....by your own admission ("impeachment"), the Democrat controlled House has wide discretion to not only investigate and compel testimony, it actively challenged the Trump administration on Russia, Ukraine, and several other issues in a very public way.

 

Quote

But the relationship between congress and the administration has totally broken down in that the administration is no longer cooperating with anything congress does or asks about. They're even ignoring subpoenas for information, and ignoring subpoenas for administration people to testify. The position of the administration appears to be that congress has no right to question what they do or even know what they're doing.

 

Depends on the issue... Trump has worked with the Congress successfully on some policies and legislation (e.g. tax reform, criminal justice, etc.)

To say the the U.S. Congress is/was impotent for COVID19 is laughable given how much it has injected itself into so many other Trump administration policies and decisions.

[Argus]

1 minute ago, OftenWrong said:

Thanks. I certainly don't have time to read all that drivel.

"Ugh. Reading hard. Ugh" is, I understand, the motto of the Trump cult.