Toronto's "Mystery Tunnel" is a Spider Hole

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/59/Spider_hole.png/250px-Spider_hole.png


This mystery tunnel is anything but mysterious. It's an ambush position known in military terms as a spider hole.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/mystery-tunnel-found-near-pan-am-games-venue-1.2968367

Any kind of meth lab or grow op would need an exhaust port for the chemicals or generator so you could breath or keep the generator running. Exhaust would draw attention.

It's not a tunnel because it doesn't go anywhere.

This article disproves that the tunnel was the work of engineering students.
http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/toronto-bunker-builder-lucky-it-didn-t-collapse-expert-says-1.2254522
Even first year engineering students can do a force body diagram and figure out they need lateral support.


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

It looks like it can hold a 10 people. Plus supplies for the wait until ambush.

Here's how one might use it. Build a spider hole in a secure area long before surveillance. Wait till the event to load it with weapons and ammo. Attackers go into the spider hole 3 days or so before event security tightens up, then they wait until the right moment to burst out and attack.

You dig it in the winter when no one is around, then it gets hidden by vegetation in the spring.

If you want to hide from detection, you make sure it does not collapse under the ground weight and thawing conditions. You build it with a structure to make sure the space won't collapse on you.  You truck away the dirt, hide the entrance in some trees, and camoflage the ingress path.

If you find the people that made this spider hole, be very cautious they are probably well-armed and expecting that knock on the door. 

Give the caliphate what it wants, only not the way they want it.

This article is a very good read on ISIS:

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

It explains, more or less, that the caliphate is living out an ancient Twilight novel - with the over-simplistic plot line and pathetic credibility gaps like a teen novel trilogy (made for people whose brains are forming yet still defective) that only morons would find interesting - this fantasy  involves a battle with an invading army at the town of Dabiq. The army is supposed to be Romans, everyone riding horses, and it is a milestone on the way to the apocalypse according to the script they are following.

Dabiq is on the border of Turkey and Syria. (from the article)

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2015/02/isismapweb2/307796482.jpg

Following the beliefs of an ancient book makes them predictable.   Why not let them have their wish? More like death wish.
 
If we want to get rid of them, and prove that god was never on their side, then we should formally agree to meet them on the plains around Dabiq.  Then when they gather, JDAM them.
 
If the events surrounding the caliphate don't play out like the plot of the book, then even zealous supporters will need to review their beliefs.  Doubt will creep in and the whole hollowed out core of once-humans will collapse. 

According to the pulp fiction, there will only be 12 caliphs and al-Bagdhadi is number 8.  Kill 5 more leaders and the plot line is over. 

To attack them alone will not solve the problem. To defeat what they believe is to attack the schwerpunkt of their ideology.  If the story does not go as planned, the whole enterprise was a lie.

Their moral belief in the script of an ancient book being true is their source of strength and biggest weakness. Exploit them.

The final awakening...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/isis-militants-to-be-wiped-out-says-jordan-minister-1.2949151

Arabs will make themselves free from US involvement when they finally stop radical Islam from drawing them into conflict. 

The US is no longer fixated on oil, it can make almost enough for domestic supply so there is no real economic urge to keep meddling.  Other than Israel. 

The real problem in the Middle East is not the US, it's allowing radical Islamist groups to grow and fester in your midst, sooner or later they were bound to turn on the rest of the Arab world.  You should have heeded Pakistan's problems.  An uneasy detente is breathing space of wicked groups that will turn their guns on you sooner or later.

To take responsibility and get rid of these groups will end the turmoil.

The OPEC Game: Forced non obsolescence

Supply and demand are not the only economics forces at work.  The other market mover is disruptive technology and obsolescence. When a new technology comes along to make another technology moot, then it quickly exploits that weakness and takes over when it's allowed to do so.  For example, where can you get typewriter ribbons anymore?  And where did floppy disks go? Everyone has many USB disk drives. I can't find a computer that uses floppy drives.

In W. Brian Arthur's book The Nature of Technology he explains that the economy is never quite at stasis, it is always changing on the time frame of decades not months like glacial movement but still in motion.  And the genesis of new technologies is born out of the arrangements set up today.

Now, back to OPEC.  OPEC has a valuable commodity they can sell so long as competing technologies cannot make enough money to remain solvent - in business long enough - to obsolete oil for good.

So OPEC plays two long games at the same time.  It tries to maximize the value when it can from every barrel of oil. It plays the production game to raise or lower oil value month over month. It keeps member countries happy and fills national coffers.

But every so often it plays the obsolescence game as well.  It increases production in the face of falling demand. Or it holds production steady in spite of falling prices to make oil so cheap it's the only game in town.  With most of the world reliant on oil products, that makes it harder for people to adopt alternative energy means because it is cost-prohibitive to switch.  That captures another group of people to their customer base.

Vladimir Putin: what not to do

Russia desperate for gas pipeline to Europe

Ok so Vladimir Putin annexed part of Ukraine. And in exchange suffered sanctions, isolation, the Saudis dumping oil to bankrupt both fracking US shale drillers and expensive corrupt oil production like Russia. And a drop in oil prices to levels that might bankrupt Russia.  Does this sound like a good deal for Russians?

So you can't have it both ways, Vladimir.  You can't upset them and expect them to sit quiet. You learned nothing from George Bush II's foray into unilateral action. UK doesn't count they've been US lapdogs since the 1970's. He acted without seeing the long game and ruined his reputation, ruined his countries standing, plunged the economy and so on. I thought Russians were smarter than Americans? They don't have to beat you they control your state through your economy. You are a fuel export country. You depend on reliable treaties. You depend on prompt payment. You've given them an excuse to punish your country. Better for them. Worse for your people.

When you piss off your customers, you're going to pay to keep them.  And this depression might last longer than your hold on the Crimea. So acting alone against the West will continue to cost your people. If you were smart, you'd turn 180 degrees and be the best friend Europe ever had. Wedge between them and the Americans.  

The Fed's Recovery Plan: Lie and hope for the best

People like Max Keiser have railed for years about the atrophied and dishonest nature of the US stock market/ US banks / US regulators relationships and the weak economic outlook.

Here is the reality; the economy was damaged by the US banks' greed.   The US government bailed out companies that deserved to fail (how would the economy look if home owners held mortgages that were worth 50% to the bankruptcy creditors - that seems like a logical  and fair outcome - the debtors win and the bankers lose).  The US regulators are OK with fining US banks and to keep the crimes under prosecuted.  The last fact, the US government shot it's bolt of free money bailing out the companies they hoped would keep jobs. Of course to do that the corporate sociopaths demanded their own livelihood was part of the bargain.

So my postulate is this: the US commercial system will continue to downplay the corruption, continue to lie to the people about what went on, and to hope that the continued wish becomes reality as people make the improvements to the economy themselves.  No bankers will go to jail, no money will be refunded to lost pension funds. The US Fed plans to keep lying about the number of US dollars in circulation and basically "will the recovery" like a necromancer might raise a body from the dead. 

Travel Process Efficiency?

Why institute a travel approval process that saves $10 on a hotel room but through the delay in approving same the cost of the airfare goes up $100?

How can that be claimed to be efficient?

The reality is that when the estimate is made, the airline cost is ignored. Only the accountants enter the data, so that removes the honest assessment of what went on.  No one puts the two numbers together.