Prior events: October 11 , October 10, October 9 , October 8 , October 7, October 6, October 5, October 4, October 3, October 2, October 1, September 30, September 29, September 28, September 27.

Russian outlet analyses the terrorist recruitment and deployment operations in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Syria.

news-front.info article: in early September, Turkish police arrested one of ISIS leaders, Emir Mahmud Ozden, who allegedly tried to plot attacks on Turkish soil to pressure the government.
Emir used to be friendly with Turkish special forces in the early 2000s. In 2012 he joined ISIS and began organizing the transfer of jihadists to Syria from Northern Caucasus, Crimea, and Central Asia. Before moving to Syria, the jihadists would stop in Turkey and undergo training. It's unclear what had broken up the relationship between Emir and Turkish special forces in the 2000s.

This July, there were two anti-terror raids in Izmir (Turkey), and Batumi (Georgia), which resulted in the arrest of 78 militants, 9 of whom were Turkish citizens, illegally residing in Georgia.
One of the arrested men in Georgia was Binal Jamgioz, the second in command of Turkish [ultra-nationalist terrorist] organization Grey Wolves (GW). He was engaged in money laundering, arms sales, and recruitment of ethnic Turkic Uyghurs in China for a separatist movement.
Back in 2014, Binal Jamgioz was recruiting militants in Azerbaijan and Georgia to fill the ranks of ISIS in Syria.
[About GW. Turkish special forces were using this group to suppress opposition, assassinate union activists, Kurdish activists, journalists, politicians. They are responsible for the death of thousands of Kurds.]
Binal Jamgioz reports to the leader of GW Devlet Bahcheli, and a billionaire and cash-machine of GW Ismail Chelebi. Chelebi resides in Georgia while remotely managing the GW financing in Turkey, Caucasus, and Central Asia.

In April, Turkey's Erdogan pardoned another large GW donor and a known mafioso Alaattin Chakothi. A question arises: why did Erdogan make so many GW arrests in September if he's also friendly with some GW leaders? Erdogan might be trying to send a message that these radical groups must play exclusively by his rules.
Erdogan had instructed the members of ISIS, GW, Al Qaida, and few others to fight in Libya and Karabakh. The leaders of [ultra-nationalist] GW had refused to fight in Libya due to not seeing a benefit for the Turkic world. Meanwhile, leaders of other Islamic militant groups had refused to fight in Karabakh in support of secular-Shia Azerbaijan.
In the end, they were forced by Erdogan to agree to fight, in exchange for freedom.
The full article contains more info about Karabakh. The above translation is a fraction of it: https://news-front.info/2020/10/10/ustami-erdogana-london-i-vashington-dayut-signal-rossii-v-karabahe/

50 more jihadists are reported dead

Middle East reporter says 50 more Syrian militants were killed in Artsakh. Among them are Ibrahim Jum'a and Ahmed Lahalak from Rastan. The 50 bodies will arrive at the Hiwar Kilis crossing soon.
The source is a fighter with the Levant Front, a Turkish-backed group from Rastan. He personally knowns the two aforementioned militants.
Photos: https://twitter.com/Elizrael/status/1315699232699973632

Ilham Aliyev feels personally insulted by Russia

The overly self-conscious autocrat of Azerbaijan, who recently resorted to using camera filters to make his skin appear bronzed on TV, feels personally insulted by Russian media outlets for not being pro-Azerbaijan enough.
"I have always said that Russians are attracted to Azerbaijan not only by cuisine, beaches, history, but also by the fact that they feel comfortable, they feel in their environment. They talk to people in Russian. You probably know that nowhere there are so many schools in Russian as in Azerbaijan.
But you have already spent several days here and you know how the factor of the Armenian occupation influences the mood of the people. People catch every word, every gesture, every facial expression.
And, of course, I will tell you frankly: during these two weeks, when on some Russian channels we see rabid anti-Azerbaijani propaganda, falsification, manipulation, an unbalanced composition of talk show participants, when the Azerbaijani people are insulted, the president of Azerbaijan is insulted on the leading Russian channels - this, of course, does not add credibility to Russia," Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in an interview with RBC.
(Context: prominent Azeri reporter was fired from Russian media outlets for justifying the bombing of an Armenian church in Shushi. Russian prime-time TV shows are critical of Azerbaijan for bringing Turkey and jihadists into the conflict.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20201011210840/http://azeridaily.com/politics/58892

the ethnic minority oppression and their history of pushing for independence from Azerbaijan

CivilNet outlet: during the Karabakh pro-independence movement in 1988, when ethnic cleansings of Armenians were committed by Azeris, the ethnic Udis, who were predominantly Christian and very close to Armenian, even with their first names, were also forced to flee Azerbaijan. Most Udis moved to Russia but some had settled in Armenia's Noyemberyan region.
During the first Karabakh war, two minorities were "active" in Azerbaijan. Lezgins created the "Sadval" movement in 1990 to preserve their ethnic identity.
The second movement was by Talysh, led by Aylakram Gumbatov, who even managed to establish the Talysh Republic in the southern Lenkoran region, for a brief period.
Lezgins, who live in northern Azerbaijan, live on the Azeri and Russian sides of the border. Talysh, who live in the south, are divided between Iran and the Azerbaijani border.
There are no widespread attempts by ethnic Talysh and Lezgins to establish independence today. Aylakram Gumbatov, the leader of the self-proclaimed Talysh Republic in the 90s, was later arrested and sentenced to death but was subsequently pardoned and exiled.
"Artsakh could serve as a role model and allow these persecuted Azeri minorities to settle in Artsakh and have representation in Artsakh Parliament."
https://youtu.be/tmYU6nWA3Cw

Interview with ethnic Talysh journalist Zabil Magerramov:
https://youtu.be/EzAQSLKWA3o

March, 5, 2019: an interview with another Talysh activist Zakharaddin Ibrahimi.
https://youtu.be/Da6sP6KWiAY

a few more things from yesterday

Tens of thousands of Armenians gathered in Los Angeles in support of Artsakh. They marched to the Turkish consulate to condemn the aggression. They beamed the Artsakh flag on the Turkish consulate building.
https://twitter.com/geviskajyan/status/1315512371343839233?s=20
Beaming: https://t.me/reartsakheng/482
Video: https://youtu.be/2C6QjiXqo6M
Video: https://www.facebook.com/ABC7/videos/707456450121067/
Videos: https://news.am/arm/news/607455.html
Photos: https://www.reddit.com/armenia/comments/j9jych/la_was_all_armenian_today/

NY Post Editorial Board: Erdogan’s proxy war in Armenia in an ugly echo of Turkey’s genocidal campaign century ago.
On Sept. 27, Azerbaijan resumed its conflict with Armenia, accusing it of unprovoked attacks. At issue is the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, a mountainous territory of 150,000 people (mostly ethnic Armenians) that is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but claimed and governed by Armenia since an earlier war.
The Azeris are plainly the aggressors: They not only outnumber the Armenians 3-to-1, they’ve been modernizing their military with a huge assist from the Turks.
Full: https://nypost.com/2020/10/11/erdogans-proxy-war-in-armenia-is-an-echo-of-turkeys-genocidal-campaign/

October 12th arrives / the battlefield / international response

8:31 MoD: the front lines were relatively stable-tense last night. Azeris are shelling the southern front right now.
https://twitter.com/ShStepanyan/status/1315510964578590726?s=20
9:02 Artsakh army: the northern, north-eastern, and southern fronts were active. All the Azeri attack attempts were repelled. They sustained heavy human and equipment losses. Their ongoing artillery fires are being suppressed with appropriate measures.
https://t.me/infocomm/23021
10:32 army: the operation to locate and destroy the Hadrut infiltrators continues. Azeris accumulated large backup forces with an attempt to enter the city. There are fierce battles.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031307.html , https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031309.html
11:28: Artavazd Knyazyan, an Armenian-Spanish businessman, has posthumously received the title of Artsakh Hero.
https://factor.am/294320.html
11:39 army spokesman: I have repeatedly referred to the fact that it is not so appropriate to indicate clear positions, landscapes, even settlements at this stage of the war. The war is fierce, the Armenian army is fighting hard against the Turkish-Azerbaijani forces, which is several times larger and is fully supported by the Turkish air force, other intelligence systems, a large number of mercenaries, terrorists, and private military organizations. The Armenian army is resisting these forces with great success, with such success that even international experts mention it.
According to the tactical-operative necessity, the defense army carries out both retreat and change of lines, as well as attack and counterattack. Trust our army, we will win.
https://factor.am/294327.html
12:30: soldiers released a video from the front lines.
https://youtu.be/fx2cj1aXwhA
12:58 army: the losses from the Azeri side: 4919 soldiers (one Lt. Colonel today), 4 TOS (Solntzepyok?), 514 tanks and armored vehicles, 17 aircrafts, 16 helicopters, 168 drones, etc.
https://factor.am/294389.html , https://t.me/infoteka24/8698
13:26: army released footage showing the destruction of another Azeri AN-2 drone.
https://youtu.be/eP95wv5DdD0
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031324.html
13:38: Azeri media reports that the Azeri govt is accumulating more riot gear and water trucks to disperse possible demonstrations. "Some residents aren't happy that the govt keeps the data about casualties secret."
The war resulted in large migration from bordering cities Ganja, Terter, Barda, Gerambo towards Baku. Azeri Telegram channels earlier shared a video showing large vehicle traffic near a Baku suburb called Kherdalan. The police blocked the road to prevent them from reaching Baku.
Azeri Twitter began sharing a hashtag that demands answers from Aliyev.
https://youtu.be/LOGVjlPnSzw
https://factor.am/294412.html
14:23: Artsakh president Arayik met the veterans of the first Karabakh war. "In this dire state, we must all stand up as one."
https://news.am/arm/news/607506.html

CivilNet recalls the first Karabakh war in 1990 to draw comparisons: today, the heaviest battles are in southern borders between Horadiz and Jabrayil; it's about a 15km section. This isn't new. In the 90s, when Azeris attacked, that's where their Operation Ring was carried out. It was around Hadrut.
In the winter of 1994 when Azeris made their last push, we lost a lot of lands there, then recaptured some of it. The line of contact stopped between the Armenian and Azeri towns of Horadiz (both similarly named). Those 5 months were Aliyev's last push. Armenians suffered 2,000 deaths and Azeris 5,000.
The situation was also dire in 1992 when Abulfaz Elchibey won the elections and started a new war. Azeris captured Martakert and Shahumyan in a few weeks. They captured 40% of Karabakh. That's what I call "dire".
Another dire situation was in 1991 and Karabakh leader Leonard Ter-Petrosyan went to Baku to negotiate with Azeri president Mutallibov.
Another dire one was in 1992 when the Lachin corridor with Armenia was about to be blocked. At the time, Azeris controlled the northern Qarvachar region and were pushing south to cut off Artsakh from Armenia. Only a few kilometers were left from the Lachin corridor.
How did Armenians change the course? It was the Armenian political unity, cold-heartedness, lack of panicking, good governance, problems within Azerbaijan.
Ceasefires have been broken before. On April 10, 1992, while the Russian delegation was there for negotiations, the Azeri army entered Maragha village and massacred dozens of civilians. The war isn't easy to stop; it's expected that today's ceasefire is hard to achieve.
More: https://youtu.be/X75N4yEp7Kk

14:37: European Parliament MP Jaromir Stetina has called for the official recognition of the Artsakh Republic. "What is happening now is dictator Aliyev's policy towards small Artsakh. In order for all this to stop, the international community, and first of all European Union, must recognize Artsakh as an independent state."
https://armlur.am/1050860/
https://infoteka24.ru/2020/10/12/72262/
14:52: Russian MFA says it's important to follow the ceasefire agreement reached in Moscow.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031334.html , https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031336.html.
15:22 army: we shot down an Azeri Su-25 jet in the north. The Turkish F-16 jets continue to accompany and aid the Azeri jets.
Hours later: at first Azeris denied losing Su-25, then their front line administration confirmed it, without realizing that we had already confirmed it.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031340.html , https://news.am/arm/news/607558.html
15:25: Los Angeles Lakers player Danny Green expressed solidarity with Armenians, saying "they want peace but are under attack now". Lakers won their 17th NBA champion title yesterday and tied it with Boston.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031342.html
15:27: British journalist Dominic Lowson wrote an article for The Sunday Times, in which he criticized Boris Johnson for his silence over Turkish aggression.
He reminded that Johnson's great grandfather was a Turkish man named Ali Kemal who was murdered in Turkey and had an Armenian name written on his body for his support for Armenians and the condemnation of the Armenian genocide.
The article notes that Artsakh has already voted to be independent from Azerbaijan.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031338.html.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/turkeys-game-is-lethal-as-johnson-well-knows-5zz5v57kx
15:47: the Armenian side reaffirms commitment to the humanitarian ceasefire if Azeris do the same.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031347.html
16:25: Armenian MFA met his Russian colleague and spoke about Azerbaijan's involvement of jihadists, "which poses a threat to the whole region."
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031353.html
15:07: PM Pashinyan held a meeting with non-parliamentary and opposition parties (HHK, ARF, etc.) to discuss various topics about independence recognition, security, possible official military agreement with Artsakh, etc.
The ambassador to several states entered the government building after the meeting. Pashinyan urged the ambassadors to recognize Artsakh republic during the meeting, "which will help end the humanitarian crisis."
Ruling party MP says that Armenia should recognize the Artsakh Republic only after another state does.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031359.html , https://factor.am/294472.html , https://factor.am/294469.html , https://factor.am/294458.html , https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031390.html
15:10: Armenians have intercepted a radio communication of Azeri Syrian jihadists near southern borders. Some segments are presented, about how they discuss miserable conditions, mistreatment by Azeri commanders, snipers shooting some Azeris in the back in case of surrender, them being told to be careful not to shoot at the Iran border, etc.
Video: https://youtu.be/ivh80u7pPy8
https://factor.am/294475.html
https://youtu.be/53KtWWZhY4U
15:17: Galina Simova, the community leader of the 1,500 ethnic Russian community of Artsakh, has asked Vladimir Putin to take steps to stop the bombardment of civilian settlements and to "fight the Syrian militants in Karabakh just as Russia fights them in Syria because they are a direct threat to Russia, too."
Full: https://news.am/arm/news/607521.html
16:51 Armenian MFA: we agree to the installation of a ceasefire verification mechanism across the border, but Azerbaijan refuses.
https://news.am/arm/news/607545.html
16:59: the Russian reporter Yuri Kotenok, who was targeted by Azeri drone and severely wounded while inside a church in Shushi, is still in Armenia. Doctors advised against airlifting him to Russia for now. He is feeling better after the surgery.
https://news.am/arm/news/607547.html
17:14: Armenians held a demonstration in Luxemburg near the EU building.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031358.html
17:17: video showing the destruction if a few more Azeri drones.
https://youtu.be/SlUdHlwEGrY
17:24: the European Parliament has received the report written by Artsakh Human Rights Ombudsman about Azerbaijan's crimes against Artsakh civilians in Sep-Oct.
https://factor.am/294575.html
17:30 U.S. Congressman Tony Cardenas: We must immediately end security assistance to Azerbaijan and Secretary Pompeo must make it clear to Turkey that it cannot continue to fan the flames of violence. The U.S. leadership cannot be silent while the people of Nagorno-Karabakh suffer.
https://twitter.com/RepCardenas/status/1315401322368294912?s=20
https://news.am/arm/news/607557.html
17:38: Chief conductor of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra Lior Shambadal expressed solidarity with Armenians. "I am proud of the Armenian spirit as you defend your beautiful country and wonderful culture."
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031364.html
17:59: the list of the names of deceased soldiers has been updated since yesterday, to 525 confirmed.
https://news.am/arm/news/607596.html , https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031369.html
18:07: yesterday, several Israeli scientists wrote an open letter to their govt, asking to stop the weapon sales to Azerbaijan. Israel Charny, the executive director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, believes most Israelis support Armenia.
He called Erdogan a murderer who oppresses Kurds in Syria and has set his eye on Jerusalem. "President Reuven Rivlin supports the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, but as a president, he has fewer powers than when he was the speaker of the Parliament."
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031371.html
18:08: the govt of Azerbaijan has launched a criminal case against the Russian WarGonzo journalist Semyon Pegov, who has been actively documenting the Azeri war crimes against civilian settlements in Artsakh.
Pegov is charged with "illegal entry to Azerbaijan" (Azeris consider Artsakh their territory) and "making calls against the Azerbaijani state."

In other news, Russian authorities are investigating a Russia-based Azeri propagandist Saadat Guliyev. The latter publicly stated that he wishes for the aforementioned Russian reporter Semyon Pegov to die [from an Azeri bombardment] in Artsakh. "Armenian citizens should not shield the military reporter," he added.
After that statement, prominent Russian TV hosts became furious and called for Russian authorities to launch a felony case against Saadat Guliyev, including for inciting ethnic hatred, which is a sensitive topic in Russia due to its ethnic diversity. The authorities are investigating and will decide whether to charge Guliyev.
https://ria.ru/20201012/zhurnalist-1579403698.html
https://factor.am/294592.html
https://news.am/arm/news/607534.html
18:34: footage showing the aftermath of Armenian troops capturing possibly one of the hills near the northern Mrav mountains. Date unclear.
Graphic: https://twitter.com/301_AD/status/1315662201286426625?s=20
https://t.me/infoteka24/8739
18:03 army spokesman: Azeri media outlets have claimed that their artillery shells "caused heavy damage on Armenian soldiers who were retreating towards Red Bazaar in the south".
The Azeri propaganda machine, as usual, distorts the reality, trying to prove at all costs that they control Hadrut. It's a naked statement by Aliyev.
The operation to blockade and destroy the Hadrut infiltrators continues. The operative situation is under the full control of our army.
https://www.facebook.com/arcrun/posts/3429257187109865
19:13 Artsakh official: the heavy battles continue near Hadrut and in the south. Our army responds proportionately.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031375.html , https://t.me/reartsakheng/496
19:19: the Conservative party of Estonia, part of the ruling coalition, has urged Turkey to "stop sending the jihadists to Karabakh front."
"We are concerned about the large-scale military aggression unleashed by the Republic of Azerbaijan against the Republic of Armenia and the Artsakh Republic on September 27. We call on the Azerbaijani authorities to immediately stop the bombing of civilian infrastructure."
https://infocom.am/Article/38678
19:24: MoD of Russia and Turkey discussed the situation in Syria, Libya, and Artsakh.
https://news.am/arm/news/607584.html
19:33 Armenian MFA: Turkey, being unable to achieve its goal, is actively preventing the establishment of the humanitarian ceasefire signed in Moscow. The army of Azerbaijan, being under the control of Turkey, continues the military actions and the attack on civilian settlements.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031377.html
19:35: watch out for fake GoFundMe pages.
https://factor.am/294649.html
20:11: Armenian hackers stole $20,000 from a bank account that collects funds for the Azeri army, used it all on purchasing sex toys from Amazon, and wrote the Azerbaijani Government building address as the shipping address.
https://t.me/reartsakheng/505 [link 404]
20:46: Turkish internet regulators have blocked several Armenian government websites in Turkey.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031388.html
20:57: the Armenian delegation to PACE has presented Azerbaijan's war crimes against Artsakh civilians and urged PACE member-states to recognize the independence of Artsakh.
https://news.am/arm/news/607598.html
21:21: Belgian-Armenian musician Sevak Avanesyan gave a performance in Shushi's St. Ghazanchetsots church that was earlier bombed by Azerbaijan twice.
https://youtu.be/0ejPlScu_uU
https://t.me/infocomm/23088
21:32 Ombudsman: 31 civilians have died in Artsakh since the beginning of the war.
https://t.me/infocomm/23089
22:00 army spokesman's briefing: Azeris refused to follow the ceasefire. Since its beginning, they launched an attack in 3-4 directions. A heavy weapon was used near Martakert. In this recent period, Azeris lost 1 jet, 3 drones, and 200 soldiers.
Turkish air force helped the Azeris to conduct 36 flights, during which we downed an Azeri Su-25 jet near north-western Qarvachar (near Mrav mountain). This region is less intense than the south.
Throughout the day, battles continued in the south. We stopped their advancement and pushed them back near Hadrut. The city is under our control.
Azeris refuse to accept the ceasefire to exchange bodies because that would mean the introduction of international mediators (Red Cross), which they don't like.
The north-eastern village of Talish is not "under Azeri control". Their forces are stationed on the Talish outskirts. The regrouping activities made by us in this northern section allowed them to publish videos from Talish. Once again, the positions can change quickly and I ask you again not to fixate on a specific location during a large war.
Hadrut is completely under our control. There were, and maybe still are, certain Azeri groups on the outskirts.
The drone attacks are still with the same intensify but the artillery is weaker now.
We will win.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=2857021897850761

the donations continue

Ajarabet betting firm donated 50mln Drams To All Armenia Fund. Another 400mln from IRS's savings fund.
https://news.am/arm/news/607575.html , https://news.am/arm/news/607580.html
Kylie Jenner has joined the social media campaign to raise awareness and urged donations to himnadram.org
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031331.html
Russian-Armenian businessman Samvel Karapetyan (Tashir) has donated another $3m.
https://t.me/reartsakheng/491
The Armenia Fund has received $100m in donations so far.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031320.html
A video from a volunteer group's office showing the humanitarian aid collected by ordinary people
https://youtu.be/ykmeUN1ZIHw

in other news

The Constitutional Court judge Arman Dilanyan has been elected by fellow judges as their new president. The previous nominee, Edgar Ghazaryan, had failed to secure 5 votes.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1031363.html

You've read 3388 words.
U.S. tax-deductible donations: www.ArmeniaFund.org
Global donations: www.HimnaDram.org

We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches.... uh, what do we do after that again?: The Perilous Defensive Position of Taiwan

Do not forget the experience in Ju: The absolute worst advice you could give the modern Republic of China Armed Forces.

Welcome to today's effortpost by me, the latest in what will quite possibly be a series on the complex military situation developing in East Asia, which pretty much everyone should be keeping a careful eye on. We'll be covering the situation in Taiwan today, and how it's much more precarious than commonly thought, though the risk of invasion is, hopefully, still relatively low.

Current series status:

What you [might] need to know about South Korea's ludicrous arms buildup
We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches.... uh, what do we do after that again?: The Perilous Defensive Position of Taiwan
[preliminary] "You've hit another cargo ship? The Problems with the US Navy: Not all of them begin with "Seven" and end with "th Fleet"."

Today's effortpost covers everyone's favorite Sinic island--yes, that's right, Taiwan! [although really it's multiple islands--we'll get to that.] In particular, it explains why Taiwan's defensive situation is much worse than it appears--but also why a Chinese invasion isn't immediately likely, and what signals to look for to see if the PRC is actually seriously planning an amphibious assault, so much as they can be discerned.
Glossary as used here:
PRC = People's Republic of China = the mainland
ROC = Republic of China = Taiwan
PLA = People's Liberation Army = Chinese military
PLAAF = People's Liberation Army Air Force
PLAN = People's Liberation Army Navy
PLANAF = People's Liberation Army Navy Air Force
ROCAF = Republic of China Air Force
ROCN = Republic of China Navy
SAM = Surface-to-air missile, ie, Patriot or S-300--most have limited ABM, or anti-ballistic missile, functionality as well
MANPADS = Man-portable air defense systems, can be carried and operated by one person or a small team of persons, short range but effective against helicopters and low-flying aircraft
ATGM = Anti-tank guided missile

1. Prologue/Chiang

Yes, that's right. Chiang Kai-shek is, besides being, shall we say, an interesting character, actually quite important in understanding why the Taiwanese military and defensive position is what it is. I'll cover the history briefly here too.

So, basically Chiang was the head of the armed forces and government of the Republic of China since more or less the death of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Republic of China, in 1925. This entire period was spent in conflict, with Chiang's National Revolutionary Army "controlling" most of China after the Northern Expedition [in reality, while the ROC had a fairly solid grasp over the urban centers, the more remote regions were still largely under the rule of warlords for some time afterwards], and, after initial moves, Chiang worked for around a decade to consolidate his rule--in particular, focusing in on the communists, which he took great pains to root out, and very nearly successfully eliminated--only a string of good fortune for the communists, from the Long March to the Xi'an Incident to the truce, kept them going. The entire Chinese Civil War is a complicated and fascinating story of its own, which I won't tell here, but most readers probably already know the conclusion. Chiang's forces were driven back, his most professional forces were destroyed [he had a bit of a habit for doing this--his elite, German-trained divisions were expended in the Battle of Shanghai, though they did quite well against the IJA], and he fled to the island of Taiwan. The communists made an attempt to begin an assault on Taiwan, repeating their success in Hainan, but after a disastrous landing attempt at Kinmen the plan was aborted. Since then, the mainland has periodically clashed, sometimes in open war, with Taiwan, but each time has been turned back, mostly by the US, but also by the qualitative superiority of the ROC.

Now, moving on to Taiwan. Taiwan was a Japanese colony for a number of years, and had a rather more amicable relationship with Japan than its other colonial possessions [well, aside from the aboriginals]. By the time Chiang landed on Taiwan with millions of troops and refugees, the island already had a substantial population of Ming-era Chinese colonists, which were significantly different from the mainlanders arriving, and a small population of Austronesian aboriginal people who predated those colonists. Thus, we have the ethnic divisions which remain to a degree prominent in Taiwan to this day:

"Waisheng Ren", "Mainlanders", generally the descendents of those who came to Taiwan with Chiang, about 10% of the population IIRC
The bulk of the population, which, for lack of a better word, I'll call "Taiwanese", about 85% of the population, with notable Hoklo/Hakka minorities
The Austronesian aborginals, about 2.5% of the population

Of course, all these groups lived in harmony, until Chiang ~~attacked~~ showed up [hint: no they didn't, also, real life ATLA reference albeit from 1946]. From the very beginning, the mainlanders dominated Taiwan, repressing local culture and political activity, primarily through their control over the military. As a result, even to this day, the armed forces are generally politically aligned with the Kuomintang [KMT], ironically, the party which is least likely to be in need of their services as they have, since the arrival of democracy, generally taken a pro-Beijing or at least conciliatory position. I won't get into the full details here of the White Terror, but suffice it to say that the military has had, to say the least, a fraught relationship with the general public. As soon as Chiang arrived, he began fortifying the island against a potential Communist assault, building vast fortress complexes, beach defenses, tunnels, and other static defenses, and these fortifications persist to this day.

Another major shift occurred in the 1960s, when the aging Chiang decided to make an attempt at reconquering the mainland, viewing it as extremely vulnerable after the Great Leap Forward and the Sino-Soviet split. However, despite years of [poorly] concealed preparations, American opposition to the idea and naval troubles resulted in the effort being abandoned in 1972. From this time on, Taiwan's armed forces mostly focused on defense. They bought newer and more sophisticated American weapons, and maintained a system of mandatory universal conscription--enshrined in the constitution. They also, consistent with their heritage from the foreign-trained NRA, generally adopted American doctrines, focusing on air and sea control, maintaining a qualitative edge, and developing limited power-projection capabilities. [There was also a brief foray into nuclear weapons--again foiled by the US, which until relatively recently had a complex relationship with Taiwan mainly aimed at maintaining the status quo].
However, since the transition to democracy, and a great improvement in relations with the mainland [which more or less coincided], the military has generally fallen far down the priorities list--but it has maintained its same approach as before, aiming to maintain a qualitative edge and to use superior technology and training to stop the PLA from making a successful landing.

[I am not Taiwanese, and still know all to little about Chiang and the civil war, so I'm open to correction on these parts if I've made any mistakes.]

2. Geography

Well, first things first. Taiwan is an island, separated from China by a ~100 mile [~160km for those not using freedom units] strait. This is, in the grand scheme of things, not very far at all. It's as close as New York is to Philadelphia, or London is to Birmingham, or Antwerp to Amsterdam, Seoul to Daejeon--look, you get the idea. It's pretty close. Taiwan is also very close to the southernmost Japanese home islands, and reasonably close to the Philippines.

Taiwan also possesses two major island garrisons, at Kinmen and Penghu. The former is within spitting distance of the mainland, literally islands in Xiamen harbor, and the latter lies within the Taiwan Strait, disrupting passage through the southern parts of the strait. It also holds a few assorted islands east of Taiwan and in the South China Sea, but we'll more or less ignore those as they aren't worth noting for our discussion.

Finally, we have the geography of Taiwan itself. Almost all [I believe 80%] of the population lives in a narrow coastal plain on the west coast, from Taipei to Kaohsiung, in one of the world's densest urban agglomerations. Most of the rest of the island is forested mountains in the 6000ft/2000m range. A relatively small area on the east coast is also heavily built up, in Yilan, the Huadong Valley, and at Taitung. In addition, most of the west coast of Taiwan is mud flats, which are not particularly conducive to amphibious operations--though not as impassable as they once were with the development of LCACs.

3. Defense

The current plan that Taiwan has to defend the island is... not good. Imagine if Chiang planned the defense, except he also had ADHD, and you'll have a decent idea of what's going on. In fact, the entire plan is eerily similar in some ways to the defense Chiang mounted against the Imperial Japanese Army.

In short, the plan Taiwan has is to stop the invaders from getting there in the first place. That means first attacking assembly areas and logistics sites on the mainland, then destroying Chinese transports in the straits, and then driving them off the beaches. This plan looks incredibly badass [see this video of Taiwan's flagship Han Kuang Exercise for an example]. It is also incredibly dumb.

Even a decade or two ago, such a strategy was tenable, if perhaps not the most practical. Taiwan maintained at least qualitative parity with the mainland. But the PLA of today is not what it was even ten years ago, let alone twenty years ago when a single American carrier group could intimidate them. The PLA now has tens of advanced guided-missile destroyers, new amphibious assault capabilities, and large quantities of new, more capable aircraft, along with a large ballistic missile force. The PLA has also been advancing its training and doctrine substantially--one might call today's PLA almost American in some ways, having learned the lessons from Iraq well and worked to apply them to their own forces.

The very first thing any full-scale invasion of Taiwan is expected to open with is a barrage of short-range ballistic missile systems, along with cruise missiles and loitering anti-radiation munitions, which China has been developing in large numbers and, it is believed, to great effect--in fact, the primary reason the US exited the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is because of what China was doing with its ballistic missile arsenal. These ballistic missiles will target primarily static defensive targets, in particular, it is thought, airbases. Now, Taiwan could try to shoot these missiles down, but doing so would expend a great deal of SAMs for relatively little effect, leaving them vulnerable against the next phase. However, it seems that Taiwan currently plans to use its SAMs as such, and thus the first wave probably will not only eliminate a large portion of Taiwan's fighter force [or ground it or force it into storage in the super-hardened aircraft shelters at Taitung and Haulien], but also eliminate a large portion of Taiwan's SAMs as well.

The next phase would be waves of airstrikes. RAND estimated in 2016 that China can sortie around 600 unrefueled fighters per day over Taiwan, but this capability is likely to grow substantially. China is developing significantly more advanced aerial refueling capabilities, using a Y-20 [strategic airlifter] derivative, which could potentially significantly increase loiter times and allow airbases further inland to attack [also allowing for greater survivability against any potential Taiwanese counterstrike using cruise missiles], and is also developing carrier forces. Though at the moment it seems unlikely that China would use carrier-based aircraft to sortie against Taiwan, with the extremely heavy J-15 being pretty much useless, the arrival of a more advanced carrier-based fighter--probably the FC-31--could potentially result in as many as several hundred additional daily sorties. In essence, we would be looking at a display of airpower more or less on par with the Gulf War. Taiwan has limited capabilities in countering these moves--even their hardened SAM sites have vulnerable radars, and their relatively old and less numerous fighter force is not expected to perform especially well against China, which is thought to probably have a qualitative edge against Taiwan at this point. The ROCAF has other problems too, from maintenance in the face of continued scrambles against Chinese aircraft to a shortage of AAMs for its most capable fighters, but I won't get into all the details here--suffice it to say that Taiwan doesn't stand a chance in an air war, and, at best, using optimal tactics [which... they don't seem to be doing] they might hold out for a couple weeks as a force sufficient to constrain the freedom of PLAAF/PLANAF air operations--even then not really contesting opposition forces so much as just aiming to reduce their combat effectiveness, and that's making some pretty generous assessments of Taiwanese ground performance.

After a few waves of these, China would probably begin making landings [probably already having done so at Kinmen and Penghu], which is when all the really impressive displays of force that Taiwan engages in would come into play. Attack helicopters would soar out over the Strait to destroy landing craft, M1 Abrams would counterattack the beachheads the PLA established--all very impressive, and none of it likely to last more than a few hours, because it's pretty much all precluded on Taiwan maintaining air superiority, which it quite simply can't do. There are some obstacles in the way of China making an amphibious landing--the garrison at Kinmen might do some damage to assembly areas before it is silenced, the Penghu garrison could slow a landing in the South for some time--but eventually China would arrive, and, in fairly short order, eliminate all those shiny tanks, attack helicopters, self-propelled guns and so on that Taiwan has invested so much money in. The static fortifications, though impressive, would also likely only pose a brief obstacle given the fact that the PLA will gain air superiority in short order and has an impressive array of precision-guided munitions that are excellently suited to destroying such targets. In addition, the front-line units that would be doing this fighting are generally understrength, in the 60-80% range, since conscription ended, and are staffed only by soldiers that aren't able to get other postings.

Now, the US might show up. It might not. But doing so will take time--American forces in theatre aren't numerous enough to stop the PLA today, and have issues of their own [that's next week's post]. And if the PLA can secure Taiwan, an attempt by the US to retake the island would be difficult and politically impalatable. And time is something which Taiwan is simply not preparing for. Unless Taiwan can develop capabilities which will allow it to hold out against China [and by hold out, I mean retain the ports/landing sites on the Pacific coast], it runs a very serious risk of being rapidly overrun.

4. Why?

In short, politics. A shift towards asymmetric capabilities is sort of in the works, but I question whether Taiwan is actually committed to the idea, given that they also are somehow scrounging up money to buy a bunch of new F-16s and an indigenous [though rumor has it several powers, such as Japan in particular, contributed heavily to the design] diesel-electric submarine program. Most egregiously, they have plans to build an amphibious assault ship or LHD, to amphibiously assault... well, we're not sure what, exactly. In essence, the military and government is unwilling to admit its position for three reasons. First, doing so would make a large portion of the officer corps, and most of their expensive, prestigious toys, irrelevant overnight. Second, doing so would be a major psychological wound to the population, which would now have to admit that they would very much be part of the fighting in a protracted urban conflict, and concede that they are basically preparing to lose, but in a costly way. Third, doing so would be politically unpopular--it would require bringing back the recently abandoned conscription, and increasing reservist service requirements, along with, even with money saved from retiring/withdrawing excess capabilities and cancelling new procurement, costing quite a bit of money.

5. How to fix this

Pretty simple, actually, and a lot of people have more or less been prescribing the same solutions. Restore universal conscription, increase reservist training, dump expensive, high-profile items like tanks and fighter jets, and just buy loads of short/medium-range SAMs, MANPADs, ATGMs, and other equipment needed to create an effective ground resistance that can, first, hold out long enough for help to arrive, and, second, potentially increase the costs of Chinese invasion to a point where the PLA is unwilling to take the risk. However, such a fix does not seem to be particularly forthcoming. It can only come via a domestic reckoning in Taiwan [which I find quite unlikely] or by external American pressure, which is possible but, again, I feel, not particularly likely--I doubt that the US is willing to accept the short-term political cost, or even recognizes the problem, to the point where they would essentially coerce Taiwan into making these substantive reforms by withholding permission to sell high-profile defense items.

6. What to watch with the PLA, and also why the PLA might not invade

War is an inherently risky undertaking, and an amphibious assault of Taiwan brings with it a particularly high risk profile and limited rewards. There is a high chance, increasing steadily, that an invasion of Taiwan would be successful--but even if it is successful, there is a definite chance that the US, aided by Japan [Japan won't do it alone, but they will support an American intervention, including by protecting American ships and aircraft, by my reckoning], will intervene--and that significantly reduces the chances of the war having an outcome favorable to the PLA. This particular risk also means that the PLA will focus on rapidly seizing control of the entire island, especially Taitung and Yilan, where American forces could potentially land--because if the PLA can successfully keep the US from being able to conduct an uncontested landing on Taiwan, the risks involved for the US escalate substantially.

The downside risk should also be noted here. A failure in an invasion of Taiwan, whatever the cause, would be disastrous for anyone involved--that anyone consisting of most of the PLA and the top political leadership of China. A defeat would likely lead to the end of at least the current head of state and his political supporters, and might even result in the end of the CCP, ala the November Revolution.

There's also a definite possibility that China will use force to coerce Taiwan into unification without actually invading it. In particular, the high urbanization of Taiwan means the island is highly vulnerable to siege, as it must import most of its food and conducts all its trade via sea. This may be a more likely problem, and some Taiwanese defense planning seems to center on this assumption, but, truth be told, no force smaller than the JMSDF stands much of a chance of keeping its sealanes clear against the PLAN if it's sufficiently motivated--the only thing that protects Taiwan in such an instance is that China may be unwilling to escalate further and will likely seek to minimize combat.

As for what to watch with the PLA, the biggest things will be if they construct more amphibious assault vessels beyond their current 2 [3?] Type 075s, which are currently fitting out, and if they start constructing large numbers of landing craft--the latter of which only 'needs' to happen a few years before any invasion. It would also be wise to keep close tabs on the domestic situation within China. While things are going well, China really has no incentive to invade Taiwan--because doing so would cause economic trouble, cost blood and treasure, and would more or less eliminate the Taiwan issue, leaving Chinese leadership unable to play it for nationalistic purposes. If things start going poorly, or if China starts to believe that it may lose the capability to invade Taiwan successfully, is when an invasion is most likely.

7. Conclusion

First, to air the contrary view and why I think it's wrong, and why even if they're right we'd be better off not betting on it. There's a group of people that are of the view that invading Taiwan is much more difficult than I, and some others, do, exemplified in Tanner Greer's "Taiwan Can Win A War With China". However, a lot of assumptions made in the article are disputed [for instance, landing locations are no longer particularly constrained], and the author himself, whomst I cited for a later work, seems to have come around more towards my view. Mostly, these articles make the legitimate point that the PLA is risk-averse and knows that an invasion of Taiwan could well go disastrously wrong due to its sheer complexity and lack of modern precedent. However, I would be very hesitant to make my assumptions based on the optimistic idea that the PLA won't invade Taiwan ever and that the complexity of the operation inherently dooms it to disaster.

Now for the actual conclusion:

I hope you enjoyed this effortpost and learned something about why Taiwan is in such a bad defensive state from it. Next effortpost will be on the troubles of the US Navy, and will, I think, be titled:

"You've hit another cargo ship? The Problems with the US Navy: Not all of them begin with "Seven" and end with "th Fleet"."

8. Citations

Actual citations this time. Plus some "citations".

Professional Articles:
Shang-Su Wu, "Taiwan's Defense Under The Tsai Administration"
Tanner Greer, "Taiwan's Defense Strategy Doesn't Make Military Sense"
RAND, "Air Defense Options For Taiwan"
RAND, "Transformation of Taiwan's Reserve Force"
Paul Huang, "Taiwan's Army Is A Hollow Shell"
Two excellent and very legitimate Reddit posts primarily as sources for inspiration:
State of the ROC Armed Forces [ /WarCollege ]
Shortcomings of Taiwan's Military Defense [ /CredibleDefense ]

Plus, as always, Wikipedia articles and my head. Hooray.

On September 11th 1990, a Peruvian Boeing 727 with 16 crewmembers on board went down off Newfoundland, Canada. In a distress call overheard by two other aircraft, the pilot of the doomed jet reported that they were low on fuel and preparing to ditch. But no trace of the plane was ever found.

The Haunting Story of OB-1303
The plane in question was a three-engine Boeing 727 passenger jet registered as OB-1303, which was owned by an airline called Faucett Perú. Faucett mostly operated within the Peruvian domestic market, but it also leased some of its aircraft to airlines overseas. During the summer of 1990, Faucett leased OB-1303 to Air Malta in order to help that airline fulfill increased demand during the holiday travel season. After a summer working routes in Europe, the contract concluded in September 1990 and the plane was due to be returned to Faucett Perú. However, the Boeing 727 is not a long-range aircraft; its fuel capacity limits it to intracontinental flights. To get the plane from Malta to Peru, it had to make stops for fuel in London, England; Reykjavik, Iceland; Gander, Newfoundland; and Miami, Florida. This rather lengthy return journey necessitated the carriage of several extra crewmembers, which is presumably why there were 16 people on board, although no information about their identities is readily available. (One source states that some Faucett pilots who had been working in Malta were returning with their families in tow.) The flight manifest indicated that there were 18 crewmembers, while Faucett Perú reportedly stated that three of them never boarded the plane when it left Reykjavik, resulting in a total of 15 occupants. News sources at the time quoted this figure. However most sources that provide statistics on plane crashes, such as ASN and the BAAA claim that there were 16 occupants, which doesn’t align with either of these scenarios.
(Photo: OB-1303, seen here in Air Malta livery.)
Around 1:16 p.m. local time (source) on the 11th of September, OB-1303 departed Reykjavik for the third leg of its five-leg trip from Valletta, Malta to Lima, Peru. The destination was Gander, Newfoundland, a common stopover point for airliners in the days before larger and more fuel efficient jets made direct flights between Europe and North America possible. The distance between Reykjavik and Gander was approximately 2,500 kilometers, comfortably within the Boeing 727-200’s maximum range of 3,570 kilometers. Records showed that the pilots took on six hours of fuel, approximately equal to the international standard (enough for the flight plus two hours extra).
Very little is known about what happened to the plane after it left Reykjavik. However, in 2006, a user on the PPrune aviation forum, a site popular with aviation professionals, responded to an inquiry about the flight, claiming to have worked as an accident investigator for the Canadian Air Line Pilots Association at the time of the incident. He said that according to documents provided to him at the time, the 727 began to deviate to the left (south) of the appropriate heading of 234 degrees almost immediately after takeoff, an assertion which is corroborated by contemporary news reports. By the time the plane neared Newfoundland, it was hundreds of kilometers off course, and after about 4 hours—the point at which they should have been arriving in Gander—the plane was somewhere over the North Atlantic southeast of Newfoundland, out of range of any air traffic control center on VHF radio. (Although HF has much longer range than VHF, the aircraft was not equipped with an HF radio at the time.) It also would have been far out of range of any ground-based navigational aids. As this was before GPS, the crew could not have known their position with any certainty, and as they were unable to raise ATC on any frequency, a rising sense of panic must have filled the cockpit.
However, the crew did have one final means of communication at their disposal: the guard frequency. “Guard” is a standard radio frequency typically used for emergency communication, and most commercial aircraft have one radio monitoring guard at all times. The crew of the Faucett 727 began to “call on guard,” and their messages were picked up by the crews of a TWA flight and a United flight which were in the area. According to the pilots of the flights who spoke to the doomed jet, the 727 crew knew they were off course and were somewhere southeast of Cape Race, the easternmost point of Newfoundland. At this point, with approximately two hours’ worth of fuel left, the plane should have been able to make it to St. John’s, if not all the way to Gander, but the crew’s weather radar showed a line of severe squalls directly between their assumed position and the Canadian coast.
According to the Canadian investigator, sometime after the original flights that had been speaking with the 727 flew out of range, the crew made contact with another United flight which had entered the area. The crew of the 727 told the United crew that they were at 10,000 feet, headed southwest, and had received a low fuel warning. They advised that they did not think they could penetrate the severe weather and were preparing to ditch on the open ocean. This was the last communication from the ill-fated flight.
The contents of their final message leave a couple of important questions. The low fuel warning makes sense given the amount of time they had spent in the air at that point. The plane had 6 hours of fuel, it left Reykjavik at 13:16 UTC, and the final distress call was heard at 18:50, approximately five and a half hours later—right about when the plane should start warning the pilots about low fuel. By that point they should have landed an hour and a half ago and were almost through their safety buffer. The question is, if they knew they were in an emergency situation, why didn’t the crew attempt to penetrate the squall line and go for a landing in Newfoundland? I would speculate that they were worried about running out of fuel while in the squall line, as they did not know their exact distance from Newfoundland and could not be sure that they had enough fuel left to reach any airport. In such a situation, they must have decided that if they had to ditch either way, it would be better to do it away from the storms.
However, the conditions at that time were not favorable for a ditching. A ditching is easiest on calm water, and the North Atlantic is notorious for being the polar opposite of calm. Even though skies were clear in the area where the plane is presumed to have ditched, there was a stiff breeze of 10-15 miles per hour and the ocean surface was covered in heavy swells. According to a news report at the time, the wind was out of the southeast, which explains the pilots’ decision to head southwest; by ditching perpendicular to the wind, they would hopefully land parallel to the wind-driven swells in order to increase their chances of keeping the plane intact.
Presumably within 10 to 15 minutes of that final distress call, the crew ditched the plane in the Atlantic several hundred kilometers southeast of Cape Race. Given the terrible surface conditions, the chances of a successful ditching were extremely low. Ditching procedures instruct pilots to land parallel to the swells, but on the open ocean it can be impossible to tell in which direction the swells are aligned even if the wind direction is known. Most open ocean ditchings in history—almost all of them in much better conditions than this one—ended with the plane digging into a swell, cartwheeling, and breaking apart. That is almost certainly what happened to the Faucett 727, and if anyone survived the initial crash (possible, perhaps even probable, given the low speed of the aircraft) they would have quickly drowned in the heavy seas or succumbed to hypothermia. Even if the plane did come to a stop intact, the probability of rescue for the occupants was remote. No one knew the plane’s exact position, and in heavy seas it would have been extremely difficult to deploy the rafts and get everyone into them. And even if they did deploy the rafts, a few hours on the North Atlantic would carry them far from their original position, where searchers would be unlikely to find them before the heavy seas caused the rafts to capsize or sink. Personally, however, I doubt they managed to deploy any life rafts.
As soon as Canadian authorities received word of the missing plane, a major search and rescue operation was launched. According to contemporary news reports, searchers had only two pieces of data to work with when attempting to determine the plane’s position: a single hit from a satellite over England, and a partial radar track from the onboard radar of another plane that was in the area. However, these two radar hits were nowhere near each other, forcing searchers to cover an area of 40,000 square miles of ocean. Although a few signals that could have been the flight’s emergency transmitter beacon were detected, searchers were unable to find the airplane or its crew, and after several days the search was called off. To this day the plane’s exact final position is unknown; sources that I’ve found all agree that it was southeast of Cape Race, but distances used in various sources include 290km, 333km, 463km, and 658km.
Normally when a plane goes down in international waters, the investigation becomes the responsibility of the aircraft’s state of registry, which in this case was Peru. However, in 1990 Peru was in a state of great instability. Peru’s new president Alberto Fujimori had come to office little over a month earlier and was fighting both currency hyperinflation and a Maoist insurgency that was wreaking havoc in the countryside. Amid the chaos, Peruvian authorities never followed up on the relatively minor distraction of the missing 727, nor did they ever request that Canada take over the investigation. As a result, no investigation was conducted and no official report was ever published. The plane still has not been found to this day, although the aforementioned Canadian investigator stated that a few “tarpaulins” believed to have come from the plane washed up in Newfoundland sometime after the crash.
And that’s where the story ends. This analysis includes something like 99% of the information readily available on the internet about the disappearance, with a considerable helping of my own analysis on top. Many of the questions about what happened have speculative answers, but how it all started and why will probably never be known. Why did the plane fly on the wrong heading immediately after takeoff from Reykjavik? Why didn’t the crew notice until several hours later? Was there a fault with their instruments, or did they make some sort of error? What might have taken place on board the plane in its final minutes? Here we have no basis even for speculation. As dozens of other plane crashes throughout history have demonstrated, they could have gone off course for any number of reasons. Today, we’re left with a disturbing mystery with little hope of resolution, which must be especially hard for the families of the 16 victims, who will spend the rest of their lives wondering what took place aboard the doomed airliner as it sank to meet the siren song of the inscrutable Atlantic.
This is my first time posting to UnresolvedMysteries, but I post similar content about solved plane crashes weekly on CatastrophicFailure, so some of you may recognize me from there! I hope this haunting case stirs some interesting discussions.
Update: Theories!
Thanks to some input from commenters, I can speculate a little bit more about what might have caused them to go off course. Before GPS, the most reliable way to navigate an airliner across an area without ground-based navigational aids was to use an Inertial Navigation System, or INS. An INS consists of a set of gyros which track an airplane's every movement and use this information to calculate, through dead reckoning, its position over long distances. INS is accurate to within a few kilometers even after flying for many hours. But OB-1303 was a Boeing 727 built in 1969 for short-haul flights over land, and it almost certainly didn't have an INS.
That means that the crew would have had to navigate by dead reckoning manually. It's very easy to make a mistake while doing this, and if they made a mistake early in the flight, it would compound over time because each calculation relies on the previous ones being correct. Furthermore, this crew was used to flying domestic flights in Peru with occasional trips to Miami, and maybe also regional flights in the Mediterranean with Air Malta, where they were never too far from land. Had they ever crossed an ocean by dead reckoning before? I would bet they hadn't. They may well have been set up to fail by their inadequate equipment and insufficient experience.

Some of the more challenging words (and definitions) from Deadwood

At some point while watching the series I started looking up the words I didn't know or whose usage I wasn't familiar with. I'm sharing the resulting list of 56 words here should any of you cocksuckers find it useful. It's in reverse-chronological order (i.e., season 1 at the bottom).
simoom| səˈmo͞om | (also simoon | -ˈmo͞on | ) noun a hot, dry, dust-laden wind blowing in the desert, especially in Arabia.
unguent| ˈəNGɡwənt | noun a soft greasy or viscous substance used as ointment or for lubrication.
vapid| ˈvapəd | adjective offering nothing that is stimulating or challenging: tuneful but vapid musical comedies.
pinchbeck| ˈpin(t)SHbek | adjective appearing valuable, but actually cheap or tawdry.
depredation| ˌdeprəˈdāSHən | noun (usually depredations) an act of attacking or plundering: protecting grain from the depredations of rats and mice.
eventuate| əˈven(t)SHəˌwāt | verb [no object] formal occur as a result: you never know what might eventuate. • (eventuate in) lead to as a result: circumstances that eventuate in crime.
janissary| ˈjanəˌserē | (alsojanizary | -ˌzerē | ) noun (plural janissaries) historical a member of the Turkish infantry forming the Sultan's guard between the 14th and 19th centuries. • a devoted follower or supporter.
decorous| ˈdekərəs | adjective in keeping with good taste and propriety; polite and restrained: dancing with decorous space between partners.
arrant| ˈerənt | adjective [attributive] dated complete, utter: what arrant nonsense!
accede| əkˈsēd | verb [no object] formal 1 assent or agree to a demand, request, or treaty: the authorities did not accede to the strikers' demands. 2 assume an office or position: he acceded to the post of director in September. • become a member of a community or organization: Albania acceded to the IMF in 1990.
exigency| ˈeksəjənsē, eɡˈzijənsē | noun (plural exigencies) an urgent need or demand: women worked long hours when the exigencies of the family economy demanded it | he put financial exigency before personal sentiment.
fastidious| faˈstidēəs | adjective very attentive to and concerned about accuracy and detail: he chooses his words with fastidious care. • very concerned about matters of cleanliness: the child seemed fastidious about getting her fingers sticky or dirty.
proscribe| prōˈskrīb | verb [with object] forbid, especially by law: strikes remained proscribed in the armed forces. • denounce or condemn: certain practices that the Catholic Church proscribed, such as polygyny.
impertinent| imˈpərtnənt | adjective 1 not showing proper respect; rude: an impertinent question. 2 formal not pertinent to a particular matter; irrelevant: talk of “rhetoric” and “strategy” is impertinent to this process.
jocund| ˈjäkənd, ˈjōkənd | adjective formal cheerful and lighthearted: a jocund wedding party.
guffaw| ɡəˈfô | noun a loud and boisterous laugh.
cogent| ˈkōjənt | adjective (of an argument or case) clear, logical, and convincing: they put forward cogentarguments for British membership | the newspaper's lawyers must prepare a cogent appeal.
miasm| ˈmīˌazəm, ˈmē- | noun (in homeopathy) any of the three underlying chronic diseases that afflict humankind: sycosis, syphilis, and psora.
turpitude| ˈtərpəˌt(y)o͞od | noun formal depravity; wickedness: acts of moral turpitude.
gunsel| ˈɡən(t)səl | noun US informal a criminal carrying a gun.
vogue | vōɡ | noun [usually in singular] the prevailing fashion or style at a particular time: the vogue is to make realistic films. • general acceptance or favor; popularity: the 1920s and 30s, when art deco was much in vogue.
lanceolate| ˈlansēələt, ˈlansēəˌlāt | adjective technical shaped like the head of a lance; of a narrow oval shape tapering to a point at each end: the leaves are lanceolate.
gainsay| ˌɡānˈsā | verb (past and past participle gainsaid) [with object and negative] formal deny or contradict (a fact or statement): the impact of the railroads cannot be gainsaid. • speak against or oppose (someone): none could gainsay her.
counterpoise| ˈkoun(t)ərˌpoiz | noun a factor, force, or influence that balances or neutralizes another: they see the power of Brussels as a counterpoise to that of London | money is a good counterpoise to beauty. • a counterbalancing weight. • a state of equilibrium: the building stands in counterpoise to a Roman temple.
discomfit| disˈkəmfət | verb (discomfits, discomfiting, discomfited) [with object] make (someone) feel uneasy or embarrassed: he was not noticeably discomfited by her tone.
alack| əˈlak | (also alack-a-day) exclamation archaic an expression of regret or dismay. Alack for me!
atrabilious| ˌatrəˈbilyəs | adjective literary melancholy or ill-tempered: an atrabilious old man.
forbearance| fôrˈberəns, fərˈberəns | noun patient self-control; restraint and tolerance: forbearance from taking action. • Law the action of refraining from exercising a legal right, especially enforcing the payment of a debt.
cinder| ˈsindər | noun a small piece of partly burned coal or wood that has stopped giving off flames but still has combustible matter in it.
rake2 | rāk | noun dated a fashionable or wealthy man of dissolute or promiscuous habits: a merry Restoration rake.
capon| ˈkāˌpän, ˈkāˌpən | noun a castrated male chicken fattened for eating.
labile| ˈlāˌbīl, ˈlābəl | adjective technical liable to change; easily altered: persons whose blood pressure is more labile will carry an enhanced risk of heart attack | we may be the most labile culture in all history. • of or characterized by emotions that are easily aroused or freely expressed, and that tend to alter quickly and spontaneously; emotionally unstable: mood seemed generally appropriate, but the patient was often labile.
beard | ˈbird | verb [with object] boldly confront or challenge (someone formidable): he was afraid to beard the sultan himself.
forbear | fərˈber, fôrˈber | verb (past forbore; past participle forborne) [no object] politely or patiently restrain an impulse to do something; refrain: [with infinitive] : he modestly forbears to include his own work | the boy forbore from touching anything. • [with object] refrain from doing or using (something): Rebecca could not forbear a smile.
exaction| iɡˈzakSHən | noun formal the action of demanding and obtaining something from someone, especially a payment or service: he supervised the exaction of tolls at various ports. • a sum of money demanded for a payment or service: the billions flow in through 28 taxes and countless smaller exactions.
prerogative| prəˈräɡədiv | noun a right or privilege exclusive to a particular individual or class: owning an automobile was still the prerogative of the rich.
in extremis| ˌin ikˈstrāmis, ˌin ikˈstrēmis | adverb in an extremely difficult situation: they suddenly find themselves in extremis 20 miles out to sea.
protraction| prəˈtrakSH(ə)n | noun 1 the action of prolonging something or the state of being prolonged: the protraction of the war.
remit | rəˈmit | [with object] | verb (remits, remitting, remitted) 1 cancel or refrain from exacting or inflicting (a debt or punishment): the excess of the sentence over 12 months was remitted.
dissemble| dəˈsembəl | verb [no object] conceal one's true motives, feelings, or beliefs: an honest, sincere person with no need to dissemble. • [with object] disguise or conceal (a feeling or intention): she smiled, dissembling her true emotion.
hustings| ˈhəstiNGz | noun (plural same) a meeting at which candidates in an election address potential voters: he could hold his own in an election hustings | Mrs. Jones organized two public hustings. • the campaigning associated with an election: a formidable political operator at his best on the hustings.
rasher| ˈraSHər | noun a thin slice of bacon: two rashers of lean bacon | he cut into one of the rashers on his plate.
collation| kəˈlāSHən | noun 2 formal a light informal meal: lunch was a collation of salami, olives, and rye bread | a cold collation.
repast| rəˈpast, rēˈpast | noun formal a meal: a sumptuous repast.
rebuke| rəˈbyo͞ok | verb [with object] express sharp disapproval or criticism of (someone) because of their behavior or actions: she had rebuked him for drinking too much | the judge publicly rebuked the jury. noun an expression of sharp disapproval or criticism: he hadn't meant it as a rebuke, but Neil flinched.
confound| kənˈfound | verb [with object] 1 cause surprise or confusion in (someone), especially by acting against their expectations: the inflation figure confounded economic analysts. • prove (a theory, expectation, or prediction) wrong: the rise in prices confounded expectations. • defeat (a plan, aim, or hope): we will confound these tactics by the pressure groups.
ruddy| ˈrədē | adjective (ruddier, ruddiest) 1 (of a person's face) having a healthy red color: a cheerful pipe-smoking man of ruddy complexion.
fettle| ˈfedl | noun condition: the aircraft remains in fine fettle.
fatuous| ˈfaCHo͞oəs | adjective silly and pointless: a fatuous comment.
rend | rend | verb (past and past participle rent | rent | ) [with object] tear (something) into two or more pieces: snapping teeth that would rend human flesh to shreds | figurative : the speculation and confusion that was rending the civilized world.
offal| ˈôfəl, ˈäfəl | noun the entrails and internal organs of an animal used as food
venal| ˈvēnl | adjective showing or motivated by susceptibility to bribery: their generosity had been at least partly venal | why should these venal politicians care how they are rated?
blinker| ˈbliNGkər | verb [with object] put blinders on (a horse). • cause (someone) to have a narrow or limited outlook on a situation: college education blinkers researchers so that they see poverty in terms of their own specialization.
august| ôˈɡəst | adjective respected and impressive: she was in august company.

EDIT (additional submissions provided by commenters):
reconnoiter| ˌrēkəˈnoidər, ˌrekəˈnoidər | (British reconnoitre) verb [with object] make a military observation of (a region): they reconnoitered the beach some weeks before the landing | [no object] : the raiders were reconnoitering for further attacks.
aspersion| əˈspərZHən, aˈspərSHən | noun (usually aspersions) an attack on the reputation or integrity of someone or something: I don't thinkanyone is casting aspersions on you.
gleet | ɡlēt | noun Medicine a watery discharge from the urethra caused by gonorrheal infection.
ambulatory| ˈambyələˌtôrē | adjective relating to or adapted for walking: continuous ambulatory dialysis | five similar pairs of ambulatory legs.
faro| ˈferō | noun a gambling card game in which players bet on the order in which the cards will appear.
bivouac| ˈbivo͞oˌak | noun a temporary camp without tents or cover, used especially by soldiers or mountaineers. verb [no object] (bivouacked, bivouacking) stay in a temporary camp without cover: he'd bivouacked on the north side of the town | the battalion was now bivouacked in a field.
de rigueur| ˌdə riˈɡər, də rēˈɡər | adjective required by etiquette or current fashion: it was de rigueur for bands to grow their hair long.
randy| ˈrandē | adjective (randier, randiest) 1 informal sexually aroused or excited: as nervous as a randy adolescent on a hot date | he was making her more and more randy.
trope | trōp | noun a figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression: he used the two-Americas trope to explain how a nation free and democratic at home could act wantonly abroad. • a significant or recurrent theme; a motif: she uses the Eucharist as a pictorial trope.
gambit| ˈɡambət | noun a device, action, or opening remark, typically one entailing a degree of risk, that is calculated to gain an advantage: his resignation was a tactical gambit.
ofay| ˈōfā | noun US offensive an offensive term for a white person, used by black people.
mitigate| ˈmidəˌɡāt | verb [with object] make less severe, serious, or painful: he wanted to mitigate misery in the world.
meet | mēt | adjective (archaic) suitable; fit; proper: it is a theater meet for great events.

I watched "Needful Things" (1993)

Oscar Watch - Post Venice/TIFF/NYFF Edition

Several months ago, right after the last Academy Awards, I posted a long, long, long list of possible contenders that had prospects to fight for the next Oscars. It was a time of hope, of looking forward, and of positivity.
Then, COVID-19 happened.
And now, we find ourselves in a year that may change the movie industry forever, with the lack of safety of theaters in times of a pandemic accelerating the switch of mainstream audiences to streaming and VOD. These are times where some people are beginning to wonder, even after they pushed the eligibility date for two more months, why the Academy doesn’t cancel next year’s Oscars. And in this rocky terrain, we lost many contenders. Fire up the Hunger Games cannons, because these are some casualties of the season (so far).
Launched to 2021: Annette, Benedetta, Deep Water, Dune, In the Heights, King Richard, Last Night in Soho, Memoria, Nightmare Alley, Passing, Red, White and Water, Raya and the Last Dragon, The Last Duel, The Power of the Dog, Tick, Tick… Boom!, West Side Story.
Unknown status / missing in action: After Yang, Blonde, Breaking News in Yuba County, C’mon C’mon, Next Goal Wins, Stillwater, The French Dispatch, The Humans, The Tragedy of Macbeth, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Those Who Wish Me Dead.
But even if this year isn’t as loaded with clear awards candidates, there are plenty of movies that are already drawing buzz for an Oscar season that started brewing a month ago, with the kickoff of the Venice Film Festival, and will go on for six and a half more months, when the Academy Awards take place on April 25, 2021. It’s gonna be a long, weird and rocky season, which is gonna be great to see in terms of the narratives that are coming up.
-Ammonite (trailer): When people were betting on the likelier contenders of this year, many people pointed in the direction of Francis Lee’s period drama, with previous Best Actress winner Kate Winslet and constant nominee Saoirse Ronan. Going into the premiere at Toronto, people had their eyes set in this queer romance between a paleontologist and a young wife in the coasts of England during the 19th century. But then, some things happened. First, Winslet started her promotion of the movie by talking about her regret for working with Woody Allen and Roman Polanski that sounded unconvincing to the ominous Film Twitter. Then, another queer period drama, Mona Fastvold’s The World to Come, started to take the attention away at Venice. And finally, the movie premiered. The reaction? Cold. Critics came out mixed with the movie, with many of them comparing it negatively to last year’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and saying that it’s too dull and alienating. Does that mean that all is lost? Not exactly. While the movie (which, considering the genre, really needs critics' support to get into the Best Picture category) has been dismissed, the acting by Winslet and Ronan has been received positively. Now that so many other contenders have been dropping out of the year, they might get some room to campaign from a (social) distance.
-Another Round (trailer): Speaking of TIFF premieres, a film that had a better time at the Canadian festival was the reunion between director Thomas Vinterberg and star Mads Mikkelsen, who reunited years after making the stirring drama The Hunt (not the one with Betty Gilpin carrying a bad political satire, the one about a Danish teacher wrongly accused of sexual abuse). This time, the material is lighter, being a dramedy about four teachers who decide to test out a theory about how people can live and work a little better if they increase the level of alcohol in their blood. Critics really liked the way the movie dealt with alcoholism, and Toronto audiences made it a runner up for the People’s Choice Award of the festival. In a year without so much exposure from other festivals, this Cannes 2020 selection could make a candidate for the Best International Film category.
-Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (trailer): Surprise, new Borat film! While Sacha Baron Cohen made headlines several times this year because of stunts that people assumed were about a second season of Who is America?, the Internet was shocked when, in early September, it was confirmed that it was actually a very niiiiice return from the journalist character that made him famous, shot during quarantine. In a matter of weeks after the reveal, the sequel got sold to Amazon Prime and got a release date for October 23. Why so soon? Well, apparently the movie, which got him in trouble with Rudy Giuliani and other people, is about Borat taking his daughter on a road trip to give her as a bride to VP Mike Pence. Even if this movie doesn’t manage to achieve the feats of the 2006 movie (which got a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination, let’s remember), it will help Baron Cohen’s image a lot, because it will come a week after his big Oscar play.
-Cherry: While everybody knows them mostly because of their contributions to the MCU, directors Joe and Anthony Russo and actor Tom Holland are trying to branch out together. Now Apple has bought into their efforts, paying more than 40 million dollars to acquire their new crime drama, about the life of former Army medic Nico Walker, who started robbing banks after his days in Iraq left him with PTSD and a pill addiction. Will Holland manage this time to escape from the shadow of “oh, jeez, Mr. Stark” Spider-Man before Chaos Walking or the Uncharted movie come out? That’s a question for another day.
-Da 5 Bloods (trailer): Talk about timing. Merely days after the country was mobilized by the police brutality that continues to divide the United States, Spike Lee premiered his new war drama on Netflix. In a vibrant, disjointed but passionate portrait of four African American veterans who return to Vietnam to search for their fallen leader and some treasure, Lee struck gold yet again with his usual fans, even though the moving of the Oscar ceremony threatened to make it harder to remind Academy voters about this movie. However, with an astounding performance from Delroy Lindo (who is confirmed to be campaigned in the Best Actor category) and a supporting turn from Chadwick Boseman which got reframed with the news of his bravery in life and death, this has what it takes to fight for a spot in the Best Picture lineup.
-Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (trailer): When it became clear that quarantine wasn’t gonna be a breeze, the first movie in consideration wise enough to move a little further ahead in the calendar was this adaptation of the hit West End production about a gay British teenager who dreams of becoming a drag queen and get his family and schoolmates to accept his sexuality. With a release date on February 26, 20th Century Studios (man, it’s weird to not use Fox in that name) hopes to strike gold, with a cast that mixes young unknowns, familiar names (Sharon Horgan, Sarah Lancashire and my boy Ralph Ineson) and the previously nominated legend that is Richard E. Grant (who is playing a former drag queen named Loco Chanelle), now taking advantage of the move of other musicals like Annette, In The Heights and West Side Story. I mean, this has at the very least some Golden Globes nods in the bag.
-French Exit: Before its premiere as the closing film of the NYFF, many pundits were expecting this surreal comedy to be somewhat of a comeback for past Best Actress nominee Michelle Pfeiffer, who here plays a close to penniless widow who moves to Paris with her son (Lucas Hedges) and cat, who also happens to be her reincarnated husband (Tracy Letts). However, the first reactions for the film adaptation of the Patrick deWitt novel were all over the place, with some people feeling cold by the execution of the weirdness and others being won over. Still, everybody had good things to say about Michelle Pfeiffer’s performance, but after the mixed reception to the rest of Azazel Jacobs’ film she really would need a lot of critics support to get anywhere near the Best Actress category. With a release date on February 12, it seems that Sony Pictures Classics is skipping the critics awards, and the distributor has a couple of big competitors above this one.
-Good Joe Bell: Every year, there are movies with big stars that go to festivals full of hope for praises and awards. Some of them work and go on, others don’t and get forgotten about. Mark Wahlberg tried to remind people that he occasionally is a good actor with a true life drama where he plays a father who decides to walk across America to raise awareness about bullying after his son, tormented for being gay, commits suicide. The film by Reinaldo Marcus Green premiered at TIFF, and the reaction was… not great. Some critics defended it, but most saw it as a flawed, baity product starring a man with a history of hate. Still, it got bought by a distributor: Solstice Studios, a new player in the game which just released its first movie, Unhinged (yup, the one about Russell Crowe road raging). While they paid 20 million dollars for Good Joe Bell, it’s clear that this won’t get near the Oscar telecast.
-Hillbilly Elegy: While many movies this year have some level of anticipation, Film Twitter is bracing for this movie in the “is this gonna be the next Green Book?” way. Ron Howard’s adaptation of J.D. Vance’s memoir about his low income life in a poor rural community in Ohio has many fearing about the overuse of tropes involving what’s called white trash porn, but rarely, Netflix has kept silent about this release. Even though it has Oscar bridesmaids Glenn Close (7 nominations) and Amy Adams (6 nominations), the streamer has not even released a photo of the movie, which supposedly will come out in November. And if you want another bad omen, take a look at the lower levels of this list by a familiar voice.
-I’m Thinking of Ending Things (trailer): Speaking of Netflix, did you know that there is a new Charlie Kaufman there, right now? While his adaptation of the dark novel by Iain Reid, seemingly about a woman (Jessie Buckley) who is taken by her boyfriend (Jesse Plemons) to meet his parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis), got the usual reception of confusion and praise that follows his movies, the release was followed for what befalls most of the Netflix original movies: a couple of days in the Top 10, and then it fell into the void. While Buckley and Plemons deliver great work in this demented, melancholic story, it’s hard to see this movie getting anything else than a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for Charlie. And that’s a long shot.
-I’m Your Woman: Following the little seen but critically acclaimed Miss Stevens and Fast Color, Julia Hart started 2020 with a Disney+ adaptation of the YA book Stargirl, and now she follows it with a drama for Amazon that will have its world premiere as the opening film of the AFI fest on October 15. In this movie, Rachel Brosnahan hopes to translate her TV success with The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel to the big screen, playing a woman in the ‘70s that has to go on the run with her kid due to her husband’s crimes.
-Judas and the Black Messiah (trailer): Even if this doesn’t end up winning any awards, it has a real shot at being the best trailer of 2020. Formerly titled Jesus Was My Homeboy, this biographical drama by Shaka King tells the tale of two men: Fred Hampton (Kaluuya), an activist and Black Panther leader, and William O’Neal (Stanfield), the FBI agent sent to infiltrate the party and arrest him. While the trailer for this movie promised a release “only in theaters”, we shall see if Warner Bros backs down from that fight.
-Let Them All Talk: While we’re on the subject of Warner Bros, we have to mention what’s happening with HBO Max. While the start of the streaming service hasn’t been good (I mean, there are still people confused about that name) and it lead to some people assume will cause many firings, it has begun to make some buzzed titles on TV, like Close Enough, Raised by Wolves and the remains of the DC Universe failed streaming service. Now, to make a mark in the movie business, the streamer has a new Steven Soderbergh movie, a comedy that stars Meryl Streep as a celebrated author that takes her friends (Candice Bergen, Dianne Wiest) and her nephew (Lucas Hedges) in a cruise to find fun and come to terms with the past, while he flirts with a literary agent (Gemma Chan). While it doesn’t have a date yet, it’s confirmed to release in 2020, and at least we know that it can’t be worse than The Laundromat.
-Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom: While the expectations for the next film adaptation of an August Wilson acclaimed play were already high, the tragic death of Chadwick Boseman made this Netflix release one of the most anticipated movies of the season, considering this is his final movie. While past Supporting Actress winner Viola Davis takes the lead playing blues singer Ma Rainey in this tale of a heated recording session with her bandmates, her agent and her producer in 1927, Chadwick Boseman has a turn as the trumpeter Levee that was already being considered for awards, and now has even more people waiting to see. The thing is that one of the biggest competitions for Boseman this year will be Boseman himself, for his already acclaimed supporting turn on Da 5 Bloods, also released by Netflix. While the streamer will have to decide which of Chadwick’s performances will get the bigger campaign, this film by director George C. Wolfe has a cushy date set for December 18, and Viola is gunning hard for this movie to win.
-Mank (trailer): As you may have noticed by now, Netflix has a lot of plates spinning around this season, and this is the big one. After befriending the service with House of Cards and Mindhunter, David Fincher is going black and white to tackle a script by his late father Jack, about the making of the classic of classics, Citizen Kane. More specifically, the making of the script, with previous Oscar winner Gary Oldman playing the lead role of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, while accompanied by Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Tuppence Middleton, Charles Dance and Tom Burke. After watching the first trailer of his satire of 1930’s Hollywood (that will release on streaming on December 4), it’s clear that this is gonna be catnip to old Academy voters, and it would be really hard for this to miss the Best Picture line up. Unless it’s a complete cinematic disaster, Mank is bank.
-Minari (trailer): While the last edition of Sundance took place in January, quarantine makes you feel like it took place two years ago. This year, the big winner of the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award in the US Dramatic Competition was a dramedy by Lee Isaac Chung, about a Korean family in the ‘80s who suddenly gets moved by their father (Steven Yeun) to Arkansas, to start a farm. Even though the reviews have been great, distributor A24 hasn’t really had a big, Oscar nominated hit for the last couple of years, and the COVID-19 crisis made them delay all their releases. But when we were ready to write this off, a new trailer for the movie came out, confirming that it’s in the game of this awards season. Maybe the pandemic will be of help to A24, considering that one of the reasons they haven’t had success is that they divided their attention into too many releases, and ended up getting not much. This time, they are betting all on Lee who, even if this doesn’t go anywhere, also has a new gig coming up as the director of the live action remake of Your Name.
-News of the World (sneak peek): So much of this year has felt like a game of chicken between a virus and movie studios. While many movies chose to skip this year altogether, Universal remains firm (for now) with its plans to open a wide movie on Christmas Day, with a Western that reunites Paul Greengrass and Tom Hanks in an enticing premise. In this drama based on Paulette Jiles’ novel, Hanks plays a traveling newsreader in the aftermath of the American Civil War, who is tasked with reuniting an orphaned girl with her living relatives. While the first sneak peek of the movie looks promising, the future is still in the air.
-Nomadland (trailer): While the world burns around Hollywood, Searchlight is betting big on Chloe Zhao’s new film. Using the strategy of taking the spotlight while the rest of the contenders is uncertain about how or when to be released, the indie drama began its journey at Venice, with critics raving about the story of a woman (two-time Oscar winner Frances McDormand) who, after losing everything in the Great Recession, embarks on a journey through the American West, living as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad. At the end of the fest, the movie won the coveted Golden Lion. To put that into perspective, the last three winners of the award were past Best Picture nominees The Shape of Water, Roma and Joker, with The Shape of Water (also distributed by Searchlight) also winning the big prize. After drawing critical acclaim following its virtual showing on TIFF and NYFF, Nomadland seems like the first lock in the Best Picture line up. Still, there are obstacles ahead. Will Zhao break the disappointment of the last few years, when deserving candidates for Best Director got blocked by the likes of Adam McKay and Todd Phillips? And will McDormand manage to get near a third Oscar, following a recent win for Three Billboards in Ebbing, Missouri? Time will tell.
-On the Rocks (trailer): While she hasn’t been near the Oscars for a while, Sofia Coppola is still a name that draws attention. This time, she opened the NYFF with a dramedy about a young mother (Rashida Jones) who reunites with her playboy father (Bill Murray, also reuniting with Sofia after Lost in Translation) on an adventure through New York to find out if her husband (Marlon Wayans) is cheating on her. The consensus seems to be that, while light and not near her best work, it’s still a fun and breezy movie, with a very good turn by Murray. While many would assume that this A24 production will disappear into the abyss when it releases on Apple TV+ on October 23, the dropping out of many candidates gives the movie a chance to, at least, fight for some Golden Globes.
-One Night in Miami (sneak peek): Following her recent Oscar and Emmy wins for If Beale Street Could Talk and Watchmen, Regina King is still striking hard, and this time, she’s doing it as a director. For her big screen debut as a filmmaker, she chose to adapt Kemp Powers’ play that dramatizes a real meeting on February 25, 1964, when Muhammad Ali (Eli Goree) followed an iconic win with a hangout session with Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) and Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge). Opening at Venice, the film received glowing reviews, with many praising King (even though some said that the movie doesn’t fully translate the play to the film medium) and the actors’ performances, especially Ben-Adir and Odom Jr. (who, it should be said, also wrote an original song for the end credits of the movie, which could help his Oscar chances). Amazon Prime is hoping that this is their big contender this year, with plans of a theatrical release on Christmas and a streaming release on January 15. Judging by the praise this got at festival season, it has a chance to go a long way.
-Over the Moon (trailer): In a year with not that many contenders for Best Animated Feature, Netflix is betting on a musical adventure directed by the legendary Glen Keane, a classic Disney animator who recently won an Oscar for Best Animated Short for co-directing Dear Basketball. While our expectations were lowered by the first trailer for the movie, centered around a Chinese girl who builds a rocket ship and blasts off to the Moon in hopes of meeting a legendary Goddess, it’s still safe to assume that it has a shot at being nominated for something. Netflix also hopes that you like its big candidate for Best Original Song, which really, really sounds like a Disney ballad.
-Pieces of a Woman: While this year doesn’t have the amount of surprise contenders that a regular Oscar season usually has, we still have some movies that sneaked through festival season. The first one was the new, somber drama by Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó, known for the doggy uprising pic White God, and the not-so-well-received sci-fi Jupiter’s Moon. This time, we follow a woman (Vanessa Kirby) whose life is torn apart after a home birth at the hands of a flustered midwife (Molly Parker) ends in tragedy, and then leads to a court battle that also makes her confront her husband (Shia LaBeouf) and her domineering mother (Ellen Burstyn). While the movie had mixed reactions, Kirby had plenty of raves in her direction, particularly concerning her performance during a 25-minute birth sequence that is said to be brutal. That brutality paid off, though, because Kirby ended up winning Best Actress at Venice, and Netflix bought the movie, which also has Martin Scorsese as an executive producer. If the Academy wants to crown a new face in the scene, Kirby is the one who will be targeted, following her acclaimed turn in The Crown and her supporting roles in blockbusters like Mission Impossible: Fallout and Hobbs & Shaw.
-Promising Young Woman (trailer): When theaters started to close because of the pandemic, Universal started the push of their movies going straight to VOD, with titles including Trolls World Tour and Never Rarely Sometimes Always. However, there was a title that was supposed to premiere in April, and then suddenly disappeared from existence. It was the directorial debut of actress Emerald Fennell, who wrote a black comedy with touches of a thriller, centered on a woman in her thirties (Carey Mulligan) whose bright future was derailed by a traumatic event, and who’s now looking for revenge. While the reaction to its premiere at Sundance wasn’t enough to consider a Best Picture run, the twisted performance by Mulligan earned her the best praise since the last time she was nominated for an Oscar, a decade ago for An Education. Now, Focus Features is planning to open the movie at Christmas, and are positioning Carey for a run at Best Actress.
-Rebecca (trailer): When the news came out saying that Ben Wheatley would adapt Daphne du Maurier’s psychological thriller novel for Netflix, many were shocked. Some people considered the chance that this was an awards play by the cult director, who is doing the same work that earned Alfred Hitchcock his only Best Picture win. But seeing the trailer for this new version, with Lily James playing the newly married young woman who finds herself battling the shadow of her husband's (Armie Hammer) dead first wife Rebecca, we have to wonder if there’s a point to the existence of this remake. We will find out if there’s any awards chances for this movie on October 21, when it releases on streaming. Let’s hope that Kristin Scott Thomas has something to play with as Mrs. Danvers.
-Respect (trailer): Every year, there’s one or two actors who announce to the world “I want an Oscar” and campaign like their lives depended on it. Last time, it was Taron Egerton (accompanied by Elton John, who actually ended up winning another Oscar). This year, it is the turn of Jennifer Hudson, who is playing Aretha Franklin in a biopic directed by first timer Liesl Tommy, and who’s hoping that this attempt at awards ends up more like Dreamgirls than like Cats. She has been doing announcement trailers (a year in advance), quarantine tributes, award show tributes, and every possible thing to get the industry to notice that she’s playing Aretha. Hey, Rami Malek and Renee Zellweger did it in the last few years, why can’t she. With a release date of January 15, Hudson wants that gold.
-Soul (trailer): Disney may be the studio that suffered the biggest hit because of the pandemic. Their parks are a loss, most of their big productions had to stop because of quarantine, and theaters in many parts of the world are closed. After the failure of Tenet for Warner Bros. and the experiment of the mouse house of charging people 30 dollars to see Mulan (which didn’t work at all), many wondered if Disney was gonna delay the new production by Pixar, written and directed by Pete Docter, who brought Oscar gold to his home with Up and Inside Out. The movie, which centers on a teacher (Jamie Foxx) who dreams of becoming a jazz musician and, just as he’s about to get his big break, ends up getting into an accident that separates his soul from his body, had a lot of promise, but the speculation of lost money was also a concern. Finally, Disney decided to release the movie on Christmas, but only on Disney Plus, causing another failure for theaters, but assuring that Disney at least can get more subscribers to its streaming service. And the movie? Well, it just premiered at the London Film Festival, and the critics are saying it’s Pixar at its best, with praises going from the look, to the script by co-director Kemp Powers (who also wrote the play of One Night in Miami, so he has many chances for a nod), to the score by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste. That means that it’s already a top contender to win Best Animated Feature, and this may not be the only category in which the movie is gonna get nominated.
-Supernova (trailer): If there’s a theme this year in terms of Oscar contenders, it might be dementia. One of the examples of this is a small road movie directed by Hairy Macqueen, which premiered to good reviews at the San Sebastian festival. This drama centers on a trip taken by Sam (Colin Firth) and Tusker (Stanley Tucci), partners for 20 years, who travel across England reuniting with friends and family, because Tusker was diagnosed with early onset dementia. While usually the big awards role is usually the one of the person who suffers the illnesses, some reviewers are calling Firth’s work as the supporting companion some of the best of his career. With Bleecker Street buying the rights for a US release, this is a little film that could still make some moves.
-Tenet (trailer): For the first five months of quarantine, the big narrative in the world of film was “Christopher Nolan is gonna save cinemas”. But after postponing the release of the mind bending actioner for months on end, creating big demands and expectations to theater owners, and finally releasing as the sacrificial lamb of Hollywood, Warner Bros ended up seeing the opposite effect. Even though Tom Cruise loved to be back at the movies, critics didn’t share enough excitement to make a spy movie that goes backwards worth the possibility of dying of coronavirus. The audiences didn’t show up as much, and those who did attend, mostly complained about the sound mixing and the plot. After all the sacrifice, it’s highly unlikely that Tenet goes beyond technical awards. Let’s start the “Travis Scott for Best Original Song” campaign now, before it’s too late.
-The Boys in the Band (trailer): The Ryan Murphy blank check for Netflix has been interesting to follow. On the one hand, we have his new TV shows, which go from not existing (The Politician), to alternate movie history that doesn’t know how alternate history works (Hollywood), to a challenge of how much TV will you stomach if Sarah Paulson and other middle aged actresses are campy in it (Ratched). And now, we are seeing his producing hand over the movie side, which starts with the new film adaptation of the cult play from 1968, which was already a movie in 1970 and recently jumped to Broadway in 2018. The cast from the recent Broadway production (which includes Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, Matt Bomer and Andrew Rannells) stars in Joe Mantello’s movie, telling the story of a group of gay friends in pre-Stonewall New York who reunite for a birthday party and end up revealing a lot of open wounds. While this movie got good reviews from critics, it kinda disappeared without a sound after beginning to stream on Netflix at the end of September. Unless the service wants to campaign for Golden Globes, this film is lost in the algorithm.
-The Devil All the Time (trailer): Another September release on Netflix was the new psychological thriller by Antonio Campos (Simon Killer, Christine) who didn’t manage to continue his streak of intense and terrifying character dramas with his messy adaptation of the dark novel by Donald Ray Pollock. Wasting a cast that includes Tom Holland, Sebastian Stan, Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, Eliza Scanlen, Bill Skarsgard, Jason Clarke and Riley Keough, this twisted period piece managed to stay for a while in the Top 10, but the reactions from critics were mixed, and audiences were busy asking what was happening with Pattinson’s Southern accent (which with The King makes two years in a row, baby). The many prognosticators who had hopes for an awards play moved on a while ago.
-The Father (trailer): It’s safe to say at this point that Anthony Hopkins is a lock for a Best Actor nomination at the next Oscars. After its premiere in Sundance, every prognosticator pointed in his direction, and for the next few months he swept praise for his harrowing portrayal of an old man grappling with his age as he develops dementia, causing pain to his beleaguered daughter (recent winner Olivia Colman, who also got praised). Sony Pictures Classics will make Florian Zeller’s adaptation of his acclaimed play its big contender of the season, using Hopkins (who this year got a nom for The Two Popes) as a starter to also get Colman, Zeller and the movie nominated.
-The Human Voice (trailer): And speaking of Sony Pictures Classics, it’s almost safe to say that they have another Oscar in the bag this year. That’s because they just bought Pedro Almodóvar’s short film, his English-speaking debut that is an adaptation of the play by Jean Cocteau. In his version (that was acclaimed by critics after premiering in Venice), Tilda Swinton plays the woman waiting at the end of a phone, expecting to hear from his ex-lover who abandoned her. Considering how the competition for Best Live Action Short Film has become somewhat lacking in the last few years (I mean, have you seen Skin), this should be an easy award to win, especially considering how beloved Almodóvar is in the Academy, which nominated him this year for the great Pain and Glory.
-The Life Ahead: While we’re talking about legends, it’s time to talk about Sophia Loren. 16 years after her last leading role in a movie, the Italian icon returns with a drama that was bought by Netflix, who plans to campaign for her as Best Actress and for the movie in the Best International Film category. Directed by Edoardo Ponti (who is also Sophia’s son), this movie centers on a Holocaust survivor who takes in a 12-year-old boy who recently robbed her, in a contemporary adaptation of Romain Gary’s novel The Life Before Us. Netflix has set a date for November 13 to release this movie, and the campaign seems to be about the narrative of seeing Loren winning another Oscar 60 years after she won her first one for Two Women, by Vittorio De Sica.
-The Midnight Sky: Based on the novel Good Morning, Midnight, this collaboration between George Clooney and Netflix is once again making us ask one thing. Are we gonna get the director Clooney of Good Night and Good Luck, or are we gonna get the director Clooney of Leatherheads, The Ides of March, The Monuments Men and Suburbicon? Let’s hope he breaks his streak of blandness with this sci-fi story, which makes us think a little bit of Gravity: A lonely scientist in the Arctic (Clooney) races to stop a group of astronauts led by Felicity Jones from returning to a devastated Earth. With a release set for December, we have to hope that this is more than some Top 10 filler that will evaporate from existence in a week’s time.
-The Prom: In probably the biggest blank check of the Ryan Murphy deal with Netflix, this musical he’ll direct is based on the Tony-nominated show about a group of Broadway losers (Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Andrew Rannells and James “boo” Corden) who try to find a viral story to get back in the spotlight, and end up going to a town in Indiana to help a lesbian high school student who has been banned from bringing her girlfriend to the prom. While it’s clear that this December 11 release is gonna sweep the Golden Globes, the emptiness of this year compared to others could clear the way for some Oscar nominations, including Meryl and the obligatory original song added to a preexisting musical for easy clout.
-The Trial of the Chicago 7 (trailer): When it was announced that Paramount was selling Aaron Sorkin’s new movie to Netflix, some people saw it as a studio dumping a failed awards vehicle to be forgotten. However, the excuse that Sorkin wanted to release this movie before the US presidential elections seems to be true, because critics really enjoyed his old school courtroom drama, centered around the trial on counter cultural activists in the late ‘60s. Everybody praised uniformly the huge cast, that includes Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jeremy Strong, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Frank Langella, William Hurt, Michael Keaton and Mark Rylance, which guarantees a SAG awards nomination (but makes it difficult to decide which actors will actually get nominated for Oscars). With a reaction that brings to mind the days of A Few Good Men and is the best reception he got since his Oscar winning script for The Social Network, the film faces a couple of hurdles. First of all, it got positioned as the frontrunner in the Best Picture race by some people, which instantly puts a target on its back. Then, we have to consider that the movie releases on Netflix this Friday, October 16, which makes it the first big contender this year to face the world, and which in these times of lockdown will probably make the reception to Marriage Story and The Irishman from last year look like a walk in the park. I mean, there are some people who aren’t swayed by Sorkin, and for good reason.
-The United States vs. Billie Holiday: While Paramount was quick to hand The Trial of the Chicago 7 to Netflix, there’s another movie that the studio kept to play in the upcoming awards season. This biographical drama follows the life of another famous musician, Billie Holiday (Andra Day), and we see the journey of her career in jazz as she is targeted by the Federal Department of Narcotics with an undercover sting operation led by Federal Agent Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes), with whom she had a tumultuous affair. While the movie counts with a screenplay credit by Pulitzer winner Suzan-Lori Parks, the big question mark is the film’s director, Lee Daniels, who hit it big with Precious and then had results that were disastrous (The Paperboy) or financially successful, but not awards-wise (Lee Daniels’ The Butler). However, Paramount trusts in this movie, and with a release date on February 12, they want to make a splash.
-Wolfwalkers (trailer): While the attempts by Apple TV+ to establish themselves as a player in the TV world go from trainwrecks (See) to forgettable (The Morning Show) to eventually great (see Ted Lasso, everybody, this is not a joke), their plans to make a name in the film business have something to do with this year’s Oscars. While Cherry can come or go, they have a solid contender for the Best Feature Documentary with Boys State, but their big dog this year is the new movie by Cartoon Saloon, an Irish studio responsible for the acclaimed The Secret of Kells, The Song of the Sea, and The Breadwinner, all of which were nominated for Best Animated Feature. This time, Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart direct a story about a young apprentice hunter who journeys with her father to Ireland to help wipe out the last wolf pack. But everything changes when she befriends a free-spirited girl from a mysterious tribe rumored to transform into wolves by night. After getting critically acclaimed following its premiere at TIFF, this is a surefire contender for this year’s Best Animated Feature category, and Apple is gonna parade it before its streaming release on December 11. Also, while you watch that, you could watch a couple of episodes of Ted Lasso, too. It’s a really good show, it’s all I’m saying.
Anyways, that’s all the news from the last few months of festivals. No matter what happens next, this is gonna be a long, long, long race.

Flatten the Curve. #52. Lance B Eliot. AI World Government President (Organization) Behind Lance? Oracle Solutions. S&P. Is Techbrium a Real Company? C3.ai Founder Claims We're at War With China Already. The WEF Great Reset & Prince Charles. Boom or Doom. It's Game On.

You have to read, Flatten the Curve, Part 51 first. Who is Lance B Eliot? Link Here
After posting the article about Lance B Eliot yesterday, another video popped up on YouTube. u/D4W50N88 found it and provided the link, and I'm glad he did (Thank you D4). Why didn't it show up for me? No idea. But it did, and now the enigma has become worse.
When I first stumbled onto this, I made a mistake. I went back through my notes and found that I had wrongly attributed the Lance persona as the judge sitting to the left of what was Lance at the table. How did I screw up that bad? I'm human. (No seriously, I'm human. I'm not AI. I'm not NSA. CIA. I don't have any affiliations to any Alphabet agencies. I am what I am. And what is that? A guy who grew up with an extremely skeptical father who always called BS on the news and political events, and tried to make me understand that it was self interest, not altruism, that guided the world around us. That will be expanded on at some point down the road.) I make mistakes. It's not the first time and it won't be the last. But sometimes mistakes happen for a reason.
This is one of those times.
So I watched the second YouTube video of Lance that was provided here;

I'm not sure if he's exactly an AI, seems to be a real person going off this video -

Really quick summary, he doesn't say diddly squat. Anyone could have regurgitated lvl 5 autonomous cars and insurance rates. My statement doesn't prove anything though. I realize that. But let me ask you something, He's been on CNN, he's written a ton of books, he's an angel investor, a venture capitalist, CEO of Techbrium, and not one other picture or (so far) any other videos of him exist? We're living in an age of near omnipresent and approaching omnipotent surveillance, they are screwing with DNA, the government has acknowledged UFO's, phenomenon like the Hum and Sky Quakes are being reported worldwide, we live in a pandemic for which we will need never ending vaccinations, so is it really out of the realm of reason that Lance could be an actor? I've looked for research papers from him and I've found maybe three to four. None of them are overly technical and mainly deal with AI and the law and ethics. That's strange. But before we dive further, I will concede the possibility that there is a Lance B Eliot, but I'm adamant that the articles and books are written by AI. No doubt in my mind, and by the time this post is done, you'll wonder what's really going on as well.
Let's start with his name. Something about it grabbed my attention, as it did for others. I can't speak for them, but I remember just looking at it suddenly thinking, is that an anagram?
u/agelesseverytime • Lance B Eliot is an anagram for antebellico - prewar.
u/WhiteRabbitCaveCA also sent me the same anagram.
Hidden in plain sight. But it's still a chess game. Your moves have to be deceptive and you need to look ahead a minimum of three moves. And all moves have multiple moves. Does this mean that the anagram doesn't apply? No. It does. And it points to the ability of having meaning hidden in meaning, all in the open.
Now I will caution you, this post will be somewhat open-ended. I haven't been able to find anything definitive that could point to a possible origin of what I believe to be Lance B Eliot, yet those breadcrumbs do lead to loaves of bread, so to speak.
So when I was sent the other YouTube link with Lance as a speaker, I looked around the web again. I had already found what I thought was a very strong link, but now the video threw a monkey wrench into my plans.
This is what else I found when I Googled articles by Lance B Eliot. Eliot Weinman, executive editor of AI Trends, where AI Eliot seems to get published a lot. Relax, it's not just the name coincidence. It's also this:

Curiosity as a Core Cognitive Capability for Self-Driving Cars. By Eliot Weinman. aitrends.com — By Dr. Lance B. Eliot, the AI Trends Insider. • I live in a gated community that has a main gate for residents and guests, and provides an impressive driving entrance into the neighborhood that displays ornate iron gates and a spectacular water-sprouting fountain. There is a secondary gate at the back of the community.

And then.

President Trump Will Sign an Executive Order Promoting AI. By Eliot Weinman • aitrends.com — President Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Monday meant to spur the development and regulation of artificial intelligence, technology that many experts believe will define the future of everything from consumer products to health care to warfare.

Source Here
There is another example there, but this will suffice. So why is Lance B Eliot being headlined by Eliot Weinman? Doesn't make sense, does it? And what is muckrack.com?

Say hello to your one-stop, relationship-building platform and goodbye to outdated media databases: Muck Rack’s search engine lets you discover and pitch relevant journalists in a much more targeted way than legacy media databases.

Ok. Now usually top ranking scientists don't belong to an organization that is meant to find journalists paying work. Why would they? And why would a guy who has started multiple companies, is a CEO of Techbrium - and speaking of which, check out the website, powered by godaddy? Seriously? It doesn’t list any employees, no detailed company history, and while it does have job openings, it seems off. So I Googled mapped Techbrium, and guess what, no results found. Ok. Gotcha. Must be the New Normal GPS malfunctioning, right? SMH.
Back to Eliot Weinman. Let me show you what he belongs to: Founder and Conference Chair, AI World & AI World Government (brought to you by the Cambridge Institute). Uhm. Keep Calm and Carry On? Don't Worry be Happy? And, Eliot Weinman is the GM and Founder at Cambridge Innovation Institute. Also, Eliot Weinman has had 1 past job as the President, Events and Publishing at Yankee Group. And. Research firm Yankee Group has acquired digital media and technology research and events firm Trendsmedia. The acquisition will “accelerate Yankee’s growth and expand its reach in global connectivity issues, helping network builders, operators and users navigate revolutionary change”, whatever that means. And when I clicked on trendsmedia, it led me to a clickfunnel company. And when I clicked on Yankees group, it was owned by 451 Research, which is owned by S&P Global Inc. (prior to April 2016 McGraw Hill Financial, Inc., and prior to 2013 McGraw-Hill Companies) is an American publicly traded corporation headquartered in Manhattan, New York City. Its primary areas of business are financial information and analytics. It is the parent company of S&P Global Ratings, S&P Global Market Intelligence, and S&P Global Platts, CRISIL, and is the majority owner of the S&P Dow Jones Indices joint venture. "S&P" is a shortening of "Standard and Poor's". Cool, right. Now what? Glad you asked. S&P is into four different segments.
S&P Global RatingsEdit • S&P Global Ratings provides independent investment research including ratings on various investment instruments.
S&P Global Market IntelligenceEdit • S&P Global Market Intelligence is a provider of multi-asset class and real-time data, research, news and analytics to institutional investors, investment and commercial banks, investment advisors and wealth managers, corporations, and universities. Subsidiaries include Leveraged Commentary & Data.
S&P Dow Jones IndicesEdit • Launched on July 2, 2012, S&P Dow Jones Indices is the world's largest global resource for index-based concepts, data, and research. It produces the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average.[20][21] S&P Dow Jones Indices calculates over 830,000 indices, publishes benchmarks that provide the basis for 575 ETFs globally with $387 billion in assets invested, and serves as the DNA for $1.5 trillion of the world's indexed assets.
S&P Global PlattsEdit • Headquartered in London, S&P Global Platts is a provider of information and a source of benchmark price assessments for the commodities, energy, petrochemicals, metals, and agriculture markets. It has offices in more than 15 cities, including major energy centres such as London, Dubai, Singapore, and Houston, and international business centres such as São Paulo, Shanghai, and New York City.
Ok. So what? So this. The McGraws and the George W. Bush family have close ties dating back several generations. Harold McGraw Jr. (deceased) was a member of the national grant advisory and founding board of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. Source Here
And who is the President and chief executive officer of S&P? Douglas L. Peterson. And what else does he do? Peterson is co-chair of the Bipartisan Policy Centers’ Executive Council on Infrastructure, and advocates for public-private sector partnerships as a means of improving infrastructure in the US.[23] For the World Economic Forum, Peterson is Co-Chair of the Stewardship Board of the Platform for Shaping the Future of Cities, Infrastructure and Urban Services; a Member of the International Business Council; and Governor of the Financial Services Industry Community. Peterson is also a boardmember of National Bureau of Economic Research, and the US-China Business Council. Peterson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee.
Basically a Conspiracy Theorist's Doomscrolling dream job, am I right?
WEF • Who are behind the Great Reset (later post coming soon), and to quote Prince Charles speaking (virtually, of course SMH) at the World Economic Forum, "We have a golden opportunity to seize something good from this crisis - its unprecedented shockwaves may well make people more receptive to big visions of change," said Prince Charles at the meeting, adding later, "It is an opportunity we have never had before and may never have again." Source Here
Great. Perfect. Crisis. Reaction. Solution.
CFR • The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), founded in 1921, is a United States nonprofit think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs. It is headquartered in New York City, with an additional office in Washington, D.C. Its membership, which numbers 4,900, has included senior politicians, more than a dozen secretaries of state, CIA directors, bankers, lawyers, professors, and senior media figures. Currently it has, • David M. Rubenstein (Chairman) – Cofounder and Co-Chief Executive Officer, The Carlyle Group. • Jami Miscik (Vice Chairman) She currently serves on the boards of EMC Corporation, In-Q-Tel and the American Ditchley Foundation, and is a member of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. Before entering the private sector, she had a twenty-year career as an intelligence officer, including a stint as the Central Intelligence Agency's Deputy Director for Intelligence (2002–2005), and as the Director for Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council (1995–1996). • Thad W. Allen − Senior Executive Advisor, Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. • Laurence D. Fink – Chairman and Chief Executive Officer BlackRock. There are more, but you get it. And let's just top it off with, CFR has published the bi-monthly journal Foreign Affairs since 1922, and runs the David Rockefeller Studies Program, which influences foreign policy by making recommendations to the presidential administration and diplomatic community, testifying before Congress, interacting with the media, and publishing on foreign policy issues.
And you may have noticed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insures banks from going bankrupt. Yikes. Hopefully we don't have a cybersecurity attack on our banking systems. Maybe we should use Coalfire?
OK, are you confused, me too. Let's recap.

BGG RECAP!

Lance B Eliot shares article ownership with Eliot Weinman on muckrack.com, which was published on AI Trends. Eliot Weinman is the executive director AI World and AI World Government. Trends Media was also bought by the Yankees Group, where Eliot Weinman is the President. And when I clicked on the Yankess group, it was owned by 451 Research, which was owned by S&P, which was started by friends of George Bush, who belonged to the Carlyle Group, which has a co-executive on the CFR, and Douglas Peterson is a member of the CFR and the WEF, while aslo running S&P.
Simple, right. Now, remember two things, Eliot Weinman seems to be associated with Lance B Eliot, and Lance is constantly produces articles about AI and business, while S&P has is all about business. Let's go.

Lance the Prequel.

So when I first found Lance, I started to ponder different anagrams. Why? Well, his last name. One guy who works for me is named Elliot, and Eliot stood out for the different spelling. After repeating a mantra of Eliot for a while, I stopped.
Eliot. ElIOT. elIoT. IoT. Internet of Things. It had to be me looking for a pattern. HAD TO BE. Then I looked at the name again. The end was possible, so I looked at his first name. I repeated the same mantra, letting my unconscious do the work. And sure enough, it hit me again. Lance. LANce. LAN. Local Area Network. No. Effing. Way. Come on. LAN + IoT = Local Area Network of Internet of Things. Ok. It adds up. Makes sense. I don't know how, but it does. Yet that still left me with the rest of his name.
CEBEL. Whelp, the mantra didn't help, it was time to dig. And dig I did. And found nothing. Well a couple of things, and one I thought that I was stretching logic too far, and the other, maybe not. Because it led me to OMG’s Artificial Intelligence Platform Task Force. A co-chair was Claude Baudoin, who has a company called cébé IT & Knowledge Management. And I almost went with it, and then something said NO. It was a gut feeling that I was wrong. There was no L in the company name. So I started digging all over again. And it wasn't easy. It took forever. It didn’t make sense. At all. I couldn't find anything that was an exact match. And then I saw this.

Thomas Siebel's software company C3IoT raised about $100 million from private equity investors in January 2018, at a $1.5 billion valuation. Today, C3.ai is focused on enterprise AI, but it started as a clean energy firm. It was briefly named C3IoT in 2016 to chase the IoT market. Siebel was a salesman at Oracle. He left in 1990, built software firm Siebel Systems and sold it to Oracle for $5.8 billion in cash and stock in 2006. Forbes

And he was attacked by an Elephant.
(DID YOU KNOW. Siebel was attacked by an elephant on a 2009 safari trip in Serengeti; he barely escaped death and has undergone 19 reconstructive surgeries. Maybe the animal kingdom was defending the planet?)
It was briefly named C3IoT. But the first program was sold to Oracle and • Oracle Siebel CRM is a sales force automation (SFA) and customer relationship management solution designed to assist enterprises to manage their customer experiences. It includes a range of sales, marketing and customer service applications tailored to various industries • focuses on businesses. Much like a lot of Lances articles. And Thomas Siebel's software • C3.ai is a leading enterprise AI software provider for accelerating digital transformation. The proven C3 AI Suite provides comprehensive services to build enterprise-scale AI applications more efficiently and cost-effectively than alternative approaches • advances AI to accelerate digital transformation, just like AI World Government, which is owned by Eliot Weinman. Is Cebel a play on Siebel? It sure seems like it to me.
And Thomas also has this to say.
High: What inning of the game do you believe we are in from an AI perspective, and how is that likely to develop going forward? Siebel: Julius Caesar considered Gaul as being divided into three parts, and I believe AI is divided into three parts.
1• Artificial general intelligence, which includes projects such as Google DeepMind. Here, the attempt is to build computers that have equal or greater intelligence as human beings. This gets to the malicious killer robots and the refrigerator that takes over your household theory, but I do not believe we need to worry about that in our lifetimes;
2• Social media systems. Here, social media vendors are using AI extremely effectively to manipulate people at the level of the limbic brain. I believe this is malevolent, and what we are seeing in social media is concerning. People are acting as servers to the computer instead of the opposite;
3• The application of AI to commercial, industrial, and government systems, which is where we play at C3.ai. This is building prediction to identify fraud, efficiency to the supply chain, and predictive maintenance for devices in the digital oilfields, the smart grid, the manufacturing industry, agricultural equipment, and precision health. This is about using AI to lower the cost of production and to deliver products and services with greater safety, with greater cybersecurity, and with lower environmental impact.
Hmmm. It's starting to sound like my posts, isn't it? Yet he's not worried about killer robots, yet social media manipulation, that's a problem. But I can bet you all the tea that's left in China, those words shouldn't be taken at Facebook value.
High: You have referred to there being a war with China based on artificial intelligence, and you have referenced how Vladimir Putin said the country that wins in AI will ultimately win in the world. As a citizen of the U.S., what do you think about this? How optimistic are you about the state’s ability to lead and the extent to which it is appropriate language? Siebel: This is a crucial topic. As you mentioned, in 2017, Vladimir Putin said, “Whoever wins the war in AI will be the ruler of the world.” I believe that is true, but I do not believe Russia will win. It is either going to be China or the U.S. I believe we are currently in a state of non-kinetic warfare with China. It is well-documented how great Russia and China are at infiltrating our power grid infrastructure, infiltrating our financial system infrastructure, and implanting viruses, bots, and malware so they can remotely turn off the grid. There are well-documented incidents where the Chinese have penetrated, say, the United States Office of Personnel Management and stolen the personnel records of up to 21 million people. This includes anyone who has ever applied for or been granted a security clearance. If this is not war, what is it? If you read the 13th five-year plan, it is extremely clear what they are doing. They are investing tens of billions of dollars a year in AI to win this battle and to dominate the use of AI for the purposes of defense and conducting warfare. In many ways, this is a test of two fundamentally opposed political philosophies. In the case of China, there is a totalitarian state with a top-down command and control economy where the NRDC writes the 13th five-year plan, invests billions of dollars, and mandates that this happens. They are extremely bright, competent, and educated, and they are hard at work. In the United States, we have a much messier process with a free-market economy and a capitalist system. Innovation does not take place from a top-down command and control government-mandated system, but in garages in Palo Alto and storefronts in theNew York. I do not know which system is going to win, but this is going to be the ultimate test of these political philosophies. This is not a war we want to lose, the stakes could not be higher, and it is game on.
And then.
High: What role do you see the government playing in all this versus private industries, and how do you see the balance between the two? Siebel: The people who work in the Pentagon are exceptionally bright and well educated. These scholar statesman warriors are not asleep at the switch, and they are adopting AI in many ways to prove the efficiency of the Department of Defense. As it relates to AI, the U.S. is going to advance through a free market economy, entrepreneurship, and through the creativity of individuals who are unbridled by the constraints of the stage. This system has always worked out for us in the past, and hopefully, it will continue to. If it does not, we are going to have a problem. Source Here
Game on. If it doesn't work, there's a problem, because we're in a war with China, and the Pentagon states that the war will be fought in abrupt climate change which will cause drought and famine in China. And I've said it before, but the social discord and the riots, will be blamed on Russia and/or China. And maybe they are to blame. Who knows, because we have to trust our New Normal World Order narrative as it's filtered with fact checks and fake news, while the surveillance system makes sure we are safe from physical threats through AI data mining, and incorporating AI through the Great Reset, which apparently China has to get on board with. Uhm, and people are having a hard time believing that our world is about to get turned upside down? Really? Has the desensitization been that effective that everyone is numb? Short answer, pretty much.

BGG Final Words

NEW YORK (PRWEB) JANUARY 11, 2018 • Though various forms of artificial intelligence and machine learning have existed for nearly 60 years, it is only recently that this field of computing has developed to a level of accessibility that truly allows businesses to leverage this innovative technology. There are no blanket solutions in technological transformations. Artificial intelligence is no exception. Mediaplanet’s Cognitive Technology campaign, created in partnership with Melinda Gates, the World Economic Forum and Microsoft, will serve as an educational guidebook for business leaders to understand how to obtain the maximum benefits from cognitive technologies within their market —using artificial intelligence to improve employee workflow and efficiency, reshape customer experiences and take risk and fraud protection to the next level. This program was made possible with the support of Melinda Gates, the World Economic Forum’s Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Microsoft, the National Security Agency, the National Retail Federation, Eliot Weinman, the Cognitive Computing Consortium, SCIP, AMT, HSBC, Forgerock, Feedzai, LogMeIn, Cognicor, Omron, The Nerdery and The Savo Group. Source Here

Hey! Look, NSA, Melinda "I hoarded food in my basement because I know how privileged we are" Gates, WEF, and Eliot Weinman. And his AI World Government did this press release.
According to Nguyen Anh Tuan, CEO of the Boston Global Forum (BGF), “We have been collaborating with Mr. Weinman and his team at AI World throughout 2018 to support the event as an International Host. We have several activities already underway at AI World 2018, and will continue our strategic alliance for all AI World 2019 events. We will present an AI-Government model at AI World Government.” Source Here
Do you want Skynet Eliot, cause this is how you get Skynet.
But maybe I'm suffering mass psychogenic delusions from Doomscrolling looking for mass surveillance examples and an upcoming war before environmental collapse. Maybe? Possible? Let's look and see if I'm justified in my paranoia.
Lance B Eliot • Neanderthal and AI. Source Here • Could the acrimonious polarization in society today be simply due to chance alone, or might we be divided amongst ourselves by inherited Neanderthal DNA that has been triggered in recent times? Let’s hope that we can find a means to overcome the polarization, else we might become an extinct species and then, down the road, perhaps some surviving all-knowing AI might look back one day and snicker that we were ultimately and unknowingly doomed by our Neanderthal forerunners.
You're gonna trigger me, you AI loving Neanderthal monster. Doesn't that sound crazy? Read the article and then tell me that it was written by a human (not that anyone has, it's just a figure of speech).

May 21, 2016 • As you can see, it seems like we managed to avert what could have been a massive economic crisis in the 2008-2009 time frame, and entered into what Mohamed in his 2010 Per Jacobsson lecture referred to as the “new normal” (now widely popularized). We have been somewhat languishing in this new normal and are seemingly trying to just keep ourselves in the new normal, sometimes now referred to as the new new normal. Believing that we are nearing the T-junction, the Figure 1 shows that we are upon a pivot point, perhaps in just the next 2-3 years, and will then swing either toward the boom or the doom, of which the Mohamed as odds-maker suggests are equally likely (50/50 chance). Source Here

Pivot? Boom or Doom? Thank God we don't have any pivots happening.

Obama, 2012, Pivot to Asia • There has been strong perception from China that all of these are part of US' China containment policy.[4] Proponents of this theory claim that the United States needs a weak, divided China to continue its hegemony in Asia. This is accomplished, the theory claims, by the United States establishing military, economic, and diplomatic ties with countries adjacent to China's borders.

Aw crap. Pandemic. The Great Reset. Fourth Industrial Revolution. World Economic Forum. AI World Government. Pivot. Boom or Doom. Pivot to Asia.
All good. Keep Calm and Carry On. There is nothing to fear, but fear itself, and environmental collapse, WW3, AI, Killer Robots, Big Brother, Pandemic, Economic Collapse, Asteroids,^1. Magnetic Field Weakening, Famine, and Animal Mass Mortality Events. It's game on. Boom or Doom time. Cats and Dogs living together. Neanderthals worshipping AI. All the worst parts out of the Bible, except we don't get turned to salt. I hope. 2020 isn't over yet. And it probably won't be over in 2021, or 2023, or, 2030. After all, the agenda runs until 2030, doesn’t it?
So is Thomas Siebel and Oracle Siebel Systems supposed to be a homonym for Cebel? Is Eliot Weinman involved somehow, or is it just a coincidence. Is Lance B Eliot gonna be AI President of the Techncracy? Just keep paying attention and stay aware. We might not what is happening, but we know something is, and possibly hidden actors involved in all of it.
Heads up and eyes open. This hasn't even started yet. Talk soon and take care.
^1. Trust me, u/arctic-gold-digger was right on the money about space rocks, and I'll show you why in a few posts. And also, thanks to u/WhiteRabbitCaveCA as well as u/UFOS-ARE-DEMONIC The extra dots being connected were a massive help.

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Oct/12/2020 wrap-up: \\ War in Karabakh (Artsakh) \\ Battles in north (Mrav), north-east (Talish), and south (Hadrut) \\ Erdogan's cozy relations with terrorist groups \\ jihadists exposed \\ Casualty report \\ Flashback 1990s: first Karabakh war \\ Ilham feels insulted \\ the international response