ALL DOTS CONNECTED...Clinton’s, Mueller, Rosenstein, Comey, Learner, plus secret guests ... Lets PLAY FOLLOW THE TRAIL... Let’s follow the trail......
Here's what it looks like when all the pieces are sewn together. It smells like conspiracy and treason. Everyone needs to read this. Slowly, and patiently, because it’s very important......
From 2001 to 2005 there was an ongoing investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
A Grand Jury had been empanelled.
Governments from around the world had donated to the “Charity”. Yet, from 2001 to 2003 none of those “Donations” to the Clinton Foundation were declared.
Hmmm, now you would think that an honest investigator would be able to figure this out.
Guess who took over this investigation in 2002?
Bet you can’t guess.
None other than James Comey.
Now, that’s interesting, isn’t it?
Guess who was transferred in to the Internal Revenue Service to run the Tax Exemption Branch of the IRS?
Your friend and mine, Lois “Be on The Look Out” (BOLO) Lerner. Now, that’s interesting, isn’t it?
It gets better, well not really, but this is all just a series of strange coincidences, right?
Guess who ran the Tax Division inside the Department of Injustice from 2001 to 2005?
None other than the Assistant Attorney General of the United States, Rod Rosenstein.
Now, that’s interesting, isn’t it?
Guess who was the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation during this time frame?
I know, it’s a miracle, just a coincidence, just an anomaly in statistics and chances, but it was Robert Mueller.
What do all four casting characters have in common?
They all were briefed and/or were front line investigators into the Clinton Foundation Investigation.
Now that’s just a coincidence, right?
Ok, lets chalk the last one up to mere chance.
Let’s fast forward to 2009......
James Comey leaves the Justice Department to go and cash-in at Lockheed Martin.
Hillary Clinton is running the State Department, on her own personal email server by the way.
The Uranium One “issue” comes to the attention of the Hillary.
Like all good public servants do, you know looking out for America’s best interest, she decides to support the decision and approve the sale of 20% of US Uranium to none other than, the Russians.
Now you would think that this is a fairly straight up deal, except it wasn’t, the People got absolutely nothing out of it.
However, prior to the sales approval, none other than Bill Clinton goes to Moscow, gets paid 500K for a one hour speech then meets with Vladimir Putin at his home for a few hours.
Ok, no big deal right?
Well, not so fast, the FBI had a mole inside the money laundering and bribery scheme.
Guess who was the FBI Director during this time frame?
Yep, Robert Mueller.
He even delivered a Uranium Sample to Moscow in 2009.
Guess who was handling that case within the Justice Department out of the US Attorney’s Office in Maryland?
None other than, Rod Rosenstein.
Guess what happened to the informant?
The Department of Justice placed a GAG order on him and threatened to lock him up if he spoke out about it.
How does 20% of the most strategic asset of the United States of America end up in Russian hands when the FBI has an informant, a mole providing inside information to the FBI on the criminal enterprise?
Guess what happened soon after the sale was approved?
~145 million dollars in “donations” made their way into the Clinton Foundation from entities directly connected to the Uranium One deal.
Guess who was still at the Internal Revenue Service working the Charitable Division?
None other than, Lois Lerner.
Ok, that’s all just another series of coincidences, nothing to see here, right?
Let’s fast forward to 2015.
Due to a series of tragic events in Benghazi and after the 9 “investigations” the House, Senate and at State Department, Trey Gowdy who was running the 10th investigation as Chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi discovers that Hillary ran the State Department on an unclassified, unauthorized, outlaw personal email server.
He also discovered that none of those emails had been turned over when she departed her “Public Service” as Secretary of State which was required by law.
He also discovered that there was Top Secret information contained within her personally archived email. ( Let's not forget at least 10 CIA spies in china were killed by the Chinese because of the leaks and who knows what else occurred)
Sparing you the State Departments cover up, the nostrums they floated, the delay tactics that were employed and the outright lies that were spewed forth from the necks of the Kerry State Department, we shall leave it with this…… they did everything humanly possible to cover for Hillary.
Now this is amazing, guess who became FBI Director in 2013? Guess who secured 17 no bid contracts for his employer (Lockheed Martin) with the State Department and was rewarded with a six million dollar thank you present when he departed his employer?
None other than James Comey.
Amazing how all those no-bids just went right through at State, huh?
Now he is the FBI Director in charge of the “Clinton Email Investigation” after of course his FBI Investigates the Lois Lerner “Matter” at the Internal Revenue Service and exonerates her.
Nope.... couldn’t find any crimes there.
Can you guess what happened next?
In April 2016, James Comey drafts an exoneration letter of Hillary Rodham Clinton, meanwhile the DOJ is handing out immunity deals like candy.
They didn’t even convene a Grand Jury.
Like a lightning bolt of statistical impossibility, like an absolute miracle from god of corruption himself, like the true “Gangsta” Homey is, James steps out into the cameras of an awaiting press conference on July the 8th of 2016, and exonerates Hillary from any wrongdoing.
Can you see the pattern?
It goes on and on, Rosenstein becomes Asst. Attorney General, Comey gets fired based upon a letter by Rosenstein, Comey leaks government information to the press, Mueller is assigned to the Russian Investigation sham by Rosenstein to provide cover for decades of malfeasance within the FBI and DOJ and the story continues.
FISA Abuse, political espionage..... pick a crime, any crime, chances are...... this group and a few others did it.
All the same players.
All compromised and conflicted.
All working fervently to NOT go to jail themselves.
All connected in one way or another to the Clinton's.
They are like battery acid, they corrode and corrupt everything they touch.
How many lives have these two destroyed?
As of this writing, the Clinton Foundation, in its 20+ years of operation of being the largest International Charity Fraud in the history of mankind, has never been audited by the Internal Revenue Service.
Let us not forget that Comey's brother works for DLA Piper, the law firm that does the Clinton Foundation's taxes.
And, See the person that is the common denominator to all the crimes above and still doing her evil escape legal maneuvers at the top of the 3 Letter USA Agencies? Yep, that would be Hillary R. Clinton.
WHO IS LISA BARSOOMIAN?
Let’s learn a little about Mrs. Lisa H. Barsoomian’s background. Lisa H. Barsoomian, a US Attorney that graduated from Georgetown Law, is a protege of James Comey and Robert Mueller. Barsoomian, with her boss R. Craig Lawrence, represented Bill Clinton in 1998.
Lawrence also represented:
Robert Mueller three times;
James Comey five times;
Barack Obama 45 times;
Kathleen Sebelius 56 times;
Bill Clinton 40 times; and
Hillary Clinton 17 times.
Between 1998 and 2017, Barsoomian herself represented the FBI at least five times.
You may be saying to yourself, OK, who cares? Who cares about the work history of this Barsoomian woman?
Apparently someone does, because someone out there cares so much that they’ve “purged” all Barsoomian court documents for her Clinton representation in Hamburg vs. Clinton in 1998 and its appeal in 1999 from the DC District and Appeals Court dockets (?).
Someone out there cares so much that the internet has been “purged” of all information pertaining to Barsoomian.
Historically, this indicates that the individual is a protected CIA operative. Additionally, Lisa Barsoomian has specialized in opposing Freedom of Information Act requests on behalf of the intelligence community. And, although Barsoomian has been involved in hundreds of cases representing the DC Office of the US Attorney, her email address is Lisa Barsoomian at NIH gov. The NIH stands for National Institutes of Health.
This is a tactic routinely used by the CIA to protect an operative by using another government organization to shield their activities.
It’s a cover, so big deal right? I mean what does one more attorney with ties to the US intelligence community really matter?
It deals with Trump and his recent tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum imports, the border wall, DACA, everything coming out of California, the Uni-party unrelenting opposition to President Trump, the Clapper leaks, the Comey leaks, Attorney General Jeff Sessions recusal and subsequent 14 month nap with occasional forays into the marijuana legalization mix …. and last but not least Mueller’s never-ending investigation into collusion between the Trump team and the Russians.
Why does Barsoomian, CIA operative, merit any mention?
BECAUSE….
She is Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s WIFE….That’s why!!
Jaw dropping, shocking and extremely sad that this info has never been exposed-
it’s bullet proof and cannot be blown off ... and will convince many not paying attention that we have a soft coup happening now..

The Losers of the Red Bull Junior Team - Part 3: The Vettel Age (2007-2009)

by TheStateOfIt
In case you missed it:

• Part 1
• Part 2

Sebastian Vettel was the driver of the Red Bull Junior Team. Others that entered F1 in Red Bull’s name before him had been hit or miss. Christian Klien was a distant second fiddle to David Coulthard, Vitantonio Liuzzi was just there, Scott Speed had his notorious temper and the less said about Robert Doornbos, the better. But Vettel was the driver that made everyone believe in Marko. We all know his heroics in Toro Rosso in 2008 and becoming a title challenger in 2009, but even his rookie year impressed many. A point on debut as a last-minute replacement for Robert Kubica, his fourth place in China and even threatening for the win at Fuji.
Everyone started to believe in the Red Bull programme at this time. If such a star like Vettel could come from this academy, who’s to say there can’t be more?
I bet the rest of these hopefuls thought so too.

The Vettel Age (2007-2009)

Pedro Bianchini (BRA) - 2007 - Formula BMW
If life was fair, Bianchini wouldn’t be on this list. The list of Red Bull Junior drivers says he joined in 2007, but he was on Red Bull’s watchlist for a much longer time. In fact, in his karting days, he made an appearance on Brazillian late-night television decked out in full Red Bull gear. In any other timeline, this would be a relic for many an F1 fan, watching a current driver gain national attention at his infancy.
Not in this timeline, though. In one of his first tests in Formula BMW, he got caught up in a major accident that broke his fibula and sidelined him for the first bit of the season. With minimal testing, missed races, and a still healing injury, Bianchini struggled and performed well below expectations. Naturally, the results-hungry Marko monster’s appetite wasn’t whetted, and threw the poor kid out of the programme. He left full-time motorsport after another unsuccessful season in Formula BMW, though he still races karts on the rare occasion.
He now works as a sales coordinator for some company called Fibrafix, thanks to some LinkedIn and Facebook diving. Once again, it’s not stalking if it’s research.
Kevin Mirocha (GEPOL) - 2007 - Formula BMW
Mirocha suffered a similar fate as Bianchini, being dropped after a single season in Formula BMW with average-ish results, the most being a podium at Silverstone. However, there was no broken fibula to blame. The Polish-German driver was just above-average, but once again, Marko’s theory of development is not improving above-average drivers to the top of the table, but rather that all his drivers should already be at peak performance.
After being kicked out of Red Bull, his move to F3 the year after showed a hint of promise, but joining HBR Racing in the following year’s Euroseries proved to be a massive mistake as the whole team collapsed mid-season, taking Mirocha with them into the pit of uncertainty. Despite that, he found minor redemption in the 2010 Formula Renault NEC Championship, winning a race in a part-time drive. This made him a surprise call-up to GP2 in 2011 for Ocean Racing Technology, however that drive was short-lived. Scoring zero points, he was dumped mid-season for a fellow Red Bull dropout, Brendon Hartley.
His final showing was a much more successful season in Palmer Formula Two (to differentiate it from current Formula Two), even winning a race, but as the series died a quiet death, so did Mirocha’s racing career. A peek at his Instagram indicated he took up automobile photography and the like. That was over three years ago, though, so lord knows what’s happening with him now.
Daniel Morad (CAN) - 2007 - Formula BMW
I can tell you, with 95% confidence, that if you’ve seen a go-kart crash on YouTube before, you’ve seen Daniel Morad. I know you’ve seen Daniel Morad, even if you yourself didn’t know it was him. Y’all remember this incident, right? It’s literally on every ‘celebrates too early’ clickbait compilation on YouTube.
And that guy is Daniel Morad.
Morad, however, is much more than a karting mishap. Under Red Bull, he was the 2007 Formula BMW USA Champion. All good, right? He was immediately dumped by Red Bull.
Morad has no idea why. Compatriot Robert Wickens was also under the Red Bull Junior Team when he won the Formula BMW USA Championship just a year prior. He got chances in Formula Atlantic, Formula Renault, Formula 3, A1GP and Palmer Formula Two under Red Bull’s employ. Morad got a one-line email saying he was out of the programme.
He was able to make it to A1GP at least, but with Team Canada out of the series, he exploited his Lebanese heritage to race for constant backmarkers Team Lebanon. In the final season of the series, Morad did the team a favour by scoring their first ever points finish in the entire series.
His next career move to GP3 wasn’t as fruitful, but he did get lucky with the reversed-grid system to take a victory in the Silverstone sprint race. That year was also the same year where he won the Rotax Max Challenge, which was the race of THAT incident. For the past decade, though, he’s moved on from hands-free go-karting to sportscars, finding some success in GT3 cars in IMSA’s endurance series, winning the 2017 Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona in the GTD class. Nowadays he’s also a Twitch streamer as well, making appearances in several iRacing events alongside the best of the best.
Tom Dillmann (FRA) - 2007-2008 - Formula Three
Yep, I consider him a failure of Red Bull’s Junior Team, despite his appearances in Formula E. Dropped right from Red Bull after a disappointing start to his Formula 3 Euro Series campaign, Dillmann’s career never settled at all after that, hopping from team to team, series to series, category to category for nearly every year after. As much as motorsport is about breaking away from the pack, entropy in your career moves hasn’t translated to results for Dillmann.
The most Dillmann got out of his career was a championship in the decaying Formula Not-Renault V8 3.5 series in 2016 and a win in GP2 in 2012, being another benefactor of the reverse grid system in the Sprint Race. His championship in Formula Not-Renault did earn him a reserve driver spot at Venturi in Formula E, which he cashed in to race in a few events when main drivers Stephane Sarrazin and Edoardo Mortara weren’t around. It seemed Dillmann finally had something going right in his racing career in his second season deputising for Venturi, nabbing 4th at New York.
Then he joined NIO. And, for those not familiar with Formula E, NIO suuuuuuuuucks. Dillmann’s only real comparison, his teammate Turvey, was streets ahead. Like, literally, because Formula E runs on streets, and Turvey was normally ahead, so literally, like... streets ahead. Please laugh. Anyway, he’s now testing with Formula Two teams has proved to be really, really competent in the world’s vacation to simracing, being quite the star in The Race’s All-Star events and finishing 2nd in the Virtual 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Mika Mäki (FIN) - 2007-2009 - Formula Renault 2.0 / Formula 3
His early career was bright. Performed well in his national karting championships. Barely lost out on two Formula BMW trophies to the same guy. Red Bull comes and signs him up. And, unlike most on this list, he did not disappoint in his first season, winning the Italian Formula Renault Championship in 2007. His next season in Formula 3 Euroseries got off to a blinding start, winning two races and being in hot contention by round six.
Then he got into an off-track accident. He crashed his Nissan 350Z in a tunnel, spearing through a metal railing. Mercifully, he was uninjured, but questions were raised about how such a serious crash occurred in a 40 km/h tunnel late at night. I’m unsure how the investigation went and whether Mäki was punished or not, but you can just tell his results were affected. His hot streak in F3 suddenly ran cold and though he managed a few more decent results, his championship hopes were gone.
He still claimed another race victory in next year’s Euroseries and even finished second in the F3 Masters event, but Red Bull had enough and cast him away. One final, hapless, half-hearted, half-season effort with Motorpark Academy the next year saw him finish last in the F3 Euroseries he had been contending for just two years earlier. That was the end of Mäki’s racing career.
But Mäki isn’t dead yet. From the looks of things, he’s gone batshit insane. He’s started his own media/marketing/communications company called Ajaton, which means Timeless in Finnish. His company’s tagline is ”FRUITY AS FUCK”. Mika himself dressed up like a fucking dictator in his company profile picture. I don’t know how much of this is good PR or creative marketing, or how much of it is Mika being mad. Whatever it is, I’m all aboard the wacky Mäki train.
Dani Juncadella (ESP) - 2008-2009 - Formula BMW
Red Bull seriously missed the boat with Juncadella, and Juncadella missed the boat with Red Bull. How did this mutual boat-missing happen? He performed solidly in his two seasons in Formula BMW under Red Bull, coming in as a runner-up to Felipe Nasr in 2009, though most credit to that goes to Mucke Motorsport getting themselves DQ’ed from five races. Then Red Bull Junior Team did their traditional purging of talent, and Juncadella was one that got exiled from the team going into 2010.
Back then, it was a shame… for Red Bull. After a year getting acclimated to F3 machinery, Juncadella made himself famous as he won the 2011 Macau Grand Prix. The next year, he took domination to new heights, winning the 2012 F3 Euroseries, the F3 European Championship (which was basically the Euroseries with a hat on top) and the Masters of Formula Three. Red Bull had missed out on the biggest name in Formula Three.
But then it would be Juncadella missing out on Red Bull’s support system. Despite his F3 success and subsequent tests with Ferrari and Williams, there was nothing going for him in single-seaters. Him signing to Mercedes brought about some rumour with being Mercedes’ development driver, but all this led to was him making the sideways switch to DTM.
He did snatch the role of reserve driver at Force India in 2014, appearing in three Grand Prix weekends, but he got sick of Formula One politics and testing restrictions, retreating back to his role in DTM. He hasn’t found the same success in touring cars, though, propping up the table in most of his DTM seasons. Only a solitary victory at Brands Hatch in 2019 and a last lap battle with Max Verstappen in Team Redline’s simracing championship were indications of Juncadella’s previous success in Formula Three.
Mirko Bortolotti (ITA) - 2009 - Palmer Formula Two
Bortolotti, like Juncadella, had tons of hype and talent behind him. There wasn’t that much of it during his karting days or his early single-seater career, but the hype around him exploded when he won the 2008 Italian Formula Three series by an absolute landslide, with a seven-race winning streak being more than enough to seal the championship. His reward was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to test with Ferrari at Fiorano.
He cashed in that reward by setting the F2008 lap record around Fiorano. Sure, testing limits heavily restricted the running of Ferrari’s race and regular testers on Fiorano, but still, beating that lap record in what was supposed to be a token, prize-winning joyride made everyone sit up and take note. The hype meter went through the roof when he signed on to Red Bull’s junior team, and finishing a solid fourth in Palmer Formula Two gave him the chance to test for Toro Rosso over the winter.
In the first week of January 2010, the press tipped him to replace Jaime Alguersuari for the upcoming season at Toro Rosso.
In the second week of January 2010, Bortolotti was removed from Red Bull’s junior team.
Granted, he did say he wasn’t exactly ready for Formula One in the midst of all the rumours, but Red Bull suddenly pulling the plug was the last thing everyone expected. Ferrari’s driver academy swooped in and planted him in a GP3 ride for 2010, but he struggled in the switch of categories and was booted out of that junior driver programme after a year in the GP3 midfield. He won the Palmer Formula Two championship in 2011, but the rapid shift from Italy’s next Formula One driver to GP3 midfielder had already disillusioned the 21 year-old Italian, and after one final test with Williams as a prize for winning the F2 championship, he shifted to sportscars.
Bortolotti’s shift to sportscars has been fairly successful, becoming the champion of the final Megane Series Championship in 2013 before signing on to Lamborghini’s factory squad in 2014. Before his shift to Audi in 2020, he won the Blancpain Endurance Championship for them in 2017 and took class wins for them in both the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring. All congratulations to Mirko, but who knows where he could’ve been had Marko done what the press thought he’d do a decade ago: stick him in the car.
Not everyone can be Vettel. If everyone is Vettel, nobody is. (yes I ripped Syndrome’s line, it’s a badass one). However, this section contains probably the saddest stories, where many of these drivers actually proved their talent at a young age, like Morad, Juncadella and Bortolotti. And yet, despite all that, they never got a fair shake with Red Bull.
We have one final part left to go, the fourth-part of this four-part series. The next part features the losers of the Red Bull from more recent times, coming from textile salesmen, sons of Top Gear personnel and an actual, legit, hero.

Welcome to the Weekly Map Recap, a series where we look back at one map in the game each week. We’ll look with a critical eye at how each map represents its theme, proves faithful to its lore, and implements its design. We’ll see how effective its gameplay is, whether the art holds up, and the forecast for the map’s long term retention. With 52 maps to date, it’ll be quite the journey!
Links to the previous entries in a reply at the bottom!
Also, before we get to the recap, you should know that I'm currently conducting a survey on map preference. I'm currently still accepting responses - and I'll be publishing the results in a Weekly Map Recap Special article. Get in those responses while you still can!

20 of 52 - Fireheart Rise - Level 60-70

Here we are in Fireheart Rise. I think most folks would classify Fireheart as an ‘endgame’ map despite its relatively low level. It’s the conclusion of the Ascalon region’s story, and surprisingly tough for a 60-70 map with a high concentration of ‘group events’. It ‘feels’ more closely related to Frostgorge Sound and the Orrian maps than it does to Sparkfly Fen. Part of that has to do with its structure - one of our ‘capture the keep’ maps that has been a big topic of conversation at the time of writing (shortly after the completion of Drizzlewood Coast).
As the last map in the Ascalon region, players are intended to come here after Iron Marches - though that flow is a bit odd, as the entrance in the Southeast is far away from the lower level events on the west side of the map. So apparently players are supposed to enter through the SE, beeline for the SW, then head in a NE direction. Weird.

Theme/Concept - 10

This map is not just the conclusion of the Ascalonian story in a linear ‘plot’ sense, but also in a thematic sense. At its core, Ascalon is thematically about civilization vs environment, and it has been since the original Searing in GW1. Fireheart Rise is the natural endpoint of that conflict: at a time when the charr in general have moved to find some accommodation with their environment (whether or not they’re successful in that), the Flame Legion is the last bastion of ‘Searing’-style ideology. They are the living embodiment of ‘burn down the land to become stronger’.
Given that this is also in many ways a civil war within the charr, this is also a thematic battle for the soul of their civilization. Will they continue as ‘burn it all’ militarists, or find some kind of sustainable balance? Can they do that while remaining true to themselves? This is a thematic story question which has remained relevant to the present day, with Blood/Frost Imperator Bangar representing a resurfacing of that ‘Flame-style’ apocalyptic militarism.
But while Bangar’s story more closely ties thematically to the awakening of modern nationalism and fascism in pre-modern states (more on that when we get to Drizzlewood and Grothmar), the Flame Legion are traditional fantasy religious fanatics. Their militarism is religiously apocalyptic in a very real sense. We get the idea that they might prefer the world as a ball of charred cinders (no pun intended).

Lore - 5

We get some really neat lore on this map, but not much to do with the first game. Beyond a small corner in the southeast, the map does not line up with any in Guild Wars 1. There was a Flame Legion stronghold area in Guild Wars 1, but it was up north where the Grothmar Valley is in GW2. You can visit the ruins of the Cathedral of Flame in that map.
But in terms of Guild Wars 2 oriented lore, we’ve got a bit more. We’ve got the Burning Forest hero challenge, where nominally many Flame Legion charr undergo the Baelfire Ritual to turn themselves into partly elemental beings. We’ve got the Apostate Wastes with a surprising amount of grawl dialogue and conversation. We’ve got Pig Iron Quarry, where apparently the Legions source a fair amount of metals.
But mostly we’ve got a high number of Legion and Pact camps. There are a full nine camps - many of which are Ash Legion - hidden in various parts of the map. Many of these have a great deal of ambient and interactable dialogue. I wouldn’t miss the camp at Burnt Hollow - some really great ambient conversations here, a lot of interaction between the different races, finding out more about each other.
It’s unclear how much of this is really significant ‘lore’ though. It’s home to the Citadel of Flame, and that’s important. But beyond that, lore about the grawl and conversations about how the charr feel about sylvari doesn’t really move the needle on important lore information. They’re great for making the world feel more alive, but less so if you’re interested in the key events and hidden secrets of the story.

Design - 4

Fair warning that this section is unusually long today.
No matter what you’re building - whether that’s a game, a film, or a building - design never happens in a vacuum. This is true of Guild Wars 2’s maps, as well: each of them exists in the context of when they were built and by whom, as well as being compared to other maps in the same game.
In Fireheart Rise’s case, we have a map that is a ‘take the keep’ meta map at a time when that is a hot topic in our community. Now, while I plan to take a look at different categories of map design in the game across all maps at a later time, I think it would be prudent to single out these map-wide conquest maps and see how Fireheart Rise relates to them.
The ‘take the keep’ map-wide meta has been a clear goal of the design team at Arenanet from the beginning. They articulated this very clearly in July 2012, following a twitch livestream (here captured on youtube) where Colin Johanson and Eric Flannum talked about the ‘engdame’ of vanilla GW2. The Orrian ‘super-meta’ of God Temples across the three Orr maps was intended in many ways to be the PvE ‘endgame’ of the vanilla release. This never particularly panned out - first because of large scale bugs across Orrian maps on release, then because of a lack of rewards (later fixed in 2013 in a Feature Pack), and finally because of megaservers which removed cross-map retention of Temple effects in any real sense. While the events are still run, they do not resemble the grand ‘D-Day Invasion’ that was pitched in that 2012 interview.
Since then, we’ve seen map-wide ‘capture the keep’ metas in a couple different instances. We could see the live ‘Lost Shores’ event in November 2012 in Southsun Cove as a once-only ‘capture the keep’ meta, never to be repeated. After Dry Top introduced true map-wide metas (given that beyond the temples, Orrian events are disconnected from their meta events), The Silverwastes incorporated that into the first true realization of the ‘conquer the keep’ in a way that the designers clearly envisioned all the way back to 2012. Fighting from one fort to the next seamlessly, with each fort contributing to success, Silverwastes set the standard.
From there, the concept was kicked into high gear. Auric Basin, Tangled Depths, and Dragon’s Stand all resemble ‘capture the keep’ meta structures: they all feature powering up allies in separate lanes or areas before progressing to conquer a single boss, area, or set of enemies. Crucially for this type of design, each lane or area’s success impacts the success of the map as a whole. While Dragon’s Stand is clearly the most direct analogue to Silverwastes, the Lost Shores event, or the original vision for the Orrian Temple meta, the other maps are very similar. Note that in Auric Basin and Tangled Depths, just like in the Silverwastes or Dragon’s Stand, the final ‘boss’ meta does not involve the enemy attacking the ‘home base’, but instead the players bringing the fight to the enemy. This separates Verdant Brink from these other maps - its structure as a ‘defend’ meta is fundamentally different.
We see the team back off of this style as a result of strong criticism of Heart of Thorns meta maps following their release. The dominant community narrative at the time was that the HoT metas were too much time commitment for little reward - why play Dragon’s Stand when you can farm CoF or Fractals much faster and more easily? Moving forward, the design team kept metas smaller and more self-contained. While there are a couple ‘capture the keep’ metas in LWS3, PoF and Season 4, they are always smaller in scale. With the exception of Domain of Kourna, which is a general failure of implementation for its own reasons that we’ll get to, maps like Domain of Istan will have ‘capture the keep’ metas with the complexity, coordination, and time commitment taken out. On that map as well, separate event areas like the Astralarium will be completely disconnected from the meta events on map - marking Istan as clearly separate from its ‘capture the keep’ cousins.
Instead, most maps in LWS3, PoF, and LWS4 will default to a ‘double meta’ style, in which alternating smaller meta events will provide high engagement and reward for players with less time commitment. It is only when we get to Dragonfall and Drizzlewood Coast that we see these map types resurface. It is too early to speak on Drizzlewood Coast, given that Arenanet staff have commented on making adjustments to the balance and timing of that map’s meta. But I will say that in many ways (regardless of current balance or practicality) Drizzlewood Coast represents the ‘final expression’ or magnum opus of the ‘capture the keep’ style meta structure - in all its gothic two-and-a-half hour too-much-of-a-good-thing glory. I doubt it's possible for even a future expansion map to go bigger with the 'capture-the-keep' style than Drizzlewood did.
But we can see this design goal in lower level maps as well. Harathi Hinterlands, which we’ve covered before, is the lowest level example. In that map we can see a clear progression of the northeast meta through a number of centaur camps leading to the world boss Ulgoth. But the meta elsewhere on the map is not connected to this ‘boss meta’. They are disjointed, one does not impact the other.
Fireheart Rise is similar. It has the idea - that the map should be about conquering forts and progressing to the Citadel of Flame - but the implementation is decidedly not ‘there’ yet. The Citadel of Flame meta is separate from the others. Some of the other ‘capture the fort’ metas are in the meta tracker, while some are not and are just group events. The map overall has an unusually high density of group events, but they are disconnected from each other and generally not present in the meta tracker. There is no sense that any event leads into any other event outside of its own ‘area’. Even stranger, the final meta chain is shorter and less complex than the Harathi Hinterlands chain. This means this map is probably the worst of the ‘capture the keep’ maps overall.

Gameplay - 4

Ultimately, this brings down the experience of the whole map. Unlike other ‘exploration-style’ maps where the events can live separately, in Fireheart Rise the events feel like they should be connected. Because they’re not, it creates cognitive dissonance which leads to a sense of purposelessness. Why bother with this tough group event if it’s not directly related to capturing the Citadel of Flame, and doesn’t have good rewards? These elements compound themselves: tough events that are disconnected, so nobody goes out of their way to do them, so there's less people to group up with, so their more difficult, which makes it so that nobody goes and does them etc. It's a cycle.
That’s not to say that there’s not fun to be had on this map, gameplay wise. The grawl meta in the Apostate Wastes happens to be, kind of ironically, the most fun meta on the map. The different events for it can be done in any order, culminating in a final bossfight where you feel like your choices mattered, even if just a little bit.
The hearts on the map involve a lot of fun sneaking around and sabotage, and there are some great minidungeons. The Pig Iron Quarry has a fantastic jumping puzzle, and it’s always fun to help out a kodan village.
But ultimately, for a map that is supposed to be about really taking the fight to the Flame Legion and assaulting their Citadel? The map just doesn’t work.

Art - 7

The art on this map is also in conflict, in a number of ways. There is some great stuff on this map: the Flame Legion forts are all distinct in structure, and it's always cool to see what the environmental artists have conquered up for their architecture.
A number of other Flame Legion artistic flourishes are neat on this map. The gentle rain of fire in some parts of the map is appropriately apocalyptic, and the ashes piled high on the ground in multiple areas make everything feel exactly as desolate as it should. Even the western corners with the kodan village and the giant grawl tree look nice.
But in many ways, this map is starting to show its age more harshly than many others. The textures are the real problem: because the Flame Legion uses so many spindly rocks in its architecture, those assets have really started to show the limitations of the art at the time the game was released. The rock textures have started to look real ugly, and the spires as if they need some more antialiasing filters laid over them. They don’t look great.
Combine that with the fact that, in a game where color is one of its main artistic assets, the colors here are so… brown. In a map like Ember Bay and Draconis Mons in the future we’ll see the artists really play with lighting and lava in interesting ways, but that’s just not there yet on this map.

Long Term/Retention - 6

Fireheart Rise is not doing as well as it once was. For a long time - from roughly 2012 to 2014/15 - the map had some of the most consistent population of any vanilla map. This was all down to the Citadel of Flame, which was the most commonly run dungeon at the time. Since the appropriate meta event had to be completed for the dungeon to be open, this map saw a consistent population in the northeast corner through all those years. Given that I was never much of a speedclearer, I’m unsure how much those players would play on other sections of the map - but I would be willing to bet it wasn’t many, given that speedclearers are not known for their love of playing minor open world events. A much reduced fraction of this population still hangs out here, I believe,
But other than that, it’s shocking how ‘out of the way’ Fireheart Rise feels. Especially when it’s tucked away close to a corner of the Tyria world map that has low traffic - between this map and Iron Marches - Fireheart Rise can sometimes feel like an afterthought.
The pieces keeping population here these days are a number of minor bits and bobs. The godskull weapon recipes can be purchased here after the grawl meta. A number of legendary journeys cross this map at some point, and so does a treasure hunter achievement or two. The Vexa’s Lab minidungeon has always been quite popular, especially when it comes up for dailies.
But overall? Fireheart Rise’s glory days are long behind it.

Overall - 6

Fireheart Rise feels strangely disjointed for an ‘assault the keep’ map. Unlike Harathi Highlands or the Orrian maps, none of the meta events seem to build into each other or produce any clear effect. The flow is confused as a result, and you would be forgiven for getting a bit lost, despite the fact that there’s little verticality. This is definitely the least engaging of the ‘capture the keep’ style meta maps. Bonus points for a great minidungeon, environmental art, and jumping puzzle - and I always give bonus points for kodan villages.
----------------------
That’s it for today! Next week, we'll be headed to our last map before Orr: Mount Maelstrom.
What do you think of today’s map? Any fond memories, or strong complaints? How well do you think this map stands up in comparison to all the others?
Don't forget that survey!

So how bad has it been? When I started this, it was because I was bored. I wanted to see just how much shit has happened. Midway through, I was shocked. Then finally sad and angry.
-Enjoy!
2020
Jan 1 -Australia is on fucking fire. Like all of it. And Hong Kong is too?
Jan 2 I think Turkey just murdered an Iranian general in broad daylight. Great start so far, 2020. HK police are reported to have used excessive force. See, America is still an influence on the world!
Jan 7. I heard there is a virus named because you drink Corona beer?? Shit sign me up, I can use a few days off.
Jan. 8. Remember when Iran launched two missiles at a US Base? Also, Russia may have shot down a Ukrainian airline killing 173 but I'm not sure.
Jan 11. That virus just killed someone. Shit don’t sign me up.
Jan 16. Seriously, does anyone remember that the impeachment of President Trump was this year? I sure as shit didn't.
Jan 20. The first 'Rona case in the US. Yes, this thing has a meme.
Jan 23. Lockdown in Wuhan. Not the rap song, an actual lockdown of 11 million
Jan. 26 fuck.
Jan 31 I am sorry, did you say Brexit actually HAPPENED?
Well January, you sucked. Taking Kobe was a real dick punch, but February has to be better.
Feb 4. Iowa Caucus-shmacus, what is the hold up here?
Feb. 5 How do you fuck this up? Trump really gets to stay. Wow.
Feb 11 Due to the impact on Latin-created beer the virus is now known as Covid-19
Feb 24 Is this really the highlight of the year? Harvey goes to jail for being a rapist.
Feb 27 Dow drops over 1100 in one day. Speculators rejoice! Meanwhile in Syria, Russia shows how much fucks it gives again and strikes 33 Turkish soldiers dead.
God damn it, what the hell 2020?
Mar 5 ICC allows for the Afghan War Crimes inquiry allowing US citizens to be investigated. Bet you didn’t know that one, huh?
March 9 Dow drops 2013 in one day making Feb 27 look like baby cakes.
March 10 Hey, remember when they locked down an entire city? Italy said, "I think that we can top it."
March 11 The WHO declares the coronavirus a pandemic. What. The. Fuck.
Mar 12 Dow drops 2352 in one day making 1929 look like baby cakes. Also, MLB postpones their season and I can decide which is more important here.
Mar 13 RIP Breonna Taylor. President Chump, err... Trump declares national emergency finally.
Mar 14 Spain lock-down
Mar 15 Ides of March, aye?
Mar 16 Dow drops 2352 in one day making... wait, is this the new norm?
Mar 17 Iran announces millions may be infected. 90% of cases so far in the Middle East are here. Sorry Iran, shitty year for everyone, we will get through it.
Mar 20 20k dead from Covid-19 so far. Oh man this is going to be bad. CA becomes first US state to lock-down. Ahh, no place like home.
Mar 24 India goes into full lock-down. India. Yeah, the billion-plus India. Plus, no Olympics this year. Bummer.
Mar 27 North Macedonia becomes the 30th country to join NATO. God damn it I am reaching for something good but I got nothing. NOTHING!
Mar 30 A passenger train derails near Chenzhou, China, killing one person and leaving 127 people injured. Oil drops below $23, lowest since 2002 - ladies and gentlemen, start your engines.
Eyes closed:
April will be better. April will be better. April will be better. April will be better. April will be better.
Open eyes:
FUCK!!
Apr. 1 What the hell is Tiger King?
Apr 2 Covid-19 coming in hot, number of cases passes 1M worldwide
Apr. 4 Turkey hides Ministry of Interior after riots erupt in a large prison due to fears of Covid-19.
Apr 5 QE II addresses the UK for the 5th time in 68 years. Also, do people really think 5G will give you Covid-19?
Apr 6 Russian Imperial Movement is labeled a terrorist group. They are, but it also happened today.
Apr 7 Japan passes $990B in relief of Covid-19. or 20% of their GDP.
Apr 8 Say it ain’t so, Joe? Biden becomes presumptive dem nominee as Bernie drops out.
Apr 9 NY state declares more Covid-19 cases than any country in the world. Yep, you read that right.
Apr 10 Russia shows how much fucks it gives yet again by saying they do not have plans to discuss oil market turmoil. Death toll for Covid-19 hits 100k worldwide. And the first case of Ebola since Feb...wait, what the fuck? One virus at a goddamn time, 2020!
Apr 12 Pope Francis live streams the Urbi et Orbi blessing for the second time in just a month. This is only supposed to happen at Christmas or Easter. Jesus. Christ. Literally.
Apr 14 US President Trump announces the US is suspending funding of the World Health Organization (WHO). Yeah you read that right. Suspend during a fucking pandemic. Your President ladies and gentlemen. IMF also says we are going into something akin to the Great Depression.
Apr 15 Tax Day delayed, so there is that. Covid-19 passes 2M cases worldwide. Tour de France also delayed. I guess steroids don’t work on the virus.
Apr 17 UN announces Myanmar has been carrying out daily airstrikes that at least 32 civilians (mostly women and children) have been killed since March 23
Apr 19 Israel hits the streets in protest to Bibi and his corrupt government. 17 dead in a killing spree in Nova Scotia. Unrest starts to break out in Paris, Berlin and other cities opposing the lockdown
Apr. 20 So let me get this straight, oil is so cheap you will pay me to take it? I see you, 2020, I see you. Also, The Industrial Bank of Korea to pay US$86M and will enter a 2yr deferred prosecution agreement to settle with US DoJ and the state of NY for a 2011 scheme to help transfer US$1B to Iran. Bibi finds a way somehow again to stay. Tom Thabane resigns from Lesotho as PM, showing that killing your ex-wife is wrong there too.
Apr 21 Mozambique police say 52 male villagers were killed by Islamist militants for not joinging.
Apr 22 Iran's Islamic RG Corps deploys the country's first military satellite.
Apr 25 separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) announces the establishment of a self-rule administration in southern Yemen. This is bad, like, really bad. Also, the global death toll from COVID-19 exceeds 200,000.
Apr 27 The Pentagon formally releases three videos of "unidentified aerial phenomena" encountered by the United States Navy. Cases of COVID-19 passes 3 million worldwide
Apr 28 Protests erupt in major cities across Lebanon for the second day over the country's continuing economic problems.
Apr. 29 Who didn’t see this one coming? An asteroid zooms past Earth with an approach of 0.042 AU (6.3 million km; 16 LD). That’s pretty effing close, man.
Apr 30 The government of Sudan criminalizes female genital mutilation. OH MY GOD SOMETHING POSITIVE!!!!!!
I don’t want to do this anymore.
May 3-4 Silvercorp USA and Operation Gideon. Blackwater eat your heart out. Silvercorp, you too. Please. Literally. I think we lost the driver of this bus somewhere in 2019.
May 5 The UK death toll from COVID-19 became the highest in Europe at 32,313 after exceeding the death toll of 29,029 in Italy.
May 6 New evidence indicates that an Algerian-born French fishmonger, who had not traveled to China and did not have contact with any Chinese nationals, was treated for pneumonia from an unknown source, now identified as COVID-19, on December 27, 2019.
May 7 11 people die and over 5,000 fall ill from a styrene gas leak in India
May 9 Chinese and Indian soldiers are injured in a cross-border clash at Nathu La
May 10 The Iranian Navy frigate Jamaran accidentally strikes the Iranian support vessel Konarak with a missile, killing nineteen sailors in friendly fire. The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 4 million worldwide. Wuhan, the original epicenter of the pandemic, reports its first coronavirus cases in more than a month
May 12 Gunmen storm a maternity hospital and kill 24 people in Kabul. In Kuz Kunar a suicide bomber kills 32 at a funeral.
May 14 The global death toll from COVID-19 exceeds 300,000.
May 18 UN announces 700k affected in recent 2020 East Africa floods
May 25 RIP George Floyd
May 26 And the people react.
May 27 RIP Tony McDade. RIP Calvin Horton, Jr. RIP David McAtee. RIP David Patrick Underwood. RIP Myqwon Blanchard.
Also, China closes autonomous Hong Kong with legislation. U.S. death toll passes for Covid-19 100,000 - more Americans than were killed in the Vietnam War and Korean War combined and approaching WW1 levels.
May 28 The Denver Post photographer is struck with pepper bullets. Not an accident.
May 29 Omar Jiménez arrested while giving a live CNN television report in Minneapolis. Linda Tirado, a freelance photojournalist, was hit in the eye with a rubber bullet or a pellet by the police in the same city. In Louisville, Kentucky, an officer fired pepper bullets at a reporter from NBC affiliate WAVE who was reporting live on air for her station.
May 30 RIP Barry Perkins. RIP James Scurlock. RIP Sarah Grossman. RIP Chris Beaty. RIP Marvin Francois. RIP John Tiggs. NYPD vehicles were recorded ramming into protesters. a Reuters crew were fired on with rubber bullets in Minneapolis. Deutsche Welle journalist Stefan Simons and his team were shot at by police in Minneapolis. Lesson of the day: DO NOT EVER GO TO MINNEAPOLIS.
May 31 RIP Dorian Murell. Police pull Taniyah Pilgrim and Messiah Young over, breaking the windows, yanking Taniyah out of the car and tasing Messiah. Justin Howell. Minneapolis PD thinks they are in GTA San Andreas and do drive-by chemical sprays. Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, a reporter for Los Angeles NPPRI affiliate KPCC was hit in the throat with a rubber bullet. Los Angeles Times reporter Molly Hennessy-Fiske reported reporters and camera crews being at the receiving end of tear gas by Minnesota State Patrol, while the same happened to an KABC-TV news crew in Santa Monica. Detroit Free Press journalists were pepper sprayed by the city's police, as was KSTP reporter Ryan Raiche along with other journalists. BBC cameraman, Peter Murtaugh, was purposely attacked by police on May 31 outside the White House. Murtaugh filmed a line of police officers charging without warning, whereby a shield-wielding officer tackled Murtaugh to the ground. Also, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 6 million worldwide
We are killing each other.
I. Don’t. Want. To. Do. This. Anymore.
June 1 David McAtee RIP. Italia Marie Kelly RIP. In Cicero, Illinois, two men were fatally shot in separate incidents following an "afternoon of unrest" - Jose Gutierrez and Victor Cazares Jr RIP. In Las Vegas, police shot and killed Jorge Gomez RIP. Australian journalist Amelia Brace and cameraman Tim Myers assaulted by United States Park Police. President Dickhead clears a path to an old church for a photo op with a bible. That path is cleared by tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash grenades.
June 2 Blackout Tuesday. Unidentified looter in Philly shot and killed and another severely injured while attempting to break into an ATM. RIP David Dorn. RIP Sean Monterrosa. Leslie Furcron shot between the eyes with a bean bag. Grand Rapids PD goes ballistic and pepper sprays everyone. $5B class action lawsuit is filed against Alphabet Inc. and Google, alleging the company violates users' right to privacy .
June 3 RIP Robert Forbes. General Keith Ellison increases the charge against Derek Chauvin. Cyclonic Storm Nisarga hits Mumbai. 20,000 tons of oil leaked into the Ambarnaya River.
June 4 Buffalo PD shows just how tough they are when they almost kill a 75 year old man. Then say Martin Gugino attacked them, only to change the story yet again when the video comes out. I see a running theme here with these folks. Also, Prez Chump puts new fencing to expand the White House perimeter, and continues to hide in a bunker.
June 7 COVID-19 pandemic: The global death toll from COVID-19 exceeds 400,000.
June 8 In Seattle, wannabe anarchists attempt to steal BLM movement with Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 7 million worldwide
June 9 George is finally laid to rest, RIP.
June 11 NASCAR bans Stars and Bars 150 years after those traitorous assholes lost. I guess better late than never. But 150 fucking years! Oh yeah and some jackass named Ray Ciccarelli quits because of it. Ugh, it never ends does it?
June 12 Ok at this point 2020, can you please just give me a week where nothing happens that signals The End is near? How about a rainbow, you got any of those anymore?
-OUT

By: Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies - May 30, 2020
Read the article here: https://www.nationofchange.org/2020/05/30/who-are-the-secret-puppet-masters-behind-trumps-war-on-iran/
On May 6th, President Trump vetoed a war powers bill specifying that he must ask Congress for authorization to use military force against Iran. Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign of deadly sanctions and threats of war against Iran has seen no let-up, even as the U.S., Iran and the whole world desperately need to set aside our conflicts to face down the common danger of the Covid-19 pandemic.
So what is it about Iran that makes it such a target of hostility for Trump and the neocons? There are many repressive regimes in the world, and many of them are close U.S. allies, so this policy is clearly not based on an objective assessment that Iran is more repressive than Egypt, Saudi Arabia or other monarchies in the Persian Gulf.
The Trump administration claims that its “maximum pressure” sanctions and threats of war against Iran are based on the danger that Iran will develop nuclear weapons. But after decades of inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and despite the U.S.’s politicization of the IAEA, the Agency has repeatedly confirmed that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.
If Iran ever did any preliminary research on nuclear weapons, it was probably during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, when the U.S. and its allies helped Iraq to make and use chemical weapons that killed up to 100,000 Iranians. A 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, the IAEA’s 2015 “Final Assessment on Past and Present Outstanding Issues” and decades of IAEA inspections have examined and resolved every scrap of false evidence of a nuclear weapons program presented or fabricated by the CIA and its allies.
If, despite all the evidence, U.S. policymakers still fear that Iran could develop nuclear weapons, then adhering to the Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA), keeping Iran inside the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and ensuring ongoing access by IAEA inspectors would provide greater security than abandoning the deal.
As with Bush’s false WMD claims about Iraq in 2003, Trump’s real goal is not nuclear non-proliferation but regime change. After 40 years of failed sanctions and hostility, Trump and a cabal of U.S. warhawks still cling to the vain hope that a tanking economy and widespread suffering in Iran will lead to a popular uprising or make it vulnerable to another U.S.-backed coup or invasion.

United against a Nuclear Iran and the Counter Extremism Project

One of the key organizations promoting and pushing hostility towards Iran is a shadowy group called United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI). Founded in 2008, it was expanded and reorganized in 2014 under the umbrella of the Counter Extremism Project United (CEPU) to broaden its attacks on Iran and divert U.S. policymakers’ attention away from the role of Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other U.S. allies in spreading violence, extremism and chaos in the greater Middle East.
UANI acts as a private enforcer of U.S. sanctions by keeping a “business registry” of hundreds of companies all over the world—from Adidas to Zurich Financial Services—that trade with or are considering trading with Iran. UANI hounds these companies by naming and shaming them, issuing reports for the media, and urging the Office of Foreign Assets Control to impose fines and sanctions. It also keeps a checklist of companies that have signed a declaration certifying they do not conduct business in or with Iran. Proving how little they care about the Iranian people, UANI even targets pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical-device corporations—includingBayer, Merck, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Abbott Laboratories—that have been granted special U.S. humanitarian aid licenses.

Where does UANI get its funds?

UANI was founded by three former U.S. officials, Dennis Ross, Richard Holbrooke and Mark Wallace. In 2013, it still had a modest budget of $1.7 million, nearly 80% coming from two Jewish-American billionaires with strong ties to Israel and the Republican Party: $843,000 from precious metals investor Thomas Kaplan and $500,000 from casino owner Sheldon Adelson. Wallace and other UANI staff have also worked for Kaplan’s investment firms, and he remains a key funder and advocate for UANI and its affiliated groups.
In 2014, UANI split into two entities: the original UANI and the Green Light Project, which does business as the Counter Extremism Project. Both entities are under the umbrella of and funded by a third, Counter Extremism Project United (CEPU). This permits the organization to brand its fundraising as being for the Counter Extremism Project, even though it still regrants a third of its funds to UANI.
CEO Mark Wallace, Executive Director David Ibsen and other staff work for all three groups in their shared offices in Grand Central Tower in New York. In 2018, Wallace drew a combined salary of $750,000 from all three entities, while Ibsen’s combined salary was $512,126.
In recent years, the revenues for the umbrella group, CEPU, have mushroomed, reaching $22 million in 2017. CEPU is secretive about the sources of this money. But investigative journalist Eli Clifton, who starting looking into UANI in 2014 when it was sued for defamation by a Greek ship owner it accused of violating sanctions on Iran, has found evidence suggesting financial ties with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
That is certainly what hacked emails between CEPU staff, an Emirati official and a Saudi lobbyist imply. In September 2014, CEPU’s president Frances Townsend emailed the UAE Ambassador to the U.S. to solicit the UAE’s support and propose that it host and fund a CEPU forum in Abu Dhabi. Four months later, Townsend emailed again to thank him, writing, “And many thanks for your and Richard Mintz’ (UAE lobbyist) ongoing support of the CEP effort!” UANI fundraiser Thomas Kaplan has formed a close relationship with Emirati ruler Bin Zayed, and visited the UAE at least 24 times. In 2019, he gushed to an interviewer that the UAE and its despotic rulers “are my closest partners in more parts of my life than anyone else other than my wife.”
Another email from Saudi lobbyist and former Senator Norm Coleman to the Emirati Ambassador about CEPU’s tax status implied that the Saudis and Emiratis were both involved in its funding, which would mean that CEPU may be violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act by failing to register as a Saudi or Emirati agent in the U.S.
Ben Freeman of the Center for International Policy has documented the dangerously unaccountable and covert expansion of the influence of foreign governments and military-industrial interests over U.S. foreign policy in recent years, in which registered lobbyists are only the “tip of the iceberg” when it comes to foreign influence. Eli Clifton calls UANI, “a fantastic case study and maybe a microcosm of the ways in which American foreign policy is actually influenced and implemented.”
CEPU and UANI’s staff and advisory boards are stocked with Republicans, neoconservatives and warhawks, many of whom earn lavish salaries and consulting fees. In the two years before President Trump appointed John Bolton as his National Security Advisor, CEPU paid Bolton $240,000 in consulting fees. Bolton, who openly advocates war with Iran, was instrumental in getting the Trump administration to withdraw from the nuclear deal.
UANI also enlists Democrats to try to give the group broader, bipartisan credibility. The chair of UANI’s board is former Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, who was known as the most pro-Zionist member of the Senate. A more moderate Democrat on UANI’s board is former New Mexico governor and UN ambassador Bill Richardson.
Norman Roule, a CIA veteran who was the National Intelligence Manager for Iran throughout the Obama administration was paid $366,000 in consulting fees by CEPU in 2018. Soon after the brutal Saudi assassination of journalist Jamal Khassoghi, Roule and UANI fundraiser Thomas Kaplan met with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, and Roule then played a leading role in articles and on the talk-show circuit whitewashing Bin Salman’s repression and talking up his superficial “reforms” of Saudi society.
More recently, amid a growing outcry from Congress, the UN and the European Union to ease U.S. sanctions on Iran during the pandemic, UANI chairman Joe Lieberman, CEPU president Frances Townsend and CEO Mark Wallace signed a letter to Trump that falsely claimed, “U.S. sanctions neither prevent nor target the supply of food, medicine or medical devices to Iran,” and begged him not to relax his murderous sanctions because of COVID-19.
This was too much for Norman Roule, who tossed out his UANI script and told the Nation, “the international community should do everything it can to enable the Iranian people to obtain access to medical supplies and equipment.”
Two Israeli shell companies to whom CEPU and UANI have paid millions of dollars in “consulting fees” raise even more troubling questions. CEPU has paid over $500,000 to Darlink, located near Tel Aviv, while UANI paid at least $1.5 million to Grove Business Consulting in Hod Hasharon, about 10% of its revenues from 2016 to 2018. Neither firm seems to really exist, but Grove’s address on UANI’s IRS filings appears in the Panama Papers as that of Dr. Gideon Ginossar, an officer of an offshore company registered in the British Virgin Islands that defaulted on its creditors in 2010.

Selling a corrupted picture to U.S. policymakers

UANI’s parent group, Counter Extremism Project United, presents itself as dedicated to countering all forms of extremism. But in practice, it is predictably selective in its targets, demonizing Iran and its allies while turning a blind eye to other countries with more credible links to extremism and terrorism.
UANI supports accusations by Trump and U.S. warhawks that Iran is “the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism,” based mainly on its support for the Lebanese Shiite political party Hezbollah, whose militia defends southern Lebanon against Israel and fights in Syria as an ally of the government.
But Iran placed UANI on its own list of terrorist groups in 2019 after Mark Wallace and UANI hosted a meeting at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York that was mainly attended by supporters of the Mujahedin-e-Kalqh (MEK). The MEK is a group that the U.S. government itself listed as a terrorist organization until 2012 and which is still committed to the violent overthrow of the government in Iran – preferably by persuading the U.S. and its allies to do it for them. UANI tried to distance itself from the meeting after the fact, but the published program listed UANI as the event organizer.
On the other hand, there are two countries where CEPU and UANI seem strangely unable to find any links to extremism or terrorism at all, and they are the very countries that appear to be funding their operations, lavish salaries and shadowy “consulting fees”: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Many Americans are still demanding a public investigation into Saudi Arabia’s role in the crimes of September 11th. In a court case against Saudi Arabia brought by 9/11 victims’ families, the FBI recently revealed that a Saudi Embassy official, Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, provided crucial support to two of the hijackers. Brett Eagleson, a spokesman for the families whose father was killed on September 11th, told Yahoo News, “(This) demonstrates there was a hierarchy of command that’s coming from the Saudi Embassy to the Ministry of Islamic Affairs [in Los Angeles] to the hijackers.”
The global spread of the Wahhabi version of Islam that unleashed and fueled Al Qaeda, ISIS and other violent Muslim extremist groups has been driven primarily by Saudi Arabia, which has built and funded Wahhabi schools and mosques all over the world. That includes the King Fahd Mosque in Los Angeles that the two 9/11 hijackers attended.
It is also well documented that Saudi Arabia has been the largest funder and arms supplier for the Al Qaeda-led forces that have destroyed Syria since 2011, including CIA-brokered shipments of thousands of tons of weapons from Benghazi in Libya and at least eight countries in Eastern Europe. The UAE also supplied arms funding to Al Qaeda-allied rebels in Syria between 2012 and 2016, and the Saudi and UAE roles have now been reversed in Libya, where the UAE is the main supplier) of thousands of tons of weapons to General Haftar’s rebel forces. In Yemen, both the Saudis and Emiratis have committed war crimes. The Saudi and Emirati air forces have bombed schools, clinics, weddings and school buses, while the Emiratis tortured detainees in 18 secret prisons in Yemen.
But United Against a Nuclear Iran and Counter Extremism Project have redacted all of this from the one-sided worldview they offer to U.S. policymakers and the American corporate media. While they demonize Iran, Qatar, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood as extremists and terrorists, they depict Saudi Arabia and the UAE exclusively as victims of terrorism and allies in U.S.-led “counterterrorism” campaigns, never as sponsors of extremism and terrorism or perpetrators of war crimes.
The message of these groups dedicated to “countering extremism” is clear and none too subtle: Saudi Arabia and the UAE are always U.S. allies and victims of extremism, never a problem or a source of danger, violence or chaos. The country we should all be worrying about is – you guessed it – Iran. You couldn’t pay for propaganda like this! But on the other hand, if you’re Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates and you have greedy, corrupt Americans knocking on your door eager to sell their loyalty, maybe you can.

Source
Previous post here.

Questions	Answers
How many times in a year do you think you get race day strategy 100% correct?	I would say we never get it 100% correct. Race day strategy isn't just about picking the correct number of stops and stop laps for both cars.
	Did we take every last drop of grip out of the tyres before we pitted? Did we pressure cars ahead the right amount at every point? Did we back off and protect the tyres the right amount at every point? Did we communicate to the driver exactly what we were trying to achieve and therefore get 100% out of them at every instant in the race? Was the modelling accurate and useful? etc. etc.
	We will always be searching for marginal/incremental improvements in everything we do.
I’m in high school and am planning on going to school to become a mechanical engineer, so my question is this: how available are engineering jobs in F1, or just motorsport in general? Of course, being an F1 engineer would be a dream, but I have no idea how difficult it would be to actually find a job	I have to be honest and say that jobs in motorsport and especially F1 are not plentiful and that they are often oversubscribed many times over.
	I would not let that put you off though, at your age you have a lot of time to pick up skills, experiences and knowledge that will help you in the endeavor of getting a job in motorsport.
	I would also say that perseverance is almost an essential quality in finding a job in F1. I, and many others I know, were turned down for roles multiple times and at various points thought we would never get our dream jobs in F1.
Hey, Randy! Thanks for doing this awesome AMA. You have talked a lot about getting into F1 for a career as an Engineer. I was hoping you could shed a bit of light in what skillsets/qualifications you look for in candidates who work as the mechanics and the pitstop crew on a given race weekend. Again, Thanks for doing this. I have read through every one of your answers and they were as much fun to read as they were enlightening about the sport we love.	So this is not my area of expertise, although I do spend a lot of time working with the pitcrew - so please take this with a pinch of salt but I think below are the main things we look for:
	* Some prior experience in building and servicing of race cars or bikes.
	* An ability to understand and follow (often complex) procedures.
	* A proactive nature (e.g. when reporting faults or build issues).
	* Dealing well with a high pressure and time constrained workload and environment.
	* An attention to detail and a willingness to learn.
	* Ability to read and interpret technical drawings.
	* Fabrication and machining skills.
Really cool to hear from you Randy. How have you and the team at McLaren been spending your time with everything that’s been going on with Covid-19? Hope we can see you go racing in Austria in July!	So F1 teams have all been subject to an extended "shutdown" meaning that most of us haven't been allowed to work on F1 projects and many of us, consequently, have not been working in recent weeks.
	Personally, I've used the time to try and get fit, having averaged c. 4 hours and 15 minutes of exercise every day since April 1st (yes I do have a spreadsheet), as well as trying to learn some new skills like React.
	Many of the team have used the opportunity to spend time with their loved ones, which can be difficult with hectic schedules, to improve their cooking skills (I have eaten the best pizza I've ever had during lockdown!), do gardening and so on.
	Everyone seems eager to get back to it and most teams will be returning to work over the next fortnight.
Hi Randy. Thanks so much for doing this, the answers so far have been really insightful. Can I ask, as an armchair fan, what can I look for over the course of the weekend to help me predict likely strategic calls on race day?	The main 2 factors are tyre behaviour (degradation, wear life and pace difference) and pitstop loss. From here you can get a basic understanding of the strategy before competitors are thrown into the mix.
	Pirelli kindly provide some of the information each weekend on tyres and you can estimate the rest from FP2 long runs towards the end of the session. Pitstop loss is also often given by some teams (maybe rounded or slightly noisified - but close enough to give you the right number of stops).
	With those 2 things you can work out the baseline strategy if you were racing alone and then you want to be considering the cars that are a pitstop window ahead and behind and see whether you would stop earlier or later than the baseline based on undercutting, traffic and so on.
Thank you so much for doing this AMA! During last year's German GP, I remember that a lot of us fans were interested in contrasting approaches made by two teams as the track started to dry up. One driver saw that the track was dry enough for slicks, called it in, and got the go ahead to take the gamble; he ended up coming very close to a podium. Another driver made similar observations and appealed repeatedly to his engineer to make the switch, but was instructed to stay out for several more laps, costing him points. I understand hindsight is 20/20 here, but if you were the engineer, would you be more inclined to take the driver's word when they potentially contradict the data, or vice versa? Do you believe there's a "correct" approach in situations like these, or a personal preference? Again, thank you so much! (Typed from my “Mclaren Edition” phone...I can't wait for the season to start, and I really wish you guys the best!)	Thank you for the kind words!
	I think there is a lot you don't see (not your fault) when it comes to strategic decisions, this is amplified many times over in a wet or changeable conditions race, where decisions are extremely difficult, with lots of information, of varying quality/frequency.
	I think we have learnt that it depends. Sometimes, we will weight the driver's input higher than anything else, sometimes it will be the least valuable information.
Do you employ many Americans on the team, and if so what does it take? Assuming they have the technical credentials of engineering.	So we have nothing against Americans, nor people of other nationalities - having the right to work in the UK is sometimes required although we do also help with visa applications this isn't always possible for us to do.
	In terms of Americans on the team, we have Zak Brown, of course and I'll be honest and say I can't think of any others at the moment, although we have had a few placement students in recent years from the United States.
	There's no extra requirement for Americans, especially as we're moving to Mercedes powerunits soon, we won't have too many issues with the pronunciation of Renault anymore.
What kind of people do you have in the strategy department? Are they mostly engineers, or like mathematicians and computer scientists?	Although we are largely engineers by degree, we don't really discriminate against other backgrounds and are often quite keen to add a diversity of ideas and backgrounds into the mix - a numerate degree is going to be very helpful though.
	We are 60% mechanical engineers, 1 engineemathematician hybrid and 1 physicist.
Is it unusual to go from entry-level engineer to head of strategy in 6-7 years? What do you think drove your success?	I think it actually happened even a bit quicker than that - which had never been my expectation when I started.
	It's hard to say what is unusual, there are so few "race strategists" in the world, let alone in F1 that I think there's not really a "usual" and often timescales can be quite variable based on circumstance (e.g. someone leaving/changing role).
	I guess the success is driven by the confidence and belief in the strategy team, of which I am just a part - so the fact that the other members of the team are so good, that management above us let us independently improve and change our processes without blame nor interference etc. is what has really driven it. Also have the much wider strategy team that includes 10s of volunteers to thank - it truly is a team effort and no single person would have the impact they do without the team around them.
Does race strategist cooperate with aerodynamics department in any way?	So, I can't go into details but yes we do. Strategy is a really cool role because we end up dealing with pretty much all other areas - as we also cover things like Competitor Intelligence and Sporting matters.
	In a more typical sense, just thinking about race strategy, there are a few areas that spring to mind, aerodynamicists and other engineers will be setting things like the wing level and the trades made here can affect performance in qualifying vs. the race, something that we as strategists are well placed to comment on the value of and also for setting cooling levels, we're responsible for weather forecasting and interpretation and so will often liaise with our aerodynamics colleagues about the risks of it being hotter than certain limits.
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Could you unpack a bit on what "competitor intelligence" does? Thanks!	"Mr Holmes, I would love to tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."
	I'm afraid that in this case the answer is no. All I can say is that we do some pretty neat things using the various kinds of information (audio, video, images, data, quotes, etc.) to gain intelligence on things like relative performance, other teams and so on.
What’s your proudest moment in F1 to date?	Another tough one!
	What makes me proudest is the Strategy team at McLaren. The team consists of around 5 people at its core and I can honestly say that they are the most talented, motivated, most passionate and smartest collection of individuals I have ever had the pleasure of working with. Everyone's level naturally rises when you work with people of this calibre and although the team is constantly looking for areas of improvement, challenging each other - it is also really just fun. I am very proud that I've played a part in pulling in each of my strategy teammates.
	One other thing that gets close (other than Grand Prix which I'll cover in another answer) is Mission Control. McLaren were kind enough to give me the opportunity to manage the project to design a new Mission Control from scratch, build and deploy it. We were responsible for building contractors, ventilation, budget, aesthetic, even unpacking and setting up over 30 machines. The Mission Control room is an awesome facility and we built it together as a team. A lot of it is secret but here's a photo you are allowed to see:
	https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EKssMOfWkAAwPE6?format=jpg&name=large
Hello, Do you go on reddit and check this sub sometimes?	I would say more frequently than sometimes and I'm not the only one who works in F1 than does.
	The content on here can be amazing at times - from some of the photos, to some of the data visualisations - and sometimes it is just fun to read comments and see how different our perspective of a race/event can be to that of fans.
You've talked about refuelling in a previous answer, and how it might affect strategies, but what is your opinion on the current tyres, and how they basically force the teams to do a two-stop strategy? Would you prefer if the tyres were manufactured in a way that makes them more durable? Thank you!	So, I would start by saying the tyres don't force teams into 2 stop strategies, however, the front-runners will have a higher propensity for 2 stops over 1 stops in the current regime, which may present a more skewed picture to fans.
	I believe and I think my colleagues and competitors agree, that good racing does involve some strategic flexibility and variety and a good sweet spot is to have races that are at crossover between 2 an 3 stop strategies (crossover means the timings and track position work out such as to be roughly equal).
	However, Pirelli are in an unenviable position with regards to giving us tyres that would encourage 2 or 3 stop crossover events, as the drivers also need to be able to push the tyres lap after lap to get good racing.
	So you can see that Pirelli have to try and balance both concerns and I think with that in mind they are doing a good job of finding a balance.
The strategy with sainz in Brazil was amazing man	Thanks for the kind words but the strategy in Brazil (I hope) was as good as in Austria, or Hungary, etc. We didn't do anything particularly special but in this case the outcome was particularly good - we try and judge ourselves on our decisions/processes/analysis rather than the outcome as the outcome/result can be dependent on chance which is outside our control.
Have you found any books in particular helpful when it comes to the soft skills required working in a multi-department environment, also when it comes to the overarching strategic principles. Building on that, how often do you find yourself acting against the data/conclusions presented to you in favour of your own observations or “common sense”	I think the most useful book has been Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix as it really demonstrates the importance of teamwork. Mark Corrigan's seminal "Business Secrets of the Pharaohs" and Michael Scott's "Somehow I Manage" are also essential reading.
	Seriously though, a difficult one, I think a lot of skills are picked up outside of books, things like logical problem-solving, being extremely pro-active, etc. however, some books that I find have been useful are:
	* Thinking Fast and Slow (almost essential reading, Thinking in Bets is also good)
	* The Intelligent Entrepreneur (very inspiring)
	* Outliers (to try and replicate some of the factors)
	* Legacy (a great book about teamwork and management)
	* Resonant Leadership (given to me by manager and a great read)
Speaking from a career standpoint, does having a background in something like biology factor into a possible role at all? Something of a mix of Biology and Engineering (Biomed, Bioengineering etc)? Thanks!	It can do - I specialised in Biomedical Engineering as one of my electives in my final year at university, by the way.
	Especially in strategy, different viewpoints/experiences/backgrounds can be very useful.
So we're hearing that Austria and maybe Britain is going ahead, is McLaren prepping for this or are they waiting for official word from Formula 1	I can't comment on the calendar as it stands as that would be breaking confidentiality. However, I can say that Liberty and the FIA are working tirelessly to bring a calendar together and it was something that we all discussed yesterday in the Sporting Working Group and is no doubt being discussed on a daily basis in other forums also.
	The teams, including McLaren, are trying as well to prepare for the season starting soon whilst remaining flexible such that if there are changes we can adapt to them quickly and well.
How do you judge a mandatory 2 pit stops instead of only one? Can this make the races more enjoyable in your opinion? Thanks	I don't think mandatory 2 stop strategies are a good idea. I can talk about this openly as its something we have debated with other teams, the FIA and Liberty as well and as a group we decided against it.
	The reason I don't like mandatory 2 stop strategies is that it is artificial and artificial constraints (I believe) will lead to more strange/bad occurrences than good ones.
	The benefit of mandatory 2 stop strategies is that everyone will make 2 stops which on average is more stops than we currently do and we believe that more stops (to a limit) typically lead to more exciting races.
	However, the downside is that this is purely artificial. If the race is a clear 1 stop and we add a second stop artificially then it's more likely that that stop could be placed in a strange spot, because the sensitivity to its timing could be low - you may see cars pitting very early or late into the race and therefore the race is still like a 1 stop (you don't get the full benefit on racing of the second stop) - especially with a point for fastest lap.
	You may then argue that we could force the second stop into a particular window, or set a limit on stint lengths. This also has issues, with cars likely to be concentrated on one side of the window and then there may need to be more artificial constraints.
	I very firmly believe that the best way to encourage more stops is to keep constraints on strategists light and influence the primary factors that determine how many stops there are, that is:
	* Pitloss (decrease = positive pressure on number of stops).
	* Tyre behaviour (worse behaviour = positive pressure on number of stops).
What's it like working for the most positive and happiest team?	Let me ask some of my friends at other teams and I'll get back to you soon.
	Only kidding 😁 ! I can't say if McLaren is the most positive/happiest team as I've not been everywhere, but its certainly the most fun, positive, happy, smart, etc. etc. team I've ever worked at.
	I love it. It's the people that make McLaren (and I know that's a cliche) special and I enjoy working in such a tight-knit, funny, motivated team.
What was the most difficult race strategy wise in your F1 career?	My first race, I think stands outs - the 2013 Australian Grand Prix. I started work on January 2nd that year (my first real job in F1), had no strategy experience, had to do lots of winter reporting and had no strategy mentor (as the previous strategist had left already). I'm not sure "baptism of fire" and "thrown into the deep-end" are mixable metaphors but that's what it felt like.
	To make matters more "interesting", the data showed and I was convinced that it would be a multiple stop (probably 3 stop) grand prix, based on what we had observed in Winter Testing and during Friday and Saturday running. This was in sharp contradiction to recent history at the Australian Grand Prix - so there were many heated discussions over this (with the majority of the team heavily disagreeing with it being more than a 1 stop race and every member having much more experience than I).
	Turns out lack of experience can be an advantage sometimes. Teams tended to do a 2 or 3 stop race, but the latter was much better. Teams were reluctant to add stops given experience and recent history of the Australian Grand Prix and this pushed many into poor strategies, rather than adapting to the tyre behaviour we were observing.
	2013 was an interesting year for strategy, with empirical data and lack of bias being really important to getting the strategies right. If you were to look through those races there are certain teams that flip-flopped a lot and others that quickly adapted to the new 'normal'.
Hi Randy, I don't know if this is already over but I'll try anyway. It's no surprise that working in F1 in any capacity must be extremely competitive. Is there any chance for someone considering a career change to be able to get a foot in the door? I work in investment management and realise that I want to be as close to my passion as possible. I'm open to pretty much any job just to get in. Naturally Id hope to have some transferable skills but i would focus on the chance to build skills and potentially go from there. Any advice? Thanks!	I think perseverance and desire are key and yes it is possible. Coincidentally, I was working in the investment industry when I was offered the chance to take a full time role in strategy for the 2013 season.
	I had worked at Williams for my final year project at university, but had been "out of the game" for a couple years when I got the offer to return.
Hello Randy, I am sorry if this has already been asked. But I would like to know your thoughts on: The new strategy involved on the new regulations/ground affect designs on the new Formula 1 vehicles? Is this a step in the right direction? Love to hear an professional / insider view on these new changes to the sport as the team Engineers do not seem to have a big say in the acceptace of the design limitations from FIA.	I personally think the new regulations (Sporting, Technical and Financial) are moving the sport in the right direction and so am looking forwards to them being introduced over the coming years.
	I would also say, as it may not be obvious to fans, that teams and engineers are heavily involved in these regulations. Whether that is us helping to draft parts of them, sense check them, vote on them, etc. it is a very open, constructive forum between the teams, the FIA and FOM (and other external experts as required).
Day 5: Mr. Singh is still answering questions. He's now one of us. LEGEND, and thanks to McLaren for allowing this. -Best AMA yet? DCanswered4questions.	Haha thank you!
	I will probably have to stop soon - but have a few more answers coming on a few families of question I haven’t yet answered. 🙂
Hi, Randy, Your answers are great, thank you! One of my most favorite McLaren performances of recent years was Fernando's insane race in Azerbaijan in 2018, when he had a double tyre puncture but still managed to finish 7th. Were you still his personal strategist back then? What was your role in his success? What were you thoughts when you saw him limping to the pits on two wheels? What did you do after that?	What a race, eh? "Personal" strategist, you make us sound like mathematical butlers... 😁.
	I wasn't Fernando's strategist at that time, Chris (one of our team) had already taken over by then and I was leading the team. It was not an easy race, although it may look like we sat back and watched, there's a lot of decisions made that you don't see and a lot of decisions made not to do stuff.
	It was a good team effort from everyone to stay calm and try and pick up the pieces after the incident on the first lap, when the car rolled into the pits we did consider retiring it - but as a famous paper salesman once said "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take". What outsiders (who get special access) often notice is that the team stays calm, you can't get wobbly or excited over the incident/accident, you need to be calm, methodical and logical.
Great ama	I think this is my favourite question so far. 😀
	To be honest, the questions are very interesting and I have had so many people answer questions for me when I was in the position of being a fan/student and that changed my life by helping me get my dream job. If I can give back a fraction of the help/information I've received then I'll feel very happy!
How contagious is Landos laugh?	I don't know about you but I find it quite grating. Do you know the feeling you get when you hear someone scratch their nails across a blackboard, or when your alarm goes off and you're still tired?
	In all seriousness though, Lando is a funny guy and does always keep the mood nice and light.
Hi Randy. Who is your favourite member of the IT team? Sincerely, Definitely not a member of the IT team.	Trick question! I don't have a favourite member of the IT team. 😁
Is there any role for physicians/doctors on race teams?	As doctors, I would probably say no. Most teams won't employ their own doctors anymore or will do so in a very limited capacity.
	However, that doesn't mean we don't have medical support, it tends to come through external organisations that support F1, such as Formula Medicine, for example, or the FIA's Medical Programme.
	We also occasionally get applications for strategists who have a medical background - and that isn't something we look down upon, if anything it may provide a skillset/experiences that would be complementary to those of 'mostly engineers'.
I understand you may not answer because this may be sensitive, but Which method of steering the ship do you think is more effective ? The steely dictatorial grip of Ron Dennis or the More lenient managerial approach of Zak brown ? From a fan perspective, I love that mclaren drivers aren’t on such a tight leash.	I never really worked under Ron as I joined in mid-2015. I have to say that the management style I’ve experienced throughout has been great - no blame culture, very open and understanding, letting the experts make decisions, etc.
Have you ever sat on the pitwall at the start and said (even to yourself) "And it's lights out and away we go."?	I haven’t! I imagine I now will at whichever Grand Prix we get the pleasure of starting first this year.
Is Ferrari’s strategy as much of a running joke in the paddock as it is by the fans and here on reddit? Maybe you can’t really answer that truthfully but I’ve always been curious. It’s obviously a difficult job but I do wonder if they shoot themselves in the foot as often as it seems from the fans perspective.	Answered elsewhere in the thread.
	It's a difficult, stressful job, so you always have respect for your competitors.
In your experience, would adding flame decals to my truck make it go faster?	Where are you going to place them? What colour are the flames?
Hey randy, i am a 15 year old girl who lives in india and my dream is to become a formula one engineer or work in f1 in anyway. What do u think are the educational qualifications needed to become a formula 1 engineer and what exposure do u think i need to even be close to full filling my dream. I have been following mclaren f1 team for quite some while now and love the friendly environment inside the team.	As PapaKeth says, hopefully there are some answers to your question about what qualifications are required in my other comments.
	Can I say though, don't let being 15, female, or living in India deter you - none of those things are a blocker to getting a job in F1 in the future.
Hi ! Thank you for answering some of our questions ! I've been wanting to ask, in the event of a car failure ( engine failure, hydraulics failure, etc) how do you become aware of it ? Do you have a real time data link to the car as an engineer ? Or is it something you see on a TV ?	So we get data from the cars "live", there are hundreds of sensors on each car and this data is transmitted to us at the track and we also transmit it back to HQ in Woking. There are tens of people looking at the data and typically we will spot problems in the data, or based on feedback from the drivers, before we see them on TV.
	That doesn't mean that we never spot stuff on TV first - sometimes you don't have instrumentation for certain things and so you may spot it visually first and the TV feed is a good way of sense-checking in some cases as well.
Do you think Stoffel deserved to still be in F1? (Not necessarily with McLaren)	100% - he is a great talent and I'm very glad that he is doing so well in Formula E.
Hi, thanks for doing this Q&A. Working for an F1 team is the dream, though I understand it's very difficult to get in. I'm disabled, would this matter to an employer? Do you have any advice on how I could approach this to someone as I'm just finishing my first year at University and hoping to apply for internships. Also, (sorry if you've answered this question already) I am studying Mathematics probably going to move into Mathematics and Statistics. Would it be possible to apply for a strategist position with a Mathematics degree?	Your disability should not matter to an employer and I really believe it will not. We have people with disabilities working at McLaren. Perhaps if it is something you are concerned about or if its a disability that a team (or McLaren) could help make easier to manage (apologies if my wording is not sensitive) then I would highlight that in your application when you apply for a role.
	Mathematics is entirely sensible as a background for a strategist role. I started off in Mathematics (& Statistics) before I moved over to Engineering (I found Mathematics at university to be too abstract for my liking). If you are doing Statistics anything that covers stochastic modelling would be particularly relevant to strategy.
I want to work in F1 in the future and preferably an engineer role. Would studying Mechanical Engineering be the best course to get a chance? Thanks	I would say the majority of F1 engineers have studied Mechanical Engineering but that doesn't necessarily equate to it giving you the best chance of getting in. Engineering skills (and particularly mechanical engineering skills) will make you suitable for a multitude of roles in an F1 team (from strategy, to design engineering, to race engineering and performance analysis), so naturally you would expect more mechanical engineers.
	I would have a think about the role that you would like to do and what qualifications would give you the best chance for that role, it could be that its Computer Science instead, or Aerodynamics, or maybe it is Mechanical Engineering. I would also think heavily about how interested you are in said degree - a degree is not a small investment of time, money and effort and its important you do something you enjoy.
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Hey Randy, this answer was not directed at me but I just want to let you know it really just helped me out. I recently dropped out of mechanical engineering because I wasn't enjoying it and made the switch to computer science. It really pained me for a while thinking about giving up the F1 dream because my career choice wasn't ideal for me. So yeah, thanks. While I'm at it I'd like to add a question about computer science in an F1 team, what kind of roles could I take part of with that degree (specificaly at the track, though I see how that's a bit less likely)? Are there masters degrees or specializations more sought after in certain areas? Again, thanks a lot for you time in answering these questions and apologies for the bad english 😅	Hi, no worries and thank you for the appreciation.
	Computer Science is a numerate enough degree at most places that you could lend yourself to any role as long as you can pick up the required engineering knowledge as well. Obviously, something in areas like Software Engineering, IT or Vehicle Science/Modelling may be most relevant/easy but there aren't necessarily many trackside opportunities in those areas.
Hello, First of all, thanks for answering all those questions. It's nice for us students dreaming of F1 to have something to look up to. So I am studying mechanical engineering in France and I am really looking forward to become a Motorsport Race engineer, and obviously F1 would be the dream. What I like the lost in that job is the trackside aspect, travelling, living the race. As I imagine, you need some years of experience to become a trackside F1 engineer. So do you think building experience in lower formulas like F2/F3, FE, or prototypes, GT...as performance/data engineer in smaller teams is a good way to line up for a trackside job in F1 ? Or is it recomended to start as an engineer at the lowest level directly in F1 and try to climb the ladder from there ? What is the proportion of your trackside colleagues that come from other motorsport categories ? Thanks !	Great - I look forward to working with you, or competing against you in the future!
	That's a tough one. I wouldn't say trackside experience, per se, is very highly desired for trackside roles, but rather a demonstration of the deep technical/operational knowledge, the ability to deal with stress, etc. that makes people successful in those roles.
	For this reason, I would say it's better to be in an F1 team and then attempt to try and go trackside, than to be trackside in a 'lower' formula.
	The data, from my experience, suggests the same, the vast majority of engineers are in F1 first and then go trackside, rather than being trackside outside of F1 and moving to be trackside in F1.
	That is not to say that experience in 'lower' formulae is not immensely useful to securing a job in F1 (just, I believe less preferred than F1 experience).
[deleted]	We have - and not just sports too.
	We have met with data scientists from football teams, coaches from the Olympics, rugby teams and professional cyclists - as well as many engineers and drivers from other motorsport series.
	We also try and keep learning by working with partners or contacts across the military and commercial fields also.
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Can you expand on the military part?	Only at a high level, I'm afraid - as I wouldn't want to give anything away to others.
	One area that I can talk about is that many teams will use military or ex-military experts to coach/train/share ideas with their personnel as there is a lot of overlap (as there is with many commercial fields also). So, for example, the military practice high quality communications on a regular basis, in highly stressful/pressured situations - that's an area where many teams have worked with ex-RAF personnel, for example, to share best practice, to coach and teach personnel and to improve processes.
Hi Randy My question is, if there's for example safety car deployed and the decision whether pit or not have to be made quickly, can the race engineer and the driver make a decision without asking you?	They can but they shouldn't and I can't think of an occasion when they have.
	Strategy decisions are made by the strategy team (not necessarily by me) and we have processes in place for making decisions where we have lots of time (normally measured in minutes), down to decisions where we may have 2 or 3 seconds to decide what to do for both cars and execute the communications/actions to do it.
	Sometimes we may pre-make the decision and sometimes we have to make it on the fly or override our original intent - the thing about safety cars is that the cause of them can often change your variables/strategy.
Can you speak on how the sport has changed in the past few years in aspect to big data. How has data gathering and manipulation changed the sport? Specifically when it comes to making decisions based on past and current strategies. What kind of software and hardware have made the biggest changes, and how do you see the future of F1 benefit from AI/Big-data? Thanks for any info you may be able to share.	McLaren have always been data-driven, so things haven't changed too much recently. We are finding better ways to analyse the data we have and to draw insights from it. I'm afraid I can't say too much more.
Why is it that you still see signs being held out to the drivers at the pit wall? Surely there can’t be anything said on these signs which can’t be said over the car radio? There’s gonna be a simple answer id imagine. I’ve always thought that it would be hard to try read a sign while travelling at 200 mph?	It happens so rarely nowadays but the radio can fail, so the pitboards are a backup for that. The drivers should always give them a look as they go past (and they rarely do!) in case the radio has failed.
	In the current times, where radio is public to other teams they could also be used as a way of passing coded messages, but we do watch them and that doesn't seem to be the case.
Hey Randy! Big fan of your work last season! My question is: Other than focusing on optimising strategy through the various instruments you have for every next race, what portion of your work is dedicated to improving the tools you have to work out strategies, or developing new technologies and methods? Is this something done consistently or over the winter? And lastly, how much does McLaren Applied work with you in using the newer tools in their work? Thanks :)	Thank you.
	With how busy the season is, often it is difficult to spend too much time doing development in the season, so big projects are typically tackled over the Winter period between seasons (although this is also getting compressed).
	However, we are constantly, both in race weekends and between, developing our analysis techniques, smaller pieces of software, our understanding of competitors' behaviours, etc. so there is a constant ongoing development battle.
	We do work with McLaren Applied fairly frequently across the business - we're not currently doing that on strategy projects.
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Hi, thanks for doing this AMA! I've spent a lot of time reading your answers!I don't know if you'll answer this too but I'll try asking something anyway 1. What are the possible roles that a computer science graduate could cover?	Hi! If you wanted to be very computer science focused, I guess software engineering, IT and some of the compute type roles would be interesting. If you're willing to pick up engineering knowledge then things like Vehicle Science modelling and CFD can open up too.
	2. What are the main languages/frameworks used in the F1 enviroment?
	3. Are you worried about Daniel coming next year? I mean, probably it will be hard not to laugh for the entire week-end when he's with Lando! Thanks in advance, totally not a computer science student.
Hi Randeep, first of all, thanks for your deep insights into the world of Formula 1 and McLaren. My question to you is, how do McLaren (or any other F1 team for that matter) ensure a stable electrical power supply in the case of a loss of normal power supply (Diesel Generators/UPS/battery banks) at both the factory and less likely to occur but still possible, at the track? Bonus question; how do teams (McLaren) prepare for different types of electrical outlets, voltages and currents all around the world?	To start - I’ll say I’m not an electrician - take the below with a pinch of salt.
	Most teams will have generators at the track (actually various kinds - to run stuff on the grid, in the trucks at European events and external ones at fly away races) and some kind of UPS system as well. Power supplies at circuits can be ‘temperamental’ and often there are power outages for specific reasons too.
	In terms of for electrical outlets - we as end users just bring our UK stuff and plug it in! There’s an electrician and IT team who ensure that everything is set up and good to go and sneak with different voltage, phase, etc. supplies.
How did it feel to be part of mclaren last year? Like it has been in an incredible year with outstanding results.	I have to say, I have enjoyed every year at McLaren and I started in 2015 when the results weren't outstanding - I am working with really awesome people and even through the bad times it is great to see the team spirit that pervades through everyone.
	Last year was incredible and it's good to get an upswing in performance and to see teammates celebrating the thick after making it through the thin!
Who won the bet where Lando had to have ur face as his lock screen till Abu Dhabi last year?	Lando won the bet, but he also clearly has no shame. 😃

nowadays in western society.
This post does not intend to tackle the statut of women throught history since the subject is about now and not the past. The History revisionnism of a certain activist group has been debunked Historical revisionism debunked here
Moreover, i will not debunk the wagegap here since it has been debunked countless times. here if you want to have look a glassdoor study.
The subject of this post is why we don’t live in a partriarchy in western countries nowadays. First of all lets look up for some definitions. The définitions will be taken from the Cambridge dictionnary and
from wikipedia.
According to the Cambridge Dictionnary,
Patriarchy is :

1. a society in which the oldest male is the leader of the family, or a society controlled by men

in which they use their power to their own advantage:

1. a form of social organization in which fathers or other males control the family, clan, tribe,

or larger social unit, or a society organized in this way.

1. Patriarchy is also the control by men, rather than women or both men and women, of most

of the power and authority in a society.
Source here
Let tackle the different definitions.

1. >a society in which the oldest male is the leader of the family

The first one seems to be the clearer definition since it explicitly shows what legitimate the
power in a patriarcal society and who benefit from it.
You have to be a male and you have to be the oldest male of the family. Now let take a look.
A simple question.
Does your grand father is the head of your family or has a primar say in the family issues ? I bet no because the oldest male is not the leader of the family anymore. Money spending decision among the nuclear family could represent well the dynamyc between the two person of the couple. The father has not the primaty say on the money spending anymore. Women are about as likely as men to have the final say and as likely than men to make a joint decision.
Cf the following document (i could note quote since it is a board and i don’t know how to do it, if you have any suggestion..)

Money, power and spending decisions in intimate relationships

See
P132-133 it is sum up of the data and is a board so i dont know how to quote it.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2008.00779.x

or a society controlled by men in which they use their power to their own advantage

Here the power, (not even defined) is used to their own advantage and men are defined as the class who has the power. One thing which could be in their own advantage could be not to die at work and letting other doing the dirty job. However, men represent the vast majority of the work fatalities ( 5.7% against 0.6%). Men are almost ten times as likely than women to die at work.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cfoi.t01.htm
Moreover men represente the majority of the homeless people (around 70%) in USA.
https://endhomelessness.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/DDP-Gender-brief-09272019-byline-single-pages.pdf
So men as a class does not possess more power than women as a class. The ultrasuccessful men are not representative of the class of men and the power held do not benefit to the class of men but only to the horlder We could associate this view as the apex fallacy. Taking only the best and make an abusive generalisation from this tiny group.

1. > a form of social organization in which fathers or other males control the family, clan, tribe, or larger social unit, or a society organized in this way.

This definition has the same idea that being a male is the reason of holding the power. The term control means they have the authority, and the power to submit to their will women to do things because of their statut of male and not bacause of their function. In other words they acess to power because they are male and not because of their jobs, etc. In a way, we could say that we are in western countries in a society with a patriarchal structure. Why did i not say Patriarchy ? Simply because the power is not held by men because of their sex but because of their choices and skills. The same goes for women. We can’t say that we are in a patriarchy because men and women have the same opportunities to access to the power. We will develop the topic of the power, its constituant and its legitimity later in this post.

1. The third definition is about the outcome, not the core reason of the power holding. Moreover it depict only the powerfull people and not all the class. It suffer from the apex fallacy as well as not tackling the origin of the power.

So the primary question is more about

«Do women have equal acess to the power?

” than “Is there the same number of women as men in power?” Because the first is about equal treatment and the other on equality of outcome. In the latter, it means that a group will not be treated as the other for the same skills and would be basically discrimination.
Lets define more accuratly the term power
• ability to control people and events
• the amount of political control a person or group has in a country
• an official or legal right to do something
• a person, organization, or country that has control over others, often because
of wealth, importance, or great military strength
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/power?q=Power
As I said previously in this post, all the above are held primarly by a minority of people, men and women and among this minotity, the majority is constituted of men.
So the remaining question which will determin if the legitimity of power is being a man or only skills
and choices (and luck but this case is because of the capitalism not patriarchy and no, capitalism is
based on skills, etc not power.) is :

« does women have the same opportunities as men to acess to power ? »

• >an official or legal right to do something
Men and women have now the same legal rights and as many women as men can vote, the vote of each woman have the same impact as the vote of each man (Vote of 1 woman = Vote of 1 man)
So women have an equal voting power.

Does women can acess to politc as easy as men ?

This mean , do women have the same opportunities to candidate and will they be as likely to be elected as a man for the same skills, etc ? Women have the same opportunities as man to candidate to political election, however, do they have the same opportunities to be elected ? According to the following meta analysis yes.

What Have We Learned About Gender From Candidate Choice Experiments? A Meta-analysis of 42

Factorial Survey Experiments
Susanne Schwarz and Alexander Coppock∗ May 5, 2020

Candidate choice survey experiments in the form of conjoint or vignette experiments have become a standard part of the political science toolkit for understanding the effects of candidate characteristics on vote choice. We collect 42 studies and reanalyze them using a standardized approach. We find that the average effect of being a woman (relative to a man) is a gain of 2 percentage points. We find some evidence of heterogeneity as this difference appears to be somewhat larger for white (versus non white) candidates, and among survey respondents who are women (versus men) or identify as Democrats or Independents (versus Republicans). Our results add to the growing body of evidence that voter preferences are not a major factor explaining the persistently low rates of women in elected office.

https://alexandercoppock.com/papers/SC_gender.pdf
Women have the same acess to political power and seen as competent in politic

Does women are seen as skillfull as men ? Are they as likely as men to be hired in prestigious jobs ?

(authority and access to prestigious jobs mean statut and wealth, so power according to the last definition of power). The answer is yes in a real situations (hired by a professionnal, etc)
B)Professionnal power and skill assessment
0)Hiring

A Meta-Analysis of Gender Stereotypes and Bias in Experimental Simulations of Employment Decision Making

Women are less likely to be hire than a man for a same job

RaterGender
Next, we examined rater gender. Across all job types, female raters exhibited a near-zero bias (d=-.04), and males exhibited a larger pro-male bias (d=-0 .21). However, we found different patterns when examining jobs with different sex distributionsseparately (see Table 2). For male-dominated jobs, male raters showed a stronger gender-role congruity bias (i.e., pro-male bias) than female raters, in support of Hypothesis 2. Both male and female raters exhibited a pro-male bias for female-dominated jobs, contrary to our expectations. However, it should be noted that k and n for female dominated job analyses were quite small. For integrated jobs, bias did not differ for male and female raters

(i.e.,confidence intervals were overlapping).
But only when it is NOT in the contexte of real life situation of recruitment and ONLY in male dominated jobs.

For male-dominated jobs, undergraduates and working adults exhibited a larger pro-male bias (d_s=-0.19) than experienced professionals (d=-0 .04). This trend was reversed for femaledominated jobs, with experienced professionals showing the largest pro-female bias, though the sample of experienced professionals was small (n =167, k = 5). Undergraduates and experienced professionals exhibited similar levels of bias when making decisions about integrated jobs (d_s =- .07 and .05, respectively). Thus, findings on bias exhibited by different types of participants were mixed.

Women are seen as comperent as men and not discriminated against in hiring.
http://doi.org/10.1037/a0036734

Does women are as likely than men to be promoted ?(acess to wealth and statut)

1)Stickyfloor and Promotion Difference
It is observed that women are on average less promoted than men. The situation seems unfair, however this remains an average, like the wage gap, which can be explained by seniority, sector of activity etc.
A 2015 Canadian study of 5,840 companies, 16,654 women and 24,192 men. The study shows that women have a salary increase 2.9% less than a man's for the same promotion in the same company. Moreover, it is observed that women without children have a pay return per promotion and a promotion rate very close to that of men while women with children do not.

Moving Up or Falling Behind? Gender, Promotions, and Wages in Canada

Unconditionally, women in our sample are 2.8 percentage points less likely to have been promoted in the last year than men. Controlling for worker characteristics in column 2, women are 3.1 percentage points less likely to have been promoted than men. Columns 3, 4 and 5 add controls for the worker’s industry, occupation, and both industry and occupation, respectively, to the controls in column 2 to account for the possibility that women may be employed in industries or occupations with shorter job ladders and fewer opportunities for promotion. Controlling for the industry (occupation) in which a worker is employed, the estimated gender gap falls to 1.9 (2.2) percentage points. Controlling for both industry and occupation, women are 0.7 percentage points less likely to have been promoted than their male peers—a difference which is not statistically significant. Column 6 adds firm effects to the model in column 5, but the estimated gender gap in promotion probabilities (-0.008) is little changed. Collectively, the estimates in panel A suggest that the gender difference in the probability of promotion is driven by gender segregation in occupation and industry rather than systematic sorting into firms offering fewer opportunities for advancement.

Page 9
https://ftp.iza.org/dp9380.pdf
In addition, a 2018 study of wage increases for salaried employees (4888 participants) or hourly
workers (5148 participants) shows that there is no significant difference between men and women.

The Gender Gap in Raise Magnitudes of Hourly and Salary Workers

The gender gap in promotions literature typically uses survey to survey imputed hourly wage changes

to measure the earnings effects of promotions alone. By distinction, we study raises with and without promotions using data within surveys that uniquely identify both the current and most recent wages of hourly workers separate from salary workers. In cross-section estimates we identify a gender gap in raise magnitude favoring men only among hourly workers who achieve promotions, but this result vanishes in fixed effects estimates. No gender gaps emerge in any other instance, including for salary workers and raises absent of promotion. We further contribute to the literature by uniquely controlling for natural ability and risk preferences of the workers, the time passed since earning the raise, and also whether the responsibility of the worker’s job changed with the raise.
https://ideas.repec.org/a/spjlabre/v40y2019i1d10.1007_s12122-018-9277-8.html
There is no difference in increment and promotion, all other things being equal.

Are women’s leadership skill assessed the same way (not harsher) as men leadership skills (authority and access to statut)?

2)Glass ceiling and harsher judgment
Another hypothesis put forward is that of the glass ceiling which would mean that a woman cannot be promoted to high-level positions because of discrimination against her.
However, according to a 2014 meta-analysis of 111 studies concerning the evaluation of the skills of a
leader, male or female, the difference is minimal (Koch2015). Taking all criteria together, we have a
d=0.04. For indication, d=0.2 corresponds to a small effect.
CF B0).
In addition, a 2014 meta-analysis of 58 published scientific articles, 30 unpublished dissertations or theses, 5 books and 6 other sources, including 100,000 people, indicates an overall difference of d=-0.06 in perceived management effectiveness (JAP). Men are assessed as less competent than women for middle positions of -0.17 with p<0.05, there is little difference for high positions of 0.04 and low positions of 0.07. In addition, experienced recruiters have less bias than young students and inexperienced workers. (d=0.04 versus d=0.19). The difference in judgement therefore has a negligible effect at best.

Gender and Perceptions of Leadership Effectiveness: A Meta-Analysis of Contextual Moderators

The distribution of effect sizes was approximately normal and centered around zero. The overall analysis of effectiveness measures resulted in a mean corrected d of =-0.05 (K = 99, N =101,676), which is not significantly different from zero (see Table 1). We examined the data for any extreme outliers (3 SD) and found two effect sizes that met this criteria (d = 1.44, N = 30 and d = 1.52, N = 40). Hunter and Schmidt (2004) argued that, when sample sizes of outliers are small to moderate, extreme outliers can occur due to sampling error. They noted that such outliers should not be removed from the data, because removing them could result in an overcorrection of sampling error. We reanalyzed the data with these two effect sizes removed from the sample, and the overall effect size changed slightly (by .01), becoming d=-0.06.
Hierarchical level as a moderator. Consistent with Hypothesis 3, hierarchical level exhibited a significant moderating effect on gender differences in leadership effectiveness (Qb = 10.71, p = .05). The results of a subgroup analysis are partially consistent with the hypothesis proposed by RCT (see Table 1). Women were rated as significantly more effective than men in middle management positions, with a d of =0.17 (K = 12, N =4,570, 95% CI [=-.31, =.03]). There was a nonsignificant gender difference in effectiveness for leaders in upper level leadership positions, with a d of -.04 (K = 28, N = 12,364, 95% CI [=-.15, .07]), and in lower hierarchical levels/supervisor positions, with a d of .07 (K =37, N = 7,421, 95% CI [=-.03, .17]). Overall, Hypothesis 3 was partially supported in that women were more effective in middle management positions, although there were not gender differences in either lower or higher level positions.

https://apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/apl-a0036751.pdf
Furthermore, a 2016 study (human-perf) of 3,367 managers and 9,670 non-managers (731 managers and 1,297 non-managers retained) shows that differences in performance ratings between men and women are again negligible and not statistically significant.

Gender differences in supervisors’ multidimensional performance ratings: Large sample evidence

We examined gender differences in supervisor ratings of overall job performance and 37 performance dimensions. Based on data from a large, diverse sample of managers (N = 3,367) and nonmanagers (N = 9,670), we found that gender had only minimal effects on ratings for a small number of specific job performance dimensions. This was generally true regardless of whether the job performance dimension was more agentic or communal in nature, whether the job was a managerial or a nonmanagerial position, and regardless of the proportion of men or women that traditionally occupy a specific job. Overall, our results are more consistent with the gender similarities hypothesis than the agency/communion paradigm, role congruity theory, and the lack of fit model. We discuss future research avenues and implications.

Women are therefore seen as performing and being as competent as men in their job

Are women as likely to be promoted than men in prestigious jobs ?

3)Glass ceiling and promotion
In addition, a 2013 study of 3,053 and 57,632 directors is looking at the promotion rate in Denmark of women as CEOs. (smith2013) Observations were made from 1997 to 2007. For promotions to the position of Vice President, the gross gap is 0.6 percentage points and 1.6 percentage points for the position of CEO. In this particular case, the presence of children seems to be beneficial for men's promotions, but paternity leave is heavily sanctioned with regard to future career prospects. The field also explains the difference in the likelihood of being promoted to CEO. Indeed, Vice Presidents in Human Resources, IT and R&D are much less likely to be promoted to the position of CEO than Vice Presidents and CFOs in sales and production. However, vice presidents and senior management tend to concentrate in human resources positions, which is an important factor explaining the lower promotion rate.

Why Are So Few Females Promoted into CEO and Vice-President Positions? Danish Empirical Evidence

1997-2007

This paper analyzes the gender gap in promotion into top corporate jobs based on employer- employee data on all Danish companies. The rawVP- and CEO-promotion rates in the data set show a fairly constant distance between males and females during the period 1997-2007. In 2007, 4.6 % of the males and 3.6 % of the females in the group of potential top executives were promoted into a VP position while for promotions from VP positions into CEO positions, the same gures were 4.4 % and 2.7 %, respectively,i.e. there was a gender gap of 1 % points for VP positions and 1.7 % points for CEO positions.
Many women may not find it very attractive to become CEOs because they have to give up too much to ll a CEO position compared to the alternative as being a VP or having a lower position which is more easily combined with having more kids and full take-up of maternity leave schemes and other family-friendly schemes, i.e. to rewrite the words by the former Danish CEO, Stine Bosse: Be in positions where they can still have a life.

p35
http://ftp.iza.org/dp5961.pdf
All this findings suggest that women are not less promoted to CEO positions than men simply because they are women.
Moreover women at CEO position are less paid but only due to the field, the risk taking.

Women in Top Management and Job Self Selection

Using a large sample of publicly traded firms from 1994-2002, we study the type of firms that female executives prefer to work in. We find that (1) female executives predominantly work in high risk firms and in high risk industries, (2) female CEOs have higher dismissal probability and female non-CEO executives (CFO, COO and President), in general, have lower tenure at office, and (3) there is significant self selection for female to work in high risk segments despite higher dismissal rates or lower tenure at job. Consistent with Bertrand and Hallock (2001), we find that, on average, female executives are paid lower than men, a result that is mainly driven by female in safer work segments. On the other hand, female executives in risky segments have comparable pay to their male counterparts. Using a size and industry male executive benchmark for each female executive, we also show that pay differential diminishes with the increase in job risk.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2870673

Does women have less access to a mentor than men do (access to network)?

According to a meta analysis on 40 studies, there is no difference of outcomes between men and women on mentoring (as a protégé or as mentor)

A Meta-Analytic Investigation of Gender Differences in Mentoring

(it is not a strict quote but sum up the results. to have an idea, r=0.1 is a small effect size, r=0.30 a medium effect size and r=0.5 is a large effect size.
The difference in access to the mentor is very weakly correlated with the sex of the protégé with r=-0.01 and p not significant. In addition, there is no difference in career development mentoring.
Furthermore, women report having more psychological support than men (r=.01) (r=.06 very low gender correlation). Men report having served as more mentors than women (r=.07), provided more career development (r=.04) and less psychological support than women (r=.04). However, the results are heterogeneous and the magnitudes are very low.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206308318619
Women are seen as competent as men in politic, in companies, have about the same rate of promotions, pay raise and as likely to be hired in real situation. They have the same opportunities to access to a prestigious jobs (statut), promotion (gain in statut) pay (wealth) and mentoring
(professional network).
I will not treat the theme of religion because the state is separated from the Church, and there is the cult freedom. I have not tackle the problem of military power since it is indeed a form of power but is accessible to women via politic or recruitement (depending on the goals) and this power is not use among the population in usual situation.

To Conclude this part women have the same access to wealth, politic, and statut in the application.

Another remaining is :

« Are Women held back »

1)On this ground we will use the education of the parent.
Does the parent raise their child in a different way, ie pushing boy to be more independant than girl ?

Gender-Differentiated Parenting Revisited: Meta-Analysis Reveals Very Few Differences in Parental Control of Boys and Girls

Although various theories describe mechanisms leading to differential parenting of boys and girls, there is no consensus about the extent to which parents do treat their sons and daughters differently. The last meta-analyses on the subject were conducted more than fifteen years ago, and changes in gender-specific child rearing in the past decade are quite plausible. In the current set of meta-analyses, based on 126 observational studies (15,034 families), we examined mothers’ and fathers’ differential use of autonomy-supportive and controlling strategies with boys and girls, and the role of moderators related to the decade in which the study was conducted, the observational context, and sample characteristics. Databases of Web of Science, ERIC, PsychInfo, Online Contents, Picarta, and Proquest were searched for studies examining differences in observed parental control of boys and girls between the ages of 0 and 18 years. Few differences were found in parents’ use of control with boys and girls. Parents were slightly more controlling with boys than with girls, but the effect size was negligible (d = 0.08). The effect was larger, but still small, in normative groups and in samples with younger children. No overall effect for gender-differentiated autonomy-supportive strategies was found (d = 0.03). A significant effect of time emerged: studies published in the 1970s and 1980s reported more autonomy-supportive strategies with boys than toward girls, but from 1990 onwards parents showed somewhat more autonomy-supportive strategies with girls than toward boys. Taking into account parents’ gender stereotypes might uncover subgroups of families where gender-differentiated control is salient, but based on our systematic review of the currently available large data base we conclude that in general the differences between parenting of boys versus girls are minimal The parent raise their children to be autonomous, at the same extend for men AND women.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159193
Moreover, in more gender egalitarian countries, the maths anxiety among girls is higher and the parent tend to value less math among girls. It is again in contradiction with the narrative expecting that less gender egalitarian countries with greater gender stereotyope would increase the gender maths anxiety gap.

Countries with Higher Levels of Gender Equality Show Larger National Sex Differencesin Mathematics

Anxiety and Relatively Lower Parental Mathematics Valuation for Girls

Most importantly and contra predictions, we showed that economically developed and more gender equal countries have a lower overall level of mathematics anxiety, and yet a larger national sex difference in mathematics anxiety relative to less developed countries. Further,although relatively more mothers workin STEM fields in more developed countries, these parents valued, on average , mathematical competence more in theirsonsthan their daughters.The proportion of mothers working in STEM was unrelated to sexdifferences in mathematics anxiety or performance

This study shows that indeed maths is less emphasized for girls than boys in more gender equal countries but it also a part of the gender equality paradoxe. STEM are more valued for girls in less gender equal country probably to to pragmatical reason (better earning). (see the part about society)
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0153857
Plus, girl in non traditional family where the woman is the breadwinner is more likely to be more traditional (their own choice)

Modern Family: Female Breadwinners and the Intergenerational Transmission of Gender Norms⇤

In this paper I investigate the intergenerational transmission of gender norms. The norm I focus on is the traditional view that it is the role of the mother to look after young children and the role of the father to be the breadwinner. I develop a model of identity formation where a child’s gender norm is endogenous to two main sources of socialisation: her family on the one hand, and society at large on the other. Using data from the Next Steps survey and the International Social Survey Programme, I examine the intergenerational transmission of gender norms in England when the norms of the family, and the society it is embedded in, are oppositional. My findings indicate between-sex heterogeneity in the transmission of gender norms from parents to children. Boys raised in modern families (i.e. where the mother is the breadwinner) are less likely to develop traditional norms. However, compared to those in traditional families, girls raised in modern families are actually more likely to be traditional; in opposition to their family’s but in line with society’s norm. Examining further outcomes associated with gender norms, I find that girls raised in modern families are also less likely to state that being able to earn high wages is important for them, and are less likely to pursue a science degree at university level. I use my identity formation model to argue that these results can be explained by heterogeneity in preferences for conformity to the family, and present empirical evidence that indeed, girls in modern families are less conformist than those in traditional families. Using a regression discontinuity design, I further show that this weaker preference for conformity is in fact a result of the treatment of living in a modern family.

http://web.econ.ku.dk/eprn_epru/Seminagendernorms_march16_Mac.pdf
Another point is that parent influence their children in their education but the interraction is both way and parents adapt a lot to their children. So the children are also a great factor on the parenting behavior.

Child Characteristics and Parental Educational Expectations: Evidence for Transmission with Transaction

Parents’ expectations for their children’s ultimate educational attainment have been hypothesized to play an instrumental role in socializing academically-relevant child behaviors, beliefs, and abilities. In addition to social transmission of educationally relevant values from parents to children, parental expectations and child characteristics may transact bidirectionally. We explore this hypothesis using both longitudinal and genetically informative twin data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Birth and Kindergarten cohorts. Our behavior genetic results indicate that parental expectations partly reflect child genetic variation, even as early as 4 years of age. Two classes of child characteristics were hypothesized to contribute to these child-to-parent effects: behavioral tendencies (approaches toward learning and problem behaviors) and achievement (math and reading). Using behavior genetic models, we find within-twin-pair associations between these child characteristics and parental expectations. Using longitudinal cross-lagged models, we find that initial variation in child characteristics predicts future educational expectations above and beyond previous educational expectations. These results are consistent with transactional frameworks in which parent-to-child and child-to- parent effects cooccur

Genetic affect also grealtly the way of parenting and the receptivness of the children. Parent adapt a lot to their children

Genetic and Environmental Associations Between Child Personality and Parenting

Parenting is often conceptualized in terms of its effects on offspring. However, children may also play an active role in influencing the parenting they receive. Simple correlations between parenting and child outcomes may be due to parent-to-child causation, child-to-parent causation, or some combination of the two. We use a multirater, genetically informative, large sample (n¼1,411 twin sets) to gain traction on this issue as it relates to parental warmth and stress in the context of child Big Five personality. Considerable variance in parental warmth (27%) and stress (45%) was attributable to child genetic influences on parenting. Incorporating child Big Five personality into the model roughly explained half of this variance. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that parents mold their parenting in response to their child’s personality. Residual heritability of parenting is likely due to child characteristics beyond the Big Five. 2) Society Does society holds back girls? Another point is that women may be held back by the social norm. Specialy in STEM where men represent the majority.

A simple hypothesis could be to take the gender equality index to assess the equality within a country (access to education healthcare etc). In less gender egalitarian countries, we would expect to find less women in STEM as they would be more held back by society, social norm and stereotype.
However it is not the case. It is even the opposite. Where the gender equality index is higher, the difference is larger.

The Gender-Equality Paradox in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education

The underrepresentation of girls and women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is a continual concern for social scientists and policymakers. Using an international database on adolescent achievement in science, mathematics, and reading (N = 472,242), we showed that girls performed similarly to or better than boys in science in two of every three countries, and in nearly all countries, more girls appeared capable of college-level STEM study than had enrolled. Paradoxically, the sex differences in the magnitude of relative academic strengths and pursuit of STEM degrees rose with increases in national gender equality. The gap between boys’ science achievement and girls’ reading achievement relative to their mean academic performance was near universal. These sex differences in academic strengths and attitudes toward science correlated with the STEM graduation gap. A mediation analysis suggested that life-quality pressures in less gender-equal countries promote girls’ and women’s engagement with STEM subjects.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617741719 More over another large sample study show that girl good abilities in maths AND reading may give them more choices than boys.

Not Lack of Ability but More Choice: Individual and Gender Differences in Choice of Careers in Science,

Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

The pattern of gender differences in math and verbal ability may result in females having a wider choice of careers, in both science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and non-STEM fields, compared with males. The current study tested whether individuals with high math and high verbal ability in 12th grade were more or less likely to choose STEM occupations than those with high math and moderate verbal ability. The 1,490 subjects participated in two waves of a national longitudinal study; one wave was when the subjects were in 12th grade, and the other was when they were 33 years old. Results revealed that mathematically capable individuals who also had high verbal skills were less likely to pursue STEM careers than were individuals who had high math skills but moderate verbal skills. One notable finding was that the group with high math and high verbal ability included more females than males. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612458937 Another large sample (300,000) studie tends to show a similar results.

Girls’ comparative advantage in reading can largely explain the gender gap in math-related fields

Gender differences in math performance are now small in developed countries and they cannot explain on their own the strong underrepresentation of women in math-related fields. This latter result is however no longer true once gender differences in reading performance are alsotakenintoaccount. Usingindividual-leveldata on 300,000 15-y-old students in 64 countries, we show that the difference between a student performance in reading and math is 80% of a standard deviation (SD) larger for girls than boys, a magnitude considered as very large. When this difference is controlled for, the gender gap in students’ intentions to pursue math-intensivestudiesandcareers is reduced by around75%,while gender gaps in self-concept in math, declared interest for math or attitudes toward math entirely disappear. These latter variables are also much less able to explain the gender gap in intentions to study maththanisstudents’ differenceinperformancebetweenmathand reading. These results are in line with choice models in which educational decisions involve intraindividual comparisons of achievement and self-beliefs in different subjects as well as cultural norms regarding gender. To directly show that intraindividual comparisons of achievement impact students’ intended careers, we use differences across schools in teaching resources dedicated to math and reading as exogenous variations of students’ comparative advantage for math. Results confirm that the comparative advantage in math with respect to reading at the time of making educational choices plays a key role in the process leading to women’s underrepresentation in math-intensive fields.

www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1905779116 The last point on the choice is that a recent meta analysis showed that increased individualism and decreased ecological stress tend to increase the gender difference of personnality traits but not the culture and stereotype itself.

Nature and evoked culture: Sex differences in personality are uniquely correlated with ecological stress

Sex differences in personality were found to be larger in more developed and more gender-equal societies. However, the studies that report this effect either have methodological shortcomings or do not take into account possible underlying effects of ecological variables. Here, a large, multinational (N = 867,782) dataset of personality profiles was used to examine sex differences in Big Five facet scores for 50 countries. Gender differences were related to estimates of ecological stress as well as socio-cultural variables. Using a regularized partial-correlation approach, the unique associations of those correlates with sex differences were isolated. Sex differences were large (median Mahalanobis' D = 1.97) and varied substantially across countries (range 1.49 to 2.48). Global sex differences are larger in more developed countries with higher food availability, less pathogen prevalence, higher gender equality and an individualistic culture. After controlling for confounds, only cultural individualism, historic pathogen prevalence and food availability remained. Sex differences in personality are uniquely correlated to ecological stress. Previously reported correlations between greater sex differences and socio-cultural liberalism could be due to confounding by influences of ecological stress.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.05.011

To conclude

Women have the same opportunity and access to power (politic and money), are seen as competent as men even at high responsabilities jobs (authority), take also important decisions in the family (spending power and intra family authority) and are raised to be as independant as men and not held back. So the power is not legitimated by the sex of people but on the skills, choice and some luck (good or bad) due to the contingence of life. It is more about inequalities than gender inequalities and does not tackle the « Patriarchy » but capitalism.

Western countries are not patriarchies

See the other part here