Heaven & Earth

A note on Hong Kong Triads (Heaven and Earth Societies).

There have been a number of prominent criminal justice professors from several universities, most of whom I know personally, who have declared that the Hong Kong Triads are dead – Sun Yee On, Wo Hop To, etc. They cite the changing traditions, the departure from numerology, and the lack of traditional structure under the Shan Chu (Mountain Master/Dragon Head) as proof. I had lunch with an Incense Master the other day and we discussed this.

You might ask why I did this or why he would take a meeting with me, but the truth is that I’ve known him for at least thirty years, and though we operated on different sides of the coin, it was still the same coin and it brings understanding. (like medieval knights, the English knights had a lot more in common with the French knights than they did with their own peasants)

Anyway, we chatted about the old days and people we knew, how things have changed, and so on. The police in Los Angeles are quite openly corrupt now, and the HK triad groups moved from white powder to safer and still popular cannabis products. The Mexican cartels are allowed to conduct business in ethnic Chinese neighborhoods and territories if they pay the tax.

We’re both old. Neither of us cares about this stuff.

Identify the Aircraft

1.

Serial production continued in the years 1935-1943, ending with the production of about 450 military aircraft of this type. By all measures,  a successful seaplane.

2.

It’s not a P-61.

Bullet Points:

** Illegal Aliens! The call has gone out to have them live in Mexico but I remain skeptical. (Mexico doesn’t offer free ObamaCare, a free ObamaPhone and $3K/month) What about Canada? Why can’t USGOV load them onto C-5s and fly them directly from Mexico to Ottawa?

** The FJB regime announced this week it is reducing the number of tactical aerial surveillance crafts being used along the U.S.-Mexico Border. The vehicles are used to interdict human and drug smuggling and is also a source of data for migrant got-aways. CBP officials distinguished between the Tethered Aerostat Radar Systems operated by CBP’s Air and Marine Operations vs. the tactical systems used by Border Patrol.

** Are Cargo Theft Numbers a bellwether? (h/t Claudio) much of the cargo commerce that is transported from here to there in the US and Canada moves by rail. Consider the vulnerability of rolling stock that sits in sidings. The same inner city demographics who loot stores in the cities without fear of incarceration also rip open boxcars and containers that are parked on railway sidings. It very much becomes a living, with theft gangs often shooting it out over who will rip open and steal the contents of which railway cars. You have to ask yourself how many police officers those departments are willing to throw at the problem as they find themselves de-funded. The obvious solutions are these: Authorize that deadly force is used on the inner-city thugs – or – accept higher prices on the shelves because nobody is insuring these loads anymore.

Technically it’s the jurisdiction of the deputized PRIVATE railway police.

** You can design your own Marie Antionette wig here.

** Initially introduced in the American West in the late nineteenth century for cattle ranching, barbed wire was a highly effective military obstacle. All armies deployed it during the Great War. There were more shells by 1916, but not enough sensitive fuses to explode them on impact with the wire; shells that buried into the ground before exploding often made wire entanglements worse by throwing the coils or strands into the air and twisting them into unrecognizable heaps. Only in 1917 did a sufficient number of shells and proper fuses begin consistently to clear enemy wire, but it remained a formidable obstacle through the end of the war, demanding long or heavy bombardments to clear paths for attacking troops. Most infantry assault sections carried wire cutters to snip through sections left undamaged by the artillery. This piece (above) was recovered from Vimy Ridge after the war.

Oh, so they’re calling it ‘dating’…not tricking or whoring.