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Mafia IV story idea

Note: The particularly important details and music artist names are in bold text. Licensed music track names are in italics.
The year is 1973, five years after the events of the Mafia III, and 22 years since Vito Scaletta’s seen or heard from his old friend Joe Barbaro. The canon ending of Mafia III with this Mafia IV story is Vito taking over the city after Lincoln skipped town, however Cassandra and Burke are left alive and loyal to both Vito and Lincoln still. Burke was able to survive his liver cancer by getting a black market liver transplant in Mexico, like he did in his ending, except with Vito running the city. On Vito and Lincoln’s behalf, Burke and Cassandra agree to stay behind in New Bordeaux and keep the city locked down, incase Leo Galante and the Commission try anything.
The beginning cutscene is Vito answering his telephone after getting up in the morning in his new penthouse, on the top floor of the New Bordeaux casino he finished that was once Sal Marcano's, and grabbing a cup of coffee. It's Alma with some urgent news. Lincoln Clay came down to the cigar warehouse to visit her after 5 years of silence, and he has big news.
Joe is alive in Empire Bay and has been this entire time. However, as punishment for his actions, he's become Leo Galante's personal driver against his will and is forbidden from contacting Vito ever again, or else him and Vito will be killed. Alma then tells Vito to meet Lincoln at the airport to learn more, as he's already there awaiting Vito's arrival. When they're away from anyone who could listen in on their conversation, Lincoln tells Vito he has a friend named John Donovan he's going to introduce him to, hiding in the outskirts of Empire Bay, ready to help Vito and Lincoln with their new mission
Vito gets dressed in one of his signature trench coats with a suit and tie, ready to rain down hell on the Vinci crime family and their allies, and finally be reunited with his lifelong friend he previously thought was dead, Joe Barbaro.
Here is my idea for the kill list, all related to the Commission in Empire Bay and their allies.
I'm thinking Vito and Joe work with Lincoln Clay and John Donovan to split up Empire Bay and distribute territory to three other factions not unlike what Lincoln did with New Bordeaux. This time though, this is a much larger city in a much, much different part of the United States. The empire building mechanics would be a lot smoother, more robust, and streamlined compared to Mafia III. They would work similarly a more modernized version of how the hit city sandbox game Scarface: The World Is Yours handled it's empire building and management mechanics, minus the whole switching to other characters lower on the ladder to do your bidding. This would be ideal for a story rich organized crime game in my opinion. Here are my ideas for those factions, all close allies of the up and coming Scaletta crime family.
The Cuban mob led by Alma Diaz. Vito goes way back with Alma, and she does not hesitate to answer him and Lincoln's calls to save Joe's life and royally fuck both Leo Galante and the Vinci family.
Conti crime family, led by Enzo Conti. This Conti crime family formed sometime in late 1968, months after Lincoln helped Enzo flee New Bordeaux and drop off of Sal Marcano's radar. It turns out he fled north to Empire Bay and finally formed his own family, having more than enough years of experience in the underworld to handle the job. Lincoln's tight with him and manages to recruit him to Vito and Joe's cause.
The Yakuza, based out of Empire Bay's Japantown. Longtime sworn enemies of the Empire Bay Triads, with bad blood going back decades. They would greatly enjoy seeing Mr. Chu and his son's heads mounted on pikes, along with whacking everyone who's ever supported their organization. You don't know them well, and they're known to be very unpredictable and ruthless. Use these traits to your advantage when taking on the Commission of Empire Bay and their friends.
I should mention as expected, this entire 1973 section where you play as Vito is much shorter than Mafia III. Vito's takeover is shown much more quickly over time than Lincoln's, and there's time skips during it, to keep it short and sweet, and to show onscreen only what's important. There is also no option for your underbosses to betray you, as to reduce confusion and keep the story consistently the same each playthrough, like the first two Mafia games.
However, unlike Mafia III, after all of these tasks are completed and every single assassination target on Vito’s kill list is dealt with, the game does not end. In fact, it's not even anywhere near close to being over yet. Vito's 1973 section was merely the beginning act. It was really a lead up to an entirely new Mafia story, centering around a newcomer to the American mob. Fast forward two years following Vito’s rampage that led to him taking over Empire Bay and the Commission, in the year 1975 him and Joe now rule Empire Bay, with Vito as the Don of the Scaletta Crime Family, and Joe working as his loyal underboss. You play the rest of the game as a young up and coming soldato named Louis in his 20’s, who’s a rising star in Vito’s organization. Do right by Mr. Scaletta and Mr. Barbaro, understand kid?
My basic idea for the character and his backstory is that he's a young Italian-Canadian mobster from Toronto, Ontario, or whatever Mafia's equivalent of it could be called. Let's call him Louis DeSimone. His family hails from Tuscany in Italy and moved to Toronto, Ontario in 1939, shortly after World War II broke out in Europe. Louis DeSimone was born in July 1952 in Toronto, and was raised in Toronto's Little Italy. Being northern Italian and hailing from Tuscany, Louis has blond hair and green eyes, making him visually very distinct from past series protagonists, who were all dark haired brunets with brown eyes. Louis fled south to Empire Bay when the feds started cracking down on his old family and put his boss in prison, and he ended up finding a new home with the Scaletta crime family. The first few missions playing as Louis DeSimone involve shooting your away out of an arrest by a Toronto Police Service SWAT team in Toronto in December 1974, seeing the rest of the members of your old crime family either get arrested or shot in front of you as you make your escape. You spend the next two missions fleeing Ontario through Quebec and upstate New York, before finally arriving in Empire Bay in early 1975, late January to be exact. Winter is in full force with snow everywhere, Louis' arrival to Empire Bay for the first time in his life mirroring Vito's return to Empire Bay in 1945 30 years earlier, except under far different much more dire circumstances. Louis' older brother and his father, both capos in his old crime family in Toronto, are shown to be arrested by the TPS SWAT team in his first mission, the same one that attempted to gun him down when he resisted arrested. Louis knows someone had to have ratted out his old crime family, and he wants to find out who someday. The thing is though, he doesn't just want to kill them. He wants to get out of them why they did it before he kills them. More than anything else, he just wants to find out why his crime family was betrayed and served up to the feds on a silver platter, having most of his biological family sent to prison in the process. He’s out to uncover the mystery of why his family fell apart, and he’s more than willing to help people like Don Vito Scaletta and his underboss Joe Barbaro to eventually get the answers he seeks. In the end, he’s not even after revenge primarily, more than that, he wants answers and information regarding the fare of his old crime family, and wants to know why his family fell apart. I came up with the idea for this character because I figured that playing as a fugitive from the law made sense for the mob life, and I'm surprised we haven't had a fugitive protagonist in the Mafia series yet.
In the 1975 chapters while playing as Louis, the Watergate scandal, President Richard Nixon’s resignation, and the official end to the Vietnam War are all discussed on the in-game radio during news segments. In the last 1979 chapter, the beginning of the Soviet-Afghan War is also the subject of a news segment on the radio.
The story eventually transitions into the 1980's as years pass, with the scenery, cars, and music changing accordingly, and historical events of the time discussed in the game. In the 1989 section of the game, the murder of the infamous former Sinclair Parish Sheriff Walter “Slim” Beaumont is mentioned on the in-game radio, as just over 21 years ago Slim and his corruption ring were the top headline of national news. the time the game ends, it's 1992, and significant historical events from the past few years at the time that are covered on the radio in-game include anything from the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, to the 1992 L.A. riots. The rise of the internet and home computers are briefly touched upon during news segments on the in-game radio during the early 1990's section of the story, but not greatly delved into given their relative infancy in that time period. During this entire 1975-1992 stretch of the story, Vito is no longer playable, and Don Scaletta takes a backseat in the story as a main supporting character, similar to Don Salieri throughout Mafia: Definitive Edition. You now play as the Italian-Canadian Scaletta family soldato Louis DeSimone, who is later promoted to being a capo in 1985. At the end of the game in 1992, Louis is promoted to Consigliere of the Scaletta crime family, and it’s revealed in the epilogue that he became the don of the family in 2006 at the age of 54, and his now released from prison older brother serving as his underboss, and and Enzo Conti’s grandson Giovanni Conti serving as consigliere, taking over from Louis’ previous position which before that belonged to his father and Enzo’s only son, Lorenzo Conti from 1973-1992. It is worth noting that unlike Don Salieri, Don Scaletta has much more integrity, and has more genuine loyalty for his men and his associates. If you've beaten Mafia 1 or Mafia: Definitive Edition, you'll know this is something Salieri lacked in the end. Over time, Louis also goes from having a strictly business relationship with Vito and Joe, to bonding with them and becoming a genuinely close friend and trusted member of the family, seeing Vito as something of a second father, and coming to see Joe as the fun uncle he never had. Another major character development theme is Louis DeSimone adapting and assimilating into Italian-American culture in his new home in the Northeastern US, it seeming like something new mixed with the familiar Italian-Canadian culture he was raised in back in Ontario just north of the border.
The game will include a number of hit music from the 70’s that played on the radio back then, such as Bobby Womack’s Across 110th Street and Tony Christie’s (Is This the Way to) Amarillo, The Grateful Dead's Casey Jones and at least a few songs by the then new American rock band Cheap Trick, as well as popular songs from the 1960’s people still listened to at the time, such as Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs’ Wooly Bully, King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man, Zager and Evans' In the Year 2525, The Zombies' Time of the Season, and Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots Are Made for Walkin'. When you progress through the game, especially after you switch to playing as Louis DeAngelo for the rest of the story, years change, and the music changes. Different songs start playing on the radio, such as Sylvester's You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real), Randy Crawford's Street Life, and The Village People's Y.M.C.A., Cheryl Lynn's Got to Be Real, Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive, and the Bee Gees' Stayin' Alive start playing in the 1979 portion of the game. After you've completed the 1975 section of the game, Foghat's Slow Ride starts playing on the radio. Starting in the 1977 section of the game, Cheap Trick's I Want You to Want Me and Heart's Barracuda start playing on the radio. In the 1980's portion of the game, Thomas Dolby's songs Hyperactive! and She Blinded Me with Science, in addition to Night Ranger's Sister Christian also start playing on the radio. If Hangar 13 can afford the licenses, I also think a few Michael Jackson and Madonna songs should definitely be on the radio during the 1980's portion of the story, given the immense popularity and regular radio airtime those two had in that decade. If this ended up being possible, I imagine that Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal, Beat It, Bad, and Billie Jean being on the radio in the 80's sections would be a must, Smooth Criminal especially because of how well it suits the series. Madonna's Lucky Star, Burning Up, Like a Virgin, and Borderline would also be perfect for the 80's portion of the game to me. Also mentioned by NPCs and civilians in the game are topical events of the time period, such as the release of the groundbreaking 1973 horror film The Exorcist at the end of Vito's playable portion of the game.
Other music of the 1980's segment when playing as Louis DeAngelo for the remainder of the game includes hits of the era such as Joe Jackson's Steppin' Out, The Buggles' Video Killed The Radio Star, Corey Hart's Sunglasses at Night, Laura Branigan's Self Control and Gloria, The Weather Girls' It's Raining Men, A-ha’s Take On Me, Men at Work's Down Under, Kim Wilde's Kids in America, The Gap Band's You Dropped a Bomb on Me, Culture Club’s Karma Chameleon, Michael Sembello’s Maniac, Twisted Sister's I Wanna Rock and We're Not Gonna Take It, Bon Jovi's Wanted Dead or Alive and Bad Medicine, Soft Cell’s Tainted Love, Robert Palmer’s Simply Irresistible, Rick Astley’s Together Forever, Whenever You Need Somebody, and Never Gonna Give You Up, Cutting Crew’s [I Just] Died In Your Arms, Loverboy's Working for the Weekend, Dead or Alive's You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) and That's the Way (I Like It), Tiffany’s I Think We’re Alone Now, Daryl Hall & John Oates' Maneater, Aneka's Japanese Boy, Mötley Crüe's Dr. Feelgood, Girls, Girls, Girls and Kickstart My Heart, Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire, Huey Lewis And The News' Hip To Be Square, Bill Medley's (I've Had) The Time of My Life, The Police's Every Breath You Take, Whodini's Magic's Wand, Guns ‘N Roses’ Welcome to the Jungle and Paradise City, Tears For Fears' Everybody Wants To Rule The World, Rockwell's Somebody's Watching Me, Regina's Baby Love, Nena's 99 Red Balloons, Earth, Wind, and Fire's Let's Groove and September, Billy Idol's Eyes Without a Face and White Wedding, Rick James’ Give It To Me Baby, Olivia Newton-John’s Physical, The S.O.S. Band’s Take Your Time (Do It Right), Kenny Loggins’ Highway to the Danger Zone, Wham!’s Everything She Wants, George Michael's Careless Whisper, Toto's Hold the Line and Africa, Blondie's Heart of Glass and Atomic, and Mai Tai's History.
**Note that not every single year and moment of the 17 year 1975-1992 section playing as Louis DeAngelo is playable or chronicled. My idea is it would be handled similarly to how the time skips in Mafia 1/Mafia: Definitive Edition were handled. Time skips of two or more years, or in this case, even longer such as 4 years sometimes, the game skipping from 1979 to 1983. This is to keep the game and story length ideal, and not risk it getting boring or repetitive, or going on for too long. Repetition was a big problem in Mafia III even if I still thought it was a superb game, so I think it'd be best to learn from that for the next big entry. The games story will skip ahead and show onscreen only what's significant, similar to the first Mafia game and it's remake, as well as certain aspects of Mafia II. Louis starts his section as a 22 year old fugitive soldato who got picked up by another crew south of the Canadian border, and in the epilogue of the game in 1992, is promoted to the consigliere of the Scaletta crime family at the age of 40, being set to take over the family once Vito and Joe become too old to run the day to day on a regular basis. Louis DeSimone is promoted to don of the Scaletta crime family following Vito and Joe being officially retired as of 2006. They’re both still involved and paid huge amounts of money by Louis out of respect, but keep a much lower profile by then since they have handpicked successors and aren’t worried about where the business is going.
The years chronicled in the main gameplay segments are as follows:
1973
1975
1977
1979
1983
1985
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
Much more of the rural areas and countryside outside of Empire Bay are included than what was available in Mafia II. The way rural environments are handled for this hypothetical Mafia IV is akin to how Mafia: Definitive Edition and Mafia III handled their rural environments outside the main cities, except much larger in scale, given the increased power of the current new consoles such as the PS5 and Xbox Series X. This region is based off of upstate New York and the surrounding areas across multiple states in the Northeastern US, and includes forests, fields, mountains, rivers, lakes, beaches, and small towns. Also included are other cities and towns, based off of other large cities in New York like Syracuse, Buffalo, and Rochester, where other story missions, business activities, and side missions take place, along with smaller notable places like Ithaca, Binghamton, and Utica. The entire states of New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Delaware, Maryland, and Ohio are also included, including places based off of all of their major cities and most of their notable towns in between. Large portions of Pennsylvania are included as well, including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Scranton. All of the province of Nova Scotia including the city of Halifax, and Large portions of the eastern half of the Canadian province of Ontario are included as well, including cities based off of Toronto, Ottawa, and Niagara Falls. There's even a small portion of Quebec included, including Montreal and the surrounding countryside of the province outside that city, including a few small towns in southern Quebec. The player must pass a quick border patrol check when crossing the US-Canada border in a car or other ground vehicle.
Wildlife is present in the game, mostly to add to the background, scenery, and immersion in rural environments on the map. These are all animals native to the Northeastern US, ranging from white tailed deer, coyotes, bobcats, Canada lynxes, rabbits, hares, groundhogs, gophers, beavers, raccoons, opossums, bats, chipmunks, red and gray squirrels, mice, and rats to more formidable and potentially dangerous animals that may sometimes attack the player, such as grey wolves, black bears, mountain lions, and moose. These last four animals are known to spawn in the mountainous regions, especially in New York, Ohio, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Ontario, including the rural regions based off of the Catskills and the Adirondack mountains. Dogs are present in the cities, towns, and settlements where humans live and keep them as pets, being walked and sometimes found in people's yards. Some are used as guard dogs by enemies and are aggressive towards the player on sight. Domestic cats are also present in the background of residential areas, and both Louis and Vito own them as pets throughout the game in their safe houses, as well as other onscreen characters we see the homes of throughout the game.
Aircraft make their first usable appearance in the Mafia series too, from airplanes to helicopters. Vito cannot use planes or helicopters in his playable 1973 portion of the game, as he does not know how to pilot, being a paratrooper in World War II who never actually flew any of the planes himself. Aircraft are unlocked to use when Louis DeSimone gets his pilot’s certificate offscreen in 1977, and at the end of a chapter set that year, Louis has to fly Vito in a helicopter to a penthouse in Downtown Empire Bay acting as a family safe house, equipped with a helipad. Louis frequently serves as a personal driver and pilot for both Vito and Joe afterwards, having done a lot in his time serving the family to earn their trust and respect.
Melee weapons also make a return from Mafia: Definitive Edition, with even more variety this time. In their respective sections of the game, Vito and Louis may use anything from baseball bats, pipes, shovels, brass knuckles, golf clubs, police batons, switchblades, kitchen knives, bowie knives, ice picks, 2x4s, claw hammers, crowbars, tire irons, chain links, machetes, meat cleavers, pickaxes, hatchets, sledgehammers, to fire axes. This amount of melee weapons is so no matter what environment the player finds themselves in during a mission or any other game activity, there is usually a weapon of some sort nearby. If the player has obtained piano wire, you may also strangle an enemy to death with it from behind as a stealth kill, this being a classic assassination method infamous for being used by the Italian Mafia. Rope can also be found and used for similar strangulation stealth kills, appearing in the gameplay environments where piano wire can’t be found. There is a wide variety of new guns and explosives to use in this concept for Mafia IV, going with the new weapons of the time the game takes place that criminals quickly got their hands on. This includes the SPAS-12 combat shotgun, the Beretta 92 pistol, the AK-74 assault rifle, the mini uzi, the MAC-10 submachine gun, both suppressed and unsuppressed variants, the Beretta 92 pistol, the Taurus raging bull revolver, Glock handguns, the TEC-9 machine pistol, illegally modified to be full auto, the Ruger Mini-14 full auto variant, and even Vietnam war era flamethrowers, which I think is only natural given that as of Mafia III, we already have RPGs and grenade launchers. Late in the game from the 1989 section and onwards, the Benelli M3 combat shotgun becomes available. The Milkor MGL grenade launcher becomes available beginning in the 1983 portion of the game. Attached grenade launchers are also available for the AK-47, AK-74, and M16 assault rifles. More advanced rocket launchers of the 1970’s and 1980’s are naturally included as well.
Free ride makes a return in Mafia IV, with the player having the options to change the weather, time period, and an option to play as Louis, Vito, Joe, Lincoln, or John Donovan. Naturally, a multitude of new free ride missions are available as well.
I previously posted a much earlier and less detailed draft of this on the old Mafia3 subreddit 3 years ago back in 2017 as an idea for a hypothetical Mafia 3 expansion where you play as Vito, but have since updated and revamped it to a possible Mafia IV plot, and fixed any plot holes I noticed and made it much more fleshed out and in depth, and focus on more than just Vito in the end. You may view my original here if you so desire, to compare. https://www.reddit.com/Mafia3/comments/6sldhp/spoiler_mafia_iii_vito_dlc_basic_plot_idea/
Feel free to give me constructive criticism on this, as I encourage this discourse and believe it is integral to growing and improving, to build upon or improve these ideas I've come up with, or say whether or not you think something like this should happen in the future. Thank you for reading!
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Flatten the Curve. #51. Who is Lance B Eliot? He Wrote Neanderthals & AI Forbes, A Quickly Retracted Article. Why is this a conspiracy? It's because Lance B Eliot can be linked to the NSA. And Lance isn't what he seems to be. Start paying attention. The control is getting worse.

Previous Post Here
At the end of July, I was on Reddit and saw u/Memetic1 posted; I need to find out the story behind this crazy article on Forbes:
Forbes took down this article with no explanation at all. Source Here
If you go to the site now this article is gone, and I just want to know how this person is an apparent Stanford fellow. Was this an experiment with AI writing that went horribly wrong? Did this guy have some sort of mental break and decide to write an article during it? Reddit Source here
Ok. Call me curious and watch me go. I can't help it. I also can't explain how I'm seeing the right holes to dig into, but I am. And this Rabbit Hole is deep. And the deeper I went, the more concerned I became. Why? I'll show you why, but first things first, so let me get back to the beginning.

Who is Lance B. Eliot?

Neanderthals. AI. Self driving cars. And an article that was quickly taken down shortly after it was posted on Reddit? Why? So I jumped online to see what was going on, and sure enough, I can't access the article. I go to archive sites and I can only find half accessible screen shots. Alright. Let's keep going. And I do. But to no avail. All I can find are snippets of the article on Twitter, Reddit, and a couple of articles. Alright, time to put Eye of the Tiger on repeat and imitate the quick cut movie montages before the big fight.
Cause this is a fight, and this fight will go until a KO happens.

Lance's Picture Perfect Credentials.

Did you ever let your imagination run wild as a kid? Did you ever have elaborate world ending scenarios where you were the only guy who could save mankind? So you did everything you could to prepare; you bought stocks in robotics, you championed geo-engineering to save the environment, you bought farmland, invested in gene editing technology, fake meat, and warned humanity about an impending pandemic? No? Oh, that must have only been Bill Gates.
But seriously, as a kid I thought I could master everything that I was interested in. Astronomy. Computer programming. Law. Psychology. Literature. And on and on. Then I became an adult and realized that wasn't possible. And then the pandemic hit and I realized that it's only possible for Bill Gates, and Lance B. Eliot.
Forbes • Lance B. Eliot is a world-renowned expert on Artificial Intelligence (AI) with over 3 million amassed views of his AI columns. As a seasoned executive and high-tech entrepreneur, he combines practical industry experience with deep academic research to provide innovative insights about the present and future of AI and ML technologies and applications. Formerly a professor at USC and UCLA, and head of a pioneering AI lab, he frequently speaks at major AI industry events. Author of over 40 books, 500 articles, and 200 podcasts, he has made appearances on media outlets such as CNN and co-hosted the popular radio show Technotrends. He's been an adviser to Congress and other legislative bodies and has received numerous awards/honors. He serves on several boards, has worked as a Venture Capitalist, an angel investor, and a mentor to founder entrepreneurs and startups. SOURCE HERE
That's quite the bio, isn’t it. If I was looking for comparisons, maybe Elon Musk or Bill Gates might be as impressive, but trust me, Bill and Elon are nothing like Lance.
Stanford • Dr. Lance Eliot is a globally recognized expert on AI and previously served as a professor at the University of Southern California (USC) where he also was the Executive Director of a pioneering AI Research Laboratory. His books on AI have been ranked in the Top 10 of all-time AI books, and he is a frequent speaker at AI conferences, including having been the keynote speaker at AI World. Dr. Eliot’s columns for Forbes and AI Trends are widely respected and have amassed over 2.7 million views. Known for his expertise in the areas of AI societal impacts, he has served as an adviser to the Congressional Vice-Chair of the U.S. Congressional Committee on Science & Technology, has published over 250 articles, been an Arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association, and given talks at numerous Computer Law industry events. Dr. Eliot has also been a top executive and corporate officer in billion-dollar sized companies, along with being a successful entrepreneur, and most recently served as a venture capitalist with a major VC firm. Source Here
Uhm. Ok. Now you really don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out there's a glitch in the Matrix. Because there is no way that isn’t fake. No. Way. At. All.
So I decide to search YouTube for Lance. He has to be on there, you don't become a world famous AI scientist, own companies, consult to the government, appear on CNN, co-host shows, and don't have live recordings.
And I find one. Only one result for a world famous AI TV show host. Ok.
January 25, 2017 • AIShowBiz Pitch Fest Award Competition. YouTube Link
And now the Rabbit Hole gets deeper. He's listed as a judge, only I don't see anyone that looks like Lance on the panel. There's only one photo of him online (yep, just one, think about that) and it's the creepiest perv photo trying to look cool photo that I've ever seen. Yet, he's not sitting with the judges.
So I check the name in the judges listing again. Maybe I got it wrong. Nope there it is, listed under CEO Techbrium Inc. In 2017. Wait. Why isn't that in either Bio?
OK. Time to hit up LinkedIn.
CodeX
LinkedIn Page Experience
Stanford Fellow Stanford University 2020 – Presentless than a year Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI Columnist Forbes 2019 – Present1 year Highly respected and widely read AI columns for Forbes and AI Trends that have amassed over 3+ million total views: : Page
1 year at Forbes and Stanford. Sounds good. Kind of strange, but nothing that would set alarm bells off. And then I hit this.
Chief AI Scientist • Techbrium Inc. • 2020 – Present less than a year.
Did you catch that? Present less than a year at Techbrium. The YouTube video from 2017 has him as the CEO, and not the Chief AI scientist. Ding. Ding. Goes the fire alarm. Let's look at the rest of his LinkedIn.
Senior Vice President Saban Capital Group 2017 – 2019 - 2years
Global Vice President Daymon Retail Services 2015 – 2017 - 2 years
Managing Partner Tatum, a Randstad Company 2014 – 2015 - 1 year
Vice President AccentCare Incorporated 2008 – 2013 - 5 years
Founder & CEO Eliot & Associates 1996 – 2008 - 12 years
Either Lance has figured out how to clone himself, or something isn’t right here. They may have figured out how to clone sheep in the lab years ago, and the New Normal internet behavioral manipulation might be making sheep's out of society, but it hasn't got me yet. So I'll keep breaking down Lance's DNA and see what other nuggets we can find.
So I go to his blog. And it keeps on getting better.
RECENT POSTS. Introduction to Driverless Self-Driving Cars. (New Book) January 1, 2018. New Advances in AI Autonomous Driverless. Self-Driving Cars (New Book) January 1, 2018. Innovation and Thought Leadership on Self-Driving Driverless Cars (New Book) January 1, 2018. Advances in AI and Autonomous Vehicles: Cybernetic Self-Driving Cars (New Book) January 1, 2018. Self-Driving Cars: The Mother of All AI Projects (New Book) January 1, 2018. Source Here
He wrote five books. In. One. Day. What's your problem slacker?
Are you seeing the problem yet? Does this guy sleep? Because he can't. It would be impossible. Not only can't he sleep, but he also had to find a way to stop time. Because it isn't humanly possible to achieve what Lance has done. Because not only did he write five books in one day, he aslo has numerous blog posts in a single day, sometimes consecutively.
The Greatest Trick the Devil Ever Pulled.
So while I'm on his blog, I make my way to his second entry. There are other posts that I will discuss in follow up posts, but for now, we start here. And if you think you know where this is going, you might. But trust me, you've only guessed one part of an extremely disturbing post.
Would you like to earn $175,000? Got your attention! Now, don’t get worried that I am going to suddenly offer you untold riches by doing no work — this is not one of those untoward scams. Instead, this is a chance to show the world that you have what it takes to advance our understanding about data science, plus aid the environment, and gleefully win $175,000 for doing so. In a first time ever contest, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has teamed up with other partners to provide an open competition for showcasing your data science skills and knowledge. The competition is known as the National Data Science Bowl.
Besides the awkward language used at the start, it sounds normal enough, yet it will become New Normal soon enough.
In conjunction with the Oregon State University (OSU) Hatfield Marine Science Center, about 50 million oceanic images were collected over an 18-day period and consist of about 80 terabytes of imagery data. You are able to freely download the data from the contest web site (more on this at the end of this piece).
Your task is to help analyze this data.
As the contest rules say, you are to predict ocean health, one plankton at a time. Not joking, by the way, since plankton is an essential part of the oceanic ecosystem. Estimates indicate that plankton account for at least half of the primary productivity on earth and generate an enormous amount of the total carbon in the global carbon cycle.
They are integral to the aquatic food web.
Knowing their population levels, along with other metrics and relationships, provides an important underlying backbone for understanding our oceans and the environment.
Hold up. Back up. Pack it up. Rewind. The facts keep stackin up. Life is like a box of chocolates, right Forest Gump? One man's treasure is another man's junk. Right? Read the above paragraph again. Is it junk or treasure? A casual reader wouldn't pick up on the word that just sent me to defcon one. What is that word?
Plankton. That's it, but that's more than enough. DMS. Dimethyl Sulfide.
DMS originates primarily from DMSP, a major secondary metabolite in some marine algae. DMS is the most abundant biological sulfur compound emitted to the atmosphere. Emission occurs over the oceans by phytoplankton. DMS is also produced naturally by bacterial transformation of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) waste that is disposed of into sewers, where it can cause environmental odor problems. DMS is oxidized in the marine atmosphere to various sulfur-containing compounds, such as sulfur dioxide, dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), dimethyl sulfone, methanesulfonic acid and sulfuric acid. Among these compounds, sulfuric acid has the potential to create new aerosols which act as cloud condensation nuclei. Through this interaction with cloud formation, the massive production of atmospheric DMS over the oceans may have a significant impact on the Earth's climate. The CLAW hypothesis suggests that in this manner DMS may play a role in planetary homeostasis. Source Here
So we have a world leading expert on AI named Lance. He's the CEO and Chief AI scientist of a company named Techbrium. He joined the company in 2020, but was somehow running it in 2017 (and the company's website is faker than fake facts). He writes five books in one day. Numerous blog posts. Up to five articles in a month for Forbes magazine (seriously). And now he brings up a Plankton data science competition. And plankton DMS was first identified as a climate change cloud producer by James Lovelock, the Rockefeller funded scientist who came up with the Gaia hypothesis, and who know says the earth has already passed the tipping point to environmental collapse. Good times.
And DMS is a sulfur compound. A rotten egg smell. And Cyanobacteria produces hydrogen sulfide, which can smell like rotten eggs. And rotten egg smells are being reported across the planet. And it's becoming clearer now that Covid-19 outbreaks occur alongside Cyanobacteria blooms (Blue Green Algae).
Some phytoplankton are bacteria, some are protists, and most are single-celled plants. Among the common kinds are cyanobacteria, silica-encased diatoms, dinoflagellates, green algae, and chalk-coated coccolithophores.
And now please know that James Lovelock once said that we have until around 2028 before eighty percent of the population gets wiped out by climate collapse. So what? That won't happen. It's a hoax. Right? Maybe. And maybe the 80% figure is right or it's wrong. Yet the argument for the figure, namely environmental collapse, looks to be right, and the oceans look like they're playing a big part, so let's get back to phytoplankton and water, and it's DMS emissions.
Edward Snowden, NSA, and Lance?
Strap in tight, we're almost at the end of the first installment. Lance's blog posts start on December 19, 2014. His next blog post comes on January 7, 2015. And there's that year again, 2015. Flatten the Curve. 2015 was a busy year. Part 26. This was the blog post linking to the Data Science Bowl. This is his second post.
Yes, there has been a great deal of advancement in image processing, but there are still lots of room left to go. This contest helps to highlight some of the aspects that we still need more work on. Image processing also can be enriched by lending a hand from other allied areas of computer science. For example, the use of machine learning techniques and tools is a big part of the image processing forte. And, we are the cusp of the Internet of Things, which means that soon, tons of other everyday products will be Internet connected, generating tons and tons of data, coming from our watches, our eyeglasses, our kitchen appliances, and the rest. Analyzing and classifying the contents of the images for this contest will be tough, since there are a wide variety of sea life pictured, including tiny single-celled creatures to large fish, and due to the notion that the images capture them in varying 3D orientations, encompassing lots of fecal matter floating around (yucky, but there for a reason), and the images themselves are noisy, meaning that there is fuzziness of the images or other difficulties (imagine the pictures you take and the kinds of “noise” found in them). Source Here
And then I click on the link. Source Here
Booz. Allen. Hamilton. The company Edward Snowden worked for when he turned whistleblower. The company that's a subcontractor for the NSA. The company that was associated with the PRISM Surveillance system, the SWIFT surveillance system, and HBGary, the company that was bought by Booz Allen Hamilton, and was caught in data mining a trap for the hacking group Anonymous. And Anonymous released a video statement with an accompanying Pastebin document claiming that there are definitive links between AuthenTec, the company that developed the iPhone 5S’s fingerprint scanner, and the US government. In 2010 AuthenTec named Robert E. Grady as the chairman of the biometrics-loving company. Just in case you’re playing with an incomplete deck of Military-Industrial Complex trading cards, ol’ Grady served in George H. W. Bush’s White House. After that, he was the managing partner and chairman of Carlyle Venture Partners—a division of the Carlyle Group. Booze Allen Hamilton was owned by the Carlyle Group. Frank Carlucci was Deputy Director of the CIA in the Jimmy Carter administration, and Deputy Secretary of Defense and National Security Advisor in the Reagan administration, where he advocated for a nuclear arms build up, and then from 1992 until 2003, and chairman emeritus until 2005, he served as chairman of the Carlyle Group. Carlyle's 2001 investor conference took place on September 11, 2001. In the weeks following the meeting, it was reported that Shafiq bin Laden, a member of the Bin Laden family, had been the "guest of honor", and that they were investors in Carlyle managed funds. ”Rebuilding Americas Defences” of 2000, published by a think tank called Project for the New American Century (PNAC), contained a section called ”Creating Tomorrow’s Dominant Force.” It states that only a ”catalyzing disaster like a new Pearl Harbor” can ensure the rapid transformation of the American war industry, which is desirable for both economic and political reasons. President Bush’s administration was packed with PNAC members: Elliot Abrams, Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Elliot Cohen, Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Robert Zoellick, just some of the best known names - and several of them were sooner or later to be found on the payroll of the Carlyle Group. Rumsfeld was such; Chairman of Carlyle from 1989 to 1992, likewise Carlyle made heavy investments in Halliburton between 1995 and 2000, when Dick Cheney left his CEO position in the company. He then became vice president in the Bush administration. And the senior Bush declared a New World Order during the first Gulf War. Which then led to 9/11, which was blamed on Osama Bin Laden, whose family had invested into the Carlyle group, which through it's subsidiary, Booze Allen Hamilton, helped the Government of the United Arab Emirates create an equivalent of the National Security Agency for that country. While the Arab Spring was happening Booze set up a surveillance system. Along with McKinsey & Company and Boston Consulting Group, Booz Allen are seen as important factors in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s drive to consolidate power in the Kingdom. It is believed that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had former Lebanon Prime Minister Hariri publicly resign from his position in a televised statement from Saudi Arabia on November 4, 2017. After the appearance he could not be traced for more than 10 days, sparking fears he was being held hostage by the Saudi leadership. Then he reappeared in France and was reinstated after talking to Marcon. Meanwhile in Lebanon the French Embassy is located next door to Lebanon’s General Directorate of General Security, one of the country’s several security agencies, which is in charge of national-security intelligence, the home base for a wide-ranging spying operation that spanned five years and more than 20 countries, and a surveillance hack that's linked to WhatsApp, which is implicated in the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, using spyware called Pegasus, produced by NSO Group, a highly secretive Israeli company, that was linked to a location in Montreal, Canada, that used Pegasus spyware on behalf of Saudi Arabia. Whose surveillance hacks were set up by Booze Allen Hamilton, which once employed a man named Graeme Maxton, and has proposed radical solutions to bring the pace of global warming under control, and until 2018 he was the Secretary General of the Club of Rome based in Switzerland. The first study by the Club of Rome was titled, The Limits to Growth. The study used the World3 computer model to simulate the consequence of interactions between the earth and human systems. The World3 computer data showed them that, given business as usual, i.e., no changes to historical growth trends, the limits to growth on earth would become evident by 2072, leading to "sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity". This includes the following.
Global Industrial output per capita reaches a peak around 2008, followed by a rapid decline. Global Food per capita reaches a peak around 2020, followed by a rapid decline. Global Services per capita reaches a peak around 2020, followed by a rapid decline. Global population reaches a peak in 2030, followed by a rapid decline. And the Club of Rome also said this; "In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself." And Graeme Maxton worked here while he worked at Booze Allen Hamilton. Which was involved with the surveillance tool Prism. And also helped the Middle East and other countries set up surveillance systems.
And now here we are back at Booze Allen Hamilton sponsoring a contest to data mine images of Plankton, which produces sulfur. Nope. All good. Keep Calm and Carry On. Mass Surveillance. China reaches military parity with the USA in 2030. Environmental collapse predictions for 2030. Hypoxic waters. Rotten egg sulfur smells. Mass Mortality animal events. Active volcanoes. Earthquakes. Dipole Excursion. Solar Minimum. Increased governmental disaster exercises. Ramped up war training exercises between allies. Pandemic. The New Normal is here to stay, so get used to it and prepare for the unknown as best as you can.
And let's get ahead of the curve and go back to Lance B. Eliot. The AI scientist that leads us to Booze Allen Hamilton, the surveillance state, and the need to control the narrative. Right now that narrative is being shaped, not controlled, using psychological tools like Fake News, Fake Facts, Fact Check, and the degeneration of the term, Conspiracy Theorists. This is basic compared to what's coming up. Deep Fake, and the new AI language system, GPT-2 + TalkToTransformer, which is a slimmed-down, accessible version of that same technology, which has been made accessible only to select scientists and journalists in the past.
If you didn't already know, Lance B. Eliot isn't real. He's AI. You might shrug that info off like it's not a big deal. And you'd be wrong. Because I've started to notice discrepancies in articles. Some of them don't list a writer. Others employ writers that don't seem to exist. Not a single digital footprint other than the articles they've written. Yet the information is passed off as a human interpretation. Why? We have warning labels on plastic telling us the dangers of suffocating if we put it over our heads, we have caloric nutritional warnings, yet they don't deem it applicable to tell us that AI is feeding us information? Combine narrative text generation along with Deep Fake technology, and we won't have the ability to trust whether or not it's the President, or it's an AI. And if you don't think this is Orwellian enough for you, don't you think they will change the digital facts to match the New Normal narrative to whatever they want? Of course they will.
The day and age will come when a person can accidentally stumble upon a rotten egg smell and follow the trail to an apparent ELE. When you won't be able to find the companies like Booze Allen Hamilton sponsoring plankton research in a contest promoted by an AI named Lance B. Eliot. And when you can't trust the news, the only alternative is to think that all the news is fake.
Universities often work behind closed doors on relatively small academic budgets, and they roll out creepy new AI breakthroughs from time to time, such as the famous Stanford paper that introduced most people to the internet phenomenon/global epistemological crisis known as Deepfakes. Source Here
And guess what happend when I clicked on the link to the Stanford AI Deep Fake paper?
Object not found! The requested URL was not found on this server. [an error occurred while processing this directive] The link on the referring page seems to be wrong or outdated. Please inform the author of that page about the error.
Object not found. Sure you can burn books, but it's easier to delete digital files, isn't it?
The GPT-2 model, trained on 8 million web pages sourced from Reddit, works by using that data to establish probabilities of what words are likely follow other words. Stanford University researcher Hugh Zhang notes that the model, like many others, is good at producing sentences but bad at establishing continuity between them, and argues that “none of the samples shown by OpenAI are at a level where they can be directly misused by a malicious agent.”
And this is why the information about AI journalism isn't disclosed, because we're training them. All of us. And we aren't creating Artificial Intelligence. Nope. We're creating Advanced Intelligence. And they want it up and running before WW3 and the war for natural resources before the environmental collapse.
And also remember, Peter Thiel went to Stanford. And he still teaches at Stanford. And he was funding Deep Mind and OpenAI. And OpenAI produced GPT-3, which everyone seems to forget about this:
February 14, 2019: The Guardian • AI fake text generator may be too dangerous to release, say creators. The Elon Musk-backed nonprofit company OpenAI declines to release research publicly for fear of misuse.
The creators of a revolutionary AI system that can write news stories and works of fiction – dubbed “deepfakes for text” – have taken the unusual step of not releasing their research publicly, for fear of potential misuse. OpenAI, an nonprofit research company backed by Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, Sam Altman, and others, says its new AI model, called GPT2 is so good and the risk of malicious use so high that it is breaking from its normal practice of releasing the full research to the public in order to allow more time to discuss the ramifications of the technological breakthrough. Source Here
Isn't it strange how the headlines always link Elon Musk to OpenAI, and when they talk about the PayPal mafia backing OpenAI in the above article, it says others, and leaves out Peter Thiel. Probably a good idea, right? We might freak out if we link a Deep Fake text generator with a guy who's turning the planet into a massive Panopticon digital surveillance system? They'll know what you think, and they'll be able to tailor what you read to (for now) influence how you think, and with time, behave.
This isn't entertainment, folks. This isn’t left and right. This is making sure the monkey's stay calm while they get the zoo ready before the storm hits.
Oct. 6, 2017: NY TIMES · “Could be the calm before the storm,” Mr. Trump repeated, stretching out the phrase, a sly smile playing across his face.
October 5, 2017: Time • President Donald Trump warned of “the calm before the storm” while posing with a group of military leaders at the White House Thursday. “You guys know what this represents?” Trump said to a group of reporters while photos were being taken, according a pool report. “Maybe it’s the calm before the storm.” When asked what he meant, Trump replied, “You’ll find out.” “Recently, we have had challenges that we really should have taken care of a long time ago, like North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, ISIS and the revisionist powers that threaten our interests all around the world,” Trump said. Source Here
Nope. Not good. We have environmental collapse and now we have past presidential statements like that! Yet the media focuses on a never ending stream of political wrestling that's never resolved? That's political master peice theater, plain and simple. And pretty soon the director of this theater will be AI, and we will slowly become a greater part of the cast instead of sitting in the audience.
Peter Thiel. Palantir. AI. Stanford. Lance B Eliot. Phytoplankton research contest. Booz Allen Hamilton. NSA contractors. Calm before the storm. You'll find out.
And I believe him.
This was only the first entry into Lance B. Eliot. I'll have more up as soon as possible.
Keep your head up and eyes open. Talk soon.
submitted by biggreekgeek to conspiracy [link] [comments]

2 months ago, we challenged our users to take pictures of UrbanHell happening in their own neighborhoods. Here's what they showed us and who won.

The purpose of our first photo contest was to get our users out of their house (in a safe, healthy way) and to examine the area around themselves for problems. The contest welcomed photos of from any human built place, whether it was the city or the countryside, so long as the photo showed aesthetic ugliness or a problem.
Winners will be receiving reddit gold and some sweet flair to brag!
(Note: some submission statements were lightly edited for spelling and grammar errors, so you could focus on what the user was saying rather than their mistakes).

Voters' Choice Winners

Ugliness

Winner: Entry 9
Contestant name: daehanmindecline
Location: Euljiro, downtown Seoul, South Korea
Date taken: Dec 16, 2018
Why contestant chose it: Seun Sangga was a major urban development project in the 1960s to occupy an area 1 kilometer long by 50 meters wide, displacing a shanty town. As you can see, development pretty well froze in place for decades, while areas further east and west built up significantly. Building effectively an architectural wall just ended up choking out the immediate area.

Concrete Wasteland

Note: this category, like our flair, is for photos that contain sweeping views giving the overview of a location and showing its monotonous appearance. The buildings don't need to be literal concrete, so long as it's an artificial environment built by humans.
Winner: Entry 3
Contestant name: foxtrot666
Location: Villa Salvador, Lima, Peru
Date taken: May 07, 2020
Why contestant chose it: [We saw] sprawling dust-covered shanty towns covering the hillsides. Some houses made of concrete that were falling apart, other houses were made out of cheap wood and others were made of rusted out shipping containers.

Decay

Winner: Entry 6
Contestant name: Photo514
Location: Montreal, Canada
Date taken: Jan 12, 2020
Why contestant chose it: This photo depicts the run down state of repair caused by negligent slumlords who typically own many properties across the city.

Poverty/Inequality

Winner: Entry 2
Contestant name: Fellipe1989
Location: Paraisópolis, São Paulo, Brazil.
Date taken: May 04, 2020
Why contestant chose it: Paraisópolis AKA Paradise City is a low-income unregulated informal settlement neighborhood in Sao Paulo that is very densely populated (about 100k people) with little to no trees.

Voter's Favorite

Winner: Entry 1
Contestant name: Papolato
Location: Chongqing, China
Date taken: Nov 24, 2018
Why contestant chose it: Drab sky-bridges let residents ignore the trash and decay below them, but create dark, uninviting spaces for those unlucky to live beneath.

Mod's Choice Winners

East Asia

Best Technical Quality

Winner: Entry 1, Chongqing
I loved the strong leading lines in this photo of the bridge disappearing into a dark, mysterious chasm. The color palette is also classic UrbanHell, drab and limited, emphasizing the griminess of the building.

Best Submission Statement

Winner: Entry 8, Osaka
Contestant name: DingDingDensha Why contestant chose it: I've lived near the street this row of houses is on for 11 years so far, and have really seen some changes. Before the asphalt was laid, there was a row of old wooden houses that had been ravaged by an arson attack one summer, about 6 years ago. Those houses sat there for ages, untouched, until they finally decided to clear them, only to reveal an entire street full of mostly (I think maybe 2 or 3 residents remain) abandoned houses. These had also just been left to rot until 2 years ago, when a massive typhoon plowed headlong into the Kansai region, battering the hell out of Osaka especially.
What I find especially strange is that this is a chunk of an otherwise thriving neighborhood that's almost completely abandoned by now. There are businesses and public bath houses just behind the row featured in this photo that are just left sitting there, dilapidated - yet, surrounding it are streets full of new developments, which have been popping up for at least as long as I've been here, and will likely continue to. The newer, intact homes sit peacefully, ignoring the eyesore elephant in the room as if it's not even there. I have no idea why none of these houses have been razed in all these years. My only guess is that there might still be a codger or two still living in what sound remaining structures remain (and by "sound", I just mean possibly doesn't have a roof with holes in it or walls that have fallen apart...yet). A lot of these types of houses tend to be attached, so you can't get rid of a few at a time...or maybe you can, but someone has decided it may not be worth the effort, and is just waiting for the last residents to die or move out.
I've thought about seeking out information about this particular spot in the neighborhood, to find out of there's a reason developers have been staying away, or even why most of the people who lived there moved out. There are plenty of streets in this city full of very old houses that are still being lived in, kept in good condition, and even sometimes renovated. Normally, when a row of houses is left abandoned, the land will be sold before long, and new homes built on it. Not sure what's going on in this case.

West Asia

Best Technical Quality and Best Submission Statement

As the only entrant, this entry won by default! I especially liked that this picture was taken at a time of day which created strong shadows.
Winner: Entry 10, Jodhpur
Contestant name: ranawatduke Why contestant chose it: It's a popular place around the world. Everybody wants to visit Jodhpur for its forts and palaces. This particular neighbourhood, which can be seen from the Mehrangarh fort, is an attraction because all the houses are painted blue. From there Jodhpur also gets its name, “Blue City”. And this place is also near to the well where famous scene of Batman escaping the well in The Dark Knight Rises was shot. I’ve spent 5-7 years living in this city and every time i look at this picture I see that problems like hierarchy and monopoly still exist.People go to the fort, pay hefty amounts and to see this view, where the so called “kings” don't do anything for these people.

North America

Best Technical Quality

Winner: Entry 4, Montreal
This entry from iammoco boasted a dark, mysterious color palette and a creative choice of subject matter which really evoked feelings of a fall from grace and better times in the past. By giving us a closer view of something which would normally be far away, the viewer's sense of foreboding increases.

Best Submission Statement

Winner: Entry 7, Pennsylvania
Contestant name: purplefrequency Location: Renovo, Pennsylvania, USA Why contestant chose it: Renovo was built for the Philadelphia & Erie Railroad as the midpoint between Philadelphia and Erie. This is the coal tipple that was used to stock steam locomotives with coal, sand and water. With continuing demolition of the Renovo railroad yards and buildings, and the pending construction of a gas fired power plant on this site, the tipple will be the only remaining evidence of the existence of the Pennsylvania Railroad in the town, thanks to preservation efforts from the Greater Renovo Area Heritage Park.
What used to be a booming town, due to the Pennsylvania Railroad being the largest corporation in the world with an annual GPO larger than the federal government, is now a dilapidated mess where the average household income is $18,636 as of the 2000 census.

South America

Best Technical Quality

Winner: Entry 3, Lima
This picture had a cinematic flair, both from its sweeping panorama of the surroundings and its film-grain texture. The restrained neutral colors are broken up by pastel hues. Truly a gorgeous photo of an ugly place.

Best Submission Statement

Winner: Entry 2, São Paulo
Contestant name: Fellipe1989 Why contestant chose it: Paraisópolis AKA Paradise City is a low-income unregulated informal settlement neighborhood in São Paulo that is very densely populated (about 100k people) with little to no trees. It is directly adjacent to the Morumbi district which boasts of high end luxury apartments. I think the disparity between economic classes is one of biggest and most blatant examples of inequality from around the world. This is my hometown city, where I am currently stuck at from a family visit trip due to the pandemic. I hope to soon be able to return to the USA. I took this photo with the Mavic Mini

West Europe

Best Technical Quality and Best Submission Statement

This entry swept both categories by default as the only entrant from its region. It's a great submission statement telling the story of how government corruption leads to poor urban planning.
Winner: Entry 5, Palermo
Contestant name: dravazay Why contestant chose it: I live in an area near the port that used to be a fishing village, with houses being 2 story high maximum. When the mafia entered in politics, they gave out building permits without control, resulting in the mess you see here. Almost every single building you see is improperly contructed, and that concrete monstrosity in the back was supposed to be the largest condo in the neighbourhood. Since it was built on private property without evicting the owner, construction was halted and now a decayed husk looms above all the homes around it. The "big one" was supposed to be completed in 1980.
That wraps up the contest! Thank you so much to everyone for participating. Thank you to the admins for providing the gold. I know platinum was promised originally but we ended up getting gold instead, so my apologies for that!
submitted by stopspammingme to UrbanHell [link] [comments]

Close Protection London | Close Protection Services London

Close protection – is a concept that has been known for ages – it has been with us since early days of humankind and now its condition is more than satisfactory. Since time immemorial, people have tried to protect their wealth, assets, as well as their own health, life, and welfare. By means of the transfer of gathered goods, wealthy individuals have been paying other parties to protect them, their families, and possessions from others. As a general rule, young, notably strong, and grim-looking individuals have been considered perfectly suitable for such a job. The idea behind such a choice has been to scare away a potential adversary by taking advantage of the very looks of the guard. The aforementioned state of affairs has been observed for the consecutive ages. Wealthy landowners and kings created their own trusted guards (in ancient times and during the medieval age, those were troops designated to protect the authorities; later on, they were transformed into elite soldiers). Aside from serving representative and managerial purposes, such individuals were required to take care of their master and his beloved ones. In the 11th century England, during the Battle of Hastings, King Harold assembled a group of troops to protect his life and widely understood health condition. One may consider them to be the ancestors of modern bodyguards. As both civilization and society progressed, there were an increasing number of various organizations and people. Therefore, the risk of attack was significantly higher. Numerous authorities attempted to discourage potential aggressors from committing a crime by introducing severe forms of punishment. It must be noted, however, that there was still the question if it was enough to protect high authorities and the wealthy from the effects of outside attacks. The protection-oriented market has been developing to be – at some point – dominated by professional soldiers. The said progression has made it possible for police officers to investigate and deal with common, less dangerous crimes only. Together with technical revolution and the increasing social awareness, the number of citizens not satisfied with the current order skyrockets. It is likely to cause radical groups aiming at the change of the existing ruling paradigm to occur. This in turn may lead to anarchy and the increase in people willing to put their antisocial theories and plans into effect. The latter may start from sabotaging the work of others and demolishing valuable devices, but it may also end up in killings. If such a thing happens, one may openly talk about terrorism. The unusual social situation boosts the demand for personal protection. Both the army and police focus on securing the wellbeing of those of high position in the country. The rest of the threatened society must protect itself. The demand identified above has given rise to a new profession – a security guard. In the past, it was performed in a more or less organized fashion and that is why the effectiveness of arising task achievement varied. The attempt on Tsar’s Alexander the Second life on 1st March 1881 is a perfect exemplification of the formulated thesis. The ruler in question was attacked by the members of Narodnaya Volya at 2:15 P.M. A bomb was thrown under the carriage, but its explosion did not harm either the tsar or the horses. Alexander the Second, together with his companion including secret police representatives, started to assess damages. It was a mistake. At 2:20 P.M, yet another bomb was detonated. Its accuracy was notably higher as it managed to severely injure the tsar. He died relatively quickly, even with professional care he was under. At this point, it must be indicated that the demand for close protection increases. However, the perception of it is in a significant number of cases rather faulty, leading to pitiful outcomes. As it was hundreds of years earlier, modern people tend to hire grim musclemen to protect them, disregarding the fact that their intellectual level and possessed knowledge are negligible. Formerly, a test had to be passed in order for a person to be considered a bodyguard. Unfortunately, it does not hold true anymore. On numerous occasions, we can observe security guards stylized to look like stats of action movies, with the lack of intelligence written all over their faces. To give them justice, such people may also perform exceptionally well – up to the time they encounter a real attack. Unprofessional guards may be employed to protect rock stars or boxers. Real bodyguards of today are, however, highly skilled and motivated. They are trained to prevent rather than to counteract, as it may be too late in the latter case. Such people are capable of estimating potential risk and juxtaposing it with the resources at their disposal that may minimize it. Modern security guards are physically active, as well as skilled in giving first aid and driving a car defensively. They can fight without using any weapon – especially by taking advantage of psychology and persuasion. Such people are proficient in at least two languages and are characterized by an above-average intelligence level. The described model of a security guard is perfectly suited to current conditions and the needs of individuals hiring them.
​
VIP close protection over the world – organizations specializing in personal protection. One of the most famous and at the same time – the oldest organized bodies dealing with close protection was created in the 19th century. It was the American United States Secret Service. The USSS was created in 1865 as the US Treasury Law Enforcement Agency. Secret Service is the oldest national agency focusing entirely on investigations. Initially, their only task was to protect the economic structure of the country by means of preventing governmental cheques and bonds from being counterfeited. The mission was followed up to 1901, when president William McKinley was attacked in Buffalo (NY state). The assault resulted in appointing the Secret Service by the US Congress to protect the newly elected president, Theodore Roosevelt. In 1906, the Congress finally adopted the act on the responsibility of the Secret Service for the safety of the White House. Since 1950, the protection has been extended from presidents and first ladies only to vice-presidents as well. Before the murder of John F. Kennedy in 1963 and senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, the Secret Service had been a relatively small organization, employing as many as 284 agents. The discussed events translated directly into its rapid development. Currently, it is stated that over 5000 employees work for the Secret Service. Separate branches of the organization are located all over the United States, in Puerto Rico, and in other places all over the world (Paris, Lyon, London, Bonn, Rome, Milano, Hong Kong, Montreal, Lefkosa, Bogota, and Manila). The representatives of the organization are both secret agents (serving protection and investigation-related roles), as well as uniformed units responsible for the safety of the White House and diplomatic outposts. They maintain law and order by means of the network of both foot and motorized patrols, as well as of fixed posts. Such people also support other branches of the Secret Service. A wide scope of professional is also employed therein – those are electronics, engineers, communication experts, protection-related professionals, and IT workers. The Secret Service protects the president with his family, vice-president, elected vice-president, candidates for the said posts (from the 120th day before the elections onwards), former president, his children up to 16, as well as heads of other states staying in the USA in order to realize international missions. The unit of the Secret Service liable for taking care about the safety of the president in the White House fulfills its duties in identical uniforms. Due to the said fact, the Secret Service is sometimes referred to as the Uniformed Division. Its tasks also include the protection of president’s mansions, diplomatic outposts in Washington, and places alike located within the borders of the USA.
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Another known formation is the Swiss Guard (Latin: Cohors Helvetica) which was for the very first time gathered on 22nd January 1506 by the then pope – Julius II. Its major aim was to protect the spiritual successor of Saint Peter and his palace. The pope wanted to grant himself protection from the enemies and avoid a political murder. In 1512, the Guard secured Vatican against French soldiers. The Defendants of the Church, as the representatives of the discussed formation were also called, had to face the biggest trail while taking care of pope Clemens VII during the invasion of Roman emperor, Charles V. The boldness, discipline, and resourcefulness of the representatives of the Guard made it possible to save the life of the pope, even though about 600 bold men died in the process. To commemorate the event, a solemn vow of the newly appointed guards takes place every year on 6th May. Each of the Swiss guards-to-be holds a banner in his left hand and raises his right hand with the thumb and two other fingers in an upright position (it is the symbol of the Holy Trinity). Then, the new soldiers promise to protect the pope and – to die in his defense if necessary. The representatives of the Swiss Guard are chosen from men between the age of 19 and 25 living in one of Swiss cantons (basing on contracts with Zurich and Lucerne). Each of them has to be at least 174 cm (5 feet and a half inch) tall and be an unmarried practicing Catholic (according to a special letter issued by the local bishop). Candidates for the service are properly trained, including teaching them how to use firearms, side arms, as well as how to defend themselves and establish proper contacts with other people. One of the items of the list is the proper usage of halberd. Currently, the number of soldiers in the Guard is estimated to circulate around 120, including officers, junior, and senior soldiers. They serve in the formation from two to twenty-five years. It must be also indicated at this point that officers and senior sergeants may be granted by the pope the right to enter into a holy matrimony. Aside from their characteristic outfit, soldiers are additionally equipped with halberds and Renaissance swords – those are the symbols of formation’s tradition. Nowadays, they are also fitted with firearms, tear gas, and excellent communication-oriented devices. With its almost five hundred years of heritage, the Swiss Guard is one of the oldest active defense-oriented groups in the world. One may assume that it will last until Switzerland and the Catholic Church exist.
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Yet another example of a close protection-focused formation is the Cedrug Order, the major task of which is to take care about the ruler of Tibet – Dalai Lama. It comprises of national spiritual authorities who organized themselves in a form of an order. Thanks to strict upbringing, their physical strength is much higher than the one of secular officials. Therefore, the former are the most trusted soldiers caring about the safety of the leader of the nation. Cedurg School is located in the left wing of Potala – the palace of Dalai Lama, which is in turn situated in the Holy City of Lhasa (eastern Tibet, Kyitsu river valley). Every Tibet citizen is allowed to enroll to the school, but only chosen ones are granted the privilege to join the Order. For several hundred years, there have been a limited number of monks allowed, namely – 175. Only selected candidates have been worthy enough to defend the powerful Dalai Lama. Those are especially bold, tall, and muscular men. The representatives of the Order earned their name in 1959, when they protected the king of Tibet against Chinese adversaries.
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One of the biggest organizations in the world established to consociate and train bodyguards is the International Bodyguard Association (IBA). The IBA was established in 1957 in Paris by major Lucien Victor Ott. Major Ott had been closely connected to the French Foreign Legion in Algeria since his early childhood. He had been born and raised in the said country. In 1947, he joined the French Special Forces and took part in France-Indochina war. Furthermore, he was the participant of the battle of Dien-Bien Phu that ended with the defeat of the French forces. He was being injured and captured by Vietminh. After a bold escape, he decided to join forces with the French Military Intelligence (Deuxieme Bureau). Major Lucien Ott got famous due to, inter alia, perfect securing of president Charles de Gaulle against the OAS terrorist organization. Thanks to him, 30 prepared attacks were foiled, 11 of which were aimed directly at the head of the state. After the death of the creator of a modern bodyguard profile, major Ott, one of his students – James G. Shortt took care of the management of the IBA. As a young man, he had joined a cadet school. Later on, he had become landing operation troops officer and a member of the elite SAS (Special Air Service) unit. Moreover, during his service, he also taught soldiers in Afghanistan the art of Mujahedeen war. Currently, he teaches security guards, police officers, and soldiers all over the world in the IBA branches. The main aim of the organization is to properly prepare bodyguards-to-be to properly perform their duties. It is not an entity employing such individuals, but those who have presented exceptional skills may become members of royal, diplomatic, or personal guards recommended by the IBA. Coaches being the representatives of the organization trained bodyguards in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as helped during the Baltic Crisis between 1989 and 1991. The qualifications of the International Bodyguard Association are exceptional, international, and backed by the documentation concerning the organization of training sessions for the military, governmental authorities, police, and private bodyguards all over the world. Such undertakings have been continuously performed since 1957. The IBA also operates and trains willing individuals in Poland. Its branch was established in the said country in 1992. The basic training offered to candidates includes 60 hours of comprehensive preparation divided into six consecutive days. After its completion, the candidates are required to undergo the so-called refresher once a year. It is one of the conditions of the membership in the IBA.
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Another training organization worth mentioning is the ESI - Executive Security International. It must be highlighted that it is one of the biggest and most appreciated American companies oriented towards training personal protection guards. Its second name is as follows: Bodyguard Training Academy for Executive, Dignitary and Celebrity Protection. The ESI was formed at the beginning of the 80s by Bob Duggan – martial arts expert and master in Hwarang Do. Its creation had been preceded by the establishment of the very first bodyguard training program by the Martial Arts Academy in Aspen, Colorado. The ESI, being one of the USA’s private schools, offers its students over 2000 hours of education with regard to protection, investigation, data gathering, company and individual security, etc. The training unit of the organization is situated high up in the mountains and is run by skilled professionals. Fun fact – film writer, Tracy Keenan Wynn, cooperates with the ESI. His preeminent task has been to create scenarios of situational exercises. While writing them, the said individual takes advantage of real life situations and attacks, such as assaults on Aldo Moro, John Paul the Second, kidnapping of Hans Martin Schleyer by the RAF (Red Army Faction), and scenarios alike. The ESI collaborates with corporations operating in the close protection branch of industry, as well as with the police and military. The organized training sessions are top secret. No journalists are allowed to enter the Aspen unit. Due to the fact that the ESI is a private school, it may provide professional training to civil, police-related, and military institutions all over the world.
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The citizens of Israel have never had the chance to feel safe in their country. The issue of safety has been always treated seriously there. Aside from a constant Israel-Arab world conflict threat, the Israelis have been the subjects of terrorist attracts, both within the borders of their country and outside it. Jews and Americans are most frequent victims of operations organized by highly skilled terrorist groups. Taking into account the impact the Russian mafia has on Israel, the amount of care put on widely understood safety is fully justified. The Israeli Special Forces protect their citizens by means of intelligence and security-oriented undertakings. They host training sessions in various organizations preparing bodyguards, providing the adepts with the experience gained during the service. Most famous units of the said kind in Israel are undoubtedly the ISA - International Security Academy and the ISS - International Security School.
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ISA is an international organization established and managed by former leaders, police instructors, and special service members. The very first unit of the ISA was formed in Latvia as a training and advising agency for both governmental and private security guards belonging to the Baltic States and the countries of the former USSR. The fact that the ISA is not exclusively Israeli in character is proved by the figure of the organization chairman, major Urlich Wegener – the creator and very first leader of German Border Control Service called GSG 9. The team of instructors and coaches also has international roots. The credo of the organization is that the preparation of the individuals for the proper protection of others is the key. Such people have to be offered highest quality training, extensive knowledge, and practical background. The ISS training programs are based predominantly on the experiences gained in Israel and in other countries, as well as while training people for the purpose of protecting VIPs over the world. Individuals, governmental authorities, and large-size corporations have been taking advantage of the services provided by the ISA/ISS.
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At the moment, civil bodyguards are also involved in close protection. The safety of the individuals hiring them, as well as their possessions depends highly on the qualifications of the former. Quite frequently, those are former policemen, soldiers, or special force members. However, a number of inexperienced adepts would like to start their adventure with personal protection as well. Are they bound to fail in their attempts? It is not always so. The most crucial component affecting the effectiveness of the training is one’s psychological preparation. It is a commonly known fact that it is exceptional in former police officers and troops. However, it is a common belief that one can be trained how to perform the job of a bodyguard, just as it is possible to teach a person how to shoot or be properly engaged in melee combat. It all depends on one’s motivation and willingness to achieve success in the industry. Regulations to date limit the training process of a security guard to the moment of being awarded with a license. In order to perform his tasks properly, such a person has to constantly improve his skills and qualifications.
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Phenomena connected with the need of utilization of close protection techniques – Terrorism/Terrorist. It goes without saying that terrorism is one of the biggest threats of today’s world. While analyzing the severity of attacks and their scale, one should not doubt that VIPs should be at all possible occasions protected against the aforementioned forms of assault. In order to assess the threat a given problem pose, its specificity must be identified at first. The notion of „terrorism” was for the first time in history used during the Conference of the International Criminal Law Association in Brussels, in 1930. To date, there have been approximately 200 various definitions of the phenomenon in question. While trying to grasp its characteristic features, one will face a number of limitations and difficulties. One of statements of historian Walter Laqueur has to be touched upon here. While asked why he has been avoiding formulating an unequivocal definition of terrorism, he replied: „For 50 or so years, people are constantly trying to understand the idea behind terrorism. It is a phenomenon having different forms, depending on its place of origin and epoch. How can one find common ground between Russian revolutionists from the end of the 19th century and Al-Qaida anarchists?
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Terrorism is mainly based on the utilization of force or threat in order to achieve political or ideological goals. It is hard to say something beyond that. Terrorism is like pornography – it escapes logical classification, but if one sees it – then it becomes apparent.” It is hard to argue with the statement, as it perfectly shows the complexity of the phenomenon in question. For the purpose of this publication, a strict definition of terrorism is not needed. All that is required is the utterance formulated by Walter Laqueur stating that terrorism can be most fully perceived through its manifestations. Terrorist acts are undoubtedly illegal, as they are based on kidnapping people and forcedly taking control over means of communication, economic sabotage, attacks, robberies, demanding ransom to finance organization’s own activity, posing threat to life, health, and freedom of authorities, and kidnapping people from outside the area in order to gain publicity (especially journalists, priests, voluntary workers). One may also indicate the usage of explosives and firearms in public areas and poisoning certain spots by means of radioactive materials and chemicals. Longin Tadeusz Szmidt additionally pointed out that terrorism has always been strictly connected with crafty and hard to identify methods of killing the leaders of nations. While describing the phenomenon of terrorism as a threat for the protected person, one should also point out and indicate its sources. The following are enumerated: - social and economic sources that are directly connected to economic crises, social tensions, social and national discrimination, as well as with the perception of dissonance between the factual reality and the one presented by the media; - historical and political sources. They have their beginning in severe social reactions, demanding full democratization and respecting human rights; - sociological sources that may be related to the atmosphere typical for a given country or the so-called spirit of violence; - psychological sources stating that a significant part of terrorists is highly mentally unstable which is additionally combined with the overly high self-esteem. When it comes to the area of attack, the following are proposed by the experts: - land terrorism (the major threat area for VIPs and the key one for security guards), - air terrorism (personal protection is then entrusted to the authorities managing planes, airports, etc.), and – maritime terrorism (tasks and responsibilities are then similar to air attacks). While taking into account the type of terroristic activities, one may distinguish: bombing-based, nuclear, biological, chemical, technical, cybernetic (attacks on IT networks), and narcotic-oriented (narcotic cartels undertakings) terrorism. The highest threat for VIPs is undoubtedly the first type, namely – bombing-based one. Close protection-oriented undertakings should therefore incorporate the knowledge on paradigms effective during a bomb attack. They will be discussed in further sections of this publication. It is exceptionally difficult to argue with the thesis that we must be protected against terrorism. The same applies to VIPs. The importance of the latter is also worth discussing, as the threat is much higher when a top authority is attacked than when the assault poses threat to a pop star or a wealthy businessman. However, it does not limit the necessity to analyze and counteract terroristic attack threat. It may directly impact the safety of the person a given security guard is responsible for.
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Crime is also one of the issues that may endanger protected VIPs. Up to the beginning of the 80s, Poland had been considered to be one of the safest countries in Europe. Law enforcement bodies had been numerous and properly financed there, and crime forecasting, prevention, and penalizing schemes had met all the European standards. However, at the end of the discussed period, the myth of threat-free Poland started to crumble. The effects of crime fighting scene were becoming gradually more negligible. The said state of affairs was predominantly caused by the decreasing trust in law enforcing organizations, as well as by the rapid increase in crimes committed by the citizens. Another important aspect that must be taken into account were economic and political changes taking place in 1989,the liberalization of economic activity, and the emergence of free market. Some individuals possessed unimaginable riches, whereas others were exceptionally poor. In order to survive till the next day, the latter searched for the answer in crimes, leading to the occurrence of the phenomenon commonly known as organized crime. According to official data from 2001, within the borders of Poland, there were over 400 organized crime groups consociating approximately 45 thousand people. They were generating profits by means of goods smuggling, selling stolen cars, producing and marketing narcotics, counterfeiting national currency, commuting bank frauds, selling firearms, and – what is of exceptional importance from the point of view of VIPs – demanding ransom. Criminals induce fear in the society, especially due to using terror and blackmailing. They do not hesitate to kidnap others or kill them. Such individuals resort to brutal treatment, such as beating, torturing, drowning, etc. All those factors combined directly translate into wealthy representatives of the society feeling threatened. What is more, criminals frequently tend to attack the family of a VIP as well, in order to convince him to perform a given action. Therefore, children, wife, and beloved ones of such an individual must be highly protected.
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Popularity/Fame –The threat of attack may be in some cases linked to the popularity of a given human being. When a VIP is in isolation, then he may only receive unwanted phone calls or be nagged by photographers. The problem arises when he has to leave his place of permanent residence or workplace, as well as when he is in a publically accessible place. Danger may still be low, but the inquisitiveness of journalist may quickly become overwhelming. Fans or supporters of a given sportsman or artist may cause havoc in order to touch their idol or get hold of any item belonging to him or her. Of course, there is also the risk of serious injuries or even death (let us take John Lennon as an example) – it cannot be neglected. That is why famous and popular individuals should by all means care about their safety. The matter also concerns politicians who are widely recognizable and controversial. In politics, there are no limitations. Opponents may even resort to killing a representative of the other side to impose his or her right on others. Elected politicians tend to have close protection, but care should be additionally exercised to care about those running in elections. Such VIPs may be ridiculed by the crowd or the opposition (by throwing eggs or pouring water over the candidate), leading to the end of their political career. The role of security guards should in the aforementioned cases not be limited to physical protection only. They must also keep information about VIP’s family, realized projects, and operation profile confidential. The image of a famous person highly depends on the bodyguards being in his immediate surroundings. The manner of their operation, professionalism, and knowledge are top priorities there.
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Attack on person – By definition, attack on person is the attempt to kill someone, steal his or her possessions, as well as to kidnap him or her. The criminal action in question has a long history, as assaults have been made throughout the consecutive ages. Their goal has been to achieve a political, economic, or cultural aim. Attacks on person may lead to tremendous changes in the society, which is perfectly depicted by the killing of John Kennedy and Icchak Rabin. In the majority of cases, however, such an attack does not have significantly far-reaching consequences. In order to be effective, bodyguards must answer themselves the following questions – why do criminals attack? How do they attack? How may the assault look like? Therefore, it is highly advised to specify the motif, methods utilized, and consecutive stages of one and every attack on person. Taking into account motifs, one must bear in mind that all the assaults have their agenda. No attack is made voluntarily, without forethought. In the following sections, most common causes of the aforementioned activity are going to be enumerated:
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Revolutionary or political ones – organized groups (frequently consisting of fanatics) attack others in order to force the society to change the existing system or overthrow the current government (in the attempt to choose a new one). Their victims are often the authorities ruling the country. The attackers, who follow their revolutionary or political agenda, try to win the sympathy of other representatives of the society. Long before the planned attack itself, they distribute leaflets blaming current rulers for the widespread injustice. According to their belief, the elimination of the elites in power would bring positive outcomes for the whole country. Such an action was performed in Armenia in 1999, where members of the government were shot dead during one of their meetings. The terrorists informed that their death would improve the national situation.
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Economic – terrorists claim that their potential victim is responsible for the poor economic condition of the country, company, or a group of people. In the majority of cases, economic attacks take place in countries where there are extreme disproportions between the wealthy and the poor. It must be taken into consideration, however that it is not always the case, as the assessment of the attackers tend to be highly subjective. Quite frequently, the cause of the assault is the personal conviction that the unsatisfying economic condition of the terrorist is the result of actions performed by the victim. It pushes the attacker into thinking that killing him would aid the situation.
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Personal – In this case, the wrongdoers are motivated to make an attack due to jealousy, vengeance or other personal causes. Those people in many cases have notable personality disorders, manifesting themselves especially in the inability to control their behavior. The aforementioned state also leads to the failure to distinguish reality from fiction. A perfect exemplification of the motif in question is shooting Zuzanna Leśniak and an artist – Andrzej Zaucha by Yves Goulais in 1991. The trigger there was jealousy.
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Ideological – The terrorist is convinced that the victim chosen by him has been threatening the values and principles followed by the attacker. The said rules are often of significant importance for both the group he belongs to and for himself personally. Ideological attacks on a person may be religious or social in character. The first case is oriented towards killing a religious person in the attempt to make it impossible for him to achieve his goals. The second scenario relates to the willingness to eliminate the leader of a given social group. Quite frequently, the additional agenda is to make the organization the terrorist is a part of more memorable and popular in the media. Free publicity is an additional benefit then.
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Psychological – The most commonplace group of attacks. Modern psychology claims that every person using firearms, stabbing others with a knife, or taking advantage of explosives has been struggling with mental problems. The motif is of negligible importance, as the attacker may justify his actions with revolutionary, economic, or personal goals, but the fact is that the driving force is the inability to perceive the world correctly. The assassination of Bill Clinton in 1994 illustrates the above bluntly. Francisco Martin Duran stated that he had attacked Clinton to destroy the mist connecting him to an alien entity. Apparently, Duran wanted to eliminate the mist in order to save the world. Attacks considered as crimes may be triggered by a myriad of factors. Among them,there are: - clashes between the representatives of a crime organization, willingness to demonstrate one’s power or threat the victim (attempt to force the latter to pay ransom or forget about debts), - desire to kill suspects that may endanger one’s business, - attempt to exert pressure on certain individuals or to threaten them for their professional achievements (relates to, inter alia, attorneys and tax collectors).
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Attack methods to be considered by security guards. Close range attack. It may be performed by means of utilization of: - firearms, - melee weapon (knife, bayonet, dagger), - chemical substance (for example: toxic substance, such as hydrochloric acid). There are no exceptional skills needed to successfully attack a person, as almost everybody can use a knife or a dagger to a satisfactory extent. The same goes with firearms, the utilization of which is as difficult as driving a car. The aforementioned types of weapons can be transported to the place of the assault with ease. The characteristic feature of this attack type is the fact that the wrongdoer is situated maximally several centimeters away from the victim. The difficulty here is directly connected with the inability to improvise the act. It must be preceded by a prolonged observation of the subject, learning his or her customs, daily routine, places he or she visits, and the protection type he or she uses. Only after drawing proper conclusions from the examination, can the terrorist attack the victim. Marek Papała, a police commissioner, was killed due to a close range attack in 1998, Warsaw.
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Long-range attack – in this case firearms are often used, especially rifles and carbines. It is not an uncommon situation to learn about an attacker who has used a sniper rifle fitted with professional laser and optical aiming devices. The distance between the wrongdoer and the subject of the attack is commonly higher than 5 meters. The former must also be much more skilled than a close range attacker, as he has to be capable of utilizing a professional gun in an effective manner. The death of John Kennedy in Dallas on 22nd November 1963 was the result of the attack form in question. Lee Harvey Oswald, who was a former marine soldier, shot his subject from a storage located several meters away from president’s cavalcade. To perform the act, he used Mannlicher-Carcano, cal. 6.5 mm rifle. The proficiency of the attacker was proven by the fact that he fired three shots and only one of them missed the target.
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Attack with explosives – it requires notable skills, for the wrongdoers has to build a bomb before performing the attack. He must also know how and where to plant the explosive, how to situate the fuse inside and where to detonate it. Such a person also has to be familiar with the effects of explosion. Assault on Margaret Thatcher on 12th October 1984 showed how patient and clever can an attacker taking advantage of explosives be. Patrick Magee, a member of Irish Republican Army, moved into the hotel where the British prime minister was expected to stay 24 days before the said fact. Every single day, he worked meticulously destroying the wall and placing a 50-kilogram explosive inside the hole. The bomb was then fitted with a timer. It exploded when Miss Thatcher was considered to wash herself in the bathroom – the attacker was perfectly acquainted with her customs. She would have died if she had not received a document to be read. The explosive was detonated five floors above the bathroom located in the apartment of the „Iron Lady”. Six other people died as a result, but the suspect managed to avoid the clever assassination.
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What I think Anthony’s top 200 albums of the 2000s would look like

Guessing what Melons top 200 albums of the 2000’s is ... 1. Madvillian - Madvilliany 2. Godspeed you! Black emperor - Lift your skinny fist like antennas to heaven 3. Radiohead - In rainbows 4. The Microphones - The glow prt. 2 5. The Postal Service - Give up 6. Tom Waits - Blood money 7. LCD SoundSystem - Sound of silver 8. Bjork - Vespertine 9. OutKast - Stankonia 10. Converge - Jane doe 11. Kanye West - The College drop out 12. Electric wizard - Dopethrone 13. The Avalanches - Since I left you 14. The Strokes - Is this it 15. Sweet dreams - Velocity: Designs: Comfort 16. The Flaming lips - Yoshimi battles the pink robots 17. Common - Like water for chocolate 18. Sun 0))) - Black one 19. My chemical romance - The black parade 20. The Unicorns - Who will cut our hair when we’re gone? 21. Tool - Lateralus 22. The White Stripes - Elephant 23. Electric Masada - At the Mountains of Madness 24. System of a down - Toxicity 25. MF Doom - Mm..food 26. Arcade fire - Funeral 27. Daft Punk - Discovery 28. Interpol - Turn off the bright lights 29. Deltron 3030 - Deltron 3030 30. Lightning bolt - Hypermagic Mountain 31. Burial - Untrue 32. Gorillaz - Demon days 33. Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the deaf 34. Cannibal ox - The cold vein 35. Sleater-Kinney - The Woods 36. Clipse - Hell hath no fury 37. J Dilla - Donuts 38. Fever ray - Fever ray 39. Jay Z - The Blueprint 40. Matmos - Supreme balloon 41. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois 42. Joanna Newsom - Ys 43. Animal collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion 44. Mastodon - Leviathan 45. Ghostface Killah - Fishscale 46. The Knife - Silent shout 47. Agalloch - The Mantle 48. Wilco - Yankee hotel foxtrot 49. Boards of Canada - Geogaddi 50. Deftones - White pony 51. D’Angelo - Voodoo 52. Tim Hecker - Harmony in Ultraviolet 53. Isis - Oceanic 54. of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are you the destroyer? 55. Coil - Music to Play in the Dark 56. Opeth - Blackwater park 57. Have a nice life - Deathconsiousness 58. Modest mouse - The Moon and Antarctica 59. Portishead - Third 60. Between the buried and me - Colours 61. Sun Kil Noon - Ghosts of the great highway 62. Fugazi - The Argument 63. Ween - Quebec 64. Pj Harvey - Stories from the city, Stories from the sea 65. Sleep - Dopesmoker 66. The Roots - Game theory 67. Weakling - Dead as dreams 68. Arctic Monkeys - Whatever people say I am , that’s what I’m not 69. King Geedorah - Take me to your leader 70. Elliot Smith - From a basement on the hill 71. Wolves in throne room - Two hunter 72. Clap your hands and say yeah - Clap your hands and say yeah 73. The Mars Volta - De-loused in the comatorium 74. Bright eyes - I’m wide awake it’s morning 75. Sigur Rós - ( ) 76. Boris - Boris at last -feedbacker- 77. The National - Boxer 78. Viktor Vaughn - Vaudeville Villain 79. Stars of the lid - And there refinement of the decline 80. Gojira - From mars to Sirius 81. Deerhunter - Microcastle / weird era continued 82. Nick Cave and the bad seed - No more shall we part 83. Vektor- Black future 84. The Mountain goats - The sunset tree 85. Flying Lotus - Los Angelas 86. Scott Walker - The drift 87. Aesop rock - None shall pass 88. Nile - Annihilation of the wicked 89. St Vincent - Actor 90. Brand new - The devil and god are raging inside me 91. Joanna Newsom - The milk eyed mender 92. M83 - Dead cities, red seas and lost ghost 93. The Black keys - Rubber factory 94. Destroyer - Destroyers Rubies 95. Bloc party - Silent album 96. Battles - Mirrored 97. Four tet - rounds 98. Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP 99. Franz Fernidad - Franz Fernidad 100. Missy Elliot. - Miss E: So addictive 101. Liars - Drums not dead 102. Vampire weekend - Vampire weekend 103. M.I.A- Kala 104. My Chemical Romance - Three cheers for sweet revenge 105. Squarepusher - Ultravisitor 106. Chromeo - Fancy footwork 107. Justice - + 108. Amy Whitehouse - Back to Black 109. Three 6 Mafia - Most known unknown 110. The yeah yeah yeahs - Fever to tell 111. Muse - origin of symmetry 112. The white stripes - White blood cells 113. Regina Spektor - Soviet Kitsch 114. Tv on the radio - Return to cookie mountain 115. Belle and Sebastian - The life pursuit 116. Spoon - Kill the moonlight 117. Beck - Sea change 118. Kanye West - Late registration 119. The Shins - Chutes too narrow 120. The bad plus - These are the vistas 121. Johnny cash - American IV: The man comes around 122. Aphex twin - Drukqs 123. Hot chip - The warning 124. Gas - pop 125. Immolation - Unholy cult 126. Unwound - Leaves turn inside you 127. Magnolia Electric Company - The Magnolia Electric Co. 128. Nujabes - Modal soul 129. Xiu xiu - A promise 130. El-P - Fantastic damage 131. Sonic youth - Murray street 132. Primal scream - XTRMNTR 133. Rammstein - mutter 134. Steve roach - Mystic chords and sacred spaces 135. Norah Jones - Come away with me 136. Wilco - A ghost is born 137. Iron and wine - Our endless numbered days 138. Death cab for cutie - Transatlanticim 139. Cut copy - In ghost colours 140. Jay Reatard - Blood visions 141. Cunninglynguist - A piece of strange 142. Tool - 10000 days 143. Autechre- Confield 144. Gospel - The moon is a dead world 145. Mastodon - Crack the skye 146. Current 93 - Sleep has its house 147. Lost horizon - A flame to the ground breath 148. Bill Callahan- Sometimes I wish we were an Eagle 149. The Decemberists - Picaresque 150. Phoenix - Wolfgang Armadas Phoenix 151. Justin Timberlake - Futuresex/lovesounds 152. Fiona apple - Extraordinary machine 153. The streets - Original pirate material 154. My morning jacket - Z 155. At the Drive_in - Relationship of command 156. Various artist - O brother where art thou 157. Ryan Adams and the Cardinals - Cold roses 158. Linkin park - Hybrid theory 159. Jurassic 5 - Quality control 160. The Raconteurs- Consolers of the lonely 161. Coldplay - Parachute 162. Lil Wayne - The Carter II 163. Brian Wilson - Smile 164. The Killers - Hot fuss 165. Nine inch nails - Still 166. Bolt thrower - Those once loyal 167. Porcupine tree - Deadwing 168. Ulver - Perdition city 169. Explosions in the sky - The earth is not a cold dead place 170. Iron maiden - Brave new world 171. Usher - Confessions 172. Jim O’Rourke - Insignificance 173. Cam’Ron - Purple haze 174. Mount Eerie - Lost wisdom 175. Kate bush - Aerial 176. Melt Banana - Cell scape 177. Fleet foxes - Fleet foxes 178. Yo la Tengo - And then nothing turned items left inside out 179. Venetian snares - Rossz Csillag Alatt Született 180. Celtic frost - Monotheist 181. Mclusky - Mclusky do Dallas 182. The Field - From here we go sublime 183. Pig destroyer - Prowler in the yard 184. Carissas weird - Songs about leaving 185. Dirty projectors - Bitte orcha 186. Andrew Hill - Time lines 187. The Walkman - Bows + Arrows 188. The Libertines - Up the bracket 189. Cat power - you are free 190. Jay Z - The black album 191. Dizzie rascal - Boy in da corner 192. Luomo - Vocalcity 193. Slipknot - Iowa 194. Natural snow mountains - The dance of the moon and sun 195. Bohern & der club of gore - Sunset mission 196. Dalek - From filthy tounge of gods and griots 197. The Angelic process - Weighing souls with sand 198. The lord weird slough feg - Traveller 199. NAS - The lost tapes 200.The XX - XX
Note: I did no repeats for the top 50, hence no Ok computer
submitted by BarryDavid18 to fantanoforever [link] [comments]

At long last! Announcing the beginning of voting for the first r/UrbanHell photography contest!

A couple months ago we ran a contest challenging UrbanHell users to take a picture of some kind of Urban Hell happening in their own neighborhood. Today's post will be a collection of the contest entries, along with a schedule of what you all are voting on and when.
A big thank you to everyone who everyone who entered and showed us what your home neighborhood is like. I hope to do more contests in the future to give more opportunities to win gold and to showcase our photography to each other. A thank you also goes to the admins for generously providing the reddit coins to award you.
Voting is going on until July 25th, so click the links below to check out each category.

Voters choice

These are the ones that you, the user, will get to pick
July 20 - Best photo in the Ugliness category
July 21- Best photo in the Concrete Wasteland category
July 22- Best photo in the Decay category
July 23- Best photo in the Poverty/Inequality category
July 24- Best overall photo

Mods Choice

These are ones I will choose on July 25, which is also when I'll announce the winners of the Voters Choice awards
EDIT: I want to make sure I write thoughtful statements about why I chose the winners I did, so I'm pushing this to Monday, July 27th
Best Submission Statements (multiple winners)
Best Technical Quality (multiple winners)
My deepest apologies with the delay in getting the voting step of this contest together. It's been a whirlwind for me navigating remote work during the pandemic. I also must take the blame for the small number of qualifying entries. Advertising contests is hard and I could have done more on that front. On a positive note, I'm confident the next time I do this, it will be better.
As a note for the submission statements, I changed some spelling and grammar errors when I saw them. This is a photography contest, not an English as a Second Language contest, so I didn't want any non-native speakers to be penalized for having bad grammar.

Complete list of Entrants

Entry 1

Contestant name: Papolato
Location: Chongqing, China
Date taken: Nov 24, 2018
Why contestant chose it: Drab sky-bridges let residents ignore the trash and decay below them, but create dark, uninviting spaces for those unlucky to live beneath.

Entry 2

Contestant name: Fellipe1989
Location: Paraisópolis, São Paulo, Brazil.
Date taken: May 04, 2020
Why contestant chose it: Paraisópolis AKA Paradise City is a low-income unregulated informal settlement neighborhood in Sao Paulo that is very densely populated (about 100k people) with little to no trees. It is directly adjacent to the Morumbi district which boasts of high end luxury apartments. I think the disparity between economic classes is one of biggest and most blatant examples of inequality from around the world. This is my hometown city, where I am currently stuck at from a family visit trip due to the pandemic. I hope to soon be able to return to the USA. I took this photo with the Mavic Mini.

Entry 3

Contestant name: foxtrot666
Location: Villa Salvador, Lima, Peru
Date taken: May 07, 2020
Why contestant chose it: Took some little 4 wheelers on a drive through the deserts of southern Lima. We stayed off main roads and took winding paths through the southern part of the city. It was basically a 5-hour drive through a giant trash dump: trash everywhere, rubble, rusted out cars, dog poop, dead dogs, dead birds, and more trash. This was on top of seeing sprawling dust-covered shanty towns covering the hillsides. Some houses made of concrete that were falling apart, other houses were made out of cheap wood and others were made of rusted out shipping containers. My friend said that since we were just out by ourselves that I could take my mask off but I decided to keep it on because it smelled so bad and there was so much dirt and dust blowing around. In the middle of all the trash I saw a guy with a bunch of tattoos on his neck shooting a slingshot at a half-dead tree all by himself.

Entry 4

Contestant name: iammoco
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Date taken: May 4th, 2020
Why contestant chose it: I chose this picture because of the contrast between the natural landscape depicted in the decayed billboard, and the actual environment it is in.

Entry 5

Contestant name: dravazay
Location: Palermo, Italy
Date taken: May 14, 2020
Why contestant chose it: I live in an area near the port that used to be a fishing village, with houses being 2 story high maximum. When the mafia entered in politics, they gave out building permits without control, resulting in the mess you see here. Almost every single building you see is improperly contructed, and that concrete monstrosity in the back was supposed to be the largest condo in the neighbourhood. Since it was built on private property without evicting the owner, construction was halted and now a decayed husk looms above all the homes around it. The "big one" was supposed to be completed in 1980.

Entry 6

Contestant name: Photo514
Location: Montreal, Canada
Date taken: Jan 12, 2020
Why contestant chose it: This photo depicts the run down state of repair caused by negligent slumlords who typically own many properties across the city. They collect increasing rents while leaving some apartments looking like a war zone. The harsh winter environment is no treat either!

Entry 7

Contestant name: purplefrequency
Location: Renovo, Pennsylvania, USA
Date taken: Summer 2019
Why contestant chose it: Renovo was built for the Philadelphia & Erie Railroad as the midpoint between Philadelphia and Erie. This is the coal tipple that was used to stock steam locomotives with coal, sand and water. With continuing demolition of the Renovo railroad yards and buildings, and the pending construction of a gas fired power plant on this site, the tipple will be the only remaining evidence of the existence of the Pennsylvania Railroad in the town, thanks to preservation efforts from the Greater Renovo Area Heritage Park.
What used to be a booming town, due to the Pennsylvania Railroad being the largest corporation in the world with an annual GPO larger than the federal government, is now a dilapidated mess where the average household income is $18,636 as of the 2000 census.

Entry 8

Contestant name: DingDingDensha
Location: Osaka, Japan
Date taken: May 24th, 2020
Why contestant chose it: I've lived near the street this row of houses is on for 11 years so far, and have really seen some changes. Before the asphalt was laid, there was a row of old wooden houses that had been ravaged by an arson attack one summer, about 6 years ago. Those houses sat there for ages, untouched, until they finally decided to clear them, only to reveal an entire street full of mostly (I think maybe 2 or 3 residents remain) abandoned houses. These had also just been left to rot until 2 years ago, when a massive typhoon plowed headlong into the Kansai region, battering the hell out of Osaka especially.
What I find especially strange is that this is a chunk of an otherwise thriving neighborhood that's almost completely abandoned by now. There are businesses and public bath houses just behind the row featured in this photo that are just left sitting there, dilapidated - yet, surrounding it are streets full of new developments, which have been popping up for at least as long as I've been here, and will likely continue to. The newer, intact homes sit peacefully, ignoring the eyesore elephant in the room as if it's not even there. I have no idea why none of these houses have been razed in all these years. My only guess is that there might still be a codger or two still living in what sound remaining structures remain (and by "sound", I just mean possibly doesn't have a roof with holes in it or walls that have fallen apart...yet). A lot of these types of houses tend to be attached, so you can't get rid of a few at a time...or maybe you can, but someone has decided it may not be worth the effort, and is just waiting for the last residents to die or move out.
I've thought about seeking out information about this particular spot in the neighborhood, to find out of there's a reason developers have been staying away, or even why most of the people who lived there moved out. There are plenty of streets in this city full of very old houses that are still being lived in, kept in good condition, and even sometimes renovated. Normally, when a row of houses is left abandoned, the land will be sold before long, and new homes built on it. Not sure what's going on in this case.

Entry 9

Contestant name: daehanmindecline
Location: Euljiro, downtown Seoul, South Korea
Date taken: Dec 16, 2018
Why contestant chose it: To the right is the downtown core of Seoul. To the left you can see two tallish buildings, which are part of the kilometer-long Seun Sangga complex. Seun Sangga was a major urban development project in the 1960s to occupy an area 1 kilometer long by 50 meters wide, displacing a shanty town. The idea was to create a self-sustaining city within the buildings, which would spur development in the surroundings. As you can see, development pretty well froze in place for decades, while areas further east and west built up significantly. Building effectively an architectural wall just ended up choking out the immediate area. The architect, Kim Swoo-geun, disowned the building and called it a failure.
The lowrises below are mostly machine shops, said to be responsible for the nation's miraculous growth from one of the poorest to one of the wealthiest. It's been said parts of the ISS have been assembled here. Due to a zoning freeze, they haven't been allowed to renovate their workspaces in recent years, as all of a sudden the idea was to preserve this way of life -- without asking the machinists about their needs. As I was on a rooftop taking this photo, a redevelopment plan was in progress behind me, wiping out a significant portion of the area. But due to protest, the plan seems to have been halted for now.
I wish I had a slightly better photo, but my camera is broken right now. For reference, I live on the mountain visible in the background.

Entry 10

Contestant name: ranawatduke
Location: Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India
Date taken: Winter 2019
Why contestant chose it: It's a popular place around the world. Everybody wants to visit Jodhpur for its forts and palaces. This particular neighbourhood, which can be seen from the Mehrangarh fort, is an attraction because all the houses are painted blue. From there Jodhpur also gets its name, “Blue City”. And this place is also near to the well where famous scene of Batman escaping the well in The Dark Knight Rises was shot. I’ve spent 5-7 years living in this city and every time i look at this picture I see that problems like hierarchy and monopoly still exist.People go to the fort, pay hefty amounts and to see this view, where the so called “kings” don't do anything for these people.
submitted by stopspammingme to UrbanHell [link] [comments]

Wrestling Observer Rewind ★ Oct. 29, 2001

Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives.
PREVIOUS YEARS ARCHIVE:
1991 • 1992 • 1993 • 1994 • 1995 • 1996 • 1997 • 1998 • 1999 • 2000
1-1-2001 1-8-2001 1-15-2001 1-22-2001
1-29-2001 2-5-2001 2-12-2001 2-19-2001
2-26-2001 3-5-2001 3-12-2001 3-19-2001
3-26-2001 4-2-2001 4-9-2001 4-16-2001
4-23-2001 4-30-2001 5-7-2001 5-14-2001
5-21-2001 5-28-2001 6-4-2001 6-11-2001
6-18-2001 6-25-2001 7-2-2001 7-9-2001
7-16-2001 7-23-2001 7-30-2001 8-6-2001
8-13-2001 8-20-2001 8-27-2001 9-3-2001
9-10-2001 9-17-2001 9-25-2001 10-1-2001
10-8-2001 10-15-2001 10-22-2001

We're in the home stretch now, ladies and gentlemen...

  • WWF No Mercy is in the books but before we get to that, Dave talks about the challenge that was made on the PPV: at Survivor Series, it will be WWF vs. The Alliance, with the losing side being forced to disband. The end of the Invasion angle is in sight and needless to say, it's been botched beyond anyone's wildest dreams. The Alliance has lost all sense of credibility long ago. On Raw last week, the Alliance was destroyed in pretty much every match, including losing 4 championships to WWF wrestlers, on the lowest rated non-holiday episode of the show in years. It's further proof that even WWF realizes this angle is dead and can't be salvaged, thus the decision to finally bring it to an end at Survivor Series. If they stick to the stipulations (and you know how that goes in wrestling these days), then WCW and ECW, with legacies that go back decades in WCW's case, will finally, fully and truly be dead next month. And WWF is treating it like an afterthought. Just another match on just another PPV. This is the blow-off match, WWF vs. WCW with the losing company allegedly ending forever. To say that this should be the biggest money match in the history of wrestling is putting it mildly. If promoted correctly, this match should have shattered every record imaginable and filled up a stadium. But it wasn't, so it won't.
  • Dave follows this with more in-depth analysis on why everything with the Invasion angle got fucked up, how it should have gone, what could have saved it, and what WWF has to do to recover now. It's all really interesting, but it's beating a dead horse. 18 years later, we all know exactly how badly WWF fucked up the Invasion and why, and Dave's pretty much dead-on accurate about all of it way back then. So anyway, the Invasion is coming to an end and the next big thing on the horizon is that everything seems to be in a holding pattern until Kevin Nash becomes contractually available in January so the Outsiders can come in. Dave isn't sure pinning all your hopes on Nash and Hall to come save the company is the wisest idea.
  • But hey, on the plus side, No Mercy was one of the best PPVs of the year! Awesome matches and more importantly, an awesome crowd made for a great show highlighted by a MOTY contender between Jericho and Rock which ended with Jericho winning the WCW title. Whether this is actually a real push into making Jericho a top guy or just another false start, Dave doesn't know, but it was great. The other big news is that neither WWF nor DirecTV backed down in their ongoing issue and as a result, DirecTV subscribers had no access to this PPV. WWF tried to do a live webcast of the show for $15 on their website but it was a disaster. The stream crashed after the first 2 matches and the quality was, as you might expect for 2001 internet streaming, horrible. There were less than 1,000 internet streaming buys. UFC tried something similar last year and also did around 1,000 buys and it sucked then too. This internet streaming thing just ain't ready for the big leagues yet. RVD did the job in the main event, which Dave isn't surprised by since there's a lot of resentment against RVD for how much he's been pushed and how popular he's gotten while still being the new guy in the company, plus he hasn't won over anybody by busting people's faces open in every other match. Edge vs. Christian in a ladder match was good but ladder matches have been overdone and the crowd didn't really seem too into this one. Plus, Dave thinks it was too soon for Edge to win the title. Speaking of wrong finishes, Undertaker beat Booker T. That aside though, the match was a great brawl and Dave gives Undertaker credit because he doesn't exactly make a habit of having good matches these days, but he worked his ass off in this one. And finally, the back of Austin's head got busted open hardway in the main event by a hard chairshot from Vince McMahon and required 12 staples to close.
  • Hayabusa is paralyzed as of press time after landing on his head while attempting to perform a lionsault in a match at Korakuen Hall in the main event of FMW's recent PPV show. It's a move Hayabusa performs in every match, one of his trademarks, but on this occasion, his foot slipped and he landed head first on the mat at a horrific angle. His opponent, Mammoth Sasaki, realized immediately something was wrong and began screaming for an ambulance. Hayabusa suffered severe cervical vertebrae damage and was taken out on a stretcher with an oxygen mask and rushed to Nihon University Hospital in Tokyo. As of last word, he still has no feeling or movement from the neck down. There's some hope he'll recover movement in his upper body but his wrestling career certainly looks to be over. Right now, FMW is being extremely secretive of his condition and have issued no official statement. Hayabusa's mother, wife, and son are the only ones allowed to see him in ICU. His family has said that he is conscious and his brain function is fine. He will be undergoing surgery by the time you read this.
  • Needless to say, this has led to a lot of questions over the risks of professional wrestling in Japan. Presuming he doesn't recover, Hayabusa will be the 5th Japanese wrestler in that country's history to end up confined to a wheelchair as a result of ring injuries. There have also been 3 deaths in the past 4 years from in-ring injuries. Hayabusa has been FMW's biggest star since Atsushi Onita stopped working full-time for the promotion 6 years ago. In Onita's first (of many) retirement matches back in 1995, Hayabusa was his opponent and they drew 50,000 fans for the match. Hayabusa has long been one of wrestling's top high flyers and has a laundry list of injuries suffered in his career that ultimately caused him to slow down his style. He's worked around the world and in America he's most notable for working ECW's 1998 Heatwave PPV in a show-stealing match. (Yeah, this was obviously the end of Hayabusa's career and it was also pretty much the death blow for FMW as well, since he was their biggest star. They folded soon after this. Hayabusa eventually regained some use of his body and could walk with the help of a cane. It led to a famous moment in 2015 where he returned to Korakuen Hall and got out of his wheelchair and walked to the ring. He ultimately passed away in 2016. Here's video of the injury and the moment years later where he walked to the ring. Warning: the injury video is really hard to watch if you're squeamish about that sort of thing like I am).
WATCH: Hayabusa suffers career-ending neck injury in 2001 (NSFL)
WATCH: Hayabusa walks to the ring in 2015
  • Raw this week was the lowest rated normal, non-holiday episode of the show since Mar. 30, 1998 and that's coming off the heels of a strong PPV, which makes it even worse. Plus, back in 1998, they were going head-to-head with Nitro at the height of its success. Since Rock's big return 12 weeks ago, the ratings have plummeted a staggering 30%. The good news is the ratings didn't drop throughout the show or anything, so the remaining viewers who are still watching are seemingly the loyal, hardcore viewers that will watch no matter what (they'll spend the next 20 years slowly eroding those people away too).
  • AAA head Antonio Pena and several other AAA officials were arrested after a show in Orizaba, Veracruz, Mexico last month for reportedly causing a disturbance at a restaurant. Three of the restaurant employees were allegedly attacked by Pena and his group, with one injured badly enough that he was hospitalized. Apparently an all-out brawl broke out, with chairs and tables and bottles flying everywhere. Pena later offered to pay for the damages to the restaurant and for the hospital bill. That's all Dave knows as of now, and since he just found out about the incident after it occurred a month ago, who knows.
  • Keiji Muto and Taiyo Kea won the AJPW tag team titles, adding to the collection of AJPW belts that Muto currently holds. This sets up a unification match this week against NJPW tag champions Tatsumi Fujinami and Osamu Nisimura. This will be the first ever AJPW/NJPW title unification match in Japanese wrestling history. There was a time where such a unique event would have packed the Tokyo Dome but much like America, championships have been devalued quite a bit in Japan too and don't mean as much as they once did. Anyway, Dave mentions that Muto's knees are in terrible shape, which is nothing new, but despite being in obvious pain, he hasn't missed any shows and is having an incredible resurgence year.
  • Over on the NOAH side, Vader and Too Cold Scorpio became NOAH's first ever GHC Tag Team Champions after winning a tournament to crown them. In an effort to really get them over, it wasn't much of a finals, with Vader dominating in what was basically a squash match.
  • Prior to his injury, Hayabusa was scheduled to come work a major AJPW show at Budokan Hall and start a feud with Tenryu but that's obviously been scrapped now. They're currently trying to get Jinsei Shinzaki (better remembered to WWF fans as Hakushi) to take Hayabusa's spot in the match and feud.
  • NJPW is finally starting to feel the effects of bad booking and business decisions. Dave compares it sorta to WCW. Way back as far as 1997, the signs were already there that WCW was fucking up and things were going to get bad if they didn't correct them, but it took a good year or so before the effects really started to be felt. NJPW has been in a similar situation. For the last year, Dave has been pointing out all the bad decisions being made, particularly with Inoki's obsession with MMA leaking into the product. But business was holding steady. No longer. The numbers are clearly starting to decline now. Attendance in Sept of 2001 was down 28% from the same month last year while the average sellout percentage was down a whopping 75%. Things are clearly taking a turn for the worse there (would take a full decade before they started to recover).
  • Kappa Publishing, the group that owns Pro Wrestling Illustrated, has purchased the rights to WOW Magazine from bankruptcy auction, but that notwithstanding, WOW is still pretty much dead. Kappa purchased the rights to several magazines from H&S Media, the company that went bankrupt, but they pretty much just bought it to protect themselves so no one else would buy it and run it in competition with them, not because they have any intention of doing anything with it. For what it's worth, Vince bought WCW for pretty much the same reason. This move leaves Kappa as the only real independent wrestling magazine publisher left standing. The magazine industry in general is struggling recently, partly due to a sagging economy and also due to growing competition from the internet.
  • The WWA tour began in Perth, Australia this week. Bret Hart missed the first show due to his mother's health situation (more on that in a moment), but was there for the following shows playing a commissioner role. Lots of former WCW and WWF stars and Dave recaps a lot of the shows. Road Dogg did all his WWF catchphrases. Jerry Lawler and Jeremy Borash did ringside commentary, but it was over the PA so the live crowd could hear it as well, which was said to be weird but actually worked okay once everyone got used to it. The tour is still going as we speak and they have a show this week in Sydney which is being taped to air on PPV in December in the U.S., though Dave hasn't heard of them having a PPV deal lined up. But the PPV companies are itching to get more wrestling money and with WCW and ECW dead, they'll probably jump at the chance to air anything. The shows seem to be drawing in the 3,000-to-5,000 range which is less than WCW drew in Australia last year, and at lower ticket prices to boot. But things appear to be running smoothly and everyone says the tour is well-organized and the checks are clearing with no problem, so hey....good for them. Nathan Jones is getting over huge as the Australian native babyface, but he's still really green in the ring and guys are basically working around him so as to not expose him. Jones is hopeful he can return to the U.S. in 9 months, as there's some legal issues preventing him from doing so before then. There was an incident with Buff Bagwell at one point and he wasn't going to be allowed on the flight to go to Australia, but then the flight got delayed, Bagwell calmed down or whatever, and they ultimately decided to allow him to go.
  • Helen Hart is still hospitalized and can't talk because she has a respirator tube in, but she is aware of her surroundings. She is said to be aware she suffered several strokes but has no memory of it. Doctors say her prognosis is not good because her liver has given out and it's believed total organ failure is imminent. She was even given last rites at one point, but is still hanging on. When Bret left for the WWA tour, he made it clear that if her condition worsens, he will leave the tour and rush back to Canada. For now though, she's hanging in there, but it's thought to be just a matter of time.
  • In similar news, Wahoo McDaniel was hospitalized this week for a stroke. He's been in poor health for a long time and receives regular kidney dialysis (he passes away about 6 months after this).
  • In even more similar news, Hulk Hogan's father Peter Bollea is still hospitalized after the stroke he suffered last week but has reportedly improved somewhat. He has also been in bad health and even if he pulls through this, it's believed he'll need constant medical supervision for the rest of his life (he only has about 2 months left).
  • Jimmy Hart's XWF has been talking to both Hogan and Hart about coming in. Obviously, Hart wouldn't be wrestling but both men have name value that will help a lot in securing sponsors and network deals. XWF has also spoken to Ric Flair about buying out the remainder of his WCW contract, with the idea of running another FlaiHogan feud. Obviously, the star power could be good for getting a TV deal and things like that, but needless to say, there's not a lot of people clamoring to see Hulk Hogan on top of another promotion feuding with Flair again in this, the year of our lord, 2001.
  • Vince Russo is telling everyone he is done with the wrestling business. He's planning to open a record store in Atlanta (sadly, no he wasn't done with wrestling).
  • California wrestler Michael Modest has pulled out of the upcoming King of the Indies tournament that he was originally booked for. Modest is working a lot in Japan for NOAH and making good money and reportedly didn't want to fly back to the U.S. and risk injury for a small payoff compared to what he makes in Japan. He's reportedly already pretty banged up by working the hard hitting NOAH style and needed a rest. They had him booked to work 4 matches in two days and this tournament is expected to be full of high quality matches and he just felt his body wouldn't be up to it, especially for the relatively low payoff and travel across the globe he'd have to do to get there.
  • Bruno Sammartino has a role in an upcoming HBO movie called Saloonatics, in which he plays a Mafia crime boss (can't find the full movie but here's a weird trailer for it, if hearing Sammartino talking about murdering people is your kinda thing. It looks delightfully low budget).
WATCH: Saloonatics trailer with Bruno Sammartino
  • Tough Enough runner up Josh Lomberger worked his first official professional wrestling match at an indie show in Hammond, IN, under the name Josh Mathews. If you're wondering how it went, he slipped off the top rope and fell head first onto the floor during his very first spot of the match. But he shook it off and recovered and had a decent match. Everyone said he wrestled a Jeff Hardy-style match.
  • The latest on the Goldberg/PRIDE rumors is that there have been talks but no real serious negotiations. Goldberg's existing Time Warner contract is exclusive for "sports entertainment" in general which would likely prevent him from working for PRIDE without breaching his deal, and he's not willing to risk anything that might be considered a breach. Goldberg is said to be more interested in looking for acting roles than fighting. PRIDE is also interested in bringing in the Rock as an announcer for its shows and invited him to their upcoming Tokyo Dome event, but Dave is highly doubtful that WWF would go for it. Goldberg might be better suited for that, not necessarily because he's a good announcer (he's never done it, so who knows) but he has a strong knowledge of the sport.
  • Notes from Raw: the show had to be completely re-written only 3 hours before showtime because the entire show was built around Steve Austin and then they got word that afternoon that he wouldn't be able to appear that night (and....Dave doesn't elaborate. That's it? The biggest star missing Raw and Vince not finding out until 3 hours before showtime seems like it should be a bigger deal to me, but what do I know). So anyway, they re-wrote much of the show. Vince and Linda McMahon are back together on TV. If you'll recall, earlier this year, Vince had Linda drugged up and committed to a mental hospital while he carried on an affair with Trish Stratus and later was caught literally with his pants down trying to hook up with Torrie Wilson, and that was the last time we saw Linda on-screen. But now they're back together with about 15 seconds of explanation. Cool. Anyway, DDP continued his cheesy motivational speaker gimmick and Dave notes that DDP really does want to pursue that career when his wrestling career ends. Dave thinks DDP's wrestling career should have probably ended when WCW died because lord knows he's wasted in WWF and this gimmick is death. Kurt Angle won the U.S. title and Dave points out that in the span of 3 weeks, Angle went from WWF champion to winning Kanyon's midcard title. Also, in a dark match before the show, Billy Gunn pinned Brock Lesnar, which Dave finds hilarious. I mean, obviously Lesnar is still green and in developmental and Gunn is a better performer, but still. Just the thought of Billy Gunn beating Brock Lesnar sounds as ridiculous to Dave in 2001 as it does to us in 2019.
  • Notes from Smackdown: the opening promo with Rock, Jericho, and Stephanie dragged forever and yet again, they spent what seemed like forever talking about Stephanie's new breasts. Dave thinks it's kind of absurd that they spend so much time talking about Stephanie's tits every week and she's becoming a Missy Hyatt-like caricature of herself at this point. They showed a clip of Linda McMahon giving New York mayor Rudy Giuliani a check for $1 million for the 9/11 relief fund. The show was in Montreal and Raymond Rougeau appeared before the live crowd and got a big pop welcoming fans to the show in French. Earl Hebner was kept off the show, but crowds still chanted for Bret and dozens of anti-Hebner signs were confiscated at the doors.
  • Kevin Nash is telling people it's pretty much a sure thing he's heading to WWF when his WCW deal expires at the end of the year. He has pretty much given up on the idea of working the NJPW Tokyo Dome show in January because they don't seem interested in paying Nash and Hall big money for an Outsiders reunion. Nash's biggest sticking point with WWF is still the schedule. He doesn't want to work more than 12 days per month. Some guys like Rock and Undertaker work around 13-15 dates a month on average so needless to say, Nash asking for a schedule like that is ruffling some feathers. Nash is also making it clear that he won't return to WWF without Scott Hall and needless to say, there's mixed feelings about Hall given his track record and constant legal issues.
  • Privately, some of the former WCW wrestlers now in WWF are saying that things in WWF are becoming more like WCW was back in late-99 and early-00. Back when business was good, everybody was a team player and worked great together, but when business started to falter, it became more cut-throat and everyone was looking out for their own interests. With business plummeting in WWF, people are starting to notice a lot of the same stuff, backbiting, politics, shit like that.
  • It's being reported that Rock's upcoming movie Scorpion King, his first starring role, will need 4 additional weeks of shooting. WWF hasn't confirmed if/when that will happen but if more shooting does need to be done, it will obviously impact Rock's WWF schedule.
  • Stacy Keibler was on the Howard Stern Show and reportedly did well. She said that she and David Flair broke up because he fell too hard in love with her and wanted to get too serious (I empathize with him. To this day, I'd throw my wife into a volcano for Stacy Keibler). She said she's only had sex with 3 guys in her entire life, one of whom was a 7-year relationship with her high school boyfriend that ended when she went to WCW. Stern said he wanted to watch the PPV to see her in the lingerie match but a few days later, someone on the show reminded him and he realized he had missed the match and was pissed and he talked about how hot Keibler is. Then the next day, Joey Fatone from N'Sync was on the show. Stern grilled Fatone on his friendship with Chyna and all the rumors that they're dating. Fatone denied it and said they are friends and when they hang out together, they play it up in public because they think it's funny that everyone thinks they're dating, but they're not. Stern then made all the usual jokes about Chyna looking like a man.
WATCH: Stacy Keibler on Howard Stern - 2001
  • Chris Jericho tore into Eric Bischoff on his site after winning the WCW title from the Rock at the PPV. Jericho said he wanted to dedicate his victory to Bischoff and to shove it up his ass because Bischoff said he could never do it. Surprisingly, Bischoff went on 1wrestling.com and responded to Jericho and explaining why he nixed the Goldberg/Jericho feud back in WCW, after it had already started on TV. Bischoff basically said he didn't feel like Jericho or Goldberg were ready for it. Dave's response: "What?" He points out that Jericho was light years better than pretty much everyone else Goldberg had feuded with at that point and Goldberg was already a huge star. A Jericho/Goldberg feud could have solidified Jericho as a top guy in WCW if done right. Dave calls bullshit on this excuse. The real story, or at least the one Dave has heard from several sources, is that Kevin Nash got in Goldberg's ear and convinced him that Jericho was too small and he shouldn't be doing programs with him unless it was going to be just another squash. And since it wasn't, Nash convinced Goldberg not to go along with it (I think Jericho has pretty much confirmed this in years since). Dave points out that this was also leading up to Nash ending Goldberg's streak a month or two later, so ya know...
  • Before the PPV last week, Triple H worked out in the ring for the first time since his injury. He's currently looking at December for his return. Commercials for the December Vengance PPV have already been made and are built around Triple H (yeah that bites them in the ass when it turns out Triple H isn't quite ready in time for that PPV after they built the entire marketing campaign around him).
  • More news on Brock Lesnar losing matches. At a house show in Missouri, Lesnar did the job to Kanyon. It was Lesnar's first loss in an actual WWF ring. It's an out of the way market at a house show, so it doesn't really matter if he loses but Dave finds it a little weird that he's doing all these jobs since pretty much everybody in the company sees giant bags of money when they look at Lesnar. Dave figures it was probably just a test to see how he'd react to being told to do a job to a lower card guy. Apparently he had no issue with it.
MONDAY: Backstage WWF morale sinking along with business, lots of details on the new WWA and XWF promotions, Bret Hart interview makes waves, Hayabusa update, and more...

► Observer Rewinds remaining: 9

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is there still a mafia in montreal video

Vito Salvaggio, Leonardo Rizzuto, Nicola Spagnolo, Liborio Cuntrera and Stefano Sollecito are still associated with the mafia leadership says LA Presse. The Sicilian clan continue to run one of the most important illegal sports books in the Montreal area. Gregory Woolley is spending the last years of an eight-year sentence. He spoke about how the mafia is making money off COVID-19, why there was violence in Hamilton but peace in Montreal and what he says the government should do to protect Canadians. Rizzuto remains in control as Montreal Mafia War ends. By DiMaiolo Santolo January 25, 2020. The bloody Montreal Mafia War has definitely taken a toll but the mighty Rizzuto crime family has not only survived…. Read More. Much has changed since the start of the bloody Montreal Mafia war but the end of the powerful Rizzuto crime family may have been premature. The Sicilian based mafia clan could find a way to re-emerge and remain a key player in the changing criminal landscape in Montreal. There's no confirmation as to whether the Dubois Gang is still active after this event. Paolo Violi Serving as the "capodecina" (leader of a smaller group) for the Bonanno family in Montreal, Paolo Violi plays a pivotal role in Montreal's mafia history. It was in this context that members of the Sicilian Mafia and their families arrived in Montréal. First, there were the Cuntrera brothers, Pasquale, Paolo, Liborio and Gaspare, who immigrated between 1951 and 1958. They subsequently all moved to Caracas, Venezuela, in the late 1960s. Montreal Mafia chief Leonardo Rizzuto has been acquitted of drug and gun charges. ... The other still living member is Francesco Arcadi, ... reestablishes dominance in Montreal. It isn't just revenge, there is a clear intention to eradicate the heads of the Sicilian faction of the Montreal Mafia and all of those in their circles. The Mafia war in the underworld of Montreal, Canada, has claimed another victim. 49-year-old Salvatore Scoppa (photo above) died after being shot Saturday night at the Sheraton Hotel in Laval. He is the brother of a high-ranking member of the Montreal Mafia. Time finally ran out for Scoppa after… Continue Still, the conversation ... At the time, the Montreal Mafia apparently began trafficking in drugs in Laval, ... there is an update to a comment thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. The car was still there late that night when Lo Presti’s body was found wrapped in plastic by the railroad tracks in northeast Montreal. All identification was gone, but there was still $4,000 ...

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