January 28, 2024 · 4:17 pm

Are your eyes wide open one year after the Chinese spy balloon incident?

This is going to be a one year after blog post. From January 28 – February 4, 2023 an unmanned Chinese spy balloon drifted across America’s most sensitive military sites. As that balloon was drifting off the east coast, President Biden finally ordered the balloon to be shot down. It took a week for the Biden administration to respond… There have been numerous government assessments, but mostly it’s been to downplay this incident and do face-saving for the Biden administration. If you were assessing response times of a leader of a country to react to a threat and it took a week to shoot down an unmanned spy balloon, from a hostile country, flying over that country’s most sensitive military sites, you might conclude you were dealing with clueless idiots in charge of that country.

For several years, I’ve thought about pivoting my blog away from the partisan political battles that have consumed our nation over the past few decades, but I invariably end up back to the politics. So, while I may write about other things on my mind, the partisan battles raging right now will largely determine the path America heads down and what our future will be like. So, there’s going to be more politics here.

What happens with the election in November definitely matters, but I’m preparing to expect the unexpected this year, because I believe there could be even more defining events than the American presidential election. 

People like to make binary choices- it’s either Biden or Trump or I’ve seen some people trying to say it’s the globalist elites trying to transform the world who are the biggest threat and not the nation-state alliance (China, Russia, Iran) that’s aligned against the West. This form of binary-thinking gets used in right-wing punditry often, with trying to sway Americans against supporting Ukraine and presenting Putin as not a threat.  What if both the globalist transformers and the China-Russia led alliance pose serious threats to America? What if neither Biden nor Trump are the life-preserver to save America, that we think they are? What if the election in November isn’t the most pivotal event this year? Lots of questions to ponder. This isn’t going to be a warm and fuzzy blog post.

There’s a whole lot more than the domestic political battles going on, but definitely who is elected president in America impacts all of those and is tied to all of them. I was watching a news report recently, I can’t remember who the reporter was, but she mentioned being at the WEF meetings in Davos and she said the two things everyone was talking about were stopping Trump and disinformation and misinformation. What’s going on with the liberal media is trying to stop Trump and hype right-wing disinformation and misinformation. What’s going on in right-wing media is largely promoting Trump and downplaying disinformation and misinformation or accusing the liberal media of spreading disinformation and misinformation. 

The global elite/WEF crowd definitely wants to stop Trump, because Trump would likely get in the way of the green transformation and the larger UN 2030 Agenda, but what do Russia and China really want? They might just add fuel to the partisan dumpster fire or they might act before the 2024 election in ways we are not prepared for. 

Russia had been working to destabilize Ukraine for years and it wasn’t until the hapless Obama administration mishandled things, that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and annexed Crimea and the Donbas region. The Obama administration did nothing and let Russia hold that territory. It was no surprise that once the Obama crowd was back in the White House in 2021, that we had the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, with the same Obama crowd bungling that and then in 2022 Russia was emboldened to invade Ukraine. 

Watching the Biden administration foot-drag military aid to Ukraine for almost two years, despite big announcements of big dollar aid packages, it’s obvious the Biden administration isn’t really committed to helping Ukraine defeat Russia, it’s more kicking the can down the road, trying to look for a way to spin this as winning. Many Americans are tired of sending aid to Ukraine and Russia, with the aid of some right-wing media, has squashed a great deal of American support for Ukraine and simultaneously conned Americans into believing Putin is a victim and Ukraine is at fault for Russia launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Cold War mindset in me, just gets disgusted to hear Americans champion Putin and dismiss the Russian threat of toppling governments in Eastern Europe, but at the same time Biden and the European leaders, who are mostly high on Great Reset fumes, are more committed to the green transformation than the war in Ukraine. There seems to be more passion for imposing hate speech laws, attacking farmers, and monitoring people’s carbon footprints than in Ukraine’s fate or what Russia does. These same European leaders, just like the Biden administration, believe they can eventually cut deals with Russia.

Then we move on to October 7, 2023. Hamas launched an asymmetrical invasion of Israel and massacred over a thousand civilians and took over a thousand hostages. That should have been a wake-up call for America. Israel was undergoing a lot of internal domestic divides. Hamas did not act alone and had training, aid and direction from Iran.

At this point, I don’t even know if Biden will be the Democratic nominee. I do expect Trump to be the GOP nominee, but I keep watching the timeline of Russia, China and Iran aggression. Russia invaded Ukraine, even while the goobers in the Biden White House believed they were achieving diplomatic success at preventing an invasion 

The Western effort to aid Ukraine and launch their Great Reset at the same time has led to degradation of readiness in NATO and the US, economic hardships and fueled populist uprisings in Europe and the US. The October 7th Hamas attack, orchestrated by Iran, has created more drains on Western aid and increased political instability. The Democratic Party sounds bipolar since October 7th – trying to support Israel and appease Palestinian extremists at the same time. Much of Europe is in the same boat.

The goobers in the Biden White House restored aid to Gaza in 2021 and in 2021 Hamas also began intensive planning for the October 7, 2023 attack. Right before the October 7th attack, the Biden national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, was taking a victory lap for the administration ditching Trump’s Middle East policies and deescalating tensions in Gaza and restoring direct diplomacy. Sullivan penned a piece for Foreign Affairs magazine doing a victory lap and the print edition had already gone to print when Hamas invaded Israel. Foreign Affairs magazine allowed Sullivan to stealth edit the online edition to rewrite his piece (I wrote about that here). Rewriting his piece doesn’t rewrite the outcome on the ground from the disastrous Biden foreign policy failures – the Biden administration restoring US aid to Gaza in 2021 actually aided and abetted Hamas terrorists in carrying out an attack on Israel.

China’s already ramped up aggression in the Pacific and there’s definitely hostile foreign involvement in our border invasion that started in 2021. China has also expanded their Belt and Road Initiative, expanding economic influence and deals in Central and South America. 

Kind of disturbing timelines since 2021, so perhaps we should be concerned about who is next in line for being a China/Russia/Iran target? There certainly seems to be a pattern there with China, Russia, Iran destabilization efforts targeting countries. 

Timeline:

August 2021 – Biden administration: Afghanistan withdrawal debacle. Also in 2021, Biden ditched the Trump Mid-East policies, he changed US policy in Ukraine, restored aid to Gaza, removed Yemen’s Houthis from the terrorist watchlist, unfroze billions of dollars to Iran, rescinded the Trump border policies, which opened the border.

February 2022 – Russian Invasion of Ukraine

October 2023 – Hamas invasion of Israel

Today – Three US troops killed in drone strike. Border crisis escalating. Internal divides growing.

In the 2016 election, when Trump made securing the border a key campaign issue, the number that kept being thrown about was 11 million illegal immigrants in America. In 2021 Biden reversed Trump’s border policies and border security officials keep saying they’ve never seen numbers like this. Customs and border enforcement reported roughly 2.5 million encounters at the border in 2023 alone.  Now we have former top FBI officials noting that this shift in demographics, to mostly fighting aged males, crossing the border began in 2021, and that it is a serious potential threat. So, just like the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, where the Biden goobers trusted the Taliban, they also believed their grand diplomacy was working in Ukraine and their restoring funding to Gaza, which Hamas controls was a big success – until it wasn’t, we’re now supposed to believe they’ve got the border situation well in hand.

Everything the Biden administration has done with border policy has made America more vulnerable to hostile countries being able to exploit our open border. Republicans in the House have just unveiled impeachment articles of the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, who has been an unmitigated disaster at safeguarding America. The Pentagon has readiness and recruitment problems, along with leadership problems. Recently, the White House did not even know the Secretary of Defense was hospitalized for almost a week. That’s a serious chain of command gap. Then again the UK’s got its own craziness going on with reports the undermanned Royal Navy is redeploying officers to diversity and inclusion teams.

I’m just going to keep my fingers crossed this year and hope I’m reading the big picture warning signs wrong.  At the same time I’m rethinking and reassessing all of my emergency preparedness efforts. For many years there’s been a concerted media effort to caricature people who get involved in emergency preparedness as far-right kooks or Doomsday fanatics. I grew up during the Cold War and still believe we should all treat emergency preparedness like a civic duty. We should all want to be an asset and not a liability in our family and community, if there’s an emergency situation. If you’re not even prepared with basics, like food and water, how on earth are you going to be an asset to anyone? In a real crisis, you’d be in a dire situation and panic mode from the first minute.

Events can change quickly and that’s why I want to try to be as prepared as I can to weather the storms ahead, as best I can. The question everyone should ask is, “How long can I and my family survive if the power and utilities stop working or there’s a civil disturbance?” I’ll be following the news, but I’m also working more on my personal preparedness and still trying to maintain a positive attitude. Instead of approaching alarming information with fear and anxiety, I look at information as expanding opportunities. Whatever we learn now and being able to troubleshoot problems that might arise, allows us to calmly consider practical ways to be prepared and is one less thing that can throw us for a loop in an actual emergency situation, that involves that type of challenge. The more information, training and skills (and supplies) you acquire, the better able you should be to adapt and manage in an actual emergency. 

I was reading a 2018 government report, Surviving a Catastrophic Power Failure: how To Strengthen The Nation’s Capabilities and it was both informative and alarming at the same time. There was a lack of clarity of who is in charge of what and chains of command and communication between federal, state, local and corporations, because power and utilities in America are privately owned. The same goes for communication. That report said FEMA was working to promote personal preparedness:

People “no longer keep enough essentials within their homes, reducing their ability to sustain themselves during an extended, prolonged outage. The nation needs to improve individual preparedness.

o Most preparedness campaigns call for citizens to be prepared for 72 hours in an emergency, but the new emerging standard is 14 days.

o For example, Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii have a standard recommending that individuals have enough food and water to support themselves for 14 days. These efforts could serve as a model for federal and state preparedness resources, campaigns, and training.

o The idea of individual preparedness is not a new concept. Civil defense, an older term used to elevate a level of individual preparedness and activate communities, used to be more widely accepted.

o FEMA offers a number of tools, resources, and guidance on emergency preparedness, including recent efforts focused on better financial preparedness for disasters, and work

(page 14) https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/NIAC%2520Catastrophic%2520Power%2520Outage%2520Study_FINAL.pdf

That’s advice from FEMA – take it or leave it. I decided in 2020 that I wanted to expand, to try to be prepared with basic supplies for 6 months to a year, but having even 14 days, which is the FEMA recommendation, is better than not having enough for a few days. Don’t wait to see if anyone around you is preparing – just go ahead and get busy. 

February 1, 2024: I decided to add this note since this Dec. 28, 2023 NBC report, U.S. intelligence officials determined the Chinese spy balloon used a U.S. internet provider to communicate, is another iteration of US accounts of that Chinese spy balloon incident last January:

“WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence officials have determined that the Chinese spy balloon that flew across the U.S. this year used an American internet service provider to communicate, according to two current and one former U.S. official familiar with the assessment.”

“The balloon connected to a U.S.-based company, according to the assessment, to send and receive communications from China, primarily related to its navigation. Officials familiar with the assessment said it found that the connection allowed the balloon to send burst transmissions, or high-bandwidth collections of data over short periods of time.”

The phrase “primarily related to its navigation” is meant to deflect, since that leaves shrouded what the information that wasn’t about “its navigation” was. 

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Filed under Emergency Preparedness, Foreign Policy, General Interest, Politics

January 27, 2024 · 11:11 am

Former FBI officials warn about border invasion

JK posted a comment with a link to a January 17, 2024 letter sent to Congressional leaders on my last blog post, that I think every American should read. The letter was written by ten former FBI directors and experts in counterintelligence. They warned this invasion at the southern border is different than other illegal immigration surges in the past. Here is a link to that letter:https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/pdclarion.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/9a/f9ab16aa-1396-5762-8198-2efd36fa97b1/65b32e508e0b0.pdf.pdf

They write:

“In 2021, the demographics of those crossing the porous southern border started to shift. Young men from around the world traveling alone and holding questionable motivations dramatically increased in number to become the most common profile of those breaching the nation’s border. A startling number have been found on the terrorist watchlist or are from countries designated as State Sponsors of Terror distinctly unfriendly to the United States.”

Their letter mentions, “The nation’s military and laws and other natural protective barriers have been thoroughly circumvented over the past three years.” Well, that is what would be termed “asymmetrical warfare,” if some of the thousands upon thousands of fighting age men are being deployed by nations hostile to the US, in preparation to launch asymmetrical attacks inside the US. Remembering Pearl Harbor should be on our minds, but even more recently, the Israelis didn’t believe Hamas could carry off an asymmetrical attack like October 7th last year. 

I doubt America’s military can be defeated by direct confrontation and I believe our adversaries are well aware of this. 

After World War I, a British soldier, Captain B. H. Liddell Hart began studying history and military strategy. He became known for his military theory, advocating the avoidance of direct frontal attack and using the indirect approach, by attacking the rear and supply lines to throw the enemy off-balance. He wrote numerous books and the photo above are the ones I have. I find his ideas interesting.

Thanks, JK for the link to this letter, because I hadn’t seen it. That’s it for this blog post, but I urge you to read the warning letter by former FBI officials.

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Filed under General Interest, Military, Politics, Terrorism

January 26, 2024 · 1:36 pm

Asymmetrical war against US already ongoing

The border crisis in America blares across the news constantly now, so I decided to take a look back. The US declared war on Mexico in 1846 over territorial disputes. That war lasted two years, Mexico lost about 1/3 of it’s territory when the dust settled and many of America’s top Civil War generals in the 1860s, cut their eyeteeth on war during that Mexican-American War.

Since that 1840s conflict, US-Mexico territorial disputes flared up many times In 1914, Mexico was in the midst of a revolution and a Mexican revolutionary leader/guerilla fighter, Pancho Villa, launched a raid on Columbus, NM, which led to the US invading Mexico. President Wilson picked General John J. Pershing to lead the US retaliatory attack on Mexico. By 1917, the US entered World War I and General John J. Pershing became the commander of the US Expeditionary Force, leading US forces in World War I. Pershing’s previous war experiences also included serving in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and the Philippine-American War in 1899. 

From the Library of Congress:

“Mexican immigration in the 20th century came in three great surges of growth. The first surge began in the 1900s. Revolution in Mexico and a strong U.S. economy brought a tremendous increase in Mexican immigration rates. Between 1910 and 1930, the number of Mexican immigrants counted by the U.S. census tripled from 200,000 to 600,000. The actual number was probably far greater. El Paso, Texas, served as the Mexican Ellis Island–a gateway to a different life for Mexican immigrants and a powerful symbol of change and survival for their children and grandchildren.”

So, what’s going on now with this massive increase of illegal immigration flooding across the US southern border? Is this similar or dissimilar to previous surges of illegal immigration at the border?

Well, I’m of the belief this is very different and a deliberate, orchestrated asymmetrical attack on the United States of America, just like I believe the “Syrian Refugee Crisis” was a deliberate, orchestrated asymmetrical attack on the West, to flood in refugees to destabilize Western countries. Certainly, criminals, like the Mexican drug cartels are opportunistically involved in this invasion of the US too, flooding in Chinese fentanyl and other drugs. China is on the move in Central and South America, setting the stage for a larger economic war and, I believe, more asymmetrical attacks on the US.

Certainly, amidst the hordes of illegal immigrants flooding into the US, there are likely many people just seeking a better life here, but these caravans transporting illegal immigrants from Central America and through Mexico paint a much more ominous bigger picture. The same liberal activist crowd (including the Obama crowd) aided and abetted the Syrian Refugee Crisis and they’ve aided and abetted this invasion of our southern border, that’s happening now. All sorts of NGOs operate to facilitate this invasion, just like there were NGOs involved in facilitating the Syrian Refugee Crisis. Here’s a 2021 quote from UNHCR, Syria Refugee Crisis – Globally, in Europe and in Cyprus:

“European countries host over 1 million Syrian asylum-seekers and refugees, with the 70 per cent being hosted in two countries only: Germany (59 percent) and Sweden (11 percent). This makes Germany the fifth largest host country globally, hosting over 1 million in total, of which over half (560,000) are Syrians. Austria, Greece, the Netherlands and France host between 2 to 5 percent, while other countries host below 2 percent.”

Unfortunately, the political people on the right, from Trump, to Abbott, to any Republican leaders, only talk about symmetrical actions to secure the physical border, not ways to defeat the much larger asymmetrical war taking place. A large part of this asymmetrical war is like everything else the far-left global transformers embark on – it’s largely dependent on controlling public opinion and yes, it’s the spin information war. 

The right, including Trump, are presently winning the spin war battle on illegal immigration. Polling consistently shows Americans want US borders secured and they don’t want to pay for millions of illegal immigrants to live off of US taxpayers or to be rewarded with benefits for illegally entering the US.

I think Trump will be the GOP nominee and stands a good chance of winning in November, while the Dems are in disarray at the moment. I believe former President Obama is pressuring Biden to step aside. There’s a media drumbeat about Michelle Obama being the magic ticket for Democrats and certainly the liberal media would galvanize to promote her. Gavin Newsom is another possibility, who’s talked about frequently. I won’t be surprised if Biden steps aside in the next few months.

With this being the current state of politics, I feel certain Democrats and their global elite transformers will try to stir up crisis after crisis at the US southern border, to create a media firestorm about the Republican physical efforts to secure the border. And China, Russia, Iran and their allies will be trying to foment chaos in the US anywhere they can this year. During that Syrian refugee crisis, there was a global media effort to pressure Western leaders to accept more and more refugees – the drowned Syrian boy became the face of that crisis. I remember this, because of the orchestrated way media stuck microphones in the faces of European leaders and demanded they respond about this child drowning.

I feel the same sort of situation is developing at the Texas border and so far we’re hearing about drownings and razor wire constantly. I feel it’s a terrible idea for random Americans and groups to show up at the border to help secure or defend the border. It feels like playing into the hands of the global transformers (many of whom are American liberals) to have untrained and unorganized people showing up, to exacerbate an already chaotic situation. 

I wonder why Tucker Carlson encouraged this – then again, I believe he’s a total fraud. 

All it takes is for one incident of a “patriot” to shoot an illegal immigrant, then Trump shooting off his mouth in support of it, and the global media will be amplifying that non-stop and it could quickly dissipate support for Republicans on the handling of the border issue. It’s almost like Tucker Carlson is manipulating the right (and Trump) into the most self-destructive approach to fighting smart against the asymmetrical attack at the border. Carlson bragged he talked to Trump too. It feels like Carlson is trying to nudge (sabotage) Trump into saying bombastic things and support extreme policies, which could topple his current strong position to win in November.

I know there are many Trump supporters, who also have 100% trust in Tucker Carlson and buy into everything he says, so I expect there will now be pressure for Republican officials to embrace Carlson’s stupid idea. It’s stupid to encourage vigilantism with no plan to organize, train or utilize them in a coherent manner. It just encourages another J-6 chaotic type outcome, where angry people who consume too much right-wing social media, hyperventilating, then heading to TX or as in the J-6 protest, some unbalanced people too. And of course, it would give the feds another opportunity to utilize informants in the most radical right-wing groups and then prod more craziness, like the kidnapping Governor Whitmer plot. 

Bottom-line is there is nothing strategically beneficial to an effort to secure the border with mobs of angry Americans showing up. And even more than that, there is nothing strategically beneficial for Trump to get behind this kind of vigilante effort Carlson is pushing.

I wrote two blog posts on “militias” in early America back in 2022, I can’t believe I’m writing about militias and The second part on militias. I was interested in this topic since 1976, the American Bicentennial, when I found out one of my ancestors was a captain of a local militia in the Northampton territory of northeast PA. Militias were organized by local governments. They operated under the auspices of the territorial authorities. My ancestor was tasked with recruiting 82 men. Many of those militias later were part of the Continental Army, which fought in the American Revolutionary War. 

Unorganized mobs and individuals showing up at the border isn’t a plan – it’s a recipe for more chaos and for Republicans to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in November.

Note: the most successful effort to sway public opinion and change the entire national debate on the border invasion has been Governor Abbott’s effort of transporting illegal immigrants to Democrat-run “sanctuary cities.” 

Currently, over 20 Republican governors are supporting Governor Abbott’s border efforts in TX and I feel more State vs. Federal challenges would be way more effective than a call to arms of untrained and unorganized citizen (vigilante) efforts. Republicans need to win in the court of public opinion, in order to win in November. There is no way a bunch of random armed citizens showing up at the Texas border will help Republicans keep winning in the court of public opinion or win in November.

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Filed under American History, General Interest, Politics

January 25, 2024 · 10:40 am

A look back at the George Floyd saga

A couple months ago, talk about George Floyd was flitting across right-wing media and I didn’t watch any of it. Today, I happened to click on a Glenn Loury and John McWhorter video, The Truth About George Floyd’s Death, from December 8, 2023. They referenced a documentary, The Fall of Minneapolis, above. 

I decided to watch this documentary, by Alpha News journalist, Liz Collin. Collin is an Emmy award-winning reporter and news anchor according to the blurb at amazon for her book, They’re Lying: The Media, The Left, and The Death of George Floyd.  I haven’t read her book. She interviewed police officers and other people directly involved and she presented the actual body cam footage of the police officers, which was suppressed by the judge in the police officers’ trials. She went into the activist history of many of the officials involved in the case, like Minnesota Attorney General, Keith Ellison, who has close ties to Louis Farrakhan, defending gang members, championing cop-killers and being very anti-police. Then there’s the initial autopsy report, which showed the drugs and preexisting medical problems George Floyd suffered from, but no physical evidence of asphyxiation or injury to his neck. 

Beyond that, the sequence of events presented by BLM mouthpieces, then repeated non-stop by the liberal media and Democrats, was not accurate, according to Collin, who uses police body cam footage and officials records to back this up. Most disturbingly were the number of officials who said the Maximal Restraint Technique used to restrain George Floyd was not an approved procedure or taught, when clearly the reporter talked to numerous officers, who said they were taught that technique and it was approved. The reporter showed the actual police training manuals. 

If even some of Collin’s information is correct, it’s clear we were massively manipulated and lied to by the media bombardment hyping a BLM manufactured narrative of “I can’t breathe,” and hyping how many minutes Floyd was restrained and insisting he was murdered by the police. Those officers are in prison. We never heard about the fact that a police officer called for EMS support 36 seconds after Floyd was on the ground.

Collin’s documentary goes further in showing the aftermath and how officials tied the hands of police officers in Minneapolis and allowed rioters to torch the 3rd Precinct in Minneapolis. She presents interviews with several of the police officers who were in that precinct during this rioting.

Does any of this matter? What if the entire narrative BLM, the media and politicians told us was lies? Should we care? There are four former police officers in prison and Derek Chauvin, the officer who restrained Floyd, received a 22 year sentence. He was stabbed 22 times by a former gang leader in prison, in December 2023. 

While it would be easier to just ignore this and move on, the truth is these false partisan narratives amplified by media do matter. Since the fall-out from “defund the police” has been an unmitigated disaster, Democrats and their media friends continually downplay crime statistics and many Democrats now claim they never supported defunding the police and that they fully support the police. These leftist culture war false narratives matter, just as right-wing false narratives matter too. The power to dominate most of the media coverage in America, still resides with the liberal media (what used to be called “mainstream”). These false narratives fuel deeper divides, distrust and lead to serious public corruption. 

The liberal media will regale you with how crazy the right-wing echochamber is and the right-wing echochamber will yammer on about the left-wing crazy, but what happened during the George Floyd protests and riots goes much further than just concerns about partisan lies told in the media – deliberate lies (BLM narratives) were used to incite nationwide protests, which led to the most destructive rioting in US history, the lying led to the conviction of four police officers. And the BLM narrative about how we needed to “defund the police,” because the police are unfairly targeting back people, seriously eroded our entire culture and led to a rise in attacks on police officers, a rise in crime, and a loss of public trust in law enforcement.

If you challenge anything related to the BLM narratives, you’re going to be labeled a racist. The liberal news media, who willingly amplify so many of these false narratives, then have a vested interest in propping up the lies. Admitting they’re just political hacks for hire and not ethical journalists dedicated to the truth would be a hard pill for them to swallow. If they admit they didn’t investigate and just repeated the BLM narratives without question, well, that would destroy their journalistic reputations.

Perhaps, my skipping a lot of the news, because it’s exhausting, needs some rethinking, because after watching this documentary, I think, once again, the prevailing BLM narrative we were bombarded with in 2020 was deliberately manufactured and filled with lies. I could have known about this documentary two months ago, if I had been paying closer attention to the news, like I used to. I’ll have to consider how I consume news, because what happened in 2020 is still very relevant.

The larger issue, beyond even BLM’s despicable effort to foment racial animus, is we always come back to the Democrat and liberal media spin information war, which is now being developed into a whole new field – cognitive security – to police speech globally. Launching more manufactured narratives will certainly be part of this ramped up cognitive security effort, to combat what liberal elites deem “disinformation and misinformation,” that’s underway.

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Filed under BLM movement, Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Information War

January 22, 2024 · 7:19 pm

A flashback to the Obama years

While writing my last blog post, it jogged my memory. This latest targeting of Evangelicals, Catholics, Dick’s Sporting Goods shoppers, and even Bible buyers, as potential threats isn’t some alarming new attack on right-wing Americans – it’s just a continuation of the Obama agenda.

Back in 2013, I wrote a blog post, Equal Opportunity For Dummies, Courtesy Of US Army, which was about how the Obama administration went about recruiting people with close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood to review all training on Islamic-inspired terrorism within the federal government, including in the US military. Experts were fired and the fact-based training was replaced with PC training, that met with the approval of the Muslim Brotherhood mouthpieces in America.

The links in that 2013 blog post no longer work and that happens a lot with old links, but here’s a 2013 Townhall piece by Todd Starnes, Military Labels Evangelicals, Catholics as ‘Religious Extremism’. In that post I mentioned reports of a US Army Reserve unit in PA using Equal Opportunity training material that placed Evangelical Christians at the top of the list of religious extremists in America. Catholics and Mormons made this list too. This Starnes piece states:

“This slide was not produced by the Army and certainly does not reflect our policy or doctrine,” he said. “It was produced by an individual without anyone in the chain of command’s knowledge or permission.”

The Starnes piece stated that a solider attending that training asked for copies of the training material and sent them to Chaplain Alliance.“

So, while the Obama administration had people trying to label Evangelical Christians, Catholics and Mormons as religious extremists, it was simultaneously purging training material on Islamic-inspired terrorism and ranting about Islamophobia constantly. Here’s a 2012 Fox News piece: FBI removes hundreds of training documents after probe on treatment of Islam.

It wasn’t only training documents that were purged by the Obama administration, as top experts on Islamic-inspired terrorism and jihad, were also purged. Stephen Coughlin, was contracted by the JCS as an intelligence analyst, but he was purged in 2008. Here’s a bit of bio from Wikipedia:

“According to reporter Bill Gertz, Coughlin “led the way in uncovering the truth about the U.S. government’s failures to tackle the Islamic threat.”[1] Coughlin completed his master’s thesis in 2007 at the National Defense Intelligence College, which focused on the Islamic doctrine of jihad as formed by Islamic law, and directly conflicted with the positions of central Muslim outreach Pentagon aide Hesham Islam and others in the U.S. government.[1][7] In connection with the trial against the Islamic charity Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which had been designated a terrorist organization for providing millions in funds to Hamas, Coughlin wrote a memorandum that explicitly criticized several groups that the U.S. Justice Department had been involved with as part of their Muslim outreach program, identifying them as front groups of the Muslim Brotherhood that were part of a subversion plan against the United States.[1] Coughlin was eventually notified after a meeting at the Pentagon’s upper floor which included Islam, who controversially called Coughlin a “Christian zealot”, that his contract would not be renewed after March 2008.[1]“

Here’s a 2010 piece, 10 Failures of the U.S. Government on the Domestic Islamist Threat, by Patrick Poole, explaining, Hesham Islam, the Obama senior Pentagon advisor on international affairs and Pentagon point-man for Muslim outreach, who called Coughlin “a Christian zealot.”

Coughlin went on to write a book, Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America In the Face of Jihad, recreating his Pentagon briefings on radical Islam and Islamic law, plus historical information. I have this book and have read parts of it, but it’s a tome – over 500 pages and then hundreds of pages of notes and appendixes – plus there’s a lot of legal terms that I’m unfamiliar with, so it’s tough-going for me. 

The reports in recent days of Evangelicals and Catholics being labeled potential domestic threats isn’t new – it’s the legacy of the Obama agenda, that the Biden administration has doubled down on. The reports of Americans having their purchases monitored and being labeled based on shopping at Dick’s Sporting Goods, or buying Bibles may sound surreal and alarming, but once again this effort has been going on since the Obama years and every time right-wing media creates a stir about it, the response from the FBI and the US military is they had no knowledge, it was an isolated incident, and they’re not targeting Christians, not creating watch lists and there’s nothing to see here. 

So, when I started watching the November hearing on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, I was sick to death of all the Trump “deep state” drama and prepared to dismiss it. I also got weary about all the hysteria about Twitter banning people and all that Trump-centric drama. Then I started thinking back to the years of this labeling right-wing people as potential domestic terrorists and how in the 1990s, the Clinton DOJ (Obama’s first Attorney General, Eric Holder, was in the Clinton DOJ too) and back then the FBI hyped the right-wing militia movement to the point it sounded like there were right-wing extremists everywhere… until 9/11. 

Once the federal government had to face the threat of Islamic-inspired terrorism, well, that was met by anger and resistance on the left, so when Obama was elected – Islamophobia became the biggest problem in America (well, next to racism) and it was because of… dangerous right-wing extremists. In case after case of terrorist attacks within the US, carried out by radical jihadists, there was an effort to reframe the incidents by federal officials and the liberal media. With the 2106 Pulse nightclub shooting, the FBI was aware of the shooter, Omar Mateen, but within days the liberal media had reframed that as due to anti-gay, right-wing Christians. In incident after incident, the FBI was aware of the jihadist shooter, but the liberal news media went full-throttle pushing a flipped script, where right-wing zealots caused the problem, not the radical Islamist, who carried out the attack. This flipping the script tactic continues to this day.

When President Biden gave his first speech after the October 7th Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians, he pledged support for Israel, but rambled on about Islamophobia – not the murdered Israeli civilians and hundreds of innocent civilian hostages (including Americans). Hamas is another group of radical jihadists. The Biden administration, which is largely a continuation of the Obama administration, jumped into flipping the script mode. The White House press secretary was blabbing about the threat of Islamophobia as anti-Semitic attacks in America skyrocketed.

I keep mentioning that short-lived Homeland Security Disinformation Governance Board, because just because the Biden administration disbanded that quickly, that doesn’t mean they’ve ditched that idea. Some tweaked and newly named effort will reemerge, because that’s how the left pushes their radical agenda. They back up, regroup, then rebrand and push forward. They aren’t deterred and they’re certainly not defeated, even though the political right thinks that “owning the libs” is victory. 

There is no concerted right-wing policy effort to counter the radical left’s onward march. The left’s been staking out territory within the federal bureaucracy and Pentagon for decades now. At the same time, for decades, even when they do have power in Washington, Republicans invariably squander it and they are always late to waking up to the left’s political moves.

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January 21, 2024 · 11:15 am

The global speech police effort begins

Back to my tin-foil hat post from the other day, well, I was the kid who was always looking for more information and often found the bibliography the most exciting part of books. With my posts on “cognitive security” I’m still trying to grasp the timelines involved in the development of this new field and definitely don’t understand all the made-up language and terminology the experts creating this new quasi state-corporate surveillance apparatus have developed. 

This isn’t some wild, right-wing conspiracy theory. The US government has funded all sorts of military contractors and experts to develop this new cognitive security field, that will be employed to “respond” to misinformation and disinformation “threats.” Once again, in April 2022 the Biden administration established the short-lived Disinformation Governance Board. 

A May 2022 CBS report, What is DHS’ Disinformation Governance Board and why is everyone so mad about it?,  described that board:

“A mix of career and political appointees will staff the board, according to a senior DHS official who briefed CBS News and was granted anonymity to speak freely on the department’s internal deliberations. While one official from each of the relevant components – CISA, FEMA, CBP, S & T, and I & A – will sit on the advisory committee, members of DHS’ Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and Privacy Office will also work with the group.”

I can answer that CBS headline question easily. People were so mad, because this Homeland Security board was the establishment of speech police in America, no matter how they try to spin it. Then add in that the “disinformation/misinformation expert,” Nina Jankowicz, tasked to lead this board had a social media history that bolstered Democrat spin efforts, like pushing the Hunter Biden laptop is Russian disinformation spin effort and also pushing the Clinton campaign dirty trick, bogus Steele dossier, spin effort. Presenting her as unbiased, would be like me trying to present myself as a centrist, because obviously my views are conservative and definitely to the right. The difference is I pay for my blog and admit upfront that I am definitely to the right in my views. It’s a safe bet that all of the “experts” involved in this effort to “respond to” disinformation and misinformation via some new “cognitive security” framework quasi-government-corporate partnership are liberals in good-standing on all the hot button liberal causes and rabidly anti-Trump.

Here’s a 2019 Medium article posted on Credibility Coalition, by John Gray and Sara-Jayne Terp: The MisinfoSec Framework Takes Shape: Misinformation, Stages, Techniques and Responses: Developing the AMITT (Adversarial Misinformation and Influence Tactics and Techniques) framework. Here’s the first paragraph, which reads almost like a mission statement:

“On May 24, 2019, the CredCo MisinfoSec Working Group met for the day at the Carter Center in as part of CredConX Atlanta. The purpose of the day was to draft a working MisinfoSec framework that incorporates the stages and techniques of misinformation, and the responses to it. We came up with a name for our framework: AMITT (Adversarial Misinformation and Influence Tactics and Techniques) provides a framework for understanding and responding to organized misinformation attacks based on existing information security principles.”

I don’t know who makes up the Credibility Coalition, but it’s website lists Hacks/Hackers and Meedan as the founders. The Credibility Coalition site describes their group:

“We are journalists, researchers, academics, students, policy-makers, technologists and engaged non-specialists.”

“We aim to develop common standards for information credibility by incubating activities and initiatives that bring together people and institutions from a variety of backgrounds.”

“Credibility Coalition’s core values are diversity, collaboration and thoughtfulness.”

In regards to the article linked about the Misinfosec framework, the post-it note photos speak volumes on what this effort is all about – it’s about labeling people and the “experts” developing the entire framework, language and labels are a self-selected group. Here’s a 2020 piece, The MisinfosecWG Counters Workshop: moving from admiration to action, by Sara-Jaybne Terp, explaining Misinfosec’s goal:

“”Countering disinformation is a multi-disciplinary activity, so we enlisted experts on disinformation, cognitive security, information security, narrative and rumor tracking, diplomacy, trust and safety, counterterrorism and CVE from our target user communities: industry, academia, media, community, government and military. We stated the workshop goals up front:

  • Draft a disinformation “Blue Team” playbook. Its intended users are defenders, information security people and organizations; its contents should be a set of responses to misinformation attacks, with information on networks, response types, frameworks, examples.
  • Ideate supporting an operational global Cognitive Security response network. The audience for this is potential response centre participants and leaders, and its contents should be a set of processes, methods, understanding needed to connect actors, partners, collaborators and funders.”

I didn’t know a thing about “cognitive security” until that House Judiciary Committee hearing in November 2023, so I was like other Republicans – late to the game. However, I’ve been following the Democrat spin information war since the 1990s and noticed some of the dramatic changes taking place in recent years. I had no idea that allegedly President Obama initiated this effort to combat disinformation and prevent another 2016, in his last days in office and now he’s produced an apocalyptic movie where the US is under attack and America’s communication systems have been disabled….

I had no clue about Sara-Jayne Terp meeting with Pablo Breuer, the military director of the Special Operations Command Donovan Group, NSA advisor and Cyber Command and Marc Rogers, a British cybersecurity expert in 2018 to brainstorm this cognitive security framework. From the Terp 2020 article, quoted in the previous paragraph, this is obviously intended to be a global cognitive security network they’re building to police the internet for misinformation and disinformation threats and respond to them. Obviously, countries with laws that allow silencing free speech will allow for more robust policing efforts and it will be easier to counter (silence) speech that earns you a post-it note label. Getting around America’s 1st Amendment will present some obstacles to the global “cognitive security” speech police.

And finally, the world’s elites meeting at Davos this year comes with the WEF experts making “disinformation and misinformation” their #1 risk for 2024… Looks like this global Cognitive Security response network has fully launched and most Americans are completely unaware. The Republicans, who might resist this effort are probably the few who paid any attention to that November House hearing on the weaponization of the federal government or followed the Twitter Files reporters (I didn’t). The Republican House effort about the “weaponization of the federal government” has been so much about Trump’s drama that it’s easily dismissed as just more of the partisan clown show in Washington. 

This is how most things go. The entire climate agenda and UN 2030 Agenda have been decades in the making, but most of us on the right didn’t pay close enough attention and it’s easy to be distracted by and get fixated on the left’s loudest messengers, like Greta Thunberg or we give so much oxygen to the viral TikTok leftist crazies that a lot of right-wing pundits use to stir up anger among the right. However, the actual serious policy legwork and building government and corporate frameworks, that are winning the left’s culture war, were years in the making by teams of experts, who established networks around the globe. 

On the right, unfortunately most of the people in politics are grifters or pundits looking to make money off of stirring up right-wing populist rage, not people who would spend years developing a global speech police force under the guise of a made-up term “cognitive security.” Seriously, years ago it was Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck with their big rally format to stir up populist anger about taking back America, then along came Trump in 2016 to borrow that same big rally format to foment populist anger.

Unfortunately, too many on the right believe that Trump is the solution to everything and somehow this man, who’s still stuck in 2016 spin war tactics, will singlehandedly save America… The development of this cognitive security field started in 2018 and included government funding and involvement. Trump was president when all of this was happening and in 2020, when it came to the crazy social mitigation efforts, well, Trump went along with that too. All I can say is it’s going to take a lot more than Trump to push back against this radical global transformation being initiated by the elite Davos crowd.

It will be very challenging to win the battle for free speech in America, when liberal elites control the information superhighway infrastructure and the right is filled with people addicted to “owning the libs” and wasting time blabbing about weirdos and kooks on TikTok, that right-wing media sensationalizes. 

That said a starting point is to be vigilant about rejecting the new terminology and labeling efforts this new speech policing effort tries to normalize. I am not giving any credence to “cognitive security” as anything other than policing speech and trying to silence unpopular viewpoints. 

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January 20, 2024 · 3:58 pm

WEF lists misinformation and disinformation as #1 threat

This is a video of the November 30, 2023 House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. With this hearing, the Democrats on the committee dismissed the very idea that weaponization of the federal government happened and they dismissed the witnesses’ testimony. This “nothing to see here” and “this hearing is a waste of time” are tried and true Democrat talking points to get past Republican-led Congressional hearings. The liberal news media takes their cues from the Democrats and runs with those talking points. While the liberal news media could talk about Stormy Daniels for a year, they moved past this hearing with just a cursory mention… and dismissal of it.

This hearing had witnesses testifying about information they allege came from a federal government worker and detailed the formation of the “all-volunteer” Cyber Threat Intelligence League and information about the beginning of the “cognitive security” apparatus. . 

The framework developed by the American “cognitive security” experts is already being used by the WHO and in Europe. The merging of corporations, gathering and providing data on Americans to the federal government and silencing Americans on social media, all based on federal bureaucrats or partisans handing names to social media companies, is just farming out government censorship to private contractors basically. This entire new field of ‘cognitive security” appears to have been set-up using military contractors, to bypass Americans’ 1st Amendment protections. The program has been run through the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which the federal government founded in 2018.  

In yesterday’s blog post, I said “cognitive security” is a made-up term, that’s now been turned into a whole new “security field,” used to identify people saying things that the “cognitive security experts” have decided are misinformation, disinformation or that places a person within one of the ever-growing categories of “dangerous people,” who might be a “threat” of some sort. This House hearing in November brought to light the infrastructure that Democrats have been putting in place within the US government since 2017, all under the guise of protecting Americans from dangerous “misinformation and disinformation.”

The WEF’s #1 immediate risk for 2024 is misinformation and disinformation.” So, there you have it from the world’s elite expert class – they’re going to be laser-focused on policing speech and cracking down on misinformation and disinformation this year. 

This morning, I heard this 2024 WEF list mentioned in a video, so I looked it up myself. Here’s the article: These are the biggest global risks we face in 2024 and beyond. The WEF surveyed “nearly 1,500 global experts from academia, business, government, the international community and civil society.” So, the climate crisis (extreme weather events on this list) was bumped to #2, so that tells you how serious they believe misinformation and disinformation are. Take note also that the Great Reset global transformation is meeting more and more populist resistance across Europe, in Canada and in the US, so naturally all those peons complaining must be silenced, so that the grand global transformation continues apace.

For some reason people on the right are always way behind in recognizing the liberal elites’ spin information war has always been about controlling public opinion by controlling the media in America. This “cognitive security” effort is just another alarming movement in the Democrats’ spin information war.

I don’t know if many of the political people on the right have noticed that since 2016, Trump and many right-wing pundits and politicians have become much better at defeating orchestrated Democrat spin attacks and Dems aren’t engaging like they used to on Twitter/X. Since Elon Musk bought Twitter, there’s been a shift in the Twitter/X spin information war and many of the most ardent Dem. spin warriors are no longer launching spin attacks on X or engaging in spin battles on X. At the same time there’s been a concerted effort to attack Musk constantly. Many of the right-wing pundits are still busily “owning the libs” and hyping every crazy liberal video from TikTok that goes viral on Twitter/X, but I wonder if they’ve noticed the left spinmeisters aren’t engaging nearly as much as they were on Twitter/X and the right-wing people on Twitter/X are mostly talking amongst themselves now. 

The spin information war battlefield has been changing a great deal in the lead up to 2024, but I don’t think many Republicans are even are aware of it. They’re still stuck in ranting about 2020 or J-6 drama..

The left is going to utilize a new spin war battlefield, I believe, and it’s not Twitter/X. I believe they’re going to ramp up efforts to silence more and more “MAGA” Americans and manipulate media in much bigger ways than the armies of Dem operatives and liberal news media mouthpieces, who have launched Dem spin attacks, with talking points for decades. I expect Democrat bigwigs to work with the “cognitive security” experts and Silicon Valley bigwigs, to spin up crises this year, that will serve as cover for much more aggressive means to silence Americans they label as “threats.” I expect Americans to be subjected to “military/intel experts in cognitive-security” (same Obama intel cabal again) to try to con Americans into believing all sorts of dire misinformation and disinformation threats demand all sorts of new curtailment of free speech, especially on social media. I expect a lot of “Crisis!” hype this year.

President Biden had warned us all about those dastardly “MAGA Republicans” and FBI director, Chris Wray, repeatedly stated that right-wing Americans are the biggest domestic threat – until after the October7th Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians, when he felt compelled to warn about the potential of radical Islamists and sleeper cells.  

The development of this “cognitive security” field began during the Trump administration, although it’s doubtful top Trump officials were even in the loop on this. I think Democrats will march in lockstep and maintain their control of the federal bureaucracy, no matter what happens, especially those involved in “cognitive security,” while Republicans would likely continue the internal fighting, even if Trump wins. 

Republicans have always been late to the game in this spin information war and right now, I think they’re rallying on the wrong battlefields, while Dems have moved on to a much bigger one, that they completely own. 

Note: The Obama administration put this “cognitive security” effort into motion in January 2017 and the scope of this effort just came to light in 2023 – that’s the timeline lag between the Dem spin information war and Republicans even being aware of what’s going on. By the time Republicans realize it’s not 2016 and Trump’s Twitter magic and “owning the libs” won’t defeat the massive Dem-initiated cognitive security apparatus, well, who knows where America will be…

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January 19, 2024 · 3:51 pm

Some tin-foil hat musings today

“If freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” 

— George Washington

This is a politics blog post. Back in December, I wrote about the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, an “all-volunteer” group which formed in 2020 to help combat misinformation. ( here, here, here). A new field called “cognitive security,” emerged, that appears to have been initiated by the Obama administration in January 2017, just before President Trump was inaugurated. Instead of just trying to combat cyberattacks and improve cyber-security, the goal now is ostensibly to protect people from misinformation, by identifying and thwarting all the bad people spreading “misinformation.” This term “cognitive security” was made-up by the experts, who are working on ways to label, target and silence Americans, whose views they feel are spreading “misinformation.” 

It’s setting up thought police, no matter what term they choose to use.

Throughout the Trump presidency there was an endless stream of Democrat and liberal media hype about “Russian disinformation/misinformation” and all of it was tied up in trying to link Trump to Russia or other Republicans and right-wing people to Russia. Days before the 2020 election, dozens of former US intelligence officials declared that the Hunter Biden laptop was “Russian disinformation” and none of them had any intelligence whatsoever to make that determination. The liberal media ran with their assessment though. Later it was revealed the FBI had that laptop in their custody and could have evaluated that laptop.

During the 2020 pandemic, “misinformation” once again targeted right-wing people as the bad people spreading “misinformation,” but it wasn’t so cut and dried and some of the “experts” pushing all the federal health policies ended up being very wrong. However, while fear and alarm were ramped up, many Americans had their rights infringed upon, including some prominent experts in vaccines and epidemiology being banned from social media for disagreeing with Dr. Fauci and his “experts.” Many Americans couldn’t attend church services, many businesses were forced to close or dramatically alter how they operated.

If you were paying attention, you might have noticed that the politicized labeling craze moved into high-gear in 2020 and there was a concerted effort to smear people who disagreed with the COVID social mitigation policies as evil and dangerous people. By the time the vaccine rolled out, there was a mass-media effort, ranting about the dreaded “Unvaccinated,” which also came with booting out over 8,000 military members, who refused to get the COVID vaccine. Last year those COVID vaccine policies were ditched and due to serious recruiting shortfalls, the military has been trying to coax those military members to rejoin. 

Without rehashing the pandemic or all the fall-out, with the information that came out about the CTI League, one of the key components of this new field of “cognitive security” is to pigeonhole people into groups and label them… to identify the people who hold “dangerous” beliefs and might spread “misinformation.” 

A couple days ago, there was a FOX News report on the House Judiciary findings:

“House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan said the documents obtained by the committee indicate that after Jan. 6, 2021, the Treasury Department’s Office of Stakeholder Integration and Engagement in the Strategic Operations of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, distributed materials to financial institutions that outlined “typologies” of “various persons of interest” and provided the banks with “suggested search terms and Merchant Category Codes for identifying transactions on behalf of federal law enforcement.” https://judiciary.house.gov/media/in-the-news/alarming-surveillance-feds-asked-banks-search-private-transactions-terms-maga

That link is an interesting read Jordan continued:

“Jordan said the committee obtained documents showing that FinCEN distributed slides, prepared by Key Bank, to other banks to explain how they could use merchant category codes (MCC) to detect customers whose transactions may reflect “potential active shooters, and who may include dangerous International Terrorists/ Domestic Terrorists/ Homegrown Violence Extremists (‘Lone Wolves’).”

Jordan said the slide instructs financial institutions to query for transactions using certain MCC codes like “3484: Small Arms,” “5091: Sporting and Recreational Goods and Supplies,” and the keywords “Cabela’s” and “Dick’s Sporting Goods,” “Bass Pro Shops,” among others.

Key Bank declined to comment.”

Whatever you think about the warnings about the government tracking your purchases and labeling people into groups – well, it’s already happening and it’s all one-sided. 

Last year, I wrote a blog post, Who are the totalitarians?, mentioning the spread of hate speech laws happening in Europe and Canada. Well, this effort is ongoing in America too and the architects here are having to find ways to mask federal government involvement due to our 1st Amendment free speech rights, so expect more melding government via “nudging” of private corporations pressuring people to comply to the far-left speech policing dictates or corporations working with federal government entities to identify people who run afoul of the new speech codes being pushed.

It’s easy to dismiss all of this as more tin-foil hat musings, but it was just last year that the Biden administration launched a short-lived “Disinformation Governance Board” within the Department of Homeland Security with this woman as the head of it:

There are all sorts of clips this week of the WEF annual meeting in Davos, where the world’s elite fly in and share all their ideas on how to radically transform the world and right-wing media always go berserk highlighting this. However, those right-wing concerns, I believe, aren’t all wild tin-foil hat craziness. Just follow the bits of information that keep cropping up in Europe, Canada, Australia and here at home in America that center on “fighting misinformation” and the left’s battle against “hate speech.”

Back in May 2023, Biden climate envoy, John Kerry, was claiming victory for the climate agenda:

“The economy has so drastically and fundamentally changed in the past several years, Kerry argued – spurred in large part by the Democrats’ climate and energy law passed last year – that the markets would reject a challenge to the nation’s clean energy trajectory.

“I don’t think anybody elected president – Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative – could change what is happening today,” President Joe Biden’s top climate diplomat told CNN in a candid and wide-ranging interview in his State Department office.” https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/12/politics/john-kerry-republicans-china-biden-climate/index.html

Despite Kerry’s claiming victory for the green transformation, this transformation also includes a radical social policy agenda. Populist uprisings in Europe have been increasing in the last few years, with farmers in revolt and even here in America, there have been several boycott efforts. For all of Kerry’s bravado, he’s repositioning himself and stepping down as Biden’s climate envoy in a few weeks.

Being very distrusting of the Democrat stealth way of ramming through policies or finding corrupt ways to work around the US Constitution, to implement their policies, I think it’s probably safe to keep my tin foil hat, pictured above, handy. One of my sons made that for me several years ago when I was telling him about the corrupt Dem spin information war. I was a tiny bit hurt that he completely dismissed what I was saying, but watching that spin info war progress and all the word games that accompany it, unfortunately most people just “trust the experts” and start spouting the new words and phrases the media and elites in academia hype, without question. You can look at a term like “gender-affirming” care for kids, which involves pumping kids full of hormones and encouraging irreversible sex-change operation. That term was mainstreamed via a mass-media spin effort, replete with all sorts of experts selling it. Millions of people began “trusting the experts” and bought into the gender ideology without question. Along with the mainstreaming the new gender terminology, there was also a mass-media spin effort to demonize anyone who dared question the new ideas and terms. 

With the hype about “misinformation,” well there’s already been several years of “Russian misinformation” media-generated hysteria, we’ve had all the COVID hysteria and we’re into the fourth year of dangerous “MAGA extremists” Dem-spin theater. As the experts developing this new made-up field of “cognitive security,” replete with ever-increasing categories, anyone could end up placed on some secret government list, due to their purchases, the social media content they watch or even the streaming content they watch on TV, and not even know it. And with the merging of carrying out government policy via corporate elites, we have no real way to prove it, let alone challenge it. 

As for me, I’m holding on to this tin-foil hat and that son still trusts some of the COVID experts, but he’s always been a gun enthusiast, so when he ends up on some watch list or this Dem-initiated thought police effort advances and hits him, I’m prepared to give that tin-foil hat back to him. 

History clearly shows that these sorts of totalitarian efforts to police speech and thoughts always spiral out of control easily and the people making the lists never run out of new labels to divide and silence people.

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January 12, 2024 · 12:44 pm

Why do so many Americans feel a lack of community?

For many years it’s common to hear people in America lament about our lack of community or read articles about how this new project or technology is the panacea that will create strong communities, as connected and idyllic as in the good old days. From social media to politically-motivated community organizing, there’s advice galore on how to build and empower strong communities, yet invariably they don’t live up to their hype. Even worse most of these modern day “community-building” projects end up creating more divisiveness and people feeling more alienated.

So what really allows people to feel that sense of close-knit community? 

Today I was rereading parts of a book I purchased in 2015 that still prods me to think about what really matters. In 2010, Amish Peace: Simple Wisdom for a Complicated World, written by Suzanne Woods Fisher, was a finalist in the ECPA Christian Book of the Year and it was Fisher’s first book. She’s branched out into writing fictional Christian-themed books since then. I consider this book a gem, no matter what your religious or spiritual beliefs.

As Fisher works to explain the Amish, often referred to as the “plain people,” she provides stories and conversations with Amish people and lets them explain their culture, lifestyle and beliefs. She lets them reveal their hearts and at the end of each chapter she poses questions for each of us to ponder in our own lives.

The Amish choose to live without most modern conveniences and dress in distinctive dark-colored clothes. Making careful decisions about their lifestyle and the welfare of the community extends to every corner of how they live their lives. That dedication to the community goes much deeper than just the material “stuff” that clutters our lives, it’s about deliberately choosing simplicity. 

Woods wrote, “The Amish have a guiding principle that seems to rest on Jesus’ words: to only live with things that they really use. And to treasure them.” At the end of the chapter on Simplicity, she poses the question, “Look around the room where you are right now. What is gathering dust? Does it have value to you? Think about the things that share your space — are they things you value or do they hinder what really matters in life?” Then she poses a harder question, “How would you describe simple living? Fewer possessions? Fewer choices? Or what about an emphasis on only the things that really matter?” 

Lo’ and behold we now have all sorts of decluttering experts and minimalist experts these days promising that if we pare down on the “stuff” we’ll find more peace and contentment in our lives. Fisher explained, “It relates to guarding well what the Amish truly treasure: their families, their homes, their communities, their faith.” They keep their priorities clearly in focus, not the glitter of new gadgets or pop psychology that everyone else is buying.

Woods explained something I didn’t really understand about the Amish and how they choose which modern things to use and which they shun. Practices vary, because church leaders in different Amish sects make those decisions and sometimes it’s a period of probation, weighing out its long-term effect. Woods explained, “And always church leaders consider where a change could lead the younger generation. They try to see beyond the immediate benefits of change to the effects it could have down the road. How could this new technology or gadget tempt someone away from the church? Or to disobey God?”

The Amish are big on setting limits on almost everything. Fisher explained the Amish believe that maintaining a connection to the land and farming is vital, but Amish mostly keep their farms to no more than eighty tillable acres. They limit the size to something manageable by their family. They also keep their communities small and will split them into another community if they grow too much. The goal is so that everyone in the community knows everyone else and is connected. She explained that it’s not only stuff they try to limit, but they also try to avoid temptations. I’ve heard diet experts for years advise that the easiest way to avoid junk food and bad snacks is to not buy it – avoid the temptation. There are other experts (and a whole marketing effort selling 100 calorie snacks & small portions) that urge carefully limiting the amount of snacks. We’ve got more “addictions” in our modern age than most of us can keep track of and all of that speaks to a people with so many diversions and choices, yet an inability to set limits and boundaries.

Another interesting limit mentioned in this book was some Amish church leaders were concerned that phones might encourage gossiping and interfere in people taking the time to meeting in person, which is a central part of Amish life. Just thinking about how life changed from phones to cell phones and the advent of messaging, well, I’ve been frustrated and felt alone sitting at the same table with some family members or other people who are engrossed in their cell phones and don’t even make eye contact or carry on conversation. Loads of people avoid actual phone conversations now and opt for text messaging.

The internet changed the world in many positive ways, despite all the bad things that have stemmed from it. I realized many years ago that I can learn many hands-on tasks better via watching videos than by step-by-step manuals and diagrams and pictures. With some new needlework/craft projects, I watch the videos, pausing, and then performing each step, to get the hang of it. The ability to rewind and watch the task performed as many times as I need to is much better than trying to look at a diagram or picture. Plus, with many videos the instructions come with advice on common problems and trouble-shooting, and often cheerful encouragement.

On the negative side, the internet can also be a huge time suck, where I can waste hours browsing, watching videos, reading a lot of pointless information rather than devoting that time to more worthwhile endeavors. There’s an even darker side to the internet that leads many people down very dark paths – porn, gambling, scams, and every other sort of human vice, often luring or preying especially on young people or the elderly.

Since I was a kid, I’ve been clipping newspaper and magazine information, project ideas, recipes, etc. and I still print out a lot of recipes and craft/needlework information. As long as the internet is easily available and Pinterest exists, well, I am going to take advantage of that. I also won’t voluntarily discard all of the modern conveniences. However, I am trying to work on limiting my screen time and avoiding online hot take news and social media drama.

An interesting thing about gadgets is with my four oldest granddaughters, I bought them several kindles over the years and then a few years ago they told me they prefer actual books. I think 2020, and all that “virtual learning” turned off many kids to sitting and looking at screens all day long. One of my granddaughters told me it just feels better holding a book. Another interesting trend is despite all the options for digital music, record players and actual vinyl records are making a comeback. One of my 16 year-old granddaughters wanted a record player for Christmas. However, the toss side of this is that most young people, according to survey after survey, would like to be a social media influencer and millions upon millions of young people grew up without any social boundaries, where posting selfies (many inappropriate) and updates on just about every moment of their lives is fairly common. Down the road, surely many will regret their youthful social media posts. There are loads of adults who get emotionally invested in engaging in social media drama too.

With social media, along with the awful, there are amateur content creators who produce worthwhile content of all sorts. I’m trying to choose more carefully whose advice, instructions, ideas, even recipes I’m going to follow.  This goes for letting any media influence my emotions too, because even many people online, who wax on about their Christian values, can spread unverified information, negativity or ideas and advice that runs counter to what matters to me.

I am not Amish. While my family heritage is mostly PA Dutch, my family isn’t Amish or Mennonite. My ancestors were early PA Germans settlers, many in the mid 1700s, at the same time many Amish arrived, but they were German Reformed and lived more secular lives.  There are still small enclaves in rural PA where the people cook traditional PA Dutch food and some still speak PA Dutch. My father and his relatives spoke PA Dutch around each other, but they spoke English too. My family attended a UCC church, that had been a German Reformed church, not Amish or Mennonite, and we lived like modern Americans, but I have always been fascinated by the Amish. 

Most of us aren’t going to voluntarily give up modern conveniences or try to live like the Amish, but there’s merit in their devotion to simple living and making careful choices on which modern technology we allow into our lives.  Very few gadgets and appliances live up to their hype or end up adding any real value to my life whatsoever. Even more worrisome is some have negative impacts on people’s lives. Living under a microscope, where every touch on a keyboard or click of a mouse and even how long we look at a screen is recorded and sold as “data” or that could be used to label us, should raise alarm bells about our privacy and personal liberty. I find it alarming and creepy how if I look at some item online and ads for that item shows up everywhere I go online. I don’t want household appliances that monitor every step I take, every move I make and government or corporations using that data to manipulate, judge, label or try to control me.

The larger concerning issue with modern technology is it’s ability to divide and isolate people. The idea that the internet would unite the world sure hasn’t panned out. The Amish believe in living simply, in close-knit communities, where their families and neighbors all know each other and more importantly are committed to each other’s welfare. It’s that commitment to each other that is the vital building block of community. 

In 2021 Sharyl Attkisson, an investigative reporter, went to talk to the Amish and looked into how they handled the pandemic. She reported, “The Amish community in Lancaster, Pa., (and Amish counties across the state) is making it through the pandemic without experiencing a catastrophic loss of life despite its refusal to adopt many of the safety precautions portrayed as necessary to prevent widespread loss of life. While officials in most U.S. cities ordered businesses and churches to close for several months in an attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19, the Amish continued working and never stopped worshiping together at church.” 

The Amish wanted no parts of the pandemic social mitigation efforts to isolate sick family members or neighbors and many refused to go to a hospital, preferring to take their chances being cared for at home by family and friends vs. not being able to see loved ones.. She continued, “In fact, the CDC shows that counties like lancaster, with substantial Amish populations, have the lowest Covid rates in the state. Lower, in fact, than areas that still have mask and other health mandates in place.” In the beginning of the pandemic, COVID raced through Amish communities, but they continued living their lives as normal. 

Building real communities, where members of the community work together on common goals and care about each other’s well-being and welfare, is what has kept the Amish thriving for hundreds of years. It’s also what has historically created close-knit communities all over the world. All the technology in the world can’t replace those simple human connections. While it sounds so easy, for many of us searching our own hearts and reaching out a hand to even people we care about can be challenging and we’re all inundated with information overload that can keep us distracted and unable to even focus on the simple things that really matter. Getting back to the basics might be the key.

Note: I stuck in a few photos of some of my PA Dutch themed cross stitch, a PA Dutch hex sign I have in my foyer and a PA Dutch cookbook I’ve had for decades. The Amish boy and girl cross stitch at the top is a Diane Graebner design. Graebner’s Amish art is very popular and many of her designs have been converted into cross stitch patterns.

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January 9, 2024 · 10:00 am

A small detour back to elementary school

Well, it’s stormy weather today, so what better time to sit at the kitchen table and do an elementary school science project. I sorted through my shoebox of old seeds and decided that it would be easier to do some simple seed viability testing before planting a bunch of old seeds. The oldest pack I’m testing is a 1996 unopened pack of onion seeds.

There are a lot of unopened flower seed packs. I googled to refresh my memory on seed viability testing, because it’s been many years since I did this. It’s basically the old ziploc bag method with a dampened paper towel inside. I watched a video by Gardener Scott, whose YT channel I enjoy, and he had some useful tips. He recommended that instead of wrapping the seeds inside a damp paper towel and sticking it in the bag (how I used to do it), he suggested placing the paper towel inside the bag, then misting the paper towel inside the bag, and finally put the seeds on one side of the paper towel. That way you can see if the seeds germinated without opening the bag and fiddling with unwrapping the paper towel to find the seeds.

A lot of gardeners keep a garden journal, but I’m not organized enough to stick with jotting down notes regularly and keeping track of data. And the thing about any journal or recordkeeping is it’s only useful if you analyze the notes and data, to gain some information and insights. Know thyself is always a good bit of data to seriously analyze before starting projects. I know I won’t keep up with jotting down notes in a journal, then reading them later, plus I’m likely to misplace the journal (like I did with this shoebox of old seeds). Since it’s winter time, I figure I can easily keep track of some baggies with seeds in them for a few weeks and check if any germinate. Using that information will make it easier to decide which of these old seeds to plant. 

I have a few packs of cactus and succulent seeds, like these 2010 Park Seed succulents and I remember those were not cheap. I’m not doing seed viability testing for those, because there aren’t many seeds in these packs. I’ll just plant them and hope for the best.

Apologies for the terrible photography. I am really awful at taking pictures. Now, it’s back to laundry for me.

Note: Yeah, yeah I looked at the succulent seed packs again and noticed there are 300 seeds with that sempervivum pack, but the other packs of cactus and succulent seed packs don’t have many seeds in them. 

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