All you’ll ever need to know about those spy balloons

As an aside, it appears that Jao Bai-Ding, in accordance with the wishes of his ChiCom owners, has fulfilled the Bee’s prophecy: Biden Says He’ll Shoot Down Chinese Spy Balloon As Soon As He’s Done Letting It Spy. Brandon Smith has a look into it.

There are numerous theories as to why such a surveillance platform would be used by the CCP and what it is designed to look for, and I thought I would offer a couple theories based on my years of study into similar projects pursued by the US Department of Defense and DARPA.

Lidar Observation From A Balloon Platform

The Chinese have been messing with lidar technology a lot lately. Lidar uses pulsed lasers to measure small variations in terrain to uncover hidden shapes and structures. It also has a knack for cutting through forest canopy and other obstructions. The problem with lidar is that the platforms commonly used to carry the apparatus are faster moving and only capture a snapshot in time. Also, it cannot see through thick clouds, dust, rain, snow or fog.

NASA and DARPA have both been testing lidar from balloons as a means to keep the lasers in the sky longer above a specific area. The Chinese balloon also looks somewhat similar to the equipment used on European lidar balloon experiments.

A lidar based spy balloon would explain Chinese interest in Eastern Montana, where there are numerous known nuclear missile silos as well as suspected hidden silos. The Chinese balloon did in fact come near at least one known nuclear missile base near Billings. Lidar could be exploited to find hidden bases in the region.

Weapons Delivery Platform

High altitude balloons are cheap and relatively effective surveillance platforms that can be used much like satellites but, with the right equipment, could become far more maneuverable. With the CCP’s limited resources it makes sense that they would be utilizing low-cost and low visibility measures instead of expensive and easier to target long range drones or spy planes.

However, these systems are not just useful for observation – They can also be used to deliver weapons packages, including EMP weapons, nuclear weapons and biological agents. The US has been testing balloons for nuclear delivery ever since Operation Yucca in 1956.

In the event of war between China and the US, the CCP may be looking for a way to strike with weapons of mass destruction with a passive delivery system that’s hard to defend against.

The EMP business is worrisome, sure. But war—actual, literal, armies-marching-as-to-no-shit war? Sorry, but despite the recent alarums raised in various quarters about a Chinese attack and/or invasion of the FUSA, I still can’t find it in myself to fret overmuch about the possibility. I mean, why on earth would they bother? They already OWN us lock, stock, and barrel, in both political and economic terms. Given their real-estate acquisitions here over the last several years, a hot war with us would only mean willfully and needlessly ruining the return on their investment.

Then again, though, they’re fucking Commies, so what would they know about maximizing return on investment anyway?

In the end, it all comes down to this: Who really needs military conquest and the attendant hassle, aggravation, and expense, when they de facto defeated us years ago—with the full and witting cooperation of America’s greedy, traitorous Ruling Class—without ever actually having to fire a shot?

1

Old Media launches pre-emptive strike

In typical dishonest fashion, against their latest hate-object.

DeSantis Derangement Syndrome: The media get even more unhinged

For those of us with already-low expectations for the leftist media, they’ve been working to lower that bar even further in their coverage of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

You’d think these press organizations would have learned from their Trump Derangement Syndrome, when they burned trust in so many institutions, including and specifically their own, trying to fight President Donald Trump. Instead, they’ve simply substituted DeSantis in their activist, bile-filled, often-totally-wrong rants.

CNN reporter John Blake sent this note to DeSantis’ press secretary, Bryan Griffin, asking for comment after the gov blocked a woke high-school class: “I’ve talked to one of the nation’s leading scholars on fascism who, along with another scholar who is an authority on fascism, say that DeSantis’ decision echoes similar decisions made by fascist dictators to force what one historian calls ‘collective amnesia’ about the past.”

I’m writing a piece calling the governor a fascist, care to comment? And how long have you been beating your wife?

Griffin posted Blake’s request to Twitter, pulling back the curtain on how hit pieces calling America’s most popular governor a “fascist” get made.

The Daily Beast ran an entirely fictitious account, likely written in crayon, of the DeSantis team paying influencers and “bot farms” on Twitter.

DeSantis for his part talks directly to Floridians and calmly explains his policies, which Floridians continue to support despite the media hoopla. He comes to his press conferences armed with facts and never lets the media get the better of him. He and his team have been teaching a master class in how to handle the dishonest press.

But they shouldn’t have to. Even those who don’t share his politics should speak up and say the coverage is absurd and lack of trust in news organizations has hurt us all. But they won’t because there are elections to win.

Well, that, plus they just enjoy the near-sexual frisson deceitfully slandering their adversaries and bringing them down provides them so much they really can’t help themselves. It’s too great a temptation for the snarling, yappy little ankle-biters to resist.

As for Ron The Great, he’s been an excellent governor, accomplishing several real and worthwhile things aimed at undoing many of the Great Leaps Forward made by Florida Leftards. Which is exactly why they hate him so desperately: love him or hate him, see him as a genuine reformer or just another grubby politician on the make, there’s no denying that DeSantis has been damned effective as governor of Florida.

And that’s what counts most at this point. The Sovereign States are where all the action is; for the most part, all the national political maneuvering and Titanic-deck-chair reshuffling hardly even registers with me anymore, it’s close to irrelevant. We know for sure and certain that the President is nothing more than a figurehead—a malleable, pliant ventriloquist’s dummy trotted out to make speeches at fundraisers. Trump’s Oval Orifice ordeal raised the curtain on that harsh reality, and the Biden meat-puppet’s disastrous tenure has confirmed it beyond all doubt.

I mean, seriously now: even diehard Dim-O-Creeps are coming around, in steadily increasing numbers, to the manifestly-obvious fact that the Biden meat-puppet isn’t in charge of his own daily bowel movement, much less of Amerika v2.0’s bloated central government, whether they’re willing to openly admit to it yet or not. Not that they’ll balk at campaigning, fundraising, and voting for the addle-pated old crook in 2024, mind. After all, they ARE still D卐M☭CRATs, you know.

Despite all the will he-won’t he 2024 Presidential speculation, despite oleaginous operators from both sides of the political fence presuming to put words in DeSantis’ mouth for their own purposes, I have yet to see the man himself utter Syllable One about the chances of him deciding to take a run at the tarnished brass ring. That makes me very happy indeed; as I’ve said over and over, Real Americans need Ron DeSantis right where he currently is. He’ll do way more good for us as Florida’s governor than he’ll ever be permitted to as POTUS, if only as a morale- and resolve-booster showing that the Left juggernaut isn’t invincible—that with a little effort and determination, they can in fact be defeated.

Should he decide to run anyhow, it will reveal much about who and what Ron DeSantis really is down deep—his character, his intelligence, his ego, his ambitions, his grasp of current reality, even—none of it the slightest bit encouraging. That will be a truly sad day, both for us and for the nation its own self.

1

So how is Biden’s War On Russia working out so far?

Not too good.

The point of the war, you recall, is “to weaken Russia” (so said DoD Sec’y Lloyd Austin), even to bust it up into little geographic tatters to our country’s advantage — that is, to retain America’s dominance in global affairs, and especially the supremacy of the US dollar in global trade settlements.

The result of the war so far has been the opposite of that objective. US sanctions made Russia stronger by shifting its oil exports to more reliable Asian customers. Kicking Russia out of the SWIFT global payments system prompted the BRIC countries to build their own alternative trade settlement system. Cutting off Russia from trade with Western Civ has stimulated the process of import replacement (i.e., Russia making more of the stuff it used to buy from Europe). Confiscating Russia’s off-shore dollar assets has alerted the rest of the world to dump their dollar assets (especially US Treasury bonds) before they, too, get mugged. Nice going, Victoria Nuland, Tony Blinken, and the rest of the gang at the Foggy Bottom genius factory.

All of which raises the question: who is liable to bust up into tatters first, the USA or Russia? I commend to you Dmitry Orlov’s seminal work, Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects, Revised & Updated. For anyone out there not paying attention the past thirty-odd years, Russia, incorporated as the Soviet Union, collapsed in 1991. The USSR was a bold experiment based on the peculiar and novel ill-effects of industrialism, especially gross economic inequality. Alas, the putative remedy for that, advanced by Karl Marx, was a despotic system of pretending that individual humans had no personal aspirations of their own.

The Soviet / Marxist business model was eventually reduced to the comic aphorism: We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us. It failed and the USSR gurgled down history’s drain. Russia reemerged from the dust, minus many of its Eurasian outlands. Remarkably little blood was shed in the process. Mr. Orlov’s book points to some very interesting set-ups that softened the landing. There was no private property in the USSR, so when it collapsed, nobody was evicted or foreclosed from where they lived. Very few people had cars in the USSR, so the city centers were still intact and people could get around on buses, trams, and trains. The food system had been botched for decades by low-incentive collectivism, but the Russian people were used to planting family gardens — even city dwellers, who had plots out-of-town — and it tided them over during the years of hardship before the country managed to reorganize.

Compare that to America’s prospects. In an economic crisis, Americans will have their homes foreclosed out from under them, or will be subject to eviction from rentals. The USA has been tragically built-out on a suburban sprawl template that will be useless without cars and with little public transport. Cars, of course, are subject to repossession for non-payment of contracted loans. The American food system is based on manufactured microwavable cheese snacks, chicken nuggets, and frozen pizzas produced by giant companies. These items can’t be grown in home gardens. Many Americans don’t know the first thing about growing their own food, or what to do with it after it’s harvested.

There’s another difference between the fall of the USSR and the collapse underway in the USA. Underneath all the economic perversities of Soviet life, Russia still had a national identity and a coherent culture. The USA has tossed its national identity on the garbage barge of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” which is actually just a hustle aimed at extracting what remains from the diminishing stock of productive activity showering the plunder on a mob of “intersectional” complainers — e.g., the City of San Francisco’s preposterous new plan to award $5-million “reparation” payments to African-American denizens of the city, where slavery never existed.

As for culture, consider that the two biggest cultural producers in this land are the pornography and video game industries. The drug business might be a close third, but most of that action is off-the-books, so it’s hard to tell. So much for the so-called “arts.” Our political culture verges on totally degenerate, but that is too self-evident to belabor, and the generalized management failures of our polity are a big part of what’s bringing us down — most particularly the failure to hold anyone in power accountable for their blunders and turpitudes.

As for the “which will fall first” question, with America now entirely in the inept hands of its own homegrown Marxists and their pretend “opposition,” well, the answer ought to be obvious. Russia already went through that cataclysmic teachable moment once; soon, it will be our turn.

And yes, Kunstler’s reversion to his by now Standard-Form surfeit of unfounded optimism concerning “investigations” and such tripe in the final ‘graph remains in full rose-tinted effect. Y’know, just in case any of you were wondering about that.

1

Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children disgrace themselves

As goes the rest of the FUSA military, so go the Marines.

 


Disgusting. But it’s probably just as well, I suppose; if today’s Marine Corps had deigned this vet worthy of a visit from one of their own, they’d have undoubtedly sent along a Jarhead in his prettiest black cocktail dress and spiked heels, in full make-up. If Mr Thompson’s poor dad didn’t stroke out right away from the sheer horror of it, being confronted by what Wokester pissants have done to his beloved Corps would have put him on a rage-high that would last for the rest of his days. I’m with Billy:

In TOTAL there were only 589,852 MARINES to serve in WW2.

16 Million Americans served in uniform

Only a little over 500k were Marines

That means this gentleman is one of a very few surviving Devil Dogs Left

Shame on the Marines for blowing this guy off.

Fucking the local Jarheads -should- have a fucking parade for him…

WTF ever happened to “Semper Fidelis?”

Always Faithful my ass.

Indeed. I repeat: Disgusting. Disgraceful. Reprehensible. And truly, truly sad.

My sincere apologies as a Heritage America to you, Mr Thompson, sir. May you have a happy 100th birthday anyway, despite this unconscionable PC insult to your bravery, your legacy, and your personal honor. Always remember, though: Illegitimi non carborundum. Otherwise, they win. And that, they must never, EVER be permitted to do.

1

A future so bright

We have to be dragged into it against our will, kicking and screaming.

Road Trips in Our Long-Term EVs Have Been…Interesting

Broken chargers, full charging stations, single-digit temperatures, and optimistic range estimates have tested our patience.

While winter has seen many travelers stranded at airport check-in counters this year, MotorTrend editors have been braving the open road in our expanding fleet of long-term electric cars, trucks, and SUVs. During road-trips, MT’s Slack channels often become a de facto logbook of our exploits, capturing the headaches and small victories of long-distance EV driving in real time. Here’s a lightly edited look at how our drivers have fared in the 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning, the 2022 Rivian R1T, the 2022 Volkswagen ID4, the 2022 Lucid Air Grand Touring Performance, and the 2023 Hyundai Ioniq 5 when holiday travel peaked, the weather and temperatures turned nasty, or they simply headed to far-flung destinations.

If you thought that was tons o’ fun, just wait till our antiquated and way-overtaxed power grid crumbles into pieces-parts under the weight of all these state-mandated struggle buggies. The only practical answer? This.

Chris Reed: I’m going to still drive the same vehicle I am now in 2040. I won’t be alone.

Assuming you’ll be allowed to, that is.

People routinely go down memory lane when they see decades-old vehicles — lovingly and ingeniously kept up for years despite replacement parts no longer being readily available — still on the streets long after they typically would have been consigned to scrap heaps. While wealthy collectors of older vehicles focus on classic sports or muscle cars, those with economic motives often prefer those they grew up with, such as the Volkswagen Beetles first sold in 1949. It was the best-selling car in the world in 1968 — popular in the U.S. in large part because of its countercultural associations, popular elsewhere more for its durability, affordability and excellent (for its time) gas mileage. In 1972, the Beetle passed the original Ford Model T to become the most manufactured vehicle in history.

Now there is an increasingly strong chance that this phenomenon — of aging vehicles still being a common sight long after they were first sold — will just keep growing in the United States, and that it could be strongest of all in California.

So I guess they’ve finally gotten it done, then: we are all Cubans now.

1

More on those electric Harleys

Thanks to Himself for hipping me to this vintage Eric Peters post, from 2018.

The Electric Suicide of Harley-Davidson

Imagine a Harley that doesn’t vibrate. No bark through the straight pipes when you push the starter button. No nothing through the pipes – which aren’t there anymore.

There is no starter button.

Just an On/Off switch.

No shifter, either. Because no gears.

All that remains is the “Harley” name on the tank – which isn’t one because it will never be used to store any gas. Might as well paint it on the side of your toaster.

Welcome to the 2019 LiveWire – Harley’s first electric motorcycle. The first of a whole line of them – intended to be ready by 2025.

They’re betting the future of the company on it.

If you have any Harley stock, better unload it.

Quickly.

Because an electric Harley is as silly as juice-bar speakeasy. It runs counter to the point.

People buy motorcycles – and especially Harley motorcycles – because they make that sound.

And also because of the smells – of gas and oil – which attend those sounds. Without which you’ve got what amounts to alcohol-free beer.

Or a girlfriend who won’t sleep with you.

Heh. Indeed. Oh, you’ll for sure be getting yourself a good fucking alright, but you won’t enjoy a single minute of it.

This is not going to end well. For the intangible reasons already articulated – a BLT without the bacon – and for other more tangible reasons.

Harleys – more than any other make of bike – appeal to the cruiser. The long-haul rider. The open road.

But electric bikes – like electric cars – are stunted by abbreviated operational range. A 2019 V-twin Sport Glide carries 5 gallons of easily and quickly replaced gas and gets 47 MPG. It thus can travel almost 240 miles – and when the tank runs low, this Harley can be back on the road in minutes.

That is freedom.

With the LiveWire, you are tied to an electric umbilical cord.

The opposite of freedom.

Yes, t’is, with cars and bikes both. Which is precisely why TPTB insists so vehemently on cramming their blasted EVs down our collective throat.

Over at Eric’s place, there are a cpl-three Harley-hating sourpuss types in the comments who scornfully profess their complete lack of concern for whether H-D carries on as an independent motorcycle manufacturer or not, and who the hell would want one of the outdated POS dinosaurs anydamned way? They’re missing the point at issue, which is, was, and shall eternally remain freedom. This ain’t about motorcycles and/or who makes ‘em. Ultimately, it’s about taking your freedom away from you, nothing more nor less. Y’know, just like with everything else.

2

Checking into Hotel USSR

Just emailed Oleg Atbashian to tell him I finished reading his autobiographical tome, Hotel USSR, and am now going through it a second time to make notes for use in my review of it here, which I should have up probably in another week, maybe two. And MAN ALIVE, but this book is powerful indeed! It’s written in a straightforward, matter-of-fact style, which only serves to intensify the impact of the relentless brutality and inhumanity chronicled therein.

I’ve been reading and excerpting Oleg’s People’s Cube humor blog for years now, and never realized that he grew up in the Ukraine, and was born the same year I was. Our upbringing and youthful experience as Children of the 60s and 70s couldn’t have been more different, alas for him.

No matter how well-informed you might be, how carefully and thoroughly you’ve educated yourself about what life might be like under full-bore totalitarian tyranny, Oleg’s story comes at you like a sharp punch in the gut. As far along the same dismal road as the US has come, let me assure you that we have no idea what it was like for the victims of the heartless thuggery and oppression that was simply the stuff of everyday existence in the Soviet Union. It’s monstrous, no more nor less. How people like Oleg managed to get through it all with their souls and spirits still relatively intact and functioning is far beyond my ken.

Yet more baffling, and infuriating, is our domestic Useful Idiots who continue to this day to lobby hard for a Made In America emulation of this abominable regime. The clueless dolts know not what they wish for, a truth that Hotel Russia makes perfectly clear. God forbid that they should ever get their way. Every last one of them should be forced to read it, with a gun at their heads if need be.

More to come as and when, folks.

2

A coup, if you like

Just now noticing it, are ya?

Jeremy Clarkson: We’re in the midst of a coup. Who the hell’s behind it?

Not in the middle of one; it’s long since been over and done with, I’m afraid. As to wondering who’s behind it, you can’t really be serious about that one.

My son came over for a father-and-son pre-football supper the other day, and as he fussed over the Aga, making a particularly fine stir fry, we laughed about what innocuous word had been banned that day and who’d been cancelled. And then, after a pause, he said with a solemn face, “You do know there’s a war going on, don’t you?”

He wasn’t talking about Ukraine. He was talking about a full-on left-wing campaign to unstitch and burn the fabric of Britain. And the genius is that no one really knows that what they’re doing is serious. We laugh as they change the name of the Sir Francis Drake Primary School to something less slavey. We think it’s all a big joke. But it isn’t.

Think about what typically happens in a military operation and then look what the woke left has done here. It’s seized control of our television and radio stations to such an extent that last week Sophie Raworth said, on the BBC News at Six, with a straight face, “And over now to our LGBT and diversity correspondent …”

And TV drama? Unaffected? Right, and when was the last time you saw a fictional police force hunting a gang of Muslim extremists? It’s always the far right. And it’s the same story in comedy. Say anything you like about Boris or Rishi and the laughter track is turned up to 11. Make a joke about she/him pronouns or Greta Thunberg and they’ll blow a piece of tumbleweed across the stage.

You probably think, because you don’t know this war is going on, that when you drop little Johnny off at the school gates he’s going to learn the nine times table that day. No, he isn’t. He’s learning that he might actually be a girl, which is why there are probably tampon dispensers in the boys’ lavatories.

When some young people with green hair glue themselves to the road, large numbers of officers are dispatched to stand around looking at them. And they are only ever removed from the tarmac if they promise to go immediately to the nearest art gallery and throw some soup at a painting.

You’ll definitely want to read all of this one, folks. Even though he’s writing about Jollye Olde, across the pond we’re tailgaiting them down the same sorry road ourselves.

2

VDH getting blackpilled?

So JJ Sefton contends, and if Hanson’s latest is any indication, he might well be right about that.

 

One overriding principle of the new Democratic Party is asymmetry—or the notion that the Left’s moral superiority earns absolute exemption from the very methods they employ against their opponents.

Disproportionality explains why the historic Mar-a-Lago raid was constructed in bogus fashion as a legitimate search for “nuclear codes.” Yet it would have sparked outrage had the FBI, on rumors of Biden sloppiness, sent armed agents into Jill Biden’s underwear drawers looking for classified papers concerning Ukraine and Iran, or towed away Joe Biden’s Corvette to get access to a garage full of unlawfully stored classified papers, or strewn Biden’s papers across the floor for an FBI concocted photo-op.

 

Well, sure, but then again who in their right mind would WANT to go through “Dr” Jill’s underwear drawer, anyway? Please pardon me whilst I throw up in my mouth, just a little.

 

The buffoonish protestors and rioters of January 6 were to be jailed for months without formal charges, put in solitary confinement, and often sentenced to the maximum punishment possible. But the rioters, shooters, and killers of 120 days of mayhem and violence during summer 2020 were calibrated as “summer of love” rowdies. Antifa and Black Lives Matter sort of, kind of got a little bit out of hand in torching a police precinct, a federal courthouse, and an iconic Washington, D.C. church, as well as trying to storm the White House grounds, sending the president into an underground bunker.

That Antifa and BLM plotted much of their anarchy and violence on social media unimpeded was unremarked upon. That fact mattered not at all in comparison to the illegal paraders and rioters of January 6. Police who shoot unarmed protestors usually have their identities immediately revealed; yet when they lethally shoot the likes of an Ashli Babbitt, their identities are suppressed, and their questionable conduct lauded.

Donald Trump was deemed crazy. A Yale psychiatrist made the rounds on television and in Congress to claim he needed an intervention and straitjacket. The FBI and an interim attorney general discussed wearing a wire to entrap Donald Trump and convince his cabinet he was nuts. If the FBI and the Justice Department did the same to Joe Biden, the Left would have claimed a coup was in progress.

Joe Biden daily forgets where he is and what he is doing. Someday historians will fault those who knowingly used a non compos mentis septuagenarian, without regard for the interests of the American people, to mask a radical neo-socialist agenda.

Biden shakes imaginary hands. He insists his son died in Iraq. In his mind, Brian Sicknick was murdered on January 6. In Walter Mitty-style, he brags that he has been a semi-truck driver, an arrested civil rights activist, a major college football prospect, a U.S. Naval Academy scholarship prospect, and on and on. If Biden was given the Montreal Cognitive Test, as was Trump, he would likely flunk it outright.

Conservatives should be aware that they are not dealing with the party of JFK and LBJ. The Democratic Party has nothing in common with the agendas of a slick Bill Clinton and is well beyond the “fundamental transformations” of arch-narcissist Barack Obama.

We are faced with a strictly disciplined, no-nonsense revolutionary party, well known from history that aims to change the nation into something unrecognizable by most Americans. And it feels that it has now created the means to do it.

 

“Aims to”? AIMS?!? My God, man, they’ve DONE it. The question before us now is whether or not it can successfully be wrested back from them, and the question remains an open one.

2
4

OF COURSE they’re not coming for your gas stove!

I understand they also have some very nice beachfront property in Arizona up for sale, too.

Democrat-led cities are already moving forward with gas stove bans that will affect millions

Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said in 2021 if his city could ban natural gas, ‘any city can do the same’

Yeah, well, the joke’s gonna be on you soon, Red “Bill”. Because guess what kind of stove practically every restaurant in the entire damned world runs?

Go on, guess. I dares ya. Yes, that would include those exclusive, hoity-toity, exorbitantly-priced eateries you self-proclaimed “elite” types so enjoy frequenting.

Democratic leaders in major cities nationwide have already moved forward with bans on natural gas stoves even as the Biden administration has pumped the brakes on similar regulations at the federal level.

Cities including Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and New York City — which are collectively home to more than 10 million Americans — have enacted varying restrictions on natural gas hookups impacting gas-powered furnaces, ovens and stoves. 

Leaders of the Democrat-led cities have argued that transitioning away from natural gas would help achieve climate and net-zero ambitions.

“New York City is proof that it’s possible to end the era of fossil fuels, invest in a sustainable future, protect public health and create good-paying jobs in the process,” former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said in December 2021. “If the largest city in America can take this critical step to ban gas use, any city can do the same.”

Following his remarks, de Blasio signed a law requiring the phase-out of fossil fuel usage in new buildings. The law, which goes into effect this year and mandates new buildings are fully electric by 2027, made New York City the largest city and first large cold-weather city to phase out fossil fuel combustion in new construction.

Electricity which comes from where and is generated using what, again now? We wonders, yes we wonders.

Eedjits, the whole sorry lot of ‘em. Eedjits, scoundrels, and reprobates.

1

Hot time in Hot-lanta

I hate to say it, but given how PDs all over the country mollycoddled, shielded, and ran active interference for pAntiFa marauders over the past cpl-three Mostly Peaceful summers, I guess we can only root for casualties on this one.

ANDY NGO REPORTS: Seven charged with domestic terrorism following deadly shooting at Atlanta autonomous zone

Seven militants have been arrested and charged with domestic terrorism following a deadly shootout with law enforcement at their “autonomous zone” in a wooded area south of Atlanta. They are all from out of state.

On Wednesday morning, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and other law enforcement agencies conducted a raid on the so-called autonomous zone at the site of the future Atlanta Public Safety Training Center. Since June 2021, Antifa and other far-left extremists from across the US have occupied the area to prevent the construction of what they call a “cop city.” The GBI says a Georgia State Patrol trooper was shot and severely injured during Wednesday’s raid by a man camped in the area. Officers returned fire and killed the gunman, who allegedly used a pistol.

Georgia’s Department of Public Safety will not name the injured patrol trooper, saying it would “compromise security against criminal or terroristic acts due to retaliation,” but told local media he was in the ICU after having emergency surgery. The deceased gunman was named on Thursday by the GBI as 26-year-old Manuel Esteban Paez Teran. He used the alias “Tort” and “Tortuguita.”

“Manuel used they/it pronouns…please make sure we are remembering them properly and respectfully,” wrote the Atlanta Community Press Collective in their statement revealing the shooter’s identity.

Following the shooting, the GBI and its law enforcement partners continued to clear the autonomous zone and several arrests were made of suspects—all of whom are from out of state. The GBI say they confiscated a cache of weapons that include mortar-style fireworks and edged weapons.

Matthew Ernest Macar, 30, Spencer Bernard Liberto, 29, and Sarah Wasilewski, 35, all from Pittsburgh, are each facing charges of domestic terrorism and aggravated assault upon a public safety officer.

Liberto and Wasilewski appear to be in a relationship based on their social media photos and posts. Both have a long history of radical leftist politics. Wasilewski’s Twitter account also shows that she follows Antifa groups and the “@defendatlantaforest” account, which is the main social media group representing the autonomous zone. She also frequently liked posts from the far-left violent extremist Pittsburgh group, Filler Distro. Filler Distro is one of several groups calling for violent retribution against law enforcement over the death of their comrade.

Liberto and Wasilewski appear to be in a relationship based on their social media photos and posts. Both have a long history of radical leftist politics. Wasilewski’s Twitter account also shows that she follows Antifa groups and the “@defendatlantaforest” account, which is the main social media group representing the autonomous zone. She also frequently liked posts from the far-left violent extremist Pittsburgh group, Filler Distro. Filler Distro is one of several groups calling for violent retribution against law enforcement over the death of their comrade.

You don’t have to be any kind of cop-sucker to be happy about a dead pAntiFa goblin, sayeth I. More, please.

4

Why we call it Once-Great Britain

So very much wrong here it’s tough to know where to even start.

Britain’s top food watchdog recently warned that bringing cake to the office is comparable to subjecting coworkers to second-hand cigarette smoke.

So-called “second-hand smoke,” like so much else these days, is the bunk.

Professor Susan Jebb, chair of the UK’s Food Standards Agency, told The Times Health commission, “We all like to think we’re rational, intelligent, educated people who make informed choices the whole time and we undervalue the impact of the environment,” adding that “If nobody brought in cakes into the office, I would not eat cakes in the day, but because people do bring cakes in, I eat them. Now, OK, I have made a choice, but people were making a choice to go into a smoky pub.”

Yeah, thanks be to God that you took care of that whole “making a choice” problem for good, eh?

“With smoking, after a very long time, we have got to a place where we understand that individuals have to make some effort but that we can make their efforts more successful by having a supportive environment,” Jebb argued. “But we still don’t feel like that about food.”

Oh, so THAT’s what we’re calling “authoritarian meddling” now, I gather.

Well, maybe that’s because food in the office only affects the individuals who eat it — unlike second-hand smoke, which is inhaled by everyone in close proximity to the smoker.

Sorry, but again: no.

Jebb went on to say that junk food ads are “undermining people’s free will,” yet claimed that restrictions are “not about the nanny state.”

Oh my NO, perish the thought. Sheesh.

These are the same people who are trying to make us eat crickets and believe that cauliflower tastes like rice. And the same people who told us to eat margarine for our health before reversing course and saying it will kill us, and now claiming that it’s good for us again.

And they have the exact same right to do so now as they did then: none whatsoever. Which is the REAL point at issue, not whether they’ve ever gotten a damned thing right, since ever. Or it ought to be, anyhow.

But yeah, you Limeys go ahead and forego that cake, it’s bad stuff. Plus, it’s difficult to eat with those bendy, non-scary plastic knives and forks your NotANanny State has forcibly relegated you chumps to.

1

Talking sense to Woke

I’ve seen the vid recommended several places but didn’t watch it, hoping some sort of at least partial transcript might eventually become available. Well, one has.

Comedian Konstantin Kisin’s Oxford Debate Speech Was Epic, Signaling That WOKE May Finally Be Going, ‘Bye, Bye’

Konstantin Kisin is a satirist, podcaster, author and political commentator and on his “Triggernometry” podcast, he and his co-host Francis Foster focus on these subjects, as well as the WOKE culture that has overtaken the Western world.

At 40, Kisin is an early Millennial (or Xennial, as they are now being categorized). So, he has lived some life, had a taste of career success, and has a family. Some of the things that indicate that your views on how life and the economy works is not merely theoretical. Kisin also was born in Russia and emigrated to Europe, domiciling in Great Britain. So, he has not always benefited from living in the Western petri dishes where WOKENESS germinates and takes hold.

Which is what makes him, and this debate speech he gave at The Oxford Union Society so compelling. The Oxford Union is a membership club that encourages debate among its members as well as celebrity, political, and guest speakers. Kisin was debating, Resolved: Has Woke Culture Gone Too Far? And Kisin’s epic counter response is the reason this video is getting so much play.

Kisin started his treatise by expressing that he is tired of talking about WOKE culture and its targeted attacks to destroy freedom of speech, as well as its false flag operations to create “equity,” which is merely racism in a cheap jacket:

“I am so tired of talking about Woke culture. That’s why it’s gone too far more than anything else.

[…]

“No, No, Free speech is not some right-wing reframing of whatever, it’s the foundation of Western civilization. Upon which this civilization is built and the alignment values that led to it.

“The only way to deal with the problem of racism is to treat people on the content of their character. And nothing else. And the fact that WOKE culture seeks to overturn that is a new form of racism that we must all oppose.”

Kisin warned that we will destroy ourselves if we continue to allow this erosion of our culture and our confidence in Western values.

Then Kisin turned his focus on Climate Change, directing his speech toward Millennials and Gen Z—at least the ones who he felt might be, “open to rational argument.” Although he knew he was speaking to young people who honor their feelings above any rational truth, Kisin made this fact-based point.

“[Climate Change will be decided] by poor people in Asia and Latin America who don’t care about saving the planet—because they’re poor.”

Kind of hard being concerned about the future of the planet, when your future only extends to your next meal.

More at the link, all of it good.

3
1

Questions, I has a few

So does Mark Jeftovic, who has narrowed his down to just two.

They Promised “Safe And Effective”; We Got “Sudden And Unexpected”

I want everybody reading this to think of two numbers from asking you two questions:

Question #1) How many people do you know who died of COVID?
I first started hearing rumblings of a new Coronavirus emerging out of China in January 2020 (although it looks now like COVID was already circulating throughout the world by mid-2019).

When I got wind of it, I was emailing friends and colleagues to get N95 masks and to stock up on groceries and medications. It looked bad. By February I was probably one of the first people seen around town wearing an N95 mask. In March I started running a spreadsheet using R0, fatality rates and case-doubling times that were coming out of the CDC, the WHO, and shrieking hysterics like Eric Feigl-Ding.

When it was all unfolding, I was initially afraid. My rough model posited that by the end of May we’d have 442,368 cases with as many as 22,118 fatalities and that was just in Toronto. By the end of July, 1.7 million cases and 88,473 fatalities.

I laid out previously what happened and what turned me into a lockdown skeptic: every day I’d plug in the new case and fatality numbers from the city, the province and federal levels and by the end of May I realized that my model was bust. By fall I knew that case numbers were bullshit (it didn’t matter how many people tested positive on a PCR test) and that lockdowns were a bigger problem than the virus.

There weren’t going to be 88K fatalities across the entire country, let alone Toronto (the official fatality count now for all of Canada is 49.5K – and we also now know that most of those, upwards of 90%, were with COVID and not from COVID. Toronto had about 3.7K total fatalities in over two years).

I naively thought this was good news. Surely everybody was looking at the data and surely everybody could see by mid-summer, that even adjusted for seasonality and expecting another wave in the fall, this was nowhere near the THERMONUCLEAR LEVEL EVENT certain prognosticators were promoting.

We all know what happened instead: by fall it had become a full fledged religion and well on its way to mass formation psychosis.

On January 1st, 2022 I surmised that the pandemic was mostly over. During the main run of COVID I did lose about four people within my social circle, none from COVID or even with COVID. That figure doesn’t count another two people I knew about in my area who committed suicide under lockdowns.

So without diminishing the tragedy of any of those 49K Canadians who succumbed with COVID, my number for the first question is zero.

How can anybody be faulted for not knowing what to believe or who to trust?
With the conventional narratives being so ephemeral and one “conspiracy theory” after another being validated (lockdowns, lab leak, vaccine passports…) is it any wonder people are becoming skeptical or outright distrustful of our institutions and media?

Given how many years they’ve been lying to us, about nearly everything under the sun, it’s dismaying that they’re only just now figuring it out.

Read it all…and weep.

(Via Wes Renegade)

2

A Republic, if you can keep it

It’s beginning to be quite dispiriting, the way so many of these stories seem to be coming out of Texas nowadays.

Kyle Rittenhouse Fires Back at ‘Woke Crowd’ after Snub: ‘Disappointing to See That Places Continue to Censor Me’

Constitutional rights advocate Kyle Rittenhouse has fired back after his event was canceled because his “values” conflict with those of the “woke crowd.”

A brewery in Texas canceled an event featuring Rittenhouse because the venue claimed the event doesn’t reflect its values.

Southern Star Brewing Company in Conroe, Texas, canceled the “Rally Against Censorship” featuring Rittenhouse on January 26.

The brewery said: “Southern star brewery is an apolitical organization.

“But we feel that this event doesn’t reflect our own values and we could not in good faith continue to rent our space for the event on 1/26.

“We don’t do rallies, we make beer for people who like beer.”

Uh huh. So, “apolitical,” then…except when you aren’t.

Rittenhouse fired back: “It’s really disappointing to see that places continue to censor me and not allow my voice and many other voices to be heard because they bend to the woke crowd.

Rittenhouse had another big, fat grenade to lob at the brewery Wokesters, who after all had booked the damned event in the first place, belying their anguished wails of being “apolitical.” And lob it he did, bless his stout young heart.


You keep right on a-rockin’, Kyle. Here’s hoping he sues the rotten bastards right into penury for breach of contract without adequate notice, and winds up owning their precious little brewery outright—lock, stock, and, ummm, barrels.

Screw Woke, and all who sail in her.

Update! Since I usually don’t proofread my posts until after they’re up live and in color on the page—not necessarily slackness on my part, everything just looks different to me on the actual site than it does in the WP editor—it wasn’t until just now that I noticed that part of this one had somehow been automagickally expurgated in transit from hither to yon by WP.

It was only a paragraph, but I still thought it important enough for losing it to bother me a little. Luckily, the missing part was retrievable from an earlier saved draft, so I went a-digging and got it back. Here t’is, in blockquote format so as to distinguish it from the rest of this update.

The operative phrases here are “Constitutional rights advocate Kyle Rittenhouse”; “Rally Against Censorship”; and “this event doesn’t reflect our own values.” Which, I’m perfectly sure it doesn’t. After all, shitlibs are steadfastly, unequivocally opposed to the US Constitution and the rights enumerated therein, and are all FOR censorship. Freedom of speech and individual liberty both being anathema to such as they, the “apolitical” Wokester brewery’s sudden attack of “conscience” should therefore come as a surprise to precisely nobody.

Apologies for the screwup, folks.

6

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