Ryan Maue
@RyanMaue
·
Follow
Greenpeace hit with $667 million judgement.

"...massive financial blow to the group that environmentalists say could chill future climate advocacy" Show more
5:56 PM · Mar 19, 2025. //

However, “Midwestern Burning Man” was no peaceful protest but a transition state to the domestic-terror style ‘advocacy’ eco-extremists are now targeting Tesla with.

This judgement is being celebrated by “normies” and, hopefully it will actually chill the destruction of private property and violence-based intimidation tactics that have been adopted by Marxists/socialists power-mongers parading as “climate advocates”. //

Hodge | March 20, 2025 at 9:28 am
Greenpeace protestors at the pipeline were totally and solely concerned about protecting the environment – NOT.

“On February 22, 2017, the protest site was cleared. Although many left voluntarily, ten people were arrested. On February 23, National Guard and law enforcement officers evicted the remaining protesters. Thirty-three people were arrested. After the protest site was abandoned, sanitation crews cleared garbage from the protest; this included abandoned cars and human waste. Also abandoned were 12 dogs. North Dakota Department of Emergency Services estimated that about 21 million pounds of garbage was removed; the cost of cleaning up the protest site was about $1 million. ”

Napoleon is master of Europe. Only the British fleet stands before him. Oceans are now battlefields. And a moderate box office success from 2003 has become an unlikely streaming favorite, a poster child for the kind of movies Hollywood doesn’t make anymore, and a beacon of positive masculinity.

That would be Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, director Peter Weir’s adaptation of the historical seafaring novels by writer Patrick O’Brian. Set inside the hermetically sealed world of the HMS Surprise, an early 19th-century British Royal Navy frigate, the movie stars Russell Crowe—fresh off Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind—as Jack Aubrey, the bold, daring, and conspicuously ponytailed captain. Paul Bettany plays Dr. Stephen Maturin, the ship’s surgeon, an erudite naturalist, and Captain Aubrey’s BFF.

If you kidnapped a hundred of Hollywood’s top minds and forced them to work around the clock, they could not engineer a more exquisite Dad Movie. Though Master and Commander is ostensibly about the Surprise sailing to intercept a French enemy warship, the battle scenes, exhilarating as they may be, are few and far in between. The bulk of the film—and the heart of its charm—is instead a meticulous rendering of daily life at sea: the monotony of hard labor, the palpable threat of scurvy, the dirty-faced sailors who sleep in close quarters and grin through yellowed teeth. (You know it smells crazy in there.) Even better? All the screen time devoted to close conversations between Aubrey and Maturin, and their two-dude violin and cello jam sessions. You come away with a sense of satisfaction at their accomplishments and camaraderie, and just a bit of longing over a bygone way of life.

But that low-key intimacy was confounding to audiences expecting the next Gladiator, and the film’s enduring popularity was not obvious when it was first released. Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind each won Best Picture, and Crowe nabbed a Best Actor Oscar for the former. Though Master and Commander was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King swept the show. Master and Commander ended up as the 33rd highest-grossing movie of 2003, three spots behind Legally Blonde 2: Red White & Blonde.

Twenty years after it was released in theaters, Master and Commander has found a new life on the internet, simultaneously the subject of memes and sincerely beloved by a certain type of guy (gender neutral). So why does the movie, which is streaming on HBO Max, suddenly have such a grip on the public imagination? One might initially think that it’s a matter of ironic distance—after all, this is a movie about the stodgy British navy, where every single character is a man. “The hot new bachelor party activity is napoleonic era naval gunnery exercises. The boys hooting and hollering as they drink grog firing three broadsides in two minutes,” reads one tweet. Another imagines a scenario in which several more Master and Commander films are announced to the world, Marvel and DC style.

It’s also just fun to argue about online. Even Russell Crowe got into the mix, responding to someone who called the film boring. But while posting about Master and Commander is popular with an irony-adjacent crowd, the love for it is all sincere. Many of the film’s most vocal fans are in their thirties. If they originally saw it in their tween or teen years, their relationship with the movie only deepened as they grew older. //

Any nostalgia stirred up by Master and Commander is also nostalgia for a different era of Hollywood. This sort of richly detailed, big-budget historical epic rarely gets a chance in today’s movie landscape. And even if the action isn’t the point, the battles absolutely kick ass, using practical effects that would probably be weightless CGI these days. (They bought a ship in Rhode Island and sailed it through the Panama Canal and a hurricane to a six-acre filming tank in Mexico!)

Nando Vila, the head of studio at Exile Content Studio, told me, “I think why a lot of guys are liking it now is because Aubrey is so charming and swashbuckling and swaggery. You believe that all those sailors are into Lucky Jack and they'll follow him to the far side of the world. You don't see that kind of brawny, ‘We're just going to go to the far side of the world. Who's with me?’—that’s not a movie that gets made anymore.”

Tom Rothman, the current chairman of Sony’s Motion Picture Group, was the chairman and CEO at Fox when Master and Commander was released. The film was his personal project: a longtime fan of the books, he had been attempting the project for 15 years. “I had to become the chairman of a major motion picture studio before I could get it made,” he told me.

“Why the books, I believe, endure is because they combine the epic and the intimate. They have epic action and daring in them,” Rothman said. “And I'm like any guy. I love that shit. ‘Oh man, they're going to take that ship’ and all that stuff. That's great. Right? But they're also very intimate and personal. They combine the epic and the intimate, and that's what great historical movies do.”

And though Master and Commander may be a film set in 1805 and made in 2003, its themes are eternal.

“It's about how men (and boys) behaved in that time and circumstance,” director Peter Weir told me in an email. “How they understood concepts like 'duty' and 'courage'. Perhaps that has some relevance today. Times change, and with them fashions, but some things remain imperishable. This film touches on those imperishables.”

Every year, nearly 1 million new citizens are welcomed into the United States through naturalization ceremonies, all of whom must pass the American citizenship exam by answering 6 out of 10 questions correctly.

While 90% of legal immigrants pass the exam, only 36% of Americans can pass it!

an easy way to sew buttons on shirts

As the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) looks to slash waste and correct inefficiencies, one DOGE adviser revealed it's "hard to really grasp the scale" of problems facing the IRS.

"A huge part of our government is collecting taxes. We cannot perform the basic functions of tax collection without paying a toll to all these contractors. We really have to figure out how to get out of this hole. We're in a really deep hole right now," DOGE representative Sam Corcos said on "The Ingraham Angle" Thursday.

Department of Government Efficiency @DOGE
·
There is a pattern across all agencies where IT “modernization” contracts do not pay for outcomes/performance; instead, they pay for time. Therefore, the incentive is for contractors to “never finish,” resulting in incredible waste.

As an example, IRS modernization started in 1990 to be delivered in 1996. Today, the work is not complete and the contractors say it’s still 5 years away. 29 years behind schedule and ~$15b over budget. Everyone loses, except the government contractors.

This must change. This week, the IRS froze ~$1.5B in modernization contracts, none of which have any effect on tax filings. All of those contracts will then either be cancelled or the contract terms will be changed to pay-for-performance.
9:25 AM · Mar 21, 2025 //

When the media omit the facts that matter most, it’s clear that they are more interested in undermining the Trump administration in the court of public opinion than in informing the public about the very real threats America faces.

The Supreme Court has become a paper tiger, failing to hold defiant lower courts accountable when they make rogue decisions. //

Lower court federal judges across the country are standing athwart the American people’s will to allow the Trump administration to cut government programs and deport violent gang members from the country. But these unelected judges have a long-running pattern of clinging to their status quo, even in defiance of the Supreme Court, because the high court refuses to rein them in.

The Supreme Court has the responsibility to make sure its subsidiary courts follow its directives — often by taking more cases, and making their precedent unambiguous. Arrogant, active, and open defiance on some of the most important issues, however, has been the norm from these lower courts for years, and a majority on the high court has persistently refused to stop them. //

The Court’s majority again refused to take a case wrongly decided by lower courts, when the Biden administration attempted to fine a Medicare-funded work-around for Dobbs, forcing hospitals in Idaho, which had outlawed almost all abortions, to perform them anyway.

“Shortly before Idaho’s law took effect, President Biden instructed members of his administration to find ways to limit Dobbs’s reach,” Alito wrote in a dissent for Moyle v. United States. “Apparently, the Court has simply lost the will to decide the easy but emotional and highly politicized question that the case presents. That is regrettable.”

It’s not just abortion, it’s Second Amendment rights as well. Lower courts repeatedly waged war against DC v. Heller, the Supreme Court precedent that struck down a law that banned handgun ownership in Washington, D.C., and clarified that the Second Amendment does not just protect a right to self defense for militia purposes.

In a 2018 case that would have allowed the Court to enforce its own precedent, the Court ran away, and had done so for years, Thomas wrote in yet another dissent slamming lower courts for defying the high court.

“Our continued refusal to hear Second Amendment cases only enables this kind of defiance. We have not heard argument in a Second Amendment case for nearly eight years … If this case involved one of the Court’s more favored rights, I sincerely doubt we would have denied certiorari,” Thomas said before listing other rights that the Court would have taken cases on. “The Court would take these cases because abortion, speech, and the Fourth Amendment are three of its favored rights. The right to keep and bear arms is apparently this Court’s constitutional orphan. And the lower courts seem to have gotten the message.” //

The Court used to enforce its precedent, like when lower courts attempted to defy Brown v. Board of Education and its mandate to racially integrate schools. It used to do it because it has always been part of the job — precedential decisions are not ‘one-and-done’ adventures. They will need clarification, parameters set, or clarity for lower courts to tell them the high court meant what it said.

At least one federal judge, James C. Ho of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, has publicly diagnosed at least part of the problem with the court refusing to take cases: A debilitating lack of fortitude among a vast array of federal judges.

In a 2023 speech at the Heritage Foundation, Ho said many federal judges are afraid to make tough decisions, or take tough cases, because they are afraid of public backlash for making the right decision:

If you plan to be faithful to the Constitution in every case, no matter how unpopular that may be, gold stars are not in the cards for you. But that’s the job. Judges don’t swear an oath to uphold the Constitution part of the time: We swear an oath to uphold the Constitution all of the time.

If you’re an originalist only when elites won’t be upset with you—if you’re an originalist only when it’s easy — that’s not principled judging. That’s fair-weather originalism. We’re not binding ourselves to the text if we only follow it when people like the result.

“When you look at the résumé of a typical federal judge, you often see a bunch of fancy credentials,” Ho added to the argument in a 2024 piece for the National Review. “People who have devoted their whole lives to collecting gold stars tend to be motivated by one overarching objective: getting more gold stars. If that’s what drives you, then the threat of public scolding can be a powerful motivator.”

The “booing of the crowd,” Ho said, “is not going away anytime soon,” and if judges cannot handle it, they should probably find other work.

At what point does judicial review turn into judicial rule?

This problem isn’t just about these issues or executive power — it’s about the broader politicization of the judiciary. When a judge blocks a policy because he personally opposes it, rather than because it violates the Constitution, he is no longer functioning as a neutral arbiter. //

Even the Supreme Court has recognized the dangers of this judicial overreach. In Trump v. Hawaii (2018), Chief Justice John Roberts warned lower courts that they do not have the authority to micromanage national security decisions made by the executive. Yet lower courts continue to ignore that warning, issuing nationwide injunctions based on political discomfort rather than constitutional law.

The media will cast Trump’s decision to ignore Boasberg’s ruling as reckless, lawless, or authoritarian. But what’s truly reckless is allowing the judiciary to continue seizing power it does not have. There is precedent for presidents pushing back against judicial overreach. Abraham Lincoln ignored a Supreme Court ruling in 1861 when Chief Justice Roger Taney attempted to block his suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War. Andrew Jackson famously refused to comply with a Supreme Court decision in Worcester v. Georgia, arguing that the executive branch — not the judiciary — was responsible for enforcement. Both of those decisions were controversial. Both were necessary.

Homeschool parents would face fines, misdemeanor charges and even jail time if they do not report themselves to local public school officials, under a new proposal from Illinois Democrats.

Parents also would be required to provide public school officials with a “portfolio” of their children’s work at any time, at any interval and frequency, until that portfolio meets the public school’s satisfaction.

The bill, dubbed the “Homeschool Act,” requires parents to report themselves in writing to local school officials starting in 2026. Parents who do not will be considered truant. They face Class C misdemeanor charges, which are punishable by up to 30 days in jail. They also face fines and lengthy hearings forcing them to comply with the Act. Under this proposal, parents also face investigations by state child welfare officials. //

Costa Howard and her homeschool-hating colleagues have peddled a mistruth that homeschoolers are more likely to abuse their children. Per an Illinois Public Radio story: “An advocate for more homeschool regulation argued there is a link between homeschooling and abuse and neglect that often goes unnoticed.” (Yet this so-called “advocate” has failed to provide credible statistical data to that effect.)

Costa Howard continuously cites in interviews the tragic story of “L.J.,” whom she claims was abused because Illinois allows parents to homeschool their children without obtrusive government involvement. But in this sad story, as well as other examples cited by Costa Howard, the children in question weren’t actually homeschooled. Their parents did no actual educating at home and instead were simply crummy, abusive parents. But all of these children were under the surveillance of state welfare officials, who left them in abusive homes for a year or more.

The ACLU is seeking to stop the executive branch from removing five plaintiffs. D.C. District Judge James Boasberg hastily took command and control over the latest iteration of lawfare, emergently agreeing to consider the case and issuing orders camouflaged in legitimacy. Judge Boasberg’s orders, actions, and reactions are laden with plain error.

From the onset, Boasberg failed to recognize his court lacks the jurisdiction to hear this case. Why? The ACLU filed this case in the District of Columbia. The five Venezuelan plaintiffs represented by the ACLU are not detained in D.C., but in New York and Texas. The Supreme Court ruled in Rumsfeld v. Padilla that no court has jurisdiction over a habeas petition unless those filing the petition are detained in the district in which it was filed.

Boasberg was also quick to accept the plaintiffs’ premise that the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) is a power properly exercised only during a time of war. This is patently false. Any plain reading of the law makes it clear that the AEA is an appropriate power to invoke not only during a time of war, but when the president determines there has been an invasion or predatory incursion. Even more persuasive is the Supreme Court’s ruling in Ludecke v. Watkins that the AEA extends beyond wartime. And without a statutory definition of “invasion” or “predatory incursion,” it is the judgment of the president alone to determine if such has occurred. This national security determination is a non-justiciable political question and the Supreme Court has repeatedly informed the intellectually curious that political questions are not reviewable by a court. //

Boasberg has gone too far and too fast to retreat, so this skirmish will continue until the Supreme Court loads up the Article II canons on his position (see what I did there). Through his orders and admonitions, Boasberg has tactlessly given imprimatur to the “legal strategy” of disrupting the Trump presidency at all costs. Boasberg has called DOJ’s response to brash authority as “woefully insufficient,” but, candidly, his stewardship of this case thus far has been nothing more than woeful.

President Trump’s adversaries were determined to take his freedom, his fortune, and even his life. Those efforts thankfully failed. But his enemies remain undeterred.

This is just lawfare by other means.

Clive Robinson • March 20, 2025 12:38 PM

@ For those “new to the game”

CI/CD Secrets is liberaly spread across the articles, but none explain what they are in layman’s terms.

The first step is to understand what “Continuous Intergration”(CI) “Continuous Development/Deployment”(CD) Pipeline is. Gitlab has a reasonable description at,

https://about.gitlab.com/topics/ci-cd/cicd-pipeline/

However it says nothing about “secrets”

Put overly simply in our modern environments much is “done in the cloud” or in older parlance “across multiple servers” for which “Authorization”(AuthZ) and “Authentication”(AuthN) is required.

At the simplest that is a user has to have “an account” that once would have been a “user name” and was considered “public knowledge”, and “a password” or “passphrase” or other “secret” known only to the user and verifiable by the server.

However when you “automate” things it gets more complicated and it gets to the point where even the user does not know what is used for AuthZ and AuthN as they are “embedded in some way” into the automated pipeline.

It is these that form the basis for “CI/CD Secrets” and whilst they could be “dynamic” and “random” by “challenge and response” or “Zero Knowledge Proof” they generally are “static” and put as “plaintext in files”.

Thus if static “once leaked” anyone who has access to the leak can impersonate the valid user(s).

It’s actually a really bad security design for an automated system and should be replaced with something that is not vulnerable to being recorded and replayed, but still does not need user(s) to be actively involved.

Unfortunately by the way this attack works it can get around the “security advise” given online with articles like,

https://blog.gitguardian.com/handle-secrets-in-ci-cd-pipelines/

Who? • March 20, 2025 12:25 PM

@ Clive Robinson

Years ago I sent an email to DISA about some obvious “errors” in some networking-related STIGs that made those technical implementation guides dangerous if followed as published. They replied, in a somewhat unpolited way, noting the obvious (that I am not affiliated with the U.S. army); these technical implementation guides about some well-known routing devices remain unfixed yet.

Same happened again some time later, this time about some CTR and CSIs published by NSA. No answer at all, something I appreciate when compared to DISA reply, but they continue recommending a setup that opens widely known attacks against shared caches in certain processor architectures. Not to say, these documents have been updated at least one time but continue suggesting the insecure settings.

To be honest, I do not trust on what CISA/DISA/NSA may publish.

The current U.S. administration may continue degrading the country cybersecurity and international alliances. If U.S. citizens accept it this way, who am I to disagree?

Clive Robinson • March 20, 2025 12:58 PM

@ Who?, ALL,

With regards,

“To be honest, I do not trust on what CISA/DISA/NSA may publish.”

And so you should not. Likewise you should not trust the word of anyone including me 😉

It’s why I do not like the idea of “Best Practice” that every man and his dog took as an idea from the legal profession. Because there is no such thing as “best practice” and anything written in that regard almost certainly become “out of date” very shortly there after.

What people should do, and few have time to do so is learn what a system does and how and what it’s interactions, strengths, weaknesses and Non Obvious Flaws are.

Who should have more power: the president of the United States, or a federal district judge — one of nearly 700 — in a courthouse anywhere in the nation?

The answer is obvious, and pure common sense.

The president is elected by millions, empowered by the US Constitution to ensure “the laws be faithfully executed,” conduct foreign policy and command the nation’s armed forces. //

Yet across the country, highly partisan district judges are using legal ploys to bulldoze Trump, stymie his agenda — and set national, even international policy.

In dozens of cases since Jan. 20, federal district judges — the lowest on the ladder — have issued nationwide injunctions halting Trump’s suspension of foreign aid, his deportation of Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gang members, his layoffs and spending cuts in federal departments and agencies, his prohibitions on discriminatory diversity programs in higher education and government hiring, and more.

On Tuesday, US District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington, DC, issued a nationwide injunction barring the Pentagon from enforcing Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order excluding transgender individuals from the military. Reyes said she foresees a “heated public debate” and appeals.

But Emperor Reyes is taking it upon herself to decide the issue for the entire nation, in defiance of the commander-in-chief who actually heads the military — before any evidence is heard.

She is freezing in place a policy the president opposes, for all the months and years it may take for the lawsuit to be decided and for appeals to be made, perhaps all the way to the Supreme Court. //

But lefty district court judges are still waging lawfare against Trump — and the high court isn’t doing its job.

On March 5, a divided Supreme Court turned down Trump’s request to lift a district court order compelling the State Department and the US Agency for International Development to pay $2 billion in foreign aid, in defiance of the president’s policies.

Justice Samuel Alito issued a blistering dissent.

“Does a single district-court judge … have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars?” he thundered.

“The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No’.”

Trump’s Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris is undeterred.

We know that the rambunctious mobs besieging Republican town halls are organized. It’s full of paid agitators, and this game could’ve gone on a bit longer if the far left didn’t overplay their hand. There is no way that Wyoming, which sent Liz Cheney packing, is this enraged about January 6. Cheney lost her primary to Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) by almost 40 points—the people of this state are decidedly in the ‘who cares’ column when it comes to this issue:

Kate Santaliz @kate_santaliz
Replying to @kate_santaliz
The crowd is now chanting “January 6” at Rep. Hageman
Embedded video
9:20 PM · Mar 19, 2025. //

anon-jo0r
2 hours ago
Check IDs and turn away people who don’t live in the area. //

Compact Man
39 minutes ago edited
The dems are simply running their playbook when they are out of power. As a reminder, here are the 13 Rules for Radicals:

1. "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have."
2. "Never go outside the experience of your people."
3. "Whenever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy."
4. "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."
5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to
   counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage."
6. "A good tactic is one your people enjoy."
7. "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag."
8. "Keep the pressure on."
9. "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."
10. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a
    . constant pressure upon the opposition."
11. "If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside;
    this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative."
12. "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."
13. "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

We should play Rules for Radicals bingo to expose the left.

The bill overturns the 2009 Shell Egg Rule, allowing these eggs to be processed safely and efficiently, increasing supply and lowering costs for consumers. […]

In 2009, the FDA required shell eggs to be refrigerated at 45°F within 36 hours to reduce salmonella risk. The rule was originally meant for grocery store eggs, but it was later expanded to include broiler eggs, which come from chickens raised for meat. Before this change, broiler eggs were safely pasteurized and used in processed foods. This unnecessary requirement now forces the disposal of 400 million usable eggs each year, driving up prices and limiting supply.

The airspeed was 136 knots, or roughly 155 mph, according to the preliminary findings.

The report, which doesn’t provide a final cause for the crash, added that the jet’s right main landing gear collapsed after making contact with the runway.

“At touchdown, the following occurred: the side-stay that is attached to the right [main landing gear] fractured, the landing gear folded into the retracted position, the wing root fractured between the fuselage and the landing gear, and the wing detached from the fuselage, releasing a cloud of jet fuel, which caught fire,” the report stated. //

Astro 9007 Da FAC
6 hours ago
Read the prelim report - east yo find on-line. VVI at touchdown >1100 fpm. Book recommends 600 (RJ Manual). Design load limit was a measly 750 or so VVI.... oops.

A million Americans died of COVID. Millions more suffered long-term injuries. Still, the left-wing media and Biden administration demonized any who dared speak about a lab origin of the deadly virus.

The lies were designed to protect the guilty who had helped fund the virus's origins, such as Doctors Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins.

The Biden government also tried to use the lab theory to ridicule a supposedly pro-Trump "conspiracy.". //

Almost as soon as Joe Biden was inaugurated, the left knew that he was physically and mentally unable to serve as president.

Indeed, that was the point.

Biden's role was designed as a waxen figurine for hard-left agendas that, without the "old Joe Biden from Scranton" pseudo-moderate veneer, could never have been advanced.

His handlers operated a nightmare administration: the destruction of deterrence abroad, two theater wars, 12 million illegal aliens, a weaponized justice system, hyperinflation, and $7 trillion more in debt.

By 2017, the public knew three truths about the so-called Christopher Steele dossier.

One, it was completely fallacious -- fabricated by a has-been, ex-British spy Christopher Steele. He childishly had cobbled together lurid sex stories, James Bond spy fictions, and Russian-fed disinformation to destroy the Trump candidacy and later presidency.

Two, it was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign. She hid her checks behind the Democratic National Committee, the Perkins Coie law firm, and Fusion GSP paywalls.

Three, the FBI under James Comey hired Steele as an informant. It helped disseminate his concocted files and was also instrumental in trying to subvert the Trump campaign and later administration.

No sane person ever believed that Hunter Biden's laptop was the work of "Russian disinformation." Its contents a year before the 2020 election were verified by the FBI, but it kept mum about its confirmation. //

All these lies have divided the country and permanently damaged the U.S.

The perpetrators have neither apologized for their lies nor tried to either deny or substantiate them.

No one involved has ever been held legally accountable.

The legacy media permanently ruined its reputation and will likely never be seen as credible again.

The Biden administration, overseer of many of these lies, will be regarded as the most duplicitous and dishonest presidency in modern history.

More than a dozen law enforcement agencies have stopped reselling their used guns or pledged to reconsider the practice after an investigation by The Trace, CBS News, and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.

The investigation, published last year, revealed that more than 52,000 former police guns had resurfaced in robberies, domestic violence incidents, homicides, and other crimes between 2006 and 2022. Many of those guns found their way into civilian hands after agencies traded them to retailers for discounts on new equipment or resold them to their own officers. //

Let's understand that more than 52,000 incidents sounds like a lot, but when you look at it over that timeframe, you're looking at roughly 3,200 firearms per year--and this is assuming these are actually crime guns, because departments trace a lot of guns that aren't used in crimes.

When you think of the fact that each year there are nearly 20,000 murders involving a firearm, 222,000 or so armed robberies, 76,000 non-fatal shootings, and so many more cases where a shot isn't fired but some other crime is committed with a firearm, you can see that we're looking at hundreds of thousands of incidents annually.

Those don't come close to touching the number of defensive gun uses, of course, but that's not what this is about. This is about that out of more than 300,000 incidents--and we don't really know how many more than that--incidents, roughly 3,200 involved a firearm that previously belonged to law enforcement. That's about 1 percent at most.

The result is a press that cheers policies antithetical to its audience’s interests. International lenders, swayed by the climate mob, tie financing to “renewable” mandates. The World Bank, once a financier of coal plants in Africa, now balks at funding anything that emits demonized carbon dioxide, leaving countries like Mozambique struggling to exploit their gas fields.

In Ghana, where power outages still plague daily life, the government hesitates to tap coal reserves, wary of an international backlash stoked by media outrage. In Kenya, where coal in the Mui Basin could power millions, local outlets echo The Guardian’s disdain for “dirty energy,” ignoring how such resources could slash electricity costs for the rural poor.

In South America, pressure from green-leaning non-governmental organizations – amplified by outlets like O Globo – has stalled oil projects in Ecuador, even as indigenous communities plead for the jobs and infrastructure they bring. In Peru, where natural gas discoveries promise economic liftoff, El Comercio fixates on melting glaciers, marginalizing rural natives still cooking over open fires.

In many developing countries, natural gas could ease energy prices, but policymakers bowed to “green pressure” and left citizens to shoulder rising costs. The poorest suffer most from higher bills, fewer jobs, and dimmer futures.

Popular news reporting no longer empowers with facts but incestuously recounts nonsense that leaves the developing world with the burden of a climate crisis fabricated by self-dealing globalists. //

People of the developing world must demand better or have their hopes buried by false prophets. And journalists in Africa, South America, and Asia must break free from the echo chamber of the climate-industrial complex. It is time to ask tough questions – the basis of critical thinking and honest reporting.

The document is about Gary Underhill, a CIA special assignments operative who dropped a major bombshell the day after Kennedy's assassination. This wasn't some conspiracy theorist in a tin foil hat—Underhill was a World War II military intelligence veteran and former Life magazine photojournalist who was linked to high-ranking CIA officials.

On November 23, 1963, a clearly disturbed Underhill made a desperate journey from D.C. to New Jersey to warn friends about a "small clique within the CIA" being responsible for Kennedy's death. A memo with the subject line "Ramparts" (the name of a magazine that featured investigations of the CIA) notes that friends described him as "sober but badly shook."

This is quite telling for someone who was a "perfectly rational and objective person," as his friends described him. //

Less than six months later Underhill was found shot to death in his Washington apartment. The coroner ruled it suicide. //

Underhill claimed Kennedy was about to “blow the whistle” on a corrupt CIA faction involved in “gun-running, narcotics, and other contraband.”

Although the friends had always known Underhill to be perfectly rational and objective, they at first didn't take his account seriously. “I think the main reason was,” explains one friend, “that we couldn't believe that the CIA could contain a corrupt element every bit as ruthless—and more efficient—as the mafia.”

Now, here’s where things get weird. Underhill was found dead months later with a bullet in the left side of his head.

The verdict of suicide in Underhill's death is by no means convincing. His body was found by a writing collaborator, Asher Brynes of the New Republic. He had been shot behind the left ear, and an automatic pistol was under his left side. Odd, says Brynes, because Underhill was right-handed. //

Pat W 48
4 hours ago
I always wondered about Jack Ruby killing Oswald while he was being transferred from the jail. Ruby was a night club owner deeply in debt to the Mafia bosses. Would a grown man with his lifestyle be so "heartbroken" by the death of the president waltz into an apparently unrestricted police area to kill the assassin?. I guess life in prison was preferable to the punishment of not following Mafia orders to shut up Oswald. I remember seeing it live on TV as my father, a NYC cop, jumped up and screamed "He's got a gun"!!!