Fire Hydrant of Freedom

It does seem an unlikely outcome given the complexity of the multifaceted attack. And some sort of spook stuff could always have played a hand:

Professor of physics, Maximilian Abitbol,  who is also an expert on the defense industry had this to say about the events of Saturday night.

This is a must read.

“I wanted to share something that is much more than a feeling.  Something that comes from a real calculation:  What happened in Israel on last Motzaei Shabbat was not less than the scale of the splitting of the Red Sea.

I am a Professor of physics and I worked for several years in the defense industry in Israel, in projects that are still the cutting edge technologies of the defence of the State of Israel.

When I look at what happened on Motzai Shabbat, on a scientific level - it simply cannot happen!! Statistically.

The likelihood that everything, but really *Everything* works out, does not exist in complex systems  Like the defense systems that were used to defend Israel from the massive Iranian attack.

These systems have never, *but never*, not only in the State of Israel, been tried in real time!!

I took a pencil and dived into the calculations to check the statistic probability that such a result would materialize. 

The large number of events that had to be handled, when each missile or UAV is handled independently (that is, human error or some deviation of one operation, is not offset by other successful operations), compounds the chance of making a mistake.

With all the high technologies, a breach was expected  In the defense of the skies of the State of Israel.

Even if we got 90% protection it would have been a miracle!!

What happened is that everyone, but everyone - the pilots, the systems operators and the technology operators acted as one man, at one moment in total unity.  If this is not an act of G-d, then I no longer know what a miracle is.

It is Greater than the victory of the Six Day War or the War of Independence.  Those wars can also be explained through natural events.

BUT

The rescue that took place for the people of Israel on Motzai Shabbat  is simply impossible naturally.  I believe that this miracle saved the lives of many people from Israel.

If the defense system had failed to intercept a number of cruise missiles, the result would have dragged us into a very complex war.

I wouldn't bet that next time it will work like this without Divine supervision.
The simple proof of what I said is that the managers of the defense industries, who develop and manufacture these systems guarantee no more than 90% success!

And we all saw, with our own eyes  99.9% !!!

Thank You Hashem!!”

M.  Abitbol

https://x.com/HilzFuld/status/1780642231604466027

This could go a number of places, but given that the FBI is threatening the people revealing this apparent Chinese penetration into electoral databases and research center I'm dropping it in. Could this, perchance, reflect a quid for Biden's numerous Chinese pro quos?

Note: these X posts are graphics heavy and hence this piece should be viewed in the oringal, which starts here:

https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1666490357469822976

KanekoaTheGreat

@KanekoaTheGreat

KONNECH #1🚨: Evidence shockingly suggests that the FBI is shielding two firms closely tied to the Chinese government, which have financed and developed an American election software company for the past 15 years, all while transferring confidential election data back to China.

2) Konnech has provided election administration and logistics software to many prominent cities and counties in the United States, including: 

•Alameda County, California
•Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
•Contra Costa County, California
•Denver, Colorado
•Detroit, Michigan
•Fairfax County, Virginia
•Hillsborough County, Florida
•Maron County, Indiana
•Los Angeles, California
•San Francisco, California
•Santa Clara County, California
•St. Louis County, Missouri
•Travis County, Texas
•Washington, D.C.

3) On August 13, 2022, Catherine Engelbrecht (
@truethevote
) and Gregg Phillips (
@onwardsocial
) convened a group of researchers to discuss how the FBI's headquarters had betrayed them following a 15-month investigation into Konnech's storage of American election data on Chinese servers. The data involved various sensitive information, including:

•Name, DOB, SSN, Address
•Phone, Email, Bank Account
•Voting Machine Passwords
•Thumb Drive Passwords
•Voter Registration Rolls
•Provisional Ballot Serial Numbers
•RFID Tags On Voting Equipment
•Election Building Schematics
•And More...

"You'd be startled to know that this server lives on the main Unicom backbone in China. And it's in a Chinese University in Wuhan, China. I'm not talking about this just being a storage place for data process here.

The app server for this particular application was in China... We're confronted with the fact that everything there was to know about elections in America, and in key counties in key cities, was in this server in Wuhan, China... So what do you do with this information?

Well, we went to the FBI because this was a matter of national security. And, they agreed. So, we started working with the local FBI community. From January of 2021 until April of 2022, the FBI opened up a significant counterintelligence operation on this.

The problem with it was that it wasn't just American information. It was Australian information. It was Canadian information, it was Mexican information. And we ultimately found out that the CCPs own elections are on this same server set in that university...

Everyone involved on the counter intelligence teams at the Bureau agreed on one thing, this software, this penetration, and this opening was a significant national security threat...

So two weeks before the 2000 Mules movie came out, I get a call from an agent and he says this has risen now to the level of a national security threat and headquarters has gotten involved. I don't know who he was referring to, but he said two women saw the case differently, and felt as though we were the criminals.

They had instructed the Detroit FBI office to notify Konnech that we had breached their firewalls, none of which is true... We later found out they were accusing me of stealing three servers from the Chinese Unicom backbone and having illegal possession of American private information.

And they were shopping that around to the other agencies that would be involved NSA, CIA and others. Trying to get somebody to pick up on this so that they could come Roger Stone me...

But the challenge we all have is this software is still in place... When you dig into Konnech's CEO Eugene Yu, in particular the other URLs that he owns, it will take you to the underlying URL that runs the Chinese Communist Party's elections.

It lives on that server, on that same URL address and that URL is owned by Eugene Yu."

https://open.ink/konnech

4) In 2002, Konnech CEO Eugene Yu was an "officer" on the "finance committee" of a Chinese foundation that flew Professor Charles Lieber, the head of Harvard’s Chemistry Department, to Zhejiang University to give a speech on “Nanotech in Today’s World.”

This discovery was made in a Chinese magazine entitled "Overseas Scholars," written by the China Association for Science and Technology in the United States (CAST-USA) and the American Zhu Kezhen Education Foundation (AZKEF).

CAST is a transnational organization and constituent member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), whose stated mission is to “maintain close ties with millions of Chinese scientists, engineers and other people working in the fields of science and technology” and to operate as “the bridge linking Chinese science and technology community with the Communist Party of China and the Chinese government,” according to organization’s archived “About Us” webpage.

In 2003, CAST established the Help Our Motherland through Elite Intellectual Resources from Overseas Program (HOME) in concert with the Organization Department of the Chinese Communist Party to recruit overseas science and technology talent to transfer technology and intellectual property back to China.

The CPPCC’s role in channeling overseas science and technology knowledge toward China’s development has grown since a 2013 directive from General Secretary Xi Jinping to focus on incentivizing overseas Chinese to contribute their technical skills and expertise to China’s national rejuvenation.

By 2020, a United States congressional body warned that the Chinese government has built a “sprawling ecosystem of structures, programs, and incentives to coopt and exploit overseas experts for the science and technology they acquire abroad.”

“Chinese leaders have long viewed advanced science and technology (S&T) as key to China’s comprehensive national power and sought to acquire it through licit and illicit means from developed countries like the United States,” the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) said in the report.

“This ecosystem sponsors promising Chinese students and scholars at the U.S. and other foreign universities, incentivizes their return to China for the long term, and employs transnational organizations to channel S&T know-how from those remaining abroad back to mainland China.”

The U.S. Senate report continues:

“Many programs associated with Beijing’s S&T transfer ecosystem—including scholarships to study abroad, talent recruitment plans, and entrepreneurship parks—contribute to China’s military-civil fusion strategy by collecting specific technologies and know-how that improve the capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and advance the goals” of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”

“This ecosystem sponsors promising Chinese students and scholars to study at foreign universities, incentivizes or requires their return to China in exchange for this support, and recruits researchers via hundreds of talent programs. Moreover, it integrates Chinese students and scholars remaining abroad with organizations that facilitate the transfer of S&T back to the Mainland, where it can be exploited by the PLA, government ministries, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), state-run laboratories, and startups.”

“Even when overseas Chinese students and scholars do stay in the United States after graduation, China’s transnational technology transfer organizations and talent recruitment plans provide a means to contribute to China’s national rejuvenation by transferring technology and know-how without requiring physical return.”

In the magazine, CAST-USA refers to Eugene Yu by his Chinese name YU Jianwei (于建伟), and says that he is an “officer” on the “finance committee” of the American Zhu Kezhen Education Foundation. The foundation’s mission is “to promote exchange and cooperation between Zhejiang University and universities in the United States” and “invite United States professors or scientists to Zhejiang University.”

In 2020, Prof. Charles Lieber was arrested for concealing his funding from the Wuhan University of Technology and participating in China’s Thousand Talents Program.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Bill Priestap, the former Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, stated that China’s talent recruitment plans are effective “brain gain programs” that “encourage theft of intellectual property from U.S. institutions.”

Priestap continued, “For example, China’s talent recruitment plans, such as the Thousand Talents Program, offer competitive salaries, state-of-the-art research facilities, and honorific titles, luring both Chinese overseas talent and foreign experts alike to bring their knowledge and experience to China, even if that means stealing proprietary information or violating export controls to do so.”

Eugene Yu was an “officer” on the “finance committee” of a Chinese foundation in the United States tasked with flying professors like Charles Lieber to China. This discovery was made in a China Association for Science and Technology in the United States magazine entitled “Overseas Scholars.”

Similarly to how the U.S. congressional report described CAST’s overseas science and technology acquisition efforts, AZKEF keeps a list of talented overseas Chinese students, offers incentives for prominent scientists to fly to China, and focuses on bridging Zhejiang University with universities in the United States.

https://archive.ph/OFVCf

https://web.archive.org/web/20011119103624/http://www.azkef.org/

https://web.archive.org/web/20031220030107/http://azkef.org:80/programs.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/20030402092120/http://azkef.org:80/lecture2002.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20140206035502/http://english.cast.org.cn/n1181872/n1257426/47099.html
https://uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-10/Overseas_Chinese_Students_and_Scholars_in_Chinas_Drive_for_Innovation.pdf

5) On November 29, 2005, Eugene Yu, also known as YU Jianwei (于建伟), established a shadow subsidiary named Jinhua Yulian Network Technology Co., Ltd. (金华宇联网络科技有限公司) in Jinhua City, Zhejiang Province, China, two years after founding Konnech in the United States.

6) On January 25, 2006, Jinhua Yulian Network was accepted into the Entrepreneurship Service Center at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Jinhua Science and Technology Park. 

The Chinese government has funded and overseen the development of Konnech's American election software ever since.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090413172501/http://www.jhcy.cn/yqqy.asp?page=3

7) On February 25, 2006, Eugene Yu registered the website domain "http://yu-lian.cn" for Jinhua Yulian Network with the email address eyu@konnech.com. 

https://archive.is/YaRv1#

On http://yu-lian.cn, Eugene Yu wrote in Chinese that he provides election software "with Chinese characteristics" to various levels of the Chinese government, including the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

https://web.archive.org/web/20131207150515/http://yu-lian.cn/Services.html

9) On http://yu-lian.cn, Eugene Yu praised "Comrade Jiang Zemin" and emphasized Konnech's philosophy of prioritizing "political tasks first, and economic benefits second." 

He highlighted his success stories of "Election Management, Detroit" and "US Overseas Voters." 

The entire website was written in Chinese.

https://web.archive.org/web/20131207151051/http://yu-lian.cn/Case.html

10) In December 2006, Konnech announced on Facebook that they had partnered with Michigan State University and the Confucius Institute to build, http://ChineseBrief.com, an "interactive communication platform and Chinese language learning tool."

https://web.archive.org/web/20120729201212/http://www.confucius.msu.edu/news.htm

11) On July 18, 2007, Eugene Yu posted an ad on the Chinese Academy of Sciences Jinhua Science and Technology Park's website, offering "5 million yuan" for developing "software packages" for Jinhua Yulian Network and http://konnech.com. 

In 2007, 5 million yuan was worth around $700,000 and was the prize money offered by the Chinese government to members of the Thousand Talents Program and other elite overseas entrepreneurs.

https://web.archive.org/web/20131019061139/http://www.jhcy.cn/jsnt_detail.asp?id=16

12) The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is a national think tank with extensive research facilities and over 50,000 researchers. CAS has been linked to Chinese military, nuclear, and cyber espionage programs. 

The U.S. Department of Defense acknowledges the CAS as China's leading academic institution for comprehensive research and development.

CAS and its affiliated companies are involved in developing AI initiatives, hypersonic spaceplanes, robotic submarines, and missile technology for the Chinese military. 

The Justice Department has indicted several individuals associated with CAS for their roles in transferring trade secrets and military technology from U.S. companies through Chinese overseas talent programs. 

In October 2002, the Jinhua Science and Technology Park became the first collaboration between the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and a prefecture-level government.

The Chinese government has built more than 150 "Overseas Chinese scholar pioneering parks" in the hearts of 54 "National New and High Technology Development Zones."

These ultra-modern facilities were designed for returning specialists to "incubate" (find commercial or military applications for) technologies acquired overseas as part of China's strategy of "serving in place" that allows Chinese scholars to stay abroad while transferring foreign technology back home.

https://uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/Interos_Supply%20Chain%20Vulnerabilities%20from%20China%20in%20U.S.%20Federal%20ICT_final.pdf

https://media.defense.gov/2019/May/02/2002127082/-1/-1/1/2019_CHINA_MILITARY_POWER_REPORT.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20100628161736/http://www.jhkjy.ac.cn/about/index.asp

13) Jinhua Yulian Network's initial address was located at No. 988 Shuanglong South Street, Jinhua City, Zhejiang Province, China, which is situated 500 meters away from the Jinhua People's Government building (No. 801 Shuanglong South Street) and across the street from the Jinhua Science and Technology Bureau (No. 828 Shuanglong South Street).

14) The Jinhua Science and Technology Park (JHTP) offers Chinese government-funded support to domestic and overseas enterprises, including financial assistance, living facilities, server hosting, internet access, university partnerships, technology transfers, research assistance, and patent support. 

In 1988, the State Council launched the Ministry of Science and Technology’s national Torch Program to speed up the nation’s “science and technological industrialization.” 

In 2005, the Ministry of Science and Technology awarded JHTP the distinction of a national-level technology business incubator. 

In 2006, JHTP was granted 3 million yuan by the Ministry of Science and Technology through China's national Torch Program to establish the Park's Internet Data Center, where Jinhua Yulian Network would develop, test, and maintain Konnech's American election software.

https://web.archive.org/web/20091017113128/http://www.jhcy.cn/yqgk_01.asp?flag=%B7%FE%CE%F1%B9%A6%C4%DC&lmbm=2405&lmmc=%B7%FE%CE%F1%B9%A6%C4%DC&url=yqgk_01.asp

https://web.archive.org/web/20090413171900/http://www.jhcy.cn/cxzt_01.asp

http://jhcy.cn/jhkjy/town_details/28.html

http://jhcy.cn/jhkjy/town_details/50.html

15) A 2008 Chinese document titled "International Elite Entrepreneurship Modern Service Outsourcing" reveals that Eugene Yu worked for the Chinese government as a Project Manager of the Guangzhou Economic and Technological Development Zone (GETDZ) from 1983 until 1985.

The document features 46 Chinese high-tech companies operating overseas and describes Konnech as an "Intelligent Web Communications" company with the mission of becoming "one of the top 50 e-commerce service providers for schools and government in the United States within 10 years.”

The document mentions Konnech's Chinese venture fund and describes the company's goal of developing advanced technology in cooperation with Zhejiang University:

“The company will enter a phase of rapid development after the implementation of the venture fund in Wuzhong.”

"In terms of specialized technology, we have been developing and hiring technical personnel with expertise in the field in a rapid manner by utilizing the role of corporate and university professors and graduate classes for project development, with the aim of receiving advanced applied technology."

"... it is an indisputable fact that many cutting-edge products come from American university campuses. We must take the corresponding path and cooperate with American universities and Zhejiang University and other domestic institutions to focus on the development of applied technologies and the application-oriented development of specialized technologies."

The document describes the problems facing the U.S. market, citing “expensive software programming fees and talent shortages” and reduced “funding for IT projects” before concluding, “In this environment, the role of our China branch is fully demonstrated.”

When Eugene Yu’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss his criminal case in California, they included a section entitled FACTUAL BACKGROUND that says he “worked in various locations” after he graduated from Zhejiang University and before he was accepted into Wake Forest University.

However, it failed to mention his prior employment as a Project Manager in the Guangzhou Economic and Technological Development Zone, where he worked in the Industrial Project Negotiation Department and "completed the introduction of several major projects":

"Eugene Yu was born and raised in Jinhua City, Zhejiang Province, China. In 1974, as part of China’s cultural revolution, Mr. Yu was sent to a communal farm where he labored for four years in squalor conditions. In 1977, after Chairman Mao died, Mr. Yu scored high on a nationwide test, qualifying him for admission to study engineering at Zhejiang University.

After graduating from college, he was sent to work in various locations in China. Mr. Yu then met and married his wife Donna Wang. In 1986, Mr. Yu and Dr. Wang were accepted to graduate school programs at Wake Forest University, where Mr. Yu obtained his MBA degree."

Since the launch of the GETDZ in 1984, China has established 219 national-level Economic and Technological Development Zones (ETDZs), which helped launch China’s rise to a global economic superpower.

In order to promote science and technology-intensive industries, ETDZs offer financial incentives and preferential policies that target domestic and overseas enterprises focused on manufacturing, scientific, and technological industries.

Two decades later, Eugene Yu would return to China to launch his company Jinhua Yulian Network Technology Co., Ltd. (金华宇联网络科技有限公司) in the Jinhua Economic and Technological Development Zone (JETDZ).

https://max.book118.com/html/2012/0222/1126480.shtm

https://cbbc.org/sites/default/files/2021-01/China-Britain%20Business%20Council%20-%20In%20the%20Zone%20-%20A%20Comprehensive%20Guide%20to%20China%E2%80%99s%20Economic%20and%20Technological%20Development%20Zones%20-%20October%202020.pdf

https://documentcloud.org/documents/2317

16) On January 4, 2011, Lin Yu, a managing supervisor at Jinhua Yulian Network, established Jinhua Red Date Software Co., Ltd., also known as Jinhua Jujube Software Co., Ltd. 

On January 16, 2011, Konnech registered the domain reddatesoft[.]com with the email eyu@konnech.com. 

Jinhua Red Date Software and Jinhua Yulian Network shared the same address at No. 1583 Binhong Road, Jinhua City, Zhejiang Province.

Jinhua Yulian Network's website included "Jinhua Red Date Software Co., Ltd." and "reddatesoft[.]com" in its copyright statement.

Peter McCallister, the General Manager of Konnech Australia, later affirmed in an affidavit that Lin Yu is Eugene Yu's older brother and a Chinese national.

(Note: The modified domain URL "reddatesoft[.]com" is used because of safety concerns with the URL raised by Twitter.)

https://web.archive.org/web/20220822014930/https://www.11467.com/jinhua/co/273669.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/20130718125224/http://yu-lian.cn/

17) On April 13, 2015, Lin Yu established Jinhua Hongzheng Technology Co., Ltd. (金华鸿正科技有限公司) in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, China.

Lin Yu (Eugene Yu's brother) owned 99.4% of the company.

Jun Yu (Eugene Yu's nephew) and Guojun Shao, who co-invented a Konnech patent with Eugene Yu, were among the other equity holders.

Jinhua Yulian Network later transferred a voting patent, co-invented with a Zhejiang University professor, to Jinhua Hongzheng Technology.  In a future thread, there will be a detailed discussion about Konnech's patents, employees, and the involvement of this professor.

18) Jinhua Hongzheng Technology provides election administration software, including web and mobile applications, to more than 430 National People's Congresses across over 20 provinces. 

The company has established partnerships with Huawei, Lenovo, China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, and the highest levels of the Chinese government.

19) On July 31, 2015, Eugene Yu registered the website domain "hongzhengtech[.]cn" for Jinhua Hongzheng Technology using the email address admin@konnech.com.

As a result, Konnech held significant control over a company that provides election administration software to the highest levels of the Chinese government.

Shortly after Catherine Engelbrecht (
@truethevote
) and Gregg Phillips (
@onwardsocial
) exposed Konnech's connection to China's National People's Congress, the domain registration email address was changed to jiadeng@hongzhengtech.com.

(Note: The modified domain URL "hongzhengtech[.]cn" is used because of safety concerns with the URL raised by Twitter.)

https://web.archive.org/web/20220824173140/https://whois-history.whoisxmlapi.com/lookup-report/AVkvG34MR7

20) In a September 1, 2022, live chat, Catherine Engelbrecht (
@truethevote
) and Gregg Phillips (
@onwardsocial
) discussed the FBI's betrayal, Konnech programming software for China's National People's Congress, and the company's storage of U.S. election data on Chinese servers.

In January 2021, Phillips said that the cyber analyst he had been working with encountered an “oddity in some of the URLs” such as http://vote4la.com, http://vote4detroit.com, and http://vote4boston.com, which Konnech’s “PollChief” software application used to gather personally-identifying information about poll workers.

Using Binary Edge, a software product companies use to identify and assess the risk of cyber breaches, “We began to look at where these URLs resolve to.

We found that most of them resolve to one I.P. address and that I.P. address — the URL resolved in China,” Phillips said. “What we also learned in our review, http://apps.konnech.net, resolved into this same URL in China, meaning that the application itself was residing in China,” he continued.

“In Binary Edge, you can figure out what type of database they are using, their database port, and all the different services offered by ports in this particular application living in China. It turned out that not only did it live there, but they left the database open.”

This database “stored the personally identifying information of over a million Americans,” he emphasized. Engelbrecht and Phillips decided that “this was a major national security risk” and immediately took the information to the FBI.

When Engelbrecht and Phillips took this information to the FBI, the FBI “said the information was forwarded to their counter-intelligence operation, and a counter-intelligence op was opened up in January or February of 2021,” Phillips said.

Phillips described how he and Engelbrecht played an active role in the FBI’s operation, “They engaged us in the operation, they were communicating with us on a regular basis. They were communicating with Catherine regarding communications with the target and this went on for approximately 15 months.”

Phillips and Engelbrecht noted that the field office they worked with for those 15 months was “legitimate” and not “political law enforcement.”

“These were legitimate people who believed that this software posed a national security risk to the United States of America and they were working with us closely to try to stop this from being in place during the midterms,” Phillips said.

“The focus point was always we needed to remove this software from the election, but taking a step further, there were a lot of other concerns that the bureau had.”

In April 2022, Engelbrecht received a call from one of the FBI agents, who informed her that the FBI’s “Washington D.C. headquarters” was now involved in the investigation.

Engelbrecht described how everything changed after this call, “There was no more goodwill, there was no more let's work together, the script had been flipped, and now we were the target,” she said. “That was a very disturbing call.”

The agent informed Engelbrecht that “two women” at the FBI’s headquarters believed that Phillips and Engelbrecht were “in the wrong for doing this” and that the D.C. office was now trying “to figure out how you guys broke the law to find all of this.”

Engelbrecht added, “which of course we didn't, but that was kind of their Modus Operandi, they were going to try to pin something on us, and today you can pick your headlines about how the FBI has done this time and again.”

Phillips remarked, “The problem is they know about this, and they chose to do nothing. They chose to investigate it, and in the end, they chose to blame us, but this is China. These are Chinese operatives in the United States; these are Chinese citizens who are programming this.”

Engelbrecht explained how the FBI agents initially hoped they could persuade the Washington D.C. office to do the right thing, “Our contacts were saying we are going to try and smooth this out, but as the days clicked on, they re-contacted us and one of them said you may need to be ready to — his term was to use the nuclear option and go to the press,” she said.

With the FBI no longer interested in pursuing Konnech, Englebrecht and Phillips organized an event for Saturday, August 13th in Arizona called “the Pit” where they brought together about two hundred “researchers, independent journalists, and big thinkers” to share their story.

“We asked the people in attendance for help, we didn't know what the FBI's plans were for us, we didn't know if we didn't speak this publicly if we would ever have the chance to, but we felt like our best chance was to share this with people we trusted who had the wherewithal to get the word out,” Englebrecht said.

She continued, “There have been so many great things that have happened since that event, but one of the greatest, was this community that came out shoulder to shoulder saying let’s dig this, let's see how much more information we can find.”

“The quality of research that has been done to supplement what we already had and to corroborate what we already had has been incredible.”

Phillips added, “This is some of the best research I have ever seen. The quality of it, the depth of it, we were with a prosecutor the other day and we had an opportunity to share some of this information with them.”

He continued, “There's likely going to be a grand jury convened here in the next week or so. It's supported by not just the research that my team OPSEC did for Catherine and True the Vote, but by the research of one of the best research teams I've ever seen come together.”

“The data and research all stand on their own.”

https://truethevote.locals.com/post/2664780/the-tiger-project

21) On September 12, 2022, Konnech filed a defamation lawsuit against Catherine Engelbrecht (
@truethevote
) and Gregg Phillips (
@onwardsocial
), accusing them of spreading baseless "conspiracy theories" and engaging in "racism and xenophobia."   

Konnech denied any affiliation with the Communist Party of China and stated that they had never stored American election data on servers in China. 

The legacy media echoed Konnech's claims against
@TrueTheVote
 and
@onwardsocial
 without conducting any examination of the company's connections to Jinhua Yulian Network, Jinhua Hongzheng Technology, or China's National People's Congress.

22) In an unusual move, U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Hoyt issued an ex-parte temporary restraining order in favor of Konnech without providing an opportunity for
@TrueTheVote
 and
@OnwardSocial
 to respond to the complaint. 

Furthermore, Judge Hoyt immediately ordered them to disclose the identities of all individuals involved in their investigation of Konnech at the outset of the trial, prior to the discovery phase. 

Failure to comply would result in the imprisonment of Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips for contempt of court.

23) On October 4, 2022, Eugene Yu, the CEO of Konnech, was arrested by the Los Angeles District Attorney's office for storing the data of American election workers on servers in China. 

Deputy District Attorney Eric Neff described the scale of the data breach as "astounding," suggesting that it could be "the largest data breach in United States history." 

Prosecutors alleged that Konnech employees shared the personal information of Los Angeles election workers with third-party software developers in China, who were involved in creating and fixing Konnech's software called PollChief. 

Furthermore, software developers in China had "super administration access" to PollChief software and confidential election data from the United States.

https://truethevote.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/eugene-yu-complaint-101322.pdf

24) On October 5, 2022, during Eugene Yu's bond hearing, his attorney contended that he posed no risk of fleeing as he had been actively cooperating with the FBI for the preceding month, and his arrest had taken the agency by surprise.

However, the Los Angeles District Attorney's office argued that Yu presented a substantial flight risk due to his strong business ties in China. 

Additionally, the prosecution raised concerns about the suspicious nature of Yu's arrest, noting that he was taken into custody without his cell phone while on his way to the airport.

25) On October 28, 2022,
@TrueTheVote
 and
@OnwardSocial
 submitted an affidavit containing approximately 10% of their text messages exchanged with FBI Agents in Detroit and San Antonio, supporting their claim of working with the FBI on a 15-month "counter-intelligence operation" against Eugene Yu, prior to the involvement of FBI headquarters in Washington D.C.

The text messages included conversations with the following individuals:

-Special Agent Bruce Fowler, Detroit
-SA Huy Nguyen, San Antonio
-SA Kevin McKenna, San Antonio
-SA Kristina Spindel, San Antonio

In one text message exchange, Fowler provided his FBI email address and mentioned receiving three thumb drives from the San Antonio office. He asked Engelbrecht to guide him on where to find information on those drives.

In another text message exchange, Engelbrecht asked for the name of an agent in Georgia. Nguyen responded that he would provide the name later, but “in the meantime, you can tell them that you filed the complaint with SA Huy Nguyen and SA Kevin McKenna with San Antonio Division.”

In another exchange, Engelbrecht texted Nguyen, stating:

"I wanted to let you know that we took the nuclear option and went public (in a very limited way, but nonetheless we did it). Konnech quickly filed a civil suit against us in Houston federal court and got an ex parte [temporary restraining order].

Part of the TRO required that we name who we’d gotten the election worker data from, same person who’d provided it to you. We gave the court the name under seal. Our attorney also notified the Houston FBI office, where the case was filed.

I’m very concerned about everyone’s safety at this point. Please do whatever possible to help ensure that name never comes out. I can provide you with whatever you may need."

Nguyen did not respond to Engelbrecht’s text. According to further texts provided by Engelbrecht, she reached out to “KayKay,” saying she hoped to talk, in person, if possible.

“KayKay” replied that she was on a temporary assignment out of state until January and asked if Engelbrecht still had Nguyen’s number. Engelbrecht then explained that she had “called and written him but no response.”

The text then explained: “We have been drug into a vicious lawsuit filed against us by Konnech.” “Our attorneys have contacted the FBI and been told that the Bureau has no interest in engaging with the court in order to maintain confidentiality.”

Engelbrecht added that she, Phillips, and “the researcher who originally provided us the data” are being “doxed,” and that it’s “a very serious situation and we’ve been left to hang.”

Engelbrecht then noted, “Yu has already been indicted by a Grand Jury and arrested,” but they “continue to hear chatter that the FBI is working with Konnech, against us, and still trying to accuse us of crimes we did not commit.”

The True the Vote founder then noted that “what Bobby said on the phone that day in April 22 (when you were reading the yearly CI disclaimer to me) has gone into full overdrive.” She added: “I also now believe Gregg and I have been set up. It’s appalling, heartbreaking, and wrong.”

https://thefederalist.com/2022/11/18/in-this-untold-story-of-poll-worker-data-chinese-servers-and-scandal-only-the-fbi-knows-the-truth/

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txsd.1888133/gov.uscourts.txsd.1888133.46.2.pdf

26) On October 31, 2022, Catherine Engelbrecht (
@truethevote
) and Gregg Phillips (
@onwardsocial
) were imprisoned for contempt of court as they refused to disclose the identity of a researcher who provided information to the LADA that resulted in the indictment of Eugene Yu:

Despite Eugene Yu's arrest by the Los Angeles District Attorney based on the allegations he had previously denied in his defamation lawsuit, Judge Kenneth Hoyt refused to admit any evidence from the criminal proceedings against Konnech in his courtroom.

Furthermore, Judge Hoyt declined to respond to a phone call from the Los Angeles District Attorney's office and asserted that the criminal case against Eugene Yu was unrelated to the civil case involving Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips.

27) On November 5, 2022, Tucker Carlson discussed Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips being arrested for refusing to reveal the identity of a researcher who provided information to the LADA that resulted in criminal charges against Eugene Yu, the CEO of Konnech: 

"George Gascon actually indicted Eugene Yu for exfiltrating the personal records of American poll workers, including their social security numbers and home addresses, out of the country to servers in China. These researchers developed that information.   

Catherine attempted to give it to law enforcement at the FBI and elsewhere and was sued by Konnech for doing that. When Konnech sued them, they got a restraining order, ordering Catherine to turn over the names of these researchers.   

Catherine and Gregg, who are very courageous people, simply refused to do it, and as a result, while Yu is home on bail, Catherine and Gregg are in jail tonight...

The civil libertarians and the mainstream press are basically a flock of sheep that are each bleeding the exact same tune, and all they want to do is deny any conversation about the possibility of fraud in elections."

28) On November 7, 2022,
@TrueTheVote
 and
@OnwardSocial
 were released from prison following a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which overturned Judge Kenneth Hoyt's order to unjustly detain them for contempt of court in a civil defamation case.

Two week later, the appeals court vacated the contempt order and wrote, "the record does not reveal what sort of emergency justified the district court's demand for that information before the parties could file Rule 12 motions before the defendants could file an answer, before the parties could file their initial disclosures, or before discovery could begin let alone conclude in the ordinary course."

"Much less did the district court explain what sort of emergency could warrant jailing the petitioner-defendants for not making such immediate disclosures. Rather, the district court made clear that it was imposing its disclosure requirements because it—the district court—wanted to add defendants to the lawsuit. Resp. 13; App. 188. That is not how the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure work."

Furthermore, the appeals court criticized Judge Kenneth Hoyt for "using a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction, and a civil-contempt order to litigate the case on Konnech's behalf."

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txsd.1888133/gov.uscourts.txsd.1888133.62.0.pdf

@gatewaypundit
 about their arrest and subsequent solitary confinement and provided information about the Konnech data breach that occurred in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, or Allegheny County. 

The breach involved the unauthorized exposure of sensitive information belonging to election workers, election judges, the complete Pennsylvania voting registration file, voting machine serial numbers, passwords, and "everything that one would need to cheat." 

"This isn't software, guys. This is malware. This is spyware. They are sucking data from the United States, storing it in China, and then using it to create a Chinese-style social credit system where we're all scored.   

United States citizens are scored to manipulate votes, manipulate thought, manipulate pretty much everything you can imagine in our lives. And these people are the tip of the spear for that. They're not the only ones but they're there."

30) On November 9, 2022, the Los Angeles District Attorney's office dropped charges against Konnech and its CEO, Eugene Yu.

District Attorney George Gascon cited concerns over “potential bias” and the “pace of the investigation” as his reasons for the decision.

"We are concerned about both the pace of the investigation and the potential bias in the presentation and investigation of the evidence," Gascon said in a statement.

"We currently have an immense volume of digital data that will define this case, but the processing of that data will take months. We would not be able to fairly and accurately process and present all of that evidence within the statutory timeframes."

"As a result, we have decided to ask the court to dismiss the current case and alert the public in order to ensure transparency."

A few weeks later, Gascon placed Deputy District Attorney Eric Neff, who alleged in court that this was potentially "the largest data breach in United States history," on administrative leave.

31) On December 22, 2022, Grant Bradley, a former employee of Konnech, filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the company that stated he personally “witnessed customer’s data (specifically poll watcher information) being made accessible to foreign nationals from China.”

Additionally, Bradley stated that Konnech used “developers, designers, and coders” who “are all Chinese nationals based out of Wuhan, China.”

https://thefederalist.com/2023/01/20/whistleblower-yes-election-data-company-gave-u-s-poll-workers-personal-info-to-china/

https://scribd.com/document/620894361/22-12-22-Verified-Complaint-1#

32) On February 24, 2023, cybersecurity expert Harry Haury, who forensically imaged Konnech's devices for the Los Angeles District Attorney's office, signed an affidavit stating that he witnessed Konnech storing the personal data of U.S. election workers on servers in China.

Furthermore, the affidavit stated that Konnech's software was developed, tested, and maintained in China, and metadata indicated that Eugene Yu was involved in developing election software for the Chinese government.

Haury, who is the CEO of Cain & Associates, stated that his company assisted the Los Angeles District Attorney's office by following FBI and Justice Department protocols to forensically image servers, computers, cell phones, and other electronic storage devices belonging to Konnech and Eugene Yu.

Haury, who has over 28 years of experience working as a cybersecurity expert for prominent organizations such as the Department of Defense, NSA, CIA, U.S. Treasury, NorthCOM, Sandia National Laboratories, more than a dozen top American banks, and the U.S. Justice Department stated that Konnech's data security system, "amounted to by far the worst example of complete disregard or negligence regarding the protection of PII and sensitive data I have ever seen. We discovered a data breach of U.S. data, which is classified as a total loss of control.”

Substantial evidence was reportedly discovered on Konnech's seized devices, including:

• confirmed multiple instances of Konnech hosting, on servers based in China, U.S. citizens’ personally identifiable information (PII);
• found evidence in private company messages that software code was being developed, tested, and maintained in China;
• confirmed that Konnech was providing administrative credentials to Chinese developers;
• PollChief software suffered from a security vulnerability that allowed any PollChief or Konnech worker to gain "super user" status, giving him or her broad access to information on all U.S. poll workers in the system;
• has evidence that Konnech employees have shared election-related data through, from, and on Chinese servers and applications;
• has evidence in metadata pulled from relevant files indicating Eugene Yu was involved in developing Chinese government (i.e., Wucheng District People’s Congress) election software; and
• has evidence showing Konnech is associated with several companies based in mainland China that appear to be associated with if not subsidized by the Chinese government.

Haury stated, "We concluded that this incident is a very high risk indicator of an intrusion by a foreign intelligence into the U.S. strategic infrastructure, and as obliged by law, we informed the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) and other pertinent law enforcement agencies of this contact."

https://truethevote.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2023.02.24-Konnech-Dkt.-87-Motion-to-Inspect-Property.pdf

33) On March 24, 2023, Peter McCallister, the former General Manager of Konnech Australia, signed an affidavit stating that he believed Konnech's software development was done in China by Jinhua Hongzheng Technology, a company owned by "Mr. Yu's older brother" and "Jun Yu, Mr. Yu's nephew, was the person responsible for depositing the data onto the server in China." 

Additionally, McCallister stated that after Eugene Yu's arrest, Konnech employees in China attempted to hack Konnech's CTO, Luis Nabergoi, and deleted "all conversations referencing or involving Eugene's nephew, Jun Yu." 

Lastly, McCallister believed that Jinhua Hongzheng Technology was "the main provider of election software products to the Communist Party of China" and that Eugene Yu had asked him to sell the same "meeting administration and voting software" to the Australian government.

34) On April 5, 2023, Grant Bradley, the former Konnech employee, signed another affidavit stating "Konnech provided programmers in China private data of U.S.-based election workers, to include social security numbers and other identifying information."

"Konnech appeared to employ at least 80 and perhaps around 100 Chinese nationals to work on its elections software for American clients."

"I witnessed customers' data (specifically poll-watcher information) being made accessible to foreign nationals in China."

"Konnech's election logistics software was (and may still be) substantially developed by developers, designers, and coders who (to the best of my knowledge, information and belief), are all Chinese nationals based out of Wuhan, China."

"The standard process Konnech used to onboard China-based programmers was to create customer environments for the programmers by uploading files containing all of the American customers' poll workers' information, polling locations, and other data to DingTalk or Jira, where the leaders from the Chinese team would have access to Jira, and the entire Chinese team would have access to DingTalk."

"During my employment, on or after October 4, 2022 I was instructed by my superiors to say outwardly to customers that poll worker data was not stored overseas, was not available to foreign nationals, and that we had no idea why Eugene Yu had been arrested... My superiors who instructed me in these regards, and I, knew these statements were false."

https://truethevote.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023.04.07-Konnech-Dkt.-94-1-Exhibit-H-Affidavit-of-Grant-Bradley.pdf

https://truethevote.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2023.03.24-Konnech-Dkt.-91-Reply-ISO-Motion-to-Inspect.pdf

35) On April 14, 2023, cybersecurity expert Nate Cain (
@cain_nate
), who forensically imaged Konnech's devices for the Los Angeles District Attorney's office, stated that Konnech stored the personal data of U.S. election workers and judges on servers in China.

Furthermore, Cain stated that a "Chinese company that has ties to the CCP" did Konnech's "software development and maintenance," and a Defense Counterintelligence Security Agency (DCSA) analyst reviewed their report, verified that it was accurate, and forwarded it to the FBI.

However, Cain mentioned that he had provided evidence of a major Konnech data breach to the police superintendent of a prominent U.S. county, who subsequently took the information to the FBI, and the FBI had declined to provide assistance, informing the superintendent that they were not interested in pursuing the matter.

Additionally, Cain stated that Los Angeles County had refused to inform several other counties that their data had also been breached.

Cain, who has over 25 years of experience working as a cybersecurity expert for the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, DISA, and the FBI, received his cybersecurity training from the NSA as a member of the U.S. Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command (MARFORCYBER).

"We found that there was voter poll worker data, as well as election judge data, and election inventory system data found on Chinese servers."

"We weren't expecting to see what we saw, which was that there was a Chinese company that was essentially doing the software development and all of the software maintenance for this company.

And what we discovered was that we got behind the Chinese firewall, and we found documents that showed that this Chinese company actually had ties to the CCP.

And then at that point, I had no choice but to take that information, package it up and provide it to the Defense Counterintelligence Security Agency (DCSA) because as a cleared contractor, I have a sworn obligation to provide them that information that this could be a potential Chinese espionage or intelligence operation working against the United States and our critical infrastructure.

So, I provided that information to them, and now, we're in a difficult situation because I don't think that George Gascon was very happy about that."

36) On April 20, 2023, Konnech and Eugene Yu retracted their defamation case against Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, a day after
@truethevote
 and
@onwardsocial
 unveiled a website (http://openink.com/konnech) containing much of the information discussed in this Twitter thread.

37) In conclusion, Eugene Yu develops election administration software for the Chinese government in partnership with Huawei, China Telecom, China Unicom, China Mobile, and Lenovo. 

Two of his former employees have signed affidavits stating that he stored confidential U.S. election data on servers in China, where his software was developed, tested, and maintained. 

Two cybersecurity experts, who forensically imaged Konnech's devices for the LADA, have stated that he stored confidential U.S. election data on servers in China, where he developed election administration software for the Chinese government. 

This information is publicly available on the internet. 

So, why is the FBI still allowing Konnech's election administration software to be used across the country?

38) On April 14, 2016, Jinhua Hongzheng Technology announced on Weibo that it provides election administration software to China's National People's Congress, Detroit,  Michigan, St. Louis, Missouri, and Washington, D.C. 

Its predecessor is Jinhua Yulian Network and "Konnech."

https://archive.ph/8xIqe

39) So, why is the FBI shielding two firms closely tied to the Chinese government, which have financed and developed an American election software company for the past 15 years, all while transferring election data back to China?

40) And lastly, why is the FBI headquarters in Washington D.C., targeting Catherine (
@truethevote
) and Gregg (
@onwardsocial
) for exposing this while seemingly protecting Jianwei Yu (于建伟)?

41) If you would like Congress to hold the FBI accountable for betraying Catherine, Gregg, and their commitment to preserving the integrity of our election system, please visit
@TrueTheVote
's website, http://stopccpelectionfraud.com, and follow these three simple steps:

1. Sign the petition
2. Contact your representatives
3. Review these articles

42) In all of my interactions with Catherine and Gregg, despite facing lawsuits, wrongful arrests, and solitary confinement, their main concern has always been the removal of this national security threat from our election system. 

If you would like to support their election integrity efforts, you can donate at:
https://truethevote.org/donate/

43) Finally, if you'd like to support my journalism, please consider becoming a member of my Twitter subscriber community.

By joining, you'll gain exclusive access to my reporting, including:

• Exclusive Konnech threads
• Content creation tips
• OSINT research tools
• Monthly Q&A sessions

Thank you for your time!

This piece applies the lessons Israel (and the US, and several Arab countries that defended Israel[!!!] learned during Iran's ongoing drone attacks and apply those lessons to Taiwan. Suffice to say Taiwan has not demonstrated a similar capability or indeed has similar tools at hand, which is good news for China:

Apply Middle East Lessons to Taiwan
Iran's Attack Could be Replicated by China Against Taiwan

STEPHEN BRYEN
APR 17, 2024

There is still a great deal to learn about Iran's drone and missile attack on Israel.  Even so, it is very clear that if such an attack was launched by China against Taiwan, the results could well be dismal and Taiwan would suffer greatly.  If there is one clear lesson from Iran's attack, it is that the US and Japan along with Taiwan must urgently prepare to fend off a similar attack.

In the Iranian attack on Israel:

Thanks for reading Weapons and Strategy! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

170 Kamikaze Drones were fired. None entered Israeli territory. At least one appears to have landed in Iran.
30 Cruise Missiles were fired; 25 were shot down outside of Israeli territory.
103 out of 110 Ballistic Missiles were shot down; 7 Ballistic Missile impacts were recorded on Israeli territory​. Five of them hit the Nevatim air base damaging at least one transport plane.
Israel used its layered mostly ground-based air defenses including Iron Dome, David's Sling, and Arrow-2 and Arrow-3.  One drone was shot down by an Israeli Sa'ar ship equipped with C-Dome, the sea-based version of Iron Dome.  Israel also used its fighter jets and other aircraft to shoot down drones and cruise missiles. 

Israel's defenses were deeply coordinated.  Israel put in the air its Oron surveillance aircraft, a multi-domain, multi-sensor solution that was used to spot threats and pass target coordinates to fighter aircraft and ground based defenses.  Israel also used its Eitam AWACS and Shavit intelligence gathering aircraft during the attack.  'The Wing of Zion' 767 aircraft, based at Nevatim, also was launched.  Ostensibly it is a VIP transport for Israel's top leaders.  In reality it is a sophisticated command center in case of a nuclear attack.

The US, UK, Jordan and Saudi Arabia also supported Israel against Iran's massive attack.  US ships and aircraft shot down some 80 "objects" that were mostly drones, but US AEGIS class Arleigh Burke class destroyers also used their AWACS missiles against ballistic missile threats.  Between four and seven SM-3 air defense missiles were launched.  The only on the ground casualties were in Israel, one Bedouin girl, age 7, seriously injured by shrapnel and in Jordan where  reportedly four people died.

The USS Wayne E. Meyer arrives at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division. The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer carries the 100th of the Aegis Weapons Systems that has been delivered to the Navy. The ship is named after the Navy Rear Admiral Wayne E. Meyer, who is known as the "Father of Aegis." Photo by Eric Parsons, US Navy
This was the first time Arab countries came to Israel's defense.

The pivot of the operation outside of Israel was the US Central Command (CENTCOM).  CENTCOM coordinated the actions of all the players.  While some of this coordination was improvised rather than planned far in advance, nonetheless it demonstrated the critical importance of an integrated approach to security.

This is an important, in fact a vital lesson for defending Taiwan.

There are three key findings.  The first is that if China launched a similar attack on Taiwan, Taiwan would need outside support for its defense just as Israel needed outside support to fend off the Iranian attacks.  As brilliant as Israel's air defense system is, it would have been saturated and unable to cope without help from the US, UK, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Taiwan's air defenses are, as far as we know, not integrated and layered like Israel's.  Taiwan's air defenses consist of Patriot batteries and home-grown air defense solutions, especially Sky Bow III.  Sky Bow is said to be capable of dealing with aircraft, cruise missiles and short range tactical missiles.  It fills in the gap of coverage with Patriot Pac-3 designed to deal with strategic threats.

Taiwan has some sea based air defenses.  Its six Lafayette-class frigates, the best warships in Taiwan's Navy, are equipped with RIM-72C Sea Chaparral air defense missiles.  The missiles are old AIM-9 Sidewinders with very short range ( said to be 3 to 4 kilometers) and would not be effective against most contemporary threats. Taiwan has a project underway to upgrade the Lafayettes under the Xunlien Project. This project aims to install MK-41 vertical launch systems on the ships which requires significant structural changes to the frigates. The MK-41 is the same vertical launch system used on US AEGIS-equipped cruisers and destroyers, and also is used in the AEGIS Ashore system in Poland and Romania.  Taiwan plans to equip the frigates with Sky Bow II or Sky Bow III missiles.

The second key finding is that Taiwan's domestic air defenses still need upgrading, especially since its current systems would have difficulty dealing with drones and with complex saturation attacks. In particular, Taiwan would greatly benefit from Iron Dome and with air defense integration know-how.  Taiwan lacks any modern combat experience in using its missile defenses and has no hands-on knowledge of how they would perform under heavy combat stress.

One immediate enhancement would be for Taiwan to get Iron Dome.  The US owns two Iron Dome systems which the US Army, a particularly retarded organization when it comes to common sense and air defenses, does not want or even know what to do with.  The easy and obvious answer would be to transfer them to Taiwan.

The third finding relates to time and distance and how to handle an air attack on Taiwan.  It is quite true that the Israeli and CENTCOM air defenses were cobbled together and probably could stand significant improvement, more automation, and other steps to exploit capabilities and commonalities.  Even so, compared to what exists in the US Pacific Command (PACOM) and its responsibilities vis a vis Japan and Taiwan, it is hardly developed at all.  PACOM cannot fight to defend Taiwan unless its systems are coordinated with Taiwan.  Much of this means there is a great need for a fully mature command and control system.  Taiwan has long been excluded from any coordination activities, has not been involved in regional military exercises led by PACOM, and so far as is known there is no planning on how to deal with a sophisticated attack on Taiwan from China.

The US must take lessons from the Iran threat and apply them to Taiwan's defense.  Failing to do so leaves China in the catbird's seat and renders Taiwan's survival against any strong attack questionable.  If nothing is done, even if the US wanted to help Taiwan, it would be without the coordinated means to help.

https://weapons.substack.com/p/apply-middle-east-lessons-to-taiwan?r=1qo1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

I’m a firearms trainer and generally stay in my lane by teaching beginning and intermediate transitioning stuff. I’ve taken my share of advance training, though, and intend to take a vehicle based class this year. I think those that carry a firearm need to be at least acquainted w/ this material:

https://www.recoilweb.com/vehicle-cover-concealment-183950.html

I’ve spent my share of time stomping about the underbrush in national parks around cave bearing country and have bumped into my share of miscreants from illegal campers (who generally trash the place) to still and meth cooking sites (slowly back away and yes, I’m armed and sometimes have a very protective pooch with me) to ginseng, morel, or other wild food hunters. With that said, I’ve never encountered antler shed hunters & didn’t know it was a problem.

These fellows had the book thrown at them. I have no problem with that:

https://gearjunkie.com/outdoor/hunt-fish/wyoming-shed-antler-poacher-charged

25 year NPR business reporter takes his organization to task for uncritically embracing the “Progressive” world view as it unflinchingly vectors Trump Derangement Syndrome:

I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.

Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says the network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.

By Uri Berliner

April 9, 2024

You know the stereotype of the NPR listener: an EV-driving, Wordle-playing, tote bag–carrying coastal elite. It doesn’t precisely describe me, but it’s not far off. I’m Sarah Lawrence–educated, was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother, I drive a Subaru, and Spotify says my listening habits are most similar to people in Berkeley.

I fit the NPR mold. I’ll cop to that.

So when I got a job here 25 years ago, I never looked back. As a senior editor on the business desk where news is always breaking, we’ve covered upheavals in the workplace, supermarket prices, social media, and AI.

It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.

In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.

If you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it’s always been this way.

But it hasn’t.

For decades, since its founding in 1970, a wide swath of America tuned in to NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that exposed us to voices around the country and the world radically different from our own—engaging precisely because they were unguarded and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the farmer listening to Morning Edition from his or her tractor at sunrise.

Back in 2011, although NPR’s audience tilted a bit to the left, it still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of the road, and 37 percent as liberal.

By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. We weren’t just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals.

An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.
That wouldn’t be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things, it’s devastating both for its journalism and its business model.

Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency.

Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.

Schiff, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became NPR’s guiding hand, its ever-present muse. By my count, NPR hosts interviewed Schiff 25 times about Trump and Russia. During many of those conversations, Schiff alluded to purported evidence of collusion. The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports.

But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.

It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. Unfortunately, it happens. You follow the wrong leads, you get misled by sources you trusted, you’re emotionally invested in a narrative, and bits of circumstantial evidence never add up. It’s bad to blow a big story.
What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don’t practice those standards yourself. That’s what shatters trust and engenders cynicism about the media.

Russiagate was not NPR’s only miscue.

In October 2020, the New York Post published the explosive report about the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer shop containing emails about his sordid business dealings. With the election only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye. Here’s how NPR’s managing editor for news at the time explained the thinking: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”

But it wasn’t a pure distraction, or a product of Russian disinformation, as dozens of former and current intelligence officials suggested. The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence peddling and its possible implications for his father.

The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with colleagues, I listened as one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good we weren’t following the laptop story because it could help Trump.

When the essential facts of the Post’s reporting were confirmed and the emails verified independently about a year and a half later, we could have fessed up to our misjudgment. But, like Russia collusion, we didn’t make the hard choice of transparency.

Politics also intruded into NPR’s Covid coverage, most notably in reporting on the origin of the pandemic. One of the most dismal aspects of Covid journalism is how quickly it defaulted to ideological story lines. For example, there was Team Natural Origin—supporting the hypothesis that the virus came from a wild animal market in Wuhan, China. And on the other side, Team Lab Leak, leaning into the idea that the virus escaped from a Wuhan lab.

The lab leak theory came in for rough treatment almost immediately, dismissed as racist or a right-wing conspiracy theory. Anthony Fauci and former NIH head Francis Collins, representing the public health establishment, were its most notable critics. And that was enough for NPR. We became fervent members of Team Natural Origin, even declaring that the lab leak had been debunked by scientists.
But that wasn’t the case.

When word first broke of a mysterious virus in Wuhan, a number of leading virologists immediately suspected it could have leaked from a lab there conducting experiments on bat coronaviruses. This was in January 2020, during calmer moments before a global pandemic had been declared, and before fear spread and politics intruded.

Reporting on a possible lab leak soon became radioactive. Fauci and Collins apparently encouraged the March publication of an influential scientific paper known as “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2.” Its authors wrote they didn’t believe “any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”

But the lab leak hypothesis wouldn’t die. And understandably so. In private, even some of the scientists who penned the article dismissing it sounded a different tune. One of the authors, Andrew Rambaut, an evolutionary biologist from Edinburgh University, wrote to his colleagues, “I literally swivel day by day thinking it is a lab escape or natural.”

Over the course of the pandemic, a number of investigative journalists made compelling, if not conclusive, cases for the lab leak. But at NPR, we weren’t about to swivel or even tiptoe away from the insistence with which we backed the natural origin story. We didn’t budge when the Energy Department—the federal agency with the most expertise about laboratories and biological research—concluded, albeit with low confidence, that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the emergence of the virus.

Instead, we introduced our coverage of that development on February 28, 2023, by asserting confidently that “the scientific evidence overwhelmingly points to a natural origin for the virus.”

When a colleague on our science desk was asked why they were so dismissive of the lab leak theory, the response was odd. The colleague compared it to the Bush administration’s unfounded argument that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, apparently meaning we won’t get fooled again. But these two events were not even remotely related. Again, politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that ought to have been driving our work.

NPR editor Uri Berliner tells how the network lost America's trust in The Free Press

Uri Berliner near his home in Washington, D.C., on April 5, 2024. (Photo by Pete Kiehart for The Free Press)

I’m offering three examples of widely followed stories where I believe we faltered. Our coverage is out there in the public domain. Anyone can read or listen for themselves and make their own judgment. But to truly understand how independent journalism suffered at NPR, you need to step inside the organization.
You need to start with former CEO John Lansing. Lansing came to NPR in 2019 from the federally funded agency that oversees Voice of America. Like others who have served in the top job at NPR, he was hired primarily to raise money and to ensure good working relations with hundreds of member stations that acquire NPR’s programming.

After working mostly behind the scenes, Lansing became a more visible and forceful figure after the killing of George Floyd in May 2020. It was an anguished time in the newsroom, personally and professionally so for NPR staffers. Floyd’s murder, captured on video, changed both the conversation and the daily operations at NPR.

Given the circumstances of Floyd’s death, it would have been an ideal moment to tackle a difficult question: Is America, as progressive activists claim, beset by systemic racism in the 2020s—in law enforcement, education, housing, and elsewhere? We happen to have a very powerful tool for answering such questions: journalism. Journalism that lets evidence lead the way.
But the message from the top was very different. America’s infestation with systemic racism was declared loud and clear: it was a given. Our mission was to change it.

“When it comes to identifying and ending systemic racism,” Lansing wrote in a companywide article, “we can be agents of change. Listening and deep reflection are necessary but not enough. They must be followed by constructive and meaningful steps forward. I will hold myself accountable for this.”

And we were told that NPR itself was part of the problem. In confessional language he said the leaders of public media, “starting with me—must be aware of how we ourselves have benefited from white privilege in our careers. We must understand the unconscious bias we bring to our work and interactions. And we must commit ourselves—body and soul—to profound changes in ourselves and our institutions.”
He declared that diversity—on our staff and in our audience—was the overriding mission, the “North Star” of the organization. Phrases like “that’s part of the North Star” became part of meetings and more casual conversation.

Race and identity became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace. Journalists were required to ask everyone we interviewed their race, gender, and ethnicity (among other questions), and had to enter it in a centralized tracking system. We were given unconscious bias training sessions. A growing DEI staff offered regular meetings imploring us to “start talking about race.” Monthly dialogues were offered for “women of color” and “men of color.” Nonbinary people of color were included, too.

These initiatives, bolstered by a $1 million grant from the NPR Foundation, came from management, from the top down. Crucially, they were in sync culturally with what was happening at the grassroots—among producers, reporters, and other staffers. Most visible was a burgeoning number of employee resource (or affinity) groups based on identity.

They included MGIPOC (Marginalized Genders and Intersex People of Color mentorship program); Mi Gente (Latinx employees at NPR); NPR Noir (black employees at NPR); Southwest Asians and North Africans at NPR; Ummah (for Muslim-identifying employees); Women, Gender-Expansive, and Transgender People in Technology Throughout Public Media; Khevre (Jewish heritage and culture at NPR); and NPR Pride (LGBTQIA employees at NPR).

All this reflected a broader movement in the culture of people clustering together based on ideology or a characteristic of birth. If, as NPR’s internal website suggested, the groups were simply a “great way to meet like-minded colleagues” and “help new employees feel included,” it would have been one thing.

But the role and standing of affinity groups, including those outside NPR, were more than that. They became a priority for NPR’s union, SAG-AFTRA—an item in collective bargaining. The current contract, in a section on DEI, requires NPR management to “keep up to date with current language and style guidance from journalism affinity groups” and to inform employees if language differs from the diktats of those groups. In such a case, the dispute could go before the DEI Accountability Committee.

In essence, this means the NPR union, of which I am a dues-paying member, has ensured that advocacy groups are given a seat at the table in determining the terms and vocabulary of our news coverage.

Conflicts between workers and bosses, between labor and management, are common in workplaces. NPR has had its share. But what’s notable is the extent to which people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.

And this, I believe, is the most damaging development at NPR: the absence of viewpoint diversity.

Today on Honestly Bari talks to Uri about this essay and his decision to publish it. Listen here:

There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. It’s frictionless—one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies. It’s almost like an assembly line.

The mindset prevails in choices about language. In a document called NPR Transgender Coverage Guidance—disseminated by news management—we’re asked to avoid the term biological sex. (The editorial guidance was prepared with the help of a former staffer of the National Center for Transgender Equality.) The mindset animates bizarre stories—on how The Beatles and bird names are racially problematic, and others that are alarmingly divisive; justifying looting, with claims that fears about crime are racist; and suggesting that Asian Americans who oppose affirmative action have been manipulated by white conservatives.

More recently, we have approached the Israel-Hamas war and its spillover onto streets and campuses through the “intersectional” lens that has jumped from the faculty lounge to newsrooms. Oppressor versus oppressed. That’s meant highlighting the suffering of Palestinians at almost every turn while downplaying the atrocities of October 7, overlooking how Hamas intentionally puts Palestinian civilians in peril, and giving little weight to the explosion of antisemitic hate around the world.

For nearly all my career, working at NPR has been a source of great pride. It’s a privilege to work in the newsroom at a crown jewel of American journalism. My colleagues are congenial and hardworking.

I can’t count the number of times I would meet someone, describe what I do, and they’d say, “I love NPR!”
And they wouldn’t stop there. They would mention their favorite host or one of those “driveway moments” where a story was so good you’d stay in your car until it finished.

It still happens, but often now the trajectory of the conversation is different. After the initial “I love NPR,” there’s a pause and a person will acknowledge, “I don’t listen as much as I used to.” Or, with some chagrin: “What’s happening there? Why is NPR telling me what to think?”
In recent years I’ve struggled to answer that question. Concerned by the lack of viewpoint diversity, I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None.

So on May 3, 2021, I presented the findings at an all-hands editorial staff meeting. When I suggested we had a diversity problem with a score of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn’t hostile. It was worse. It was met with profound indifference. I got a few messages from surprised, curious colleagues. But the messages were of the “oh wow, that’s weird” variety, as if the lopsided tally was a random anomaly rather than a critical failure of our diversity North Star.

In a follow-up email exchange, a top NPR news executive told me that she had been “skewered” for bringing up diversity of thought when she arrived at NPR. So, she said, “I want to be careful how we discuss this publicly.”

For years, I have been persistent. When I believe our coverage has gone off the rails, I have written regular emails to top news leaders, sometimes even having one-on-one sessions with them. On March 10, 2022, I wrote to a top news executive about the numerous times we described the controversial education bill in Florida as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill when it didn’t even use the word gay. I pushed to set the record straight, and wrote another time to ask why we keep using that word that many Hispanics hate—Latinx. On March 31, 2022, I was invited to a managers’ meeting to present my observations.

Throughout these exchanges, no one has ever trashed me. That’s not the NPR way. People are polite. But nothing changes. So I’ve become a visible wrong-thinker at a place I love. It’s uncomfortable, sometimes heartbreaking.

Even so, out of frustration, on November 6, 2022, I wrote to the captain of ship North Star—CEO John Lansing—about the lack of viewpoint diversity and asked if we could have a conversation about it. I got no response, so I followed up four days later. He said he would appreciate hearing my perspective and copied his assistant to set up a meeting. On December 15, the morning of the meeting, Lansing’s assistant wrote back to cancel our conversation because he was under the weather. She said he was looking forward to chatting and a new meeting invitation would be sent. But it never came.

I won’t speculate about why our meeting never happened. Being CEO of NPR is a demanding job with lots of constituents and headaches to deal with. But what’s indisputable is that no one in a C-suite or upper management position has chosen to deal with the lack of viewpoint diversity at NPR and how that affects our journalism.

Which is a shame. Because for all the emphasis on our North Star, NPR’s news audience in recent years has become less diverse, not more so. Back in 2011, our audience leaned a bit to the left but roughly reflected America politically; now, the audience is cramped into a smaller, progressive silo.

Despite all the resources we’d devoted to building up our news audience among blacks and Hispanics, the numbers have barely budged. In 2023, according to our demographic research, 6 percent of our news audience was black, far short of the overall U.S. adult population, which is 14.4 percent black. And Hispanics were only 7 percent, compared to the overall Hispanic adult population, around 19 percent. Our news audience doesn’t come close to reflecting America. It’s overwhelmingly white and progressive, and clustered around coastal cities and college towns.

These are perilous times for news organizations. Last year, NPR laid off or bought out 10 percent of its staff and canceled four podcasts following a slump in advertising revenue. Our radio audience is dwindling and our podcast downloads are down from 2020. The digital stories on our website rarely have national impact. They aren’t conversation starters. Our competitive advantage in audio—where for years NPR had no peer—is vanishing. There are plenty of informative and entertaining podcasts to choose from.

Even within our diminished audience, there’s evidence of trouble at the most basic level: trust.

In February, our audience insights team sent an email proudly announcing that we had a higher trustworthy score than CNN or The New York Times. But the research from Harris Poll is hardly reassuring. It found that “3-in-10 audience members familiar with NPR said they associate NPR with the characteristic ‘trustworthy.’ ” Only in a world where media credibility has completely imploded would a 3-in-10 trustworthy score be something to boast about.

With declining ratings, sorry levels of trust, and an audience that has become less diverse over time, the trajectory for NPR is not promising. Two paths seem clear. We can keep doing what we’re doing, hoping it will all work out. Or we could start over, with the basic building blocks of journalism. We could face up to where we’ve gone wrong. News organizations don’t go in for that kind of reckoning. But there’s a good reason for NPR to be the first: we’re the ones with the word public in our name.

Despite our missteps at NPR, defunding isn’t the answer. As the country becomes more fractured, there’s still a need for a public institution where stories are told and viewpoints exchanged in good faith. Defunding, as a rebuke from Congress, wouldn’t change the journalism at NPR. That needs to come from within.

A few weeks ago, NPR welcomed a new CEO, Katherine Maher, who’s been a leader in tech. She doesn’t have a news background, which could be an asset given where things stand. I’ll be rooting for her. It’s a tough job. Her first rule could be simple enough: don’t tell people how to think. It could even be the new North Star.

Uri Berliner is a senior business editor and reporter at NPR. His work has been recognized with a Peabody Award, a Loeb Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and a Society of Professional Journalists New America Award, among others. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @uberliner.

https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust

I suspect the authoritative report linked within will be cited frequently:

https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/04/landmark-nhs-england-report-science-doesnt-support-gender-affirming-medicine/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=landmark-nhs-england-report-science-doesnt-support-gender-affirming-medicine

… to defeat Mississippi’s claim of costal land ownership. Tickles my fancy that a citizen beat the state by reaching back so far into the historic record:

Private Landowner in Mississippi Beats State Based on Interpretation of "1784 Spanish Land Grant"

The Volokh Conspiracy / by Eugene Volokh / Apr 11, 2024 at 2:49 PM

From last week's Mississippi Supreme Court decision in State v. Aldrich (opinion by Justice David Ishee):

This case is a dispute over roughly one acre of Mississippi coastal land. In short, John Aldrich and the State disagree over whether the subject property is Aldrich's or State-owned tideland…. [T]he primary source of conflict is the map the secretary of state published in 1994 that demarcated the boundaries between private property and Public Trust Tidelands.

Via the map, the secretary designated the subject property as State-owned tideland. Aldrich disagreed with the designation however, leading him to challenge the relevant boundary in Harrison County Chancery Court in 1998. The State then filed a counterclaim, alleging it held fee simple title to the property.

Following more than two decades of inactivity and extended bursts of litigation to be detailed below, the chancellor eventually found in Aldrich's favor in 2022, vesting title in him and adjusting the tideland boundary. Throughout the proceedings, the chancellor made five consequential findings, all of which the State labels as error on appeal. Four of them present issues that can be routinely resolved. The outlier, however, poses a unique issue.

Specifically, the chancellor found that a 1784 Spanish land grant, which is the root of Aldrich's deraignment of title, negated the State's claim to fee simple title. This finding carries considerable weight, as it calls into question which lands passed from the federal government to Mississippi upon statehood. This case therefore requires careful historical analysis that balances the interests of private landowners with those of the State. Upon review, however, we find no error and affirm the chancery court's decision….

The 1783 Treaty of Paris, the 1795 Treaty of San Lorenzo, the 1800 Treaty of St. Ildefonso, and the 1803 Treaty of Paris also come up, as does "[t]he deposition of oyster shells and dredge spoils."

The post Private Landowner in Mississippi Beats State Based on Interpretation of "1784 Spanish Land Grant" appeared first on Reason.com.

https://reason.com/volokh/2024/04/11/private-landowner-in-mississippi-beats-state-based-on-interpretation-of-1784-spanish-land-grant/

This could live more than one place but given the abject asshattery documented in this piece I’ll drop it here:

“Crime Guns” -- D.C.’s MPD Under an ATF Cloud

MONDAY, APRIL 8, 2024 “Crime Guns” -- D.C.’s MPD Under an ATF Cloud

Some reckonings are a long time coming. The District of Columbia’s irrational hostility to all things gun-related and to legitimate, licensed retail gun dealers in particular, has reportedly culminated with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) scrutinizing the D.C. police department under a program aimed at suspected “bad apple” gun dealers.

When the District’s one and only Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL) who processed gun transfers lost his lease in 2011, D.C.’s restrictive zoning laws forced him to temporarily close his business because he was unable to get approval for an alternative location. District law forbids firearm transfers between unlicensed individuals, which meant residents were left without a legal means of acquiring or transferring handguns. It was only after a lawsuit was filed that local politicians agreed to lease him space in the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) headquarters, allowing the FFL to resume operations. Even so, the location was not zoning-compliant and required emergency legislation to sanction it.

In March 2020, the FFL “abruptly” shut down his business, and the MPD itself stepped in as the District’s FFL. Mayor Muriel Bowser justified the move as necessary to avoid more litigation, “so that we wouldn’t run into any constitutional issues or open ourselves up to meddling in our gun laws from outside groups… once there is a viable commercial alternative licensed to operate in D.C., MPD will no longer need to serve this role.”     

As one source pointed out, not only did the MPD-as-FFL continue to charge $125 per firearm for each transfer –“$100 more than the average cost in the USA to process a firearm transfer for an eligible citizen” – there were questions as to whether the MPD qualified for an FFL and whether the ATF “gave the MPD special treatment” in granting the license. There was also the conflict between the D.C. government, a federal enclave, acting as an FFL and keeping the mandatory records required by that role at its “business premises,” which premises also happened to be “a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof,” contrary to the prohibition in 18 U.S.C. § 926(a)(3).   

A report from NBC’s News4 I-Team now claims to have “federal documents proving a concerning number of guns the Metropolitan Police Department helped bring into the District ended up at crime scenes. So many guns recovered at crime scenes, in such a brief period, that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives placed D.C. police into a program designed to give extra scrutiny to dealers with higher levels of so-called crime guns.”

The report alleges that the ATF issued the MPD a “Demand 2 Program” letter in May 2022. The Demand 2 Program requires FFLs with 25 or more firearm traces in a calendar year, with a short “time to crime” of three years or less, to submit an annual report of firearms transactions to the ATF, followed by quarterly reports of used firearms acquired by the FFL. The reporting requirement applies until the FFL is instructed to stop by the ATF. The letter, of course, concerns just the eight or so months that the MPD acted as the District’s exclusive FFL, when it limited itself to processing transfers, including conducting background checks and enforcing the District’s gun registration and other requirements.

Based on the NBC report, “at least 25 of the guns MPD helped sell to D.C. residents in 2020 and 2021 were recovered at crime scenes in 2021 alone,” and that “[f]or the dozens of guns recovered at crime scenes that D.C. police helped sell, the time-to-crime was at most 20 months – less than two years.”

The initial reporting period under the Demand 2 Program is as identified in the ATF letter or no less than the 12 months prior to the date of the letter; follow-up reporting periods are quarterly, going forward from the date of the ATF letter. The ATF’s stepped-up reporting requirements are likely meaningless in the case of the MPD, given that the department ceased its short-lived tenure as an FFL effective January 4, 2021.

Anti-gun politicians and their gun control allies have argued for years that high crime rates in gun control strongholds are fueled by so-called “bad apple” gun dealers and less stringent laws in adjacent jurisdictions. The Brady Campaign, for instance, claimed that Chicago’s strict gun control was undermined by neighboring states’ laws and certain suburban dealers that “simply flood the streets of Chicago with thousands of guns.” The Giffords Law Center asserts that Washington, D.C. “has some of the strongest” gun control in the nation and “(b)ecause of this, firearms purchased in DC are rarely used in crimes… nearly every gun recovered at a crime scene in DC was originally purchased in another state.” This statement conveniently overlooks D.C.’s rising crime rates and that guns could only be purchased elsewhere, given that the District lacks a single retail gun store.

The NBC report refers to a letter in a similar vein that Mayor Bowser wrote to Virginia lawmakers on January 8, 2020. It named Virginia (a Giffords B plus-rated state) as the main source of “crime guns” used in the District, and asked for measures to address gun trafficking through stronger licensing and increased inspections for gun dealers (“ATF data show that criminal or negligent gun dealers are responsible for ‘nearly half’ of the total number of trafficked firearms uncovered in ATF investigations”).

A few months later, on April 20, Bowser signed Mayor’s Order 2020-064, authorizing the MPD to obtain a federal firearms license on behalf of the District. Not only did the MPD allegedly advise the NBC news team that “it started dealing guns more than two weeks before Mayor Muriel Bowser’s order allowing them to do so,” but it facilitated bringing guns into D.C. that ended up being used in crimes. The NBC News4 I-Team reportedly contacted the Mayor’s office about the letter and MPD’s role as a gun dealer, and while the office “acknowledged the questions” it “never answered them.”

By now, having “facilitated the legal transfer” of approximately 8,000 firearms for an estimated revenue stream of over a million dollars, the MPD and the District’s political leaders face questions as to how these facilitated sales impacted public safety.

Ironically, given the mayor’s concerns over “open[ing] ourselves up to meddling in our gun laws from outside groups,” at least two of the outside groups asking questions are the gun control group Brady and the ATF. According to a Brady spokesperson quoted in the NBC report, “MPD is ultimately responsible for the public safety of the residents … Everything that they do should have an eye towards protecting the public safety. If Washington [MPD] is engaged in selling firearms to the public, they have an obligation to the residents of D.C. to make sure that they are doing so safely and responsibly.”

The greater irony, by far, is that many of D.C.’s politicians pushed a bill last year to crack down on “firearm industry members” (any entity “engaged in the manufacture, distribution, importation, marketing, wholesale, or retail sale of firearm-related products”). If passed, one of the responsibilities of regulated entities would be to prevent “the unlawful … use of a firearm-related product,” with the District’s Attorney General, private citizens and others being authorized to bring civil actions with respect to alleged violations. A specific section reads, “An intervening act by a third party, including, but not limited to, criminal misuse of a firearm-related product, shall not preclude a firearm industry member from liability under [this] title.” At the time, the bill’s sponsor described the bill as “a meaningful step towards measured responsibility for the ongoing trauma gun violence inflicts on District residents.”       

If nothing else, this latest development may persuade D.C. lawmakers to reconsider the flaw in blaming industries and institutions, rather than individual perpetrators, for crime and violence, especially as one of the institutions involved is the District itself.

https://www.nraila.org/articles/20240408/crime-guns-dc-s-mpd-under-an-atf-cloud

Real Clear Investigations does a deep dive into “non-partisan” voter registration efforts that are anything but non-partisan:

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/04/10/how_taxpayers_will_heavily_subsidize_democrat_boots_on_the_ground_this_election_1023475.html?fbclid=IwAR3PQ6B7qqTd2iEYlVfonKic3lqXd26_0ff-DfDf1C3TevWj5_TiKhqZ4g0_aem_ATTJ0fXDWaQvoupad_azuf_sezlBQQGaU1MpjfM-6Las4snerpefXOJxalogC7bxBsmSxKupUApw9wdkUmH_aq9D

Couple interesting pieces re the latest plagiarism scandals to emerge in higher ed. For those who don’t know, “protected class” is educrat speak for minorities identified as worthy of extra protections. Every time I’d embark on a performance management effort for an underperforming employee the first question HR would ask is “are they a member of a protected class?”

Perhaps it’s just me, but it seems “protected” is turning into a synonym for underperforming scholar:

https://www.karlstack.com/p/lisa-cooks-new-plagiarism-scandal?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&fbclid=IwAR0l4o_eKH6kZUTQVc9MQ3fDTluc5B1bS6fiT8MjMJ_Kocac-TrE8YUIM4M_aem_ATR_vR4aNGK7i5XdRCcS3k_snAv21r2O3O7N78Kk3ND7HA9OSzAVlSP9vLwkTXG_qbUw32DAE4Nc-VQmPeNpk1q5

https://www.dailywire.com/news/trouble-at-the-fed

Always amuses me when green weenies allow emotion to get between them and larger environmental issues:

Why Botswana’s President Just Threatened to Send 20,000 Elephants to Germany

Germany's Minister of the Environment has suggested restricting the import of hunting trophies. President Masisi of Botswana had quite the response.

Written by Rachelle Schrute Apr 08, 2024 12:10 p.m. ET

Botswana’s President, Mokgweetsi Masisi, proposed a most unusual export to Germany last week: Elephants — 20,000 of them. The heated offer came in response to comments made earlier by Germany’s Minister of the Environment, Steffi Lemke, who suggested a ban on the import of hunting trophies into the country. Lemke, a leader in the country’s Green Party, cited the possible new restrictions as a way to prevent poaching.

“We would like to offer such a gift to Germany,” Masisi told the German tabloid Bild. “Twenty thousand elephants for Germany, this is not a joke.” Masisi noted that Lemke did not understand the reality of living with a growing population of such a large animal.

“It is very easy to sit in Berlin and have an opinion about our affairs in Botswana. We are paying the price for preserving these animals for the world and even for Lemke’s party,” he said.

According to Masisi, the population of elephants in Botswana has swelled to more than 130,000 due to conservation efforts. It’s estimated that the biological carrying capacity for elephants in the county is only around 60,000.

Masisi went on to explain that elephants were trampling people to death. He explained that the explosion in population has caused serious damage to villages and decimated crops.

In an effort to curb the growing population of elephants in Botswana, the country has offered to send 8,000 elephants to Angola and another 500 to Mozambique.

Trophy Hunting as a Tool of Conservation?

Elephant hunting for sport has been at the center of the trophy hunting debate since the tradition began. Elephants are often personified and cherished because of their intelligence. This, in particular, stirs strong emotions for animal rights activists, such as Save the Elephants.

As the largest land animal, they are quite literally the “elephant in the room” when the discussion of trophy hunting arises.

Conservation efforts have led to a healthy increase in elephant populations in several locations worldwide. Elephant hunting was banned in Botswana in 2014 in an effort to preserve the species, but the ban ended in 2019 amid immense pressure from local communities.

In his interview with Bild, Masisi stated that hunting elephants is vital to the country as an “important means to keep them in check.”

Meanwhile, Germany remains one of the largest importers of hunting trophies in the European Union. In 2023, 26 African elephant trophies were imported to the country. Botswana’s president recently warned that a hunting trophy import ban would amount to “a resurgence of colonial conquests” if it comes to fruition. He hinted at the management of the population, the safety of his people, and the economic value to his communities as being a driver for his push to preserve the hunts.

“I find it unfathomable that you’d be horrified of the protection of ones’ livelihood – rural, poor people, who have allowed 40% of the country to be set aside for conservation – and [sic] when they defend themselves,” Masisi said.

bald eagle
Man Pleads Guilty to Bald Eagle 'Killing Spree,' Co-Defendant Still at Large

A Washington man faces up to 5 years in prison for four felonies, while his co-defendant remains on the run from authorities. Read more…
TAGS

Hunt & Fish Hunting News Outdoor trophy hunting wildlife management

Rachelle Schrute has been writing about hunting, fishing, and conservation for several years, as well as being a wilderness guide in Yellowstone National Park. Prior to that, Rachelle held leadership positions in multiple conservation organizations and often finds herself testifying in the capitol on topics ranging from wildlife management to habitat protection. Based in Montana, Rachelle is an avid hunter, angler, wild game cook, and professional outdoor napper.

https://gearjunkie.com/outdoor/hunt-fish/botswana-threatens-germany-with-elephants

He Lied:

WSJ Editorial

The Internal Revenue Service got an audit of its own in time for Tax Day, and two irregularities jump out. President Biden’s plan to hire a new army of tax collectors is falling flat, and the agents already at work are targeting the middle class.

Those are two findings of the IRS’s watchdog, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (Tigta). The report examines IRS progress on mandates from the Biden Administration backed by tens of billions in new funding. The first supposed goal was to audit more ultrawealthy and fewer middle-class filers, but it’s not going so well.

By last December the IRS decided that it wouldn’t begin tracking its progress until later this year. That’s because the agency has been slow to shift its focus to high-income taxpayers, who make up a small share of total filings. Its April 2023 strategic plan pledged that future audits would disproportionately target individuals making at least $400,000, but “did not include specifics on how the IRS was going to ensure it met this commitment,” says Tigta.

The most recent data suggests the IRS is still focused on the middle class. As of last summer, 63% of new audits targeted taxpayers with income of less than $200,000. Only a small overall share reached the very highest earners, while 80% of audits covered filers earning less than $1 million. Don’t forget to save those charitable-giving receipts.

Sluggish hiring might explain the slow shift. To its credit, the IRS never claimed it would decrease its middle-class audits, only that audits on higher-earners would become a majority. A fleet of new agents were supposed to turn their sights on rich tax dodgers. But apparently the job is in scarce demand.

Tigta reports that revenue-agent recruitment is “far below” the agency’s target, and it hired only 34 in the first six months of its expansion, according to trade publication Government Executive. That compares with its goal of 3,700 in the first year.

The agency faces the same tight labor market as any other employer, but the job specs aren’t bad. A typical salary for these agents is about $125,000, plus public-employee perks such as up to $60,000 in student-loan forgiveness. But for one reason or another, America’s treasurers and accountants aren’t lining up to become federal tax collectors.

All of this should encourage the House Republicans working to claw back more of the $80 billion that Democrats funneled to the IRS. For all that new money, Congress is so far getting the same old agency.

https://apple.news/AZVbhdOdHTwqFZfj2nmqUUg

Scroll down a bit for the paper itself, which explores various maritime chokepoints and the implications if coordinated attacks or some other circumstances closes various critical waterways. Several helpful tables of said chokepoints, treaties regarding them, and such.

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/compound-maritime-insecurity

They are increasing in land mass instead:

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/04/06/islands-that-climate-alarmists-said-would-soon-disappear-due-to-rising-sea-found-to-have-grown-in-size/?fbclid=IwAR1X99RSNuacjpTwsKs-1YnBVjwQpYPxwSOY_TYmM9G85-UTGG8uTbC71gY

It’s worth noting this is based on a Chinese study. As noted in Climate the Movie, these days most federally funded US research has to at least have a built in nod to “climate change,” if not making it a central tenet of the research.

Research that threatens to undermine “climate change” hysteria is not funded. I posted a piece yesterday noting that the amount of US R&D is falling. With China emerging as our primary geo-political foe, and as their research isn’t required to hobble itself by embedding ever more laughable climate hysteria into its foundation, one wonders what sort of impact that will have on geopolitics, and if that impact is seen by those championing “net zero” as a problem or a boon?

Good thing the Biden admin is picking a fight in Eastern Europe and roiling the Mid-East while its “readiness” policies reduces US military readiness. Perhaps they see the inevitable consequences of doing so to be a feature rather than a bug?

https://thefederalist.com/2024/03/29/if-diversity-is-our-strength-why-is-our-military-so-weak/

Israel has something that appears to have a targeted/focused EMP capability among other features:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/pauliddon/2021/11/11/israel-unveils-revolutionary-new-scorpius-electronic-warfare-system/?sh=38b7bb332fdd&fbclid=IwAR2Lt9FapYDJRStcmsRKxr6pz_KQP2X9Kb_RKJKcU5HjAQoGYZodVsAJJ-Y_aem_AYv5Q2uItvgVPsyHri2hu5B09msQ8ffET4_QO5uczMHGeUziRuilkWFhakY1Kg09HTjdz4vK2iTHTwy6Ztv-GwIS

Lots of formatting and graphs in the original, linked at the end of this piece. My big takeaway here is the reduction in R&D budgets and that impact on the future. Though it’s touched on, I suspect a lot of the “green” spending we currently endure sucks oxygen/monetary resources from R&D:

What the '3 Body Problem' teaches about stagnation

Warning: This essay contains significant spoilers about The Three-Body Problem, the best-selling science-fiction novel by Cixon Liu, also now a Netflix series.

The mysterious Trisolaran aliens in The Three Body Problem want to invade Earth and seize the planet for themselves. The rub? Although Trisolarans are a much older civilization and far more advanced than Earth’s dominant species, humans are way better at generating continuous technological progress. (One likely reason: Trisolaris, a planet in the Alpha Centauri star system, has a catastrophically unstable climate that causes repeated collapses of the aliens’ civilization. They’re constantly starting over, while humanity — blessed by a comparatively stable climate — continues to advance.) By the time the Trisolaran warfleet completes its 400-year journey to Earth at one-hundredth the speed of light, humanity will have far eclipsed its tech capabilities. In the book, a Trisolaran scientist explains to its superior the harsh reality of its herky-jerky linear progress versus human exponential progress:

Let’s observe the facts: Humans took more than a hundred thousand Earth years to progress from the Hunter-Gatherer Age to the Agricultural Age. To get from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age took a few thousand Earth years. But to go from the Industrial Age to the Atomic Age took only two hundred Earth years. Thereafter, in only a few Earth decades, they entered the Information Age. This civilization possesses the terrifying ability to accelerate their progress. On Trisolaris, of the more than two hundred civilizations, including our own, none has ever experienced such accelerating development. The progress of science and technology in all Trisolaran civilizations has been at a constant or decelerating pace. In our world, each technology age requires approximately the same amount of time for steady, slow development.”

The princeps nodded. “The fact is that four million and five hundred thousand hours from now, when the Trisolaran Fleet has reached the Earth, that civilization’s technology level will have long surpassed ours, due to their accelerating development. The journey of the Trisolaran Fleet is long and arduous, and the fleet must pass through two interstellar dust belts. It’s very likely that only half of the ships will reach the Earth’s solar system, while the rest perish along the way. And then, the Trisolaran Fleet will be at the mercy of a much more powerful Earth civilization. This is not an expedition, but a funeral procession!”

The Trisolarans, however, have devised a solution: slow humanity down. To do this, they create and send two protons to Earth — as subatomic particles, the protons can move at light speed — which then unfold into two-dimensional forms to create Sophons. These are essentially quantum computers capable of incredible feats, including the ability to interfere with Earth's scientific experiments (such as cutting-physics conducted by particle accelerators), monitor all human communication in real time, and spread misinformation — all happening with some help of human collaborators who treat Trisolarans as divine.

Beyond direct interference in scientific progress, Trisolarans hope the mere knowledge of Sophons and their capabilities can demoralize scientists, policymakers, and the general public. Knowing that any technological breakthrough could be monitored or thwarted by Trisolarans will create a sense of futility and despair in humanity, potentially slowing innovation through a decrease in effort and investment in research and development. People will lose hope in science, specifically, and progress, generally.

The Trisolaran plan is so diabolically clever, it almost makes me wonder if the true explanation for America’s Great Downshift — the surprise slowdown in tech progress and productivity growth since the early 1970s that I write about in The Conservative Futurist — is, well, aliens! I mean, if there were a couple of Sophons bopping around the planet and messing with us, how would the results be any different than what we’ve experienced for the past half century?

Think about it: Less frontier-pushing scientific effort? We can sure check that box. Federal R&D spending has declined by two-thirds as a share of GDP since 1964, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.


What’s more, perhaps these hypothetical aliens are right now continuing their dirty work and messing with our heads. That would sure explain how despite a) five decades of disappointing tech-driven productivity growth, b) the existence of a geopolitical competitor that wants to be the global tech and economic leader, and c) loads of research showing the growth impact of government science investment, Washington still won’t give a massive boost to R&D spending. The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act was supposed to provide a huge funding boost, but Congress has significantly underfunded key agencies and programs as intended.

As Politico reports:

While nearly $53 billion is going into reviving a homegrown semiconductor industry, Congress has gnawed away at the law’s ambitions on fundamental research and development aimed at staying ahead of China and other rivals in competitive fields like artificial intelligence. The latest example is the spending package lawmakers advanced over the past week: Biden’s signature enacts deep cuts to the National Science Foundation and stalls key offices in the Commerce and Energy departments that are supposed to deploy CHIPS money, turning a promised cash infusion of $200 billion over a decade into a humiliating haircut. And while it’s hardly the first time Congress has reneged on promised funds, it threatens an important pillar of Biden’s industrial policy. … The National Science Foundation offers a window onto the broader challenge, as the agency that expected to gain the most from CHIPS. The law authorized NSF to receive $81 billion over a five-year period that would ultimately double the agency’s budget by 2027. This year, the NSF should have gotten $15.64 billion, according to the CHIPS Act. Under the latest spending deal, lawmakers provided NSF with $9.06 billion — 42 percent short of the CHIPS target and an 8 percent cut to its current budget.


The Trisolarans are an impressive bunch, so it makes sense that some humans would be so dazzled that they would treat them as gods and be happy to do their bidding — including sabotaging their fellow humans. In our world, such a role is played by environmentalists and NIMBYs. These are folks who, over the past half century, have acted as Sophons in slowing tech progress.

For example: You can thank them for 1970s-era environmental regulations that make it maddeningly hard to build big projects in America, either quickly or cheaply. And you can thank them for continuing to use such regulations today. These are just a few of the headlines from the past month or so:

Tribes, environmental groups ask US court to block $10B energy transmission project in Arizona
Federal judge temporarily blocks plans to build transmission line crossing a Mississippi River wildlife refuge
Lawsuit challenges lithium project at California’s Salton Sea
Why Biden's climate law needs a permitting boost

More Sophons: Those in Hollywood who continue their public demoralization campaign about technology — AI will kill us, cancer cures will turn us into zombies — and the future. Next week, American moviegoers can watch the new film Civil War:

In the near future, a team of journalists travel across the United States during the rapidly escalating Second American Civil War that has engulfed the entire nation, between the American government, the separatist Western Forces of Texas and California, the Florida Alliance, and the New People's Army. The film documents the journalists struggling to survive during a time when the U.S. government has become a dystopian dictatorship and partisan extremist militias regularly commit war crimes

Alex Garland's “Civil War” Explodes Into Theaters April 12 - Irish Film  Critic

In my book, I highlight a study by Yale University economist Ray Fair that finds an interesting historical coincidence. First, US infrastructure spending as a percent of GDP began a steady decline around 1970, a pattern seen in no other rich country. (“The United States appears to be a special case in this regard,” Fair writes.) And at roughly the same time that America started ignoring its roads and bridges, Washington started running big budget deficits. As Fair sees it, the two trends provide evidence of a sustained change in national attitude: “The overall results suggest that the United States became less future-oriented beginning around 1970. This change has persisted.”

What’s more, Fair is “doubtful” the sustained shift can really be explained, not that he doesn’t float some possible explanations:

The years 1968, 1969, and 1970 had many noticeable events: the early baby boomers moving into their 20s; the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy; the beginning of the women’s movement; the draft, the bombing of Cambodia, and unrest on college campuses; Woodstock; Stonewall. Did any of these increase the impatience of the country in a permanent way? There are likely stories that could be woven, undoubtedly more than one, but it is unclear whether anything could be tested. The question is probably too big, but the fact is interesting.

In The Conservative Futurist, I float my own explanations for the Down Wing shift that underlay the Great Downshift in tech progress and growth. I try to explain why various macroeconomic headwinds (such as important breakthroughs requiring more resources than in the past) nor our policy mistakes (such as less R&D spending, more anti-growth regulation) provide a complete explanation of our current predicament.

From the book:

Yes, progress was harder than almost anyone imagined. But when progress failed to happen as expected, decade after decade—especially when it became clear our interventions weren’t working as well as hoped—why didn’t we work harder and smarter to make those Up Wing dreams come true anyway? Why did we let ourselves lose the future?

My answer is multi-causal:

The Vietnam War drove many, especially environmentalists and intellectuals, to see modern technology and large technological systems as inherently destructive forces.

Rising nuclear fears after WWII and incidents like the 1950s Castle Bravo test contaminating a Japanese fishing boat planted seeds of doubt about nuclear power and technological progress in general.

High-profile environmental disasters like the Santa Barbara oil spill and Cuyahoga River fire reinforced concerns about humans damaging the planet.

Influential books like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and The Limits to Growth argued that unrestrained economic growth and technological development would lead to catastrophic pollution, resource depletion, and overpopulation.

The decline of optimistic Up Wing futurism in the 1960s, replaced by dystopian and apocalyptic visions in popular culture, deprived society of positive images of the future.

Sorry, it wasn’t aliens or Sophons. It was us.

https://fasterplease.substack.com/p/what-the-3-body-problem-teaches-about?r=1qo1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwAR0oLKyUXwue1r-tNs8rK8xKYZQb9aHFoSylr2dC5DFzKPdYTopMgP12wrA&triedRedirect=true

The good news re 2024 and the Culture Wars the MSM won’t bring us:

This week's wins
Don't let the news media get you down. We are winning
APR 05, 2024

On Monday, the Washington Post (owned Jeff Bezos) said, “Democrats spar over registration as worries over young and minority voters grow.

“The rise in Trump support among nonregistered voters has run up against a long-held Democratic policy priority of growing the voter rolls.”

It’s called the Trump Effect. After 4 years of FJB, young black people and young Hispanic people see what young white people see in him — a leader who cares about them. FJB only cares about the bribes.

The story said, “Aaron Strauss, an influential data scientist who helps direct progressive spending at the firm OpenLabs, sparked private disagreements over this issue in January when he sent about a dozen major Democratic donors a confidential memo that challenged traditional nonpartisan registration.”

Strauss said, “Indeed, if we were to blindly register nonvoters and get them on the rolls, we would be distinctly aiding Trump’s quest for a personal dictatorship.”

The story said, “He also warned that efforts to gain Democratic votes among younger and non-black people of color were often expensive — costing more than $1,200 per net vote in 2020, by one estimate — because the groups now include so many non-Democrats. Among voters of color, he wrote that ‘only African American registration is clearly a prime opportunity,’ adding that netting Democratic voters among Black people cost approximately $575 per vote in 2020.”

We are winning. Young people want to be on the winning team.

People also know the 2020 election was not on the up-and-up. They are fixing that.

AP reported, “Private money to fund elections will be banned in Wisconsin after voters approved a constitutional amendment on April 2 put forward by Republicans in reaction to grants received in 2020 that were funded by donations from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

“Voters also approved a second question put on the ballot by the Republican-controlled Legislature that amends the constitution to say that only election officials can administer elections. That’s already state law, but putting it in the constitution makes it more difficult to repeal or change.

“Democrats opposed both measures, which they argued would make it more difficult to conduct elections in the presidential battleground state.”

By more difficult to conduct elections, AP and the Democrat Party meant more difficult to steal elections.

It is not as if the election boards needed Zuckbucks. He ponied up $300 million — or less than 1% of the state government’s $49.7 billion ($49,700,000,000) budget.

No, the money was used by Democrats in key states to stuff the ballot boxes. Voters in Wisconsin saw through it like Jacqueline Bisset’s T-shirt in The Deep and voted accordingly.

We are winning overseas. The Trans-Nazis got Scotland to enact a dopey hate speech law that criminalized call a man a man and a woman a woman, among other things. JK Rowling — who like Stephen King became a billionaire writing books that people want to read — stood up for free speech (unlike the increasingly fascist King).

BBC reported, “JK Rowling hate law posts not criminal, police say.”

It is unclear if this applies her alone because she is a celebrity, but she is speaking out and standing up for free speech.

She had tweeted, “I hope every woman in Scotland who wishes to speak up for the reality and importance of biological sex will be reassured by this announcement, and I trust that all women — irrespective of profile or financial means — will be treated equally under the law.

“If they go after any woman for simply calling a man a man, I'll repeat that woman's words and they can charge us both at once.”

The land that gave the world William Wallace and Rob Roy MacGregor has turned into a pansy land filled with girly men in dresses instead of kilts. They tuck it in now. How embarrassing it is to watch the shrinkage from an ocean away.

But a lady from England will save the Scots from their biggest threat: the Scottish Parliament.

The tranny wars continue here and Christians are winning. Biden declared Easter Sunday something called “Transgender Day of Visibility,” which Obama began celebrating each March 31 at tranny day when he took office, likely at the request of his spouse.

The angry reaction to Biden’s declaration was so swift and so fierce that Biden now denies that he did what he did. The two religions — Christianity and Trans Insanity — do not mix.

Trump got in a good one, telling a rally in Green Bay, “What the hell was Biden thinking when he declared Easter Sunday to be 'Trans Visibility Day'? Such total disrespect to Christians. November 5th is going to be called ‘CHRISTIAN Visibility Day’ when Christians turn out in numbers that nobody's ever seen before.”

However, the big issue on Christian Visibility Day will be kicking the illegal aliens out. Governor Abbott of Texas was brilliant when he began shipping these invaders to New York and other Democrat-run hellholes.

Abbott made illegals the Old Maid card of politics. He now has sanctuary cities fighting one another on who gets stuck with them.

The Daily Mail reported, “Denver warns new migrants to leave sanctuary city and move elsewhere — saying that their lack of resources means asylum seekers will suffer.”

Breitbart reported, “Michigan Poll Shows Trump Leading Biden as Voters Express Support for Mass Deportation of Illegal Aliens.”

Dumping the illegals on Democrats destroyed decades of propaganda. Conservatives win when they force Democrats to practice what they preach.

Meanwhile, there was a comeuppance in Cajun country.

Benny Johnson tweeted, “LSU Women’s Basketball Team skipped the National Anthem. Iowa stood proud.

“LSU just got their ass beat with the entire stadium cheering against them. Season over.

“Let this be a lesson to all players: the cringy, selfish woke athlete moment is OVER.”

The lack of sportsmanship from LSU’s trash-talking Angel Reese also made the LSU Tigers the villainesses. None of them are slaves and Miss Reese likely will become a millionaire when she joins a European women’s team next season. (After 28 years, the WNBA is still just a summer league.)

Jason Whitlock has been on Reese’s case all week long. In response to a critic, he tweeted, “Adultification is some new term made up on a college campus to blame white supremacy for a problem related to black illegitimacy. You know what adultifies a child? Single-parent households lacking the proper supervision and roles.

“No father in the house exposes young black girls (and boys) to sexual exploitation and experience long before they're ready. No father in the house forces young black boys to play the role of man of the house long before they’re ready. Emanuel Acho calling a 21-year-old grown isn’t harming black girls. You know it. I know it. Exit fantasyland and deal with the reality we created.”

He is right, as is Johnson. Woke is a joke in sports now. My take is that William Thomas passing himself off a woman swimmer began the inevitable fall. Americans still have chivalry in their souls. You can do what you want to me, but leave the women alone.

LGBT’s next-door neighbor, DEI, is on the ropes. The Austin American-Statesman sobbed, “A week after state Sen. Brandon Creighton warned Texas university system administrators about the state's expectations for higher education institutions to comply with Senate Bill 17 — an anti-DEI law that went into effect in January — the University of Texas has laid off at least 60 staff members who previously worked in diversity, equity and inclusion-related positions, according to three people with knowledge of the terminations.”

Texas is following Florida’s lead on this but as Reagan said, “There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

Scott Adams proved Reagan’s point by tweeting, “Whoever came up with Didn't Earn It as the description of DEI might have saved the world.

“Normally, the clever alternative names people use to mock the other side’s policy are nothing but grin-worthy. This one could collapse the whole racist system. It’s that strong.”

Speaking of earning, dumping Ronna Romney McDaniels as RNC chairwoman worked. The money is pouring in.

Axios reported, “Trump, RNC report raising $65.6 million in March.”

The money doubled the amount of cash on hand the party — not the RNC staff — has to spend. Trump taking over the RNC hit limousine drivers the hardest.

I know I have done posts like this in the past. Guess what? I will do posts like this in the future because following the media reports with their lies and faux outrage can be depressing. History is not on their side, just as it was not on the side of the Confederacy — which Democrats created as a means to resist Lincoln.

They tell us: we will bury you.

Nikita Khrushchev said the same thing. He’s in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

https://donsurber.substack.com/p/this-weeks-wins?r=1qo1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwAR2QR3HH3zmt3rEKXdsjBb7YRl-zNH_a_byJNzpl_JJXfz6dfI5jQHSt3KM&triedRedirect=true

ccp’s post re Buchanan got me thinking about other guitarists that aren’t regarded as well as the should be. I already posted about Chris Whitley, whose blend of blues, folk, alt rock, and subtle jazz sensibilities makes him a standout.

Another is Johnny Thunders. It’s easy to miss his prowess as his often punk, reductive, guitar work doesn’t scream “look at me, ma!” like wretched, showy guitarists such as Richie Blackmoor, Eddie Van Halen, and others that find the outside edge of their usually limited skill set, crank the amp up to “11,” and then proceed to publicly masturbate using their guitar as an inflatable doll proxy.

Next, I’ll tell you how I really feel about showy guitarists with limited skills….

Anyhoo, Thunders in not the antithesis of the sort of rock musicians I loathe, but rather turns cliches inside out and generally fucks with them, all while letting his understated guitar work shine through his music, rather than dominate it like the meatheads cited above do. Thunders is one of the few guitarists out there that, within the first few bars of a piece, is immediately recognizable, which is also the case where his vocals are concerned.

A lifelong junky, Thunders OD’d in a seedy motel, leaving little other than his body of work behind. You can find much of his work here:

https://music.apple.com/us/artist/johnny-thunders/3184311

A couple of my favorites:

https://music.apple.com/us/album/great-big-kiss/285601659?i=285601789

https://music.apple.com/us/album/you-cant-put-your-arms-around-a-memory/310650295?i=310650315

And hey, while gushing on about an artist, I should confess I initially didn’t have much for the first band most know Thunders from, the New York Dolls. In those days I was into power trios and blues roots stuff; glam rock was far from my cup of tea. Things change, though, and much like I came to embrace Bowie despite his glam strutting (though I still can’t abide China Girl and his pop Thin White Duke crap), the Dolls and their contribution to the early US punk and NY CBGB’s musical scene has grown on me in my dotage.

I had the same question while posting that.

From the links below:
"Natural gas can be burned to produce electricity in a traditional combustion turbine (CT) power plant or a more modern and efficient combined cycle (CC) power plant.

A combined cycle power plant is a modern electrical generating plant that captures the energy from burning natural gas in two ways.

First - the gas turbine burns fuel and generates electricity:
The gas turbine compresses air and mixes it with fuel.
The mixture is ignited, creating an explosion that propels the very hot gas through the turbine.
The hot gas spins the gas turbine blades which rotates the turbine shaft.
The fast-spinning turbine shaft drives a generator that converts the spinning energy into electricity.
Second - the steam turbine utilizes the waste heat from the gas turbine exhaust that would otherwise escape through the exhaust stack to create additional electricity:
A heat exchanger captures exhaust heat from the gas turbine and boils water to create steam.
The steam spins the steam turbine blades which rotates the turbine shaft.
The steam turbine shaft drives a generator that delivers additional electricity.
This is the most efficient type of fossil fuel power plant. By combining these two systems, the overall net efficiency of the combustion process can be increased by 50 - 60 percent. Thus, from an overall efficiency of about 35% in a single cycle system one can achieve to an overall efficiency of 50-60% in a combined cycle system.

Either a single shart or multiple shaft configuration can be used for the combined cycle plant. In a single shaft system, the gas and steam turbines turn a common shaft with a single generator. This is the most efficient configuration. However, in larger plants it is more economical to have multiple gas turbines and a single steam turbine.

For large-scale power generation, a typical gas/steam turbine set would be a 270 MW gas turbine coupled to a 130 MW steam turbine giving a total of 400 MW. A typical power plant might consist of between 1 and 6 such sets. GE currently manufactures the largest gas turbine available at just over 500 MW."

https://www.ourworldofenergy.com/vignettes.php?type=electrical-power-generation&id=15

https://www.ourworldofenergy.com/vignettes.php?type=electrical-power-generation&id=9

Thanks! My quick search mostly returned “closed caption” or “Connecticut” hits so I quit wading through the results. Your deep dive into it here is appreciated?

Couldn’t find the original so this X link will have to do.

https://x.com/catturd2/status/1775491012862910668?s=61&t=L5uifCqWy8R8rhj_J8HNJw

Couldn’t find a good topic to fit this one under—Air Travel & Tourism seemed more about vacationing than the complexities and corporate folly discussed below—and indeed engineering seems a critical and and vast topic deserving a category of it’s own so, gulp, here goes.

I’ve seen various stand along pieces including a PBS Frontline episode re Boeing and the causes of all its horrifying engineering failures, but most those pieces seemed about star’s aligning in a manner leading to catastrophic failure, rather than an astoundingly shortsighted campaign to replace senior staff with burger flippers in search of a better life as corporate leaders wandered the facility asking aloud “will no one rid me of these meddlesome quality engineers?”

Suicide Mission
What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

BY MAUREEN TKACIK  MARCH 28, 2024
 
Expand
Tkacik-Boeing 032824.jpg
GAVIN MCINTYRE/THE POST AND COURIER VIA AP
A Boeing Dreamlifter sits on the tarmac at their campus in North Charleston, South Carolina, May 30, 2023.

John Barnett had one of those bosses who seemed to spend most of his waking hours scheming to inflict humiliation upon him. He mocked him in weekly meetings whenever he dared contribute a thought, assigned a fellow manager to spy on him and spread rumors that he did not play nicely with others, and disciplined him for things like “using email to communicate” and pushing for flaws he found on planes to be fixed.

“John is very knowledgeable almost to a fault, as it gets in the way at times when issues arise,” the boss wrote in one of his withering performance reviews, downgrading Barnett’s rating from a 40 all the way to a 15 in an assessment that cast the 26-year quality manager, who was known as “Swampy” for his easy Louisiana drawl, as an anal-retentive prick whose pedantry was antagonizing his colleagues. The truth, by contrast, was self-evident to anyone who spent five minutes in his presence: John Barnett, who raced cars in his spare time and seemed “high on life” according to one former colleague, was a “great, fun boss that loved Boeing and was willing to share his knowledge with everyone,” as one of his former quality technicians would later recall.

More from Maureen Tkacik

But Swampy was mired in an institution that was in a perpetual state of unlearning all the lessons it had absorbed over a 90-year ascent to the pinnacle of global manufacturing. Like most neoliberal institutions, Boeing had come under the spell of a seductive new theory of “knowledge” that essentially reduced the whole concept to a combination of intellectual property, trade secrets, and data, discarding “thought” and “understanding” and “complex reasoning” possessed by a skilled and experienced workforce as essentially not worth the increased health care costs. CEO Jim McNerney, who joined Boeing in 2005, had last helmed 3M, where management as he saw it had “overvalued experience and undervalued leadership” before he purged the veterans into early retirement.

“Prince Jim”—as some long-timers used to call him—repeatedly invoked a slur for longtime engineers and skilled machinists in the obligatory vanity “leadership” book he co-wrote. Those who cared too much about the integrity of the planes and not enough about the stock price were “phenomenally talented assholes,” and he encouraged his deputies to ostracize them into leaving the company. He initially refused to let nearly any of these talented assholes work on the 787 Dreamliner, instead outsourcing the vast majority of the development and engineering design of the brand-new, revolutionary wide-body jet to suppliers, many of which lacked engineering departments. The plan would save money while busting unions, a win-win, he promised investors. Instead, McNerney’s plan burned some $50 billion in excess of its budget and went three and a half years behind schedule.

Swampy belonged to one of the cleanup crews that Boeing detailed to McNerney’s disaster area. The supplier to which Boeing had outsourced part of the 787 fuselage had in turn outsourced the design to an Israeli firm that had botched the job, leaving the supplier strapped for cash in the midst of a global credit crunch. Boeing would have to bail out—and buy out—the private equity firm that controlled the supplier. In 2009, Boeing began recruiting managers from Washington state to move east to the supplier’s non-union plant in Charleston, South Carolina, to train the workforce to properly put together a plane.

Boeing was in a perpetual state of unlearning all the lessons it had absorbed over a 90-year ascent to the pinnacle of global manufacturing.
But after the FAA cleared Boeing to deliver its first 787s to customers around the end of 2011, one of Swampy’s old co-workers says that McNerney’s henchmen began targeting anyone with experience and knowledge for torment and termination. One of Swampy’s closest colleagues, Bill Seitz, took a demotion to go back west. A quality control engineer named John Woods was terminated for insisting inspectors thoroughly document damage and repair performed on composite materials, which were far less resilient than steel. Good machinists and inspectors who wore wristbands in support of a union drive were framed with dubious infractions. “Everyone from Everett started dropping like flies,” remembers a former manager at the plant.

“There’s a form we all had to sign that says you take responsibility for anything that goes wrong, and it states pretty clearly that if something happens to a plane because of something you did wrong, you can face a major fine or jail time for that,” the manager recalled. “The Everett managers took that seriously. Charleston leadership did not.”

The bosses hit Swampy with a new initiative called “Multi-Function Process Performer,” through which quality inspectors were directed to outsource 90 percent of their duties to the mechanics they were supposed to be supervising. This was supposed to speed up production and save Boeing millions once it successfully shed the thousands of inspectors it intended to axe. Swampy believed relying on mechanics to self-inspect their work was not only insane but illegal under the Federal Aviation Administration charter, which explicitly required quality inspectors to document all defects detected, work performed, and parts installed on a commercial airplane in one centralized database. Swampy knew he was caught in a prisoner’s dilemma. If he went along, he was breaking the law; if he didn’t, whistleblowers who complained about unsafe practices were routinely terminated on grounds of violating the same safety protocols they had opposed violating.

Swampy calculated that it would be a bigger pain for Boeing to fire him for doing the right thing than following orders, so he kept his head down and continued managing his inspectors as though he were back in Everett, taking special care to meticulously record every episode of noncompliance (and nonconformance, which is similar but not identical) he encountered. He documented his discovery that machinists installing floor panels had been littering long titanium slivers into wire bundles and electrical boxes between the floorboards and the cargo compartment ceiling panels, where they risked causing an electrical short. A series of mysterious battery fires had already caused the FAA to ground the 787 for a few months just over a year after the first plane had been delivered. He wrote that 75 out of a package of 300 oxygen masks slated for installation on a plane did not actually pump oxygen. His team compiled a list of 300 defects on a fuselage scheduled for delivery, and he discovered that more than 400 nonconforming aircraft parts had gone missing from the defective parts cage and likely been installed on planes illegally and without documentation, by managers and mechanics desperate to get them out the door.

John Barnett worked for Boeing for more than 30 years as a quality inspector and manager.

Few quality managers were as stubborn as Swampy. A Seattle Times story detailed an internal Boeing document boasting that the incidence of manufacturing defects on the 787 had plunged 20 percent in a single year, which inspectors anonymously attributed to the “bullying environment” in which defects had systematically “stopped being documented” by inspectors. They weren’t fooling customers: Qatar Airways had become so disgusted with the state of the planes it received from Charleston that it refused to accept them, and even inspired the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera to produce a withering documentary called Broken Dreams, in which an employee outfitted with a hidden camera chitchatted with mechanics and inspectors about the planes they were producing. “They hire these people off the street, dude … fucking flipping burgers for a living, making sandwiches at Subway,” one mechanic marveled of his colleagues; another regaled the narrator with tales of co-workers who came to work high on “coke and painkillers and weed” because no one had ever had a urine test. Asked if they would fly the 787 Dreamliner; just five of 15 answered yes, and even the positive responses did Boeing no favors: “I probably would, but I have kind of a death wish, too.”

The day after Broken Dreams premiered, Swampy got an email informing him that he’d been put on a 60-day corrective action plan four weeks earlier. His alleged offense constituted using email to communicate about process violations; the HR file noted, fictitiously, that his boss had discussed his “infraction” with him earlier.

Swampy was no fool. “Leadership wants nothing in email so they maintain plausible deniability,” he wrote in the “comments” space on his corrective action plan paperwork. “It is obvious leadership is just looking for items to criticize me on so I stop identifying issues. I will conform!” He immediately applied for a job on the graveyard shift, whose supervisor promised the gig would go to the manager with the most seniority on the Final Assembly team. But the job went to a manager who had transferred to Final Assembly all of a week earlier, which is when Swampy began to realize he’d been institutionally blackballed from the only company he’d ever worked for.

He got two more internal job offers rescinded after that, including one from a group that was literally desperate for someone with Barnett’s breadth of experience. “They didn’t care how bad I wanted him,” the senior manager told one of Swampy’s friends. “They said John Barnett is not going anywhere.”

Finally, in early 2017 Swampy happened upon a printout of a list of 49 “Quality Managers to Fire.” The name John Barnett was number one. Swampy decided to go on a medical leave of absence, which turned into early retirement on March 1. He called a labor lawyer he knew from a colleague’s case, and together they began the seemingly unending process of filing an aviation whistleblower complaint detailing his seven years at the Charleston plant. It made him sick to think that the value of his Boeing shares had tripled over the same period during which he’d watched the company get so comprehensively dismantled. But it was downright surreal to watch the stock price nearly triple once more during the two years after he left the company.

Nine days after the stock reached its high of $440, a brand-new 737 MAX dove into the ground near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at nearly 800 miles per hour, killing 157 people on board, thanks to a shockingly dumb software program that had programmed the jets to nose-dive in response to the input from a single angle-of-attack sensor. The software had already killed 189 people on a separate 737 MAX in Indonesia, but Boeing had largely deflected blame for that crash by exploiting the island nation’s reputation for aviation laxity. Now it was clear Boeing was responsible for all the deaths.

Swampy had no firsthand experience with the 737 MAX, but it was obvious that the ethos that drove the 787 plant had poisoned that program as well. He began sharing his story in media interviews, and soon the Department of Justice, which had opened a criminal investigation into the MCAS flight control system crashes that quickly widened to encompass the Dreamliner program, came calling as well.

While the criminal probe ultimately shriveled into one of the most pathetic plea bargains in the history of American justice, something shifted within the FAA. Boeing had quietly assumed many of the roles traditionally played by its primary regulator, an arrangement that was ethically absurd, though in practice it probably worked better than being regulated by an agency full of underpaid bureaucrats desperate to ingratiate themselves to Boeing. (Swampy’s best friend and later wife Diane Johnson worked at Boeing as an FAA liaison.) Most of the Boeing employees who worked in quasi-regulatory roles were like Swampy, terrified of anything going wrong on a plane they had inspected and deeply skeptical of their bosses, who seemed unconcerned about the consequences.

Amid the MAX grounding, the FAA began to take a closer look at the 787 program that was the subject of so many complaints from workers and airlines. The company had campaigned the FAA heavily to approve a “random sampling” method of inspecting the precision of the shims it cut to connect various pieces of the plane together; a closer look revealed the shims were not as precisely sized as the company had boasted. Eight planes were immediately grounded, and the agency forced Boeing to halt deliveries pending further investigation. Weeks stretched into years as nonconformances and noncompliances piled up; “Boeing Looked for Flaws in Its Dreamliner and Couldn’t Stop Finding Them,” one headline summarized.

Boeing had quietly assumed many of the roles traditionally played by its primary regulator, an arrangement that was ethically absurd.
In December 2022, Aviation Week produced a helpful diagram mapping what sections of the plane had caused auditors the biggest headaches. Every single section, from the tip of the nose to the horizontal stabilizers, was marked up with red arrows. In 2023, deliveries were halted in January, February, and again in August over problems with the shimming, the horizontal stabilizer, and God knows what else. Swampy, and hundreds of others who had blown the whistle on Boeing’s managerial nihilism, had been thoroughly vindicated. But it was too late. There were no more cleanup crews left at Boeing; too much knowledge had been drained from the company.

“For every new plane you put up into the sky there are about 20,000 problems you need to solve, and for a long time we used to say Boeing’s core competency was piling people and money on top of a problem until they crushed it,” says Stan Sorscher, a longtime Boeing physicist and former officer of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), the labor union representing Boeing engineers. But those people are gone.

Sorscher has warned Boeing management for decades now of the catastrophic effects of the brain drain inflicted by its war on “brilliance.” He says McDonnell Douglas managers published a statistical analysis in 1997 gauging productivity against the average seniority of managers across various programs that found that greener workforces were substantially less productive, which he found to be a “mirror image” of a kind of “rule of thumb” within Boeing that held that every Boeing employee takes four years to become “fully productive.” But the average employee assigned to the 737 program has been at Boeing just five years, according to a longtime Boeing executive who is involved in various efforts to save the company; for comparison’s sake, he says the average employee assigned to the 777 program had between 15 and 20 years under their belt. The typical engineer or machinist assigned to the task of fixing Boeing’s 20,000 problems has never known a Boeing that wasn’t a five-alarm dumpster fire.

There’s a terrifying visual representation of this: the satellite view of the Moses Lake Municipal Airport in an arid stretch of Washington east of Seattle, or the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, California, where hundreds of Boeing 737 MAXes sit in abandoned parking lots waiting for someone to fix them so they can finally be delivered. Meanwhile, pieces are flying off the Boeing planes actually in use at an alarming rate, criminal investigations are under way, and another in a long line of stock-conscious CEOs is stepping down. Boeing’s largest union, the Machinists, is trying to snag a board seat because, in the words of its local president, “we have to save this company from itself.”

SPEEA has demanded, understandably, that the board choose an aerospace engineer as its next CEO. But there are few signs that will happen: None of the names floated thus far for the spot have been aerospace engineers, and the shoo-in for the position, GE’s Larry Culp, is not an engineer at all.

By now you know what became of Swampy: He was found dead a few weeks ago with a gunshot wound to his right temple, “apparently” self-inflicted, on what was meant to be the third day of a three-day deposition in his whistleblower case against his former employer; his amended complaint, which his lawyer released last week, is the basis for much of this story.

It is worth noting here that Swampy’s former co-workers universally refuse to believe that their old colleague killed himself. One former co-worker who was terrified of speaking publicly went out of their way to tell me that they weren’t suicidal. “If I show up dead anytime soon, even if it’s a car accident or something, I’m a safe driver, please be on the lookout for foul play.” Swampy’s wife Diane, who worked at Boeing for 28 years, died of brain cancer at age 60 in late 2022.

Discussing Swampy’s death and the whistleblower lawsuit he left behind, the longtime former Boeing executive told me, “I don’t think one can be cynical enough when it comes to these guys.” Did that mean he thought Boeing assassinated Swampy? “It’s a top-secret military contractor, remember; there are spies everywhere,” he replied. More importantly, he added, “there is a principle in American law that there is no such thing as an accidental death during the commission of a felony. Let’s say you rob a bank and while traveling at high speed in the getaway you run down a pedestrian and kill them. That’s second-degree murder at the very least.”

TRANSPORTATION AIRLINES BOEING WHISTLEBLOWERS CORPORATE POWER CEOS JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
MAUREEN TKACIK
Maureen Tkacik is investigations editor at the Prospect and a senior fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project.

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/the-monkees-davy-jones-called-the-beatles-the-1st-manufactured-group/ar-AA1dEzdt?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=95ad38c2916b4a7abfbb03450d9531c7&ei=8

OTOH
from my experience writing songs based on personal experience does NOT necessarily mean the claimed songwriter did in fact write the song.

I have seen them distributed to people based on what fits their profile.
Very clever and no one knows for the better.

I regularly get into trouble for claiming the Beatles killed rock ‘n roll, perhaps an exaggeration, but not much of one as I believe they exerted such an enormous force on the course of pop music in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s that they effectively bent all ensuing genre offerings towards the musical archetypes they established much as a celestial body bends space and time.

This sort of force does not emerge accidentally so I’m with Jones where the “manufactured” claim is concerned, particularly given all the solo treacle (Paul McCartney and Wings ditties makes me want to self-administer a lobotomy with a grapefruit spoon) emerging after they broke up. Indeed, after Lennon was shot my favorite joke was:

Q: What would it take to bring the Beatles back together?

A: Three more bullets.

2nd post. YOu know all the hoopla over LNG being extra specially carbon pollutie or whatever? It seems it was based on a single, non-peer reviewed "study:"

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/04/03/the-entire-push-to-halt-new-natural-gas-exports-traces-back-to-one-ivy-league-prof-and-his-shaky-study/