Month: December 2022

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

Regime change in Russia is all the rage right now. It’s another episode of MI-6’s longest running show, “Russia – Putin’s Fragile Playground,” playing daily in our intelligence co-opted media.

And, hey, thanks to Elon Musk that’s no longer a conspiracy theory, despite the protestations of the bad guys.

The current picture is one punctuated with regular stories of Ukrainian drone attacks on a Russian air base or power station. There’s even now a major article making the rounds about how Russia is facing organized sleeper cells of saboteurs operating without restraint to take out critical infrastructure.

Not that I doubt that it’s true, of course the US and its “key NATO ally” (*cough* the UK *cough*) are fully committed to taking down Russia, but it’s the fact that it’s happening now as Russia makes big moves to reorganize its military to fight this war for the long haul is what’s interesting.

This implies that all of a sudden now there is significant pushback to the scale of that commitment within the EU. I have serious doubts about that.

The recent admission by Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the Minsk Accords were just a time-buying exercise to arm Ukraine for the war can be interpreted in a number of ways.

But for me, knowing that the dominant narrative has been to frame this as a US-led proxy war versus Russia, Merkel’s admission plays into that perfectly. Remember, I’ve always made the distinction between The Davos Crowd and the Neoconservatives.

I’ve always viewed the Neocons as the Useful Idiots of the more Leninist Davosians. Merkel is a committed Davosian lieutenant if there ever was one.

Merkel is adding to that hyper-aggressive US narrative by trying to frame her part in Minsk as something demanded by the US that she went along with.

This is a US-led train that the EU has been held hostage on like its the freaking Snowpiercer.

Yeah, ok.

It makes much more sense if we’re getting all revisionist about things to argue that Merkel used her good relations with Putin and his blind spot for Germany to negotiate Nordstream 2, knowing full well it would be a geopolitical minefield.

Seriously, when you stop to think through the entire NS2 saga, if Merkel was sincere in buying time to go to war with Ukraine then if follows the pipeline was just another Minsk strategically; waste not only Russia’s time but also billions of dollars on a project that was never going to pay them back?

In that view, the money spent on NS2 was one of the first casualties of this war which has been going on since the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich in 2014.

When viewed through that lens it makes the current situation even more dangerous and more tenuous than ever. Because that leaves you realizing the depth to how angry the Russians are, and how committed they are to the war.

This means their best strategic play is trapping the West in a Ukrainian meat grinder economically, politically, and militarily of its own devising.

And that brings me to a recent post by Martin Armstrong. Martin is looking at the cycles and forecasting a cluster of them coinciding around the March/April 2023 time frame in relation to war and Putin.

As always, salting to taste Martin’s computer modeling of the future is quite necessary, but I’m happy to engage it if it yields insight.

I understand that Martin Armstrong is very worried about how these next few years play out, and rightly so. The psychopaths in charge across the West don’t have a reverse gear. They only attack.

If you are confused about what it is these people really believe about where the future of Russia is headed, this recent article at the Hudson Institute – about as normie Neocon an institution as you can get — should clear things up.

This article isn’t an opinion piece about potential goals or to be read as a wish-list of crazy people. It is a fervently held set of beliefs that stem from their view of demographic analysis of Russia and their mission to stamp out the remains of the Soviet Union.

This is an ideological fight for the neocons. Ending Russia is their religion.

It is why they are so easy to manipulate. It makes them the perfect useful idiots in Davos’ larger game.

To the neocon mind (sic), it is a foregone conclusion that Russia is going to collapse. I refer you to my article from the other day about models, ‘laziness,’ and the gulf between knowledge and the pretense thereof.

It is this attention to the order of operations that is important in trying to make sense of what’s going on in the world today.

One of my most common complaints with my ‘libertarian brethren’ is that they are always jumping to ‘end-game’ while not thinking through the moves that get us there.

In monetary theory we can do the math and realize the system is doomed. By taking that variable and adding it into the political mix we can solve the geopolitical equation and then make grand pronouncements about the where everything winds up.

And when that happens people arrogantly settle into their conclusions and then their confirmation bias takes over. Each data point then confirms what they want to see and they ignore the Black Swans on the horizon.

The neocons and Davos have already mapped the future end-game and have, frankly, checked out on the day-to-day moves. They are like the libertarians I described above, just waiting for the collapse that may never come.

And I have to thank Martin Armstrong for helping me get past that arrogance personally. His relentless attention to the ‘order of operations’ is his greatest contribution to the commentariat.

This is where I think Martin’s anxiety about Putin and Russia comes from, and again, fair enough. Personnel is policy, after all. But that’s on both sides of the political divide.

I believe he is misreading the situation in Russia when it comes to Putin.

In fact, despite having ‘deep sources’ in Russia, Martin’s analysis of Putin has been fairly weak.  Just because the neocons believe they can just foment enough chaos internally, they can overthrow Putin doesn’t mean that it will finally occur.

Did this work in 2015, when Putin disappeared from the public sphere for two weeks in February and Armstrong himself told us that he was dealing with an internal coup attempt within the Kremlin, which Putin put down with his characteristic understatement?

They faced lesser sanctions then but had a bigger monetary problem than they did in 2022 because in 2014 Russia wasn’t prepared for all-out economic warfare.  Putin warned his SEO giants like Gazprom and Rosneft to pay down their dollar-denominated debt and diversify their payment structure. 

They didn’t and it nearly cost Russia everything.

Putin, with Xi’s help, bailed them out.  But, as always, it’s pretty obvious he got something in return, more loyalty from them.

Martin’s fears stem from not believing Putin always understood his position vs. the West.  It’s naïve on his part to think that Putin who called the west “Not Agreement Capable” in 2015 believed that Minsk was ever going to be implemented or that the UK wouldn’t cross every red line.

While Minsk bought Ukraine time to arm itself, it bought Putin time to build the weapons and systems needed to stop it, while proving to the world that the West was preparing for war on them as well as Russia.

The strategy he employed in dealing with Gazprom and Rosneft in 2015 to secure the domestic allies he’d need today was also used to curate the friends he’d need internationally.

c.f. 2022 as proof of this.

Putin’s strategy has always been allow their strategy of aggressive military and economic strangulation to develop and use diplomacy and honest brokering to accumulate allies around the world for that moment when the West decided to strike in Ukraine.

Then he struck before they were ready.

Martin is, in my view, projecting his fears onto Putin with this analysis.

And I don’t think he does himself any favors by publishing his “Putin Cycle” chart because it doesn’t line up with any of Putin’s big moves. 

This cycle missed Putin accepting Crimea into Russia (March 2014), his 2015 UN Speech and move into Syria, which his grand Economic Confidence Model picked up (Sept 28-30th 2015). It missed his speech where he outlined his strategy to beat the West at the Munich Security Confernece of 2007.  It missed his State of the Union address in March 2018 where he unveiled the weapons which set us on this path where the Neocons realized their window for taking down Russia would close permanently if those weapons ever went into mass production.

I don’t want to be too harsh here because it’s obvious Martin is simultaneously sincere, well informed, and rightfully concerned about Putin’s predicament.  It’s obvious that Putin’s being targeted for termination.  He is the captain steering the Russian ship and the crazies in Moscow are being given every excuse to get rid of him.

But I remind you that Russia like Iran and more so than China, is a civilization first and a system second. Because of that, external pressure and internal infiltration won’t have the same effect as it has here in the West.  

Yes, both Iran and Russia are corrupt, but they are corrupt in different ways than in the West. Iranians and Russians understand this corruption far better than egghead analysts at Langley feeding think tanks on K-Street.

And that, I think, is the difference here.  Putin may have to fend off another round of treasonous activity in the Kremlin in 2023, but I don’t think for a moment that he’s not aware of it.  In fact, what I would say is that his strategy with domestic traitors is no different than how he deals with his Western adversaries; allowing them to think they have him on the ropes and then crush them after they’ve exposed themselves.

That’s Colonel Doug MacGregor’s assessment of Putin’s strategy on the ground in Ukraine.  It’s hard to argue that he wouldn’t pursue the same strategy inside Russia herself, if MacGregor is correct.

Personnel, again, is policy.

None of this is to say that it won’t be a treacherous path for Putin in 2023.  It will be.  

The West believes the humiliations that they have inflicted on Putin will force him from office.

But today’s Russia seems to be, as Alex Mercouris put it in a recent video, “Embarrassment-proof.”

This is what Martin is worried about, that the embarrassments of drone attacks and lack of military success will create unrest for Putin at home.

I would be more worried that Putin makes a big move in the coming weeks in Ukraine.  That he again, “Goes First,” and pre-empts what the West has planned by attacking.

The drone strikes inside Russia are part of these humiliations. But, I think Armstrong, like the neocons, is assessing the political damage to Putin as if he were an American politician.

We are the ones with this air of invincibility.  Russians, thanks to Putin’s successful framing of the conflict, propaganda if you like, are under no illusions about the situation.

They understand their government is dysfunctional.  They understand the West is inconsolable about their refusal to be colonized or wiped off the earth.  And lastly, they understand that Putin isn’t perfect but he’s no globalist traitor.

An airstrike here or a failed offensive there isn’t evidence of anything more than what they’ve always known.  They aren’t starting from the position of imperial arrogance.

We are the ones whose psyches are fragile.  They are the ones who have gone through the fire (the 1990s) and survived.  

This is why we’re more likely to collapse if our vaunted military might falters, or worse, is defeated. Now go back to my arguments about Merkel, Minsk and NS2 and tell me you can’t see the trap that Davos has set for the Neocons and the US political establishment living in the bubble of their foregone conclusions.

The goal of these provocations is, again, to get Russia to go off halfcocked and give the West the moral high ground to mobilize for total war.  

Russia is a country trying to rise, or at least not be swallowed up by attrition. It is not a colonial power trying to stave off the inevitable dissolution.  Time is its ally here.  

Putin will have to respond to these attacks.  He will need a big political win in the next few months.  If you are handicapping his political situation right now, one big negative is his canceling his annual marathon Q&A, but that can be read two ways.

It’s a lot of work to put that event on. Spending weeks preparing for a show he shouldn’t waste his time on it while running a war is the right message to send to his people, not pledging state resources to fix a broken toilet in Irkutsk.

The West wants you to believe he doesn’t want to face an angry populace for his unpopular war.

Honestly?  My answer to that is, “Ok, Boomer.”

Now ask yourself who’s allocating $4 million per member of Congress for “personal security” in a bill that they ram-rodded through post-election?

What should unnerve you about this whole situation is that the one person who is supposedly months away from being destroyed is the one who is calm, understanding his fate.

“Do you know what they say among the Russian people? Those who are destined to hang, do not drown.”

– VLADIMIR PUTIN

You know, now that I think about this quote, I’m not so sure Putin was only just describing himself.

*  *  *

Join my Patreon if you don’t want to drown

Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

The danger signs were everywhere in 2022.

With every new law enacted by federal and state legislatures, every new ruling handed down by government courts, and every new military weapon, invasive tactic and egregious protocol employed by government agents, we were reminded that in the eyes of the government and its corporate accomplices, “we the people” possess no rights except for that which the Deep State grants on an as-needed basis.

Totalitarian paranoia spiked. What we have been saddled with is a government so power-hungry, paranoid and afraid of losing its stranglehold on power that it has conspired to wage war on anyone who dares to challenge its authority. In a Machiavellian attempt to expand its powers, the government unleashed all manner of dangers on an unsuspecting populace in order to justify its demands for additional powers to protect “we the people” from emerging threats, whether legitimate, manufactured or overblown.

The state of our nation suffered. The nation remained politically polarized, controlled by forces beyond the purview of the average American, and rapidly moving the nation away from its freedom foundation. The combined blowback from a contentious presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in Americans being subjected to egregious civil liberties violations, invasive surveillance, martial law, lockdowns, political correctness, erosions of free speech, strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, government spying, and the criminalization of lawful activities.

Thought crimes became a target for punishment. For years now, the government has used all of the weapons in its vast arsenal—surveillance, threat assessments, fusion centers, pre-crime programs, hate crime laws, militarized police, lockdowns, martial law, etc.—to target potential enemies of the state based on their ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that might be deemed suspicious or dangerous. In other words, if you dare to subscribe to any views that are contrary to the government’s, you may well be suspected of being a domestic terrorist and treated accordingly. In 2022, those who criticized the government—whether that criticism manifested itself in word, deed or thought—were flagged as dangerous alongside consumers and spreaders of “mis- dis- and mal-information.”

Speech was muzzled. Those who want to monitor, muzzle, catalogue and censor speech continued to push for social media monitoring, censorship of flagged content that could be construed as dangerous or hateful, and limitations on free speech activities, particularly online. Of course, it’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth. Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act. If the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.

Kill switches aimed to turn off more than just your car. Vehicle “kill switches” were sold to the public as a safety measure aimed at keeping drunk drivers off the roads, but they were a perfect metaphor for the government’s efforts to not only take control of our cars but also our freedoms and our lives. For too long, we have been captive passengers in a driverless car controlled by the government, losing more and more of our privacy and autonomy the further down the road we go.

Currency went digital. No matter how much money the government pulls in, it’s never enough, so the government came up with a new plan to make it even easier for its agents to seize Americans’ bank account. In an Executive Order issued in March 2022, President Biden called for the federal government to consider establishing a form of digital money. Digital currency will provide the government and its corporate partners with a mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient.

The government spoke in a language of violence. Police violence killed three people a day. Warrior cops—trained in the worst-case scenario and thus ready to shoot first and ask questions later—did not make us or themselves any safer. Despite this, President Biden’s pledged to expand law enforcement and so-called crime prevention through a $30 billion “Fund the Police” program.

Cancel culture became more intolerant. Cancel culture—political correctness amped up on steroids, the self-righteousness of a narcissistic age, and a mass-marketed pseudo-morality that is little more than fascism disguised as tolerance—shifted us into an Age of Intolerance, policed by techno-censors, social media bullies, and government watchdogs. Everything has now become fair game for censorship if it can be construed as hateful, hurtful, bigoted or offensive provided that it runs counter to the established viewpoint.

Homes were invaded. Government agents routinely violated the Fourth Amendment at will under the pretext of public health and safety. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the many ways the government and its corporate partners-in-crime used surveillance technology to invade homes: with wiretaps, thermal imaging, surveillance cameras, and other monitoring devices.

Political theater kept the public distracted. Having devolved into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population, the political scene provided ample diversions with its televised Jan. 6 committee hearings, the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearings, and more.

Bodily integrity was undermined. Caught in the crosshairs of a showdown between the rights of the individual and the so-called “emergency” state, concerns about COVID-19 mandates and bodily integrity remained part of a much larger debate over the ongoing power struggle between the citizenry and the government over our property “interest” in our bodies. This debate over bodily integrity covered broad territory, ranging from abortion and forced vaccinations to biometric surveillance and basic healthcare. Although the Supreme Court overturned its earlier rulings recognizing abortion as a constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment, it did nothing to resolve the larger problem that plagues us today: namely, that all along the spectrum of life—from the unborn child to the aged—the government continues to play fast and loose with the lives of the citizenry.

The government’s fiscal insanity reached new heights. The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) hit $30 trillion. That translates to roughly $242,000 per taxpayer. It’s estimated that the amount this country owes is now 130% greater than its gross domestic product (all the products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the citizens). That debt is also growing exponentially: it is expected to be twice the size of the U.S. economy by 2051.

Surveillance got creepier. On any given day, the average American going about his daily business was monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears. In such a surveillance ecosystem, we’re all suspects and databits to be tracked, catalogued and targeted. With every new AI surveillance technology that was adopted and deployed without any regard for privacy, Fourth Amendment rights and due process, the rights of the citizenry were marginalized, undermined and eviscerated.

Precrime became more fact than fiction. Under the pretext of helping overwhelmed government agencies work more efficiently, AI predictive and surveillance technologies were used to classify, segregate and flag the populace with little concern for privacy rights or due process. All of this sorting, sifting and calculating was done swiftly, secretly and incessantly with the help of AI technology and a surveillance state that monitors your every move. Where this becomes particularly dangerous is when the government takes preemptive steps to combat crime or abuse, or whatever the government has chosen to outlaw at any given time.

The government waged psychological warfare on the nation. The government made clear in word and deed that “we the people” are domestic enemies to be targeted, tracked, manipulated, micromanaged, surveilled, viewed as suspects, and treated as if our fundamental rights are mere privileges that can be easily discarded. Aided and abetted by technological advances and scientific experimentation, the government weaponized violence; surveillance, pre-crime and pre-thought campaigns; digital currencies, social media scores and censorship; desensitization campaigns; fear; genetics; and entertainment.

Gun confiscation laws put a target on the back of every American. Red flag gun laws (which authorize government officials to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others) gained traction as a legislative means by which to allow police to remove guns from people suspected of being threats. Red flag gun laws merely push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless.

The burden of proof was reversed. Although the Constitution requires the government to provide solid proof of criminal activity before it can deprive a citizen of life or liberty, the government turned that fundamental assurance of due process on its head. Each and every one of us is now seen as a potential suspect, terrorist and lawbreaker in the eyes of the government. The groundwork has been laid for a new kind of government where it won’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation, or even if you’re a citizen. What will matter is what the government—or whoever happens to be calling the shots at the time—thinks. And if the powers-that-be think you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides.

The Supreme Court turned America into a Constitution-free zone. Although the Court’s rulings on qualified immunity for police who engage in official misconduct were largely overshadowed by its politically polarizing rulings on abortion, gun ownership and religion, they were no less devastating. The bottom line: there will be no consequences for cops who brutalize the citizenry and no justice for the victims of police brutality.

The FBI went rogue. The FBI’s laundry list of crimes against the American people ran the gamut from surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, and intimidation tactics to harassment and indoctrination, governmental overreach, abuse, misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property, and that’s just based on what we know.

The government waged war on political freedom. In more and more cases, the government declared war on what should be protected political speech whenever it challenges the government’s power, reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.

The military industrial complex waged more wars. America’s part in the showdown between Russia and the Ukraine conveniently followed on the heels of a long line of other crises which have occurred like clockwork in order to keep Americans distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from the government’s steady encroachments on our freedoms.

The Deep State went global. We’ve been inching closer to a new world order for the past several decades, but COVID-19, which saw governmental and corporate interests become even more closely intertwined, shifted this transformation into high gear. This new world order—a global world order—made up of international government agencies and corporations owes its existence in large part to the U.S. government’s deep-seated and, in many cases, top-secret alliances with foreign nations and global corporations. This powerful international cabal, let’s call it the Global Deep State, is just as real as the corporatized, militarized, industrialized American Deep State, and it poses just as great a threat to our rights as individuals under the U.S. Constitution, if not greater.

Authoritarian madness escalated. You didn’t have to be a conspiracy theorist or even anti-government to recognize the slippery slope that starts with well-meaning intentions for the greater good and ends with tyrannical abuses no one should tolerate. When any government is empowered to adopt a comply-or-suffer-the-consequences mindset that is enforced through mandates, lockdowns, penalties, detention centers, martial law, and an utter disregard for the rights of the individual, there should be reason for concern.

The takeaway: the more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march towards outright dictatorship, it rests—as it always has—at the local level, with “we the people.”

Unless we work together to push back against the government’s overreach, excesses and abuse, 2023 will be yet another terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for freedom.

Homicide as well as suicide are common causes of death for young age groups in the United States, second only to accidents for those between the ages of 15 and 34.

After that age, cancer, heart disease and more recently Covid-19 become bigger killers.

Even for children aged 5-9, homicide is a big danger and was the fourth most common cause of death for the age group in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

For those 10 to 14 years old, both homicide and suicide are among the top 4 killers.

According to a study published this week in scientific journal Jama Pediatrics, homicide rates in children have been rising in recent years, increasing by as much as 50 percent for Black children and those between the ages of 16 and 17 just between 2018 and 2020.

They also shot up for adults in 2020 and 2021. Suicide rates also increased for those under the age of 45 in the past decade, including very young children from the age of 5.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Of approximately 46,000 suicides recorded by the CDC in the U.S. in 2020, between 6,000 and 8,000 deaths occurred per ten-year age cohort above the age of 15.

Despite being a relatively large killer of children who are 10 to 14 years old, only around 600 suicides occurred in this age group in 2020. The situation is similar for homicides, where around 200-300 death in the age groups 5-9 and 10-14 constitute rank 4 of the most common causes of death. Between 6,000 and 7,000 homicide deaths occurred for those 15 to 24 years old and those 25 to 34 years old in 2020.

For older age groups, the number decreases gradually.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Biden administration has dialed up its crackdown on so-called “ghost guns” by issuing guidance that basically expands the definition of what “readily converted” means in a new federal rule and making more do-it-yourself pistol parts subject to restrictions.

In an open letter to firearms dealers (pdf) dated Dec. 27, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) told firearm vendors that nearly-complete handgun frames or receivers—basically the pistol grip and firing mechanism—will be treated the same as fully completed firearms.

Ghost Gun Rule

Firearm vendors who sell near-complete pistol frames and receivers—often as kits that can be relatively easily turned into untraceable homemade guns—were hit with the new rule in August, which required that frames and receivers that could be “readily converted” into fully operational guns are subject to the same regulations as traditional firearms.

The August regulation, dubbed the Ghost Gun Rule, meant that kits containing partially complete frames or receivers plus assembly tools and instructions were subject to licensing, background check, and serialization requirements.

But ambiguity around the definition of the word “readily” in the regulation meant that some vendors continued to sell nearly-complete unserialized frames and receivers as standalone products while additional components needed to finalize their at-home manufacture were offered separately, or by third parties.

Such was the argument made in an October letter (pdf) by a dozen or so Democrat lawmakers to the ATF and Justice Department, which claimed that a number of ghost gun companies were continuing to sell unserialized frames and receivers by interpreting “readily” in a way that amounted to a loophole.

“The final rule, however, is clear and unambiguous: a nearly-complete frame or receiver is a firearm,” the lawmakers wrote.

“The rule does not cover only frames and receivers sold as part of a kit, but also frames and receivers that can be readily completed,” they continued, urging the ATF to issue enforcement guidance that basically expands the definition of what it means for pistol components to be considered as “readily converted” into a functional firearm.

They asked the ATF and the Justice Department to consider a nearly-completed frame or receiver as “readily convertible” not only when it’s sold as part of a kit containing things like jigs, molds, templates, and tools for assembly but also when such auxiliary equipment is available to the general public.

“In particular, we urge the Department and ATF to confirm that how ATF reviews the ‘readily convertible’ nature of a nearly-complete frame or receiver will not be limited to what tools, equipment, and instructions are included in the same sale or distribution of the part sold, but rather premised on the tools, equipment, and instructions that are readily available to the general public, including those easily obtainable online through third parties,” the lawmakers wrote.

ATF agreed and by issuing the new guidance, the agency is making clear that it will now be requiring relevant firearm frames to have serial numbers and to be sold by licensed dealers who carry out background checks just like with fully completed guns.

“Today’s open letter is another important step in implementing the crucial public safety rule regarding privately made firearms, or Ghost Guns,” ATF Director Steven Dettelbach said in a press release. “Ghost Guns can kill like other firearms if they are in the wrong hands, so they are treated as firearms under the law.” 

According to explanatory remarks to the Ghost Gun Rule published in the Federal Register, from the beginning of 2016 to the end of 2021, there were around 45,000 homemade ghost guns recovered by law enforcement from potential crime scenes, including 692 homicides or attempted homicides.

Before Regulating ‘Ghost Guns,’ Enforce Existing Laws

Several current and former law enforcement members told The Epoch Times that the proliferation of ghost guns at crime scenes is a problem, but that being insufficiently tough on repeat offenders under current laws is a much bigger problem.

“If we are going to invest energy to fight crime, we should invest energy to get repeat offenders off the street,” Al Maresca, a deputy U.S. marshal in the District of Maryland, told The Epoch Times in an earlier interview.

“Felon in possession of a gun is already illegal, a straw purchase is already illegal—there are all these other laws on the books that we can be focusing our efforts on,” he added.

Roberto Alaniz, a recently retired sergeant from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), told The Epoch Times that focusing on ghost guns is unlikely to make a dent in violent crime.

Read more here…

A Seattle tech worker was charged this week in a criminal theft scheme which netted around $300,000 from his employer.

28-year-old Ermenildo Castro of Tacoma allegedly told detectives he was inspired by the 90’s movie “Office Space” when he allegedly wrote software code to manipulate shipping fees paid to his employer, Zulily.com, to go into his own bank accounts.

According to KOMO news, citing court documents, Castro netted around $260,000 in shipping fees.

What’s more, he used his position as a software engineer to alter the price of around $41,000 in merchandise for ‘pennies on the dollar.’

According to police, the company’s cybersecurity staff found a document on Castro’s laptop titled ‘OfficeSpace project’, which outlined Castro’s scheme to ‘cleanup evidence’ by manipulating audit logs and disabling alarm logging. The theft began in February and by March the company had identified discrepancies in the shipping fees being charged to customers, an SPD report states.

Castro was part of the team assigned to investigate the discrepancies in shipping fees, according to the report. –KOMO

Investigators for the company eventually caught on to Castro’s scheme and visited his house, where they found several boxes of merchandise piled up in the driveway and around the front door. 

He claimed the orders, which included more than 1,000 items, were sent to his house in error.

“When asked why he never returned the items to Zulily, he said that once they fired him his opinion was, ‘f— ‘em’,” reads the police report.

Seattle police wrote a narrative on how Castro’s alleged scheme was like “Office Space.”

“In the Initech office, the insecure Peter Gibbons hates his job. His best friends are two software engineers Michael Bolton and Samir Nagheenanajar, that also hate Initech. When he discovers that Michael and Samir will be downsized, they decide to plant a virus in the banking system to embezzle fraction of cents on each financial operation into Peter’s account. However[,] Michael commits a mistake in the software on the decimal place and they siphon off over $300,000. The desperate trio tries to fix the problem, return the money and avoid going to prison.”

Apparently Castro thought he could avoid ‘pound me in the ass prison.’

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

If we are not free to think what we want, we do not have a free society.  It really is that simple.  Unfortunately, there is now an overwhelming consensus among elitists in the western world that radical measures must be instituted to control what people think.  If you insist on being a rebel, there is a very good chance that you will be punished for holding unorthodox views.  You won’t necessarily be put in prison, but our system has countless other ways that it can punish you.  For example, those that insist on embracing unacceptable thoughts will find that their career choices are quite limited, and there are certain positions that they will be prohibited from ever holding under any circumstances.  Not only that, but if your thoughts are offensive enough you may have a financial account suddenly shut down or credit denied for seemingly no reason.  This sort of thing was unheard of a decade ago, but now it is happening all the time.  Of course you can forget about having any sort of a substantial social media presence if your thoughts do not conform to current “societal norms”.  Even the “free speech platforms” are banning and shadowbanning countless accounts every single day.

If any of the things that I have just described have happened to you, that is probably because you are a “thought criminal”.

You are not supposed to contradict the conditioning that you have received from our education system, from the news media, from our politicians and from the corporate entertainment that you are being fed for hours each day.

When you deviate from socially acceptable viewpoints, you are guilty of “thoughtcrime”.  This is how “thoughtcrime” is defined by Wikipedia…

Thoughtcrime is a word coined by George Orwell in his 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. It describes a person’s politically unorthodox thoughts, such as beliefs and doubts that contradict the tenets of Ingsoc (English Socialism), the dominant ideology of Oceania. In the official language of Newspeak, the word crimethink describes the intellectual actions of a person who entertains and holds politically unacceptable thoughts; thus the government of the Party controls the speech, the actions, and the thoughts of the citizens of Oceania.

Sadly, we truly have become an “Orwellian society” at this point.

In fact, a woman in the UK was just arrested for thoughts that she was thinking within her own mind…

The U.K. March for Life director was recently arrested after police found her praying silently outside of an abortion clinic, according to a press release by Alliance Defending Freedom U.K.

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, a charity volunteer and Christian, was approached by police officers outside of BPAS Robert Clinic in Birmingham, England, and asked if she was praying, according to ADF’s press release. Vaughan-Spruce told the officers she “might be praying silently” and was later arrested.

“It’s abhorrently wrong that I was searched, arrested, interrogated by police and charged simply for praying in the privacy of my own mind,” Vaughan-Spruce stated in the release. “Nobody should be criminalized for thinking and for praying, in a public space in the UK.”

Once she was taken in to the station, you would think that those in charge would realize that a huge mistake has just been made.

But instead of releasing her, she was ruthlessly interrogated.

Apparently they were absolutely determined to discover whatever evil thoughts that this vicious thought criminal had been thinking.

And apparently they found something, because now she has been charged on four counts…

Remember the British woman who was arrested for praying silently? She’s been charged.

pic.twitter.com/VrHx93kQEd

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) December 28, 2022

She insists that she is not a criminal.

But she doesn’t understand that the world has changed.

Anyone that thinks unauthorized thoughts in now a criminal in this system.

And at this moment there are countless intelligence agents all over the western world that are scouring social media sites for more thought criminals.

Thanks to the release of the Twitter Files, we now know that the FBI has spent an enormous amount of time, effort and energy looking for unauthorized thoughts on our largest social media platforms.

When the FBI found unauthorized thoughts on Twitter, requests were made to ban specific accounts.  This represented a gross violation of our First Amendment rights, and apparently it kept happening over and over again.

The FBI was confronted about this, and this is how they responded…

“The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our tradition, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries.

As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers.

The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public.

It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”

And it has also come out that the FBI has been paying Twitter and other social media companies millions of dollars for some reason…

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is declining to specify what other social media companies the federal agency gave money to after Fox News confirmed that it paid Twitter nearly $3.5 million.

FBI officials told Fox News that the nearly $3.5 million payment to Twitter was a “reimbursement” for the “reasonable costs and expenses associated with their response to a legal process… For complying with legal requests, and a standard procedure.”

The FBI officials also said that Twitter isn’t the only social media company that is being paid by the federal agency, telling Fox News “We don’t just reimburse Twitter.”

What exactly was that money for?

We deserve to know.

New Twitter CEO Elon Musk recently stated that “almost every conspiracy theory that people had about Twitter turned out to be true.”

Reading that should chill you to the core.

Of course many other big tech companies have also been colluding with the government to suppress free speech, and one recent survey found that the vast majority of Americans want answers…

A recent poll shows that 63 percent of Americans want Congress to investigate “whether the FBI was involved in censoring information on social media sites.”

The Twitter Files disclosures show that not only did Twitter collude with the FBI, it also worked with other government agencies like the CIA and the Pentagon to suppress information.

Musk said in a post on Dec. 27 that “*Every* social media company is engaged in heavy censorship, with significant involvement of and, at times, explicit direction of the government.”

As time rolls along, those that choose not to conform to “societal norms” will be increasingly pushed to the utter fringes of society.

If you continue to choose to be an “independent thinker”, getting a “good job” will be exceedingly difficult.

Just think about it.  Right now, how many of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are “independent thinkers” that have unacceptable belief systems?

If you want to rise in the pyramidal structure of our society, you have got to believe what the system tells you to believe.

Of course if all independent thought is eliminated, our society will become the sort of dystopian nightmare that authors such as George Orwell and myself have been warning about for a very long time.

Even though I do not like much of what my fellow Americans have to say, I vigorously defend the right to say those things.

Freedom of thought and freedom of speech are non-negotiable, and our system of government simply will not work without them.

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It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.