Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Musk v Oz
2. Alaska
3. NY
4. MN Senator
5. Space
6. Classified
7. Protests
8. Hoax List
1. Musk v Oz. One of the problems living relatively close to China is that the CCP authoritarian ways and means tend to rub off on their neighbors. Last week’s participant in the intel community’s Get Musk derby took place in Oz, which is going after him and Twitter/X. At issue is an April 15 stabbing by a 15-year-old screaming Allahu Akbar in Wakely near Sydney. The target was a bishop giving a sermon and the attack was live streamed on YouTube. The national government got itself involved, with its courts demanding YouTube and Twitter/X immediately take the video down. Both complied. The problem arose when the government demanded Twitter/X remove the video from its worldwide feed. At this point, Musk refused, citing freedom of speech and the fact that the Oz government was trying to inflict its worldview on the rest of the world. At issue is the ability of users in Oz to use VPNs and tools like the TOR browser to bypass national blocks on content. In effect, the government of Oz is demanding a worldwide ban on this specific content, a precedent any self-respecting dictator would love. The Oz Prime Minister, eSafety Commissar, and even a state senator got themselves involved, with name calling taking place early and often. As of this writing, Musk has not relented, and the case continues to rattle around the courts system. There are several things going on here. First is the kneejerk reaction by yet another putatively western government not to do anything to upset the Muzzies. Second, we have Oz returning to their authoritarian kneejerk ways, something they did so well and enjoyed so much during COVID where they actively suppressed, censored and even called the military and police out on skeptics and protesters. Oz has a national TV channel, modeled after the British BBC, which is in very real control of content and can craft the message to precisely what the government demands, like US media, something they seem to enjoy. From here, it appears that the stars are all aligned against Musk. I have a contact in Oz who claims otherwise, saying he is doing quite well in the argument. We will see how this all works out. Once again, I wouldn’t bet against Musk.
2. Alaska. As Dementia Hitler approaches his reelection, his war on Alaska resource development continues. Last week, he locked up another 13 million acres of NPR-A, a petroleum field created over a century ago for fuel for naval vessels. He doubled down and issued a no-build order on a road to a rare earths mining district south of the Brooks Range, west of Fairbanks, the Ambler Road. In doing this, both Dementia Hitler and his flying monkey Deb Haaland claimed their action was based entirely on local native opposition to both developments. The shutdowns prompted a tepid response from first term congress critter Mary Peltola criticizing the action. Peltola is up for reelection in November and has been claiming that she protected Alaska’s primary economic resource, fishing, from everyone, everywhere, and everything, so reelect her because she has a nice smile. Her problem is that oil and natural gas are the heart of Alaska’s economy, paying over 90% of all the taxes and bills up here. Peltola is rather high on the list of incumbent democrats at risk so we expect the state to get flooded with outside money and ads. Since she can’t run on the economy or jobs given what Deb Haaland has done to us since being installed, looks like she is going to be all abortion all the time, an interesting position for a Native Alaska woman, as there is no word for abortion in her native Yup’ik language. Since she and her handlers want to discuss abortion so much (what else do they have?), perhaps it is time to trot out the other poster boy for abortion, one Kermit Gosnell, the butcher of Philly.
3. NY. A couple bits from NY last week. First, Letitia James’ attempt to get Judge Engoron to toss the $175 million bond written against Trump failed, though she did get manage to get Engoron to levy a few additional restrictions on the bond. Second is more interesting, as Trump continues to campaign in NYC during his time out of the courthouse. His latest zinger was a threat to flip NY red. He lost NY by 22% in 2020, but polls within 10% today. The more he campaigns, the more video he takes with bodega owners, clerks, and construction workers, the better he is going to do in November. Will he flip NY? Unlikely, though he should make things very, very uncomfortable for democrats in the state, especially democrats who think they are still running the state. Better yet, Trump will force democrats to expend resources in NY that they would rather spend elsewhere.
4. MN Senator. In one of the more bizarre stories from last week, a MN state senator (democrat) was arrested on suspicion of burglary last week. She was a meteorologist with the military and local MN Public Radio. A homeowner called in an active burglary at 0445. She broke into a window, was searching for something and found hiding under a bed. Her recently deceased father and stepmother live on the same block, and likely the same home as the home invasion call originated from, though both the stepmother and local police have been very close mouthed about the invasion. One report had her in the parent’s home looking for something of her father’s estate that she wanted. This case gets political as democrats hold a one seat majority in the MN state senate. If she is unable to do her job due to being incarcerated, there will be some interesting problems in the legislature that has four weeks remaining in its session with no budget bills yet passed.
5. Space. A pretty good week in all things space last week with recovery of a pair of broken spacecraft. The best news was recovery of communication with Voyager 1. Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 and is currently 24 billion kilometers from earth, well beyond the heliosphere in interstellar space. It has been sending data about its surroundings back since it was launched. Last November, it stopped sending readable data back. It was transmitting, but the data was unreadable. Computers on the craft have been reprogrammed multiple times since launch with updates and various hardware fixes. This reprogramming takes a while, as today a signal takes 22.5 hours each direction. Telemetry was unreadable, indicating some problem with its onboard computer. Controllers eventually figured out that there was a bad memory chip in its Flight Data System, the computer that merges science data with onboard systems data. They figured how to reprogram the software on the craft to bypass / ignore memory locations thought to be bad. Eventually, the craft responded with readable health data. Science data is not stored and transmitted back in batches, so everything observed since November is all gone. Voyager 1 is the farthest spacecraft from Earth and will hopefully work for another 8-9 years before its onboard power runs out. The second bit of good news comes from the moon, courtesy of Japan’s SLIM lander. SLIM was a tech demo which landed on the moon Jan 19. It lost a nozzle during its landing burn and ended up landing upside down. Took a while to communicate its condition, but it did survive, though not without difficulties. It even returned some scientific data. It was not supposed to survive the lunar night following its landing. As of last week, it survived its third lunar night, making it a tough little machine. For a tech demo, this has been a remarkable and surprising success.
6. Classified. Julie Kelly reported last week on unredacted documents released by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s office in the Trump classified case. Judge Cannon ordered Smith to unredact and release the documents. He eventually did and the documents were released to the media. Turns out that the National Archives coordinated directly with the Dementia Hitler WH to frame Trump for illegal possession starting almost immediately after Trump left office. As a result of that coordination, the National Archives sent a criminal referral letter to Merrick Garland’s (In)Justice Department alleging mishandling of classified. Everyone involved on the government side of this, Smith, Garland, National Archives, and the Biden WH lied about the WH orchestrating the entire mess. Worse, there was a pallet of boxes of papers collected from the Trump WH prepared by the GSA and held somewhere in VA that was eventually dumped at Mar-a-Lago. These boxes contained papers with classified markings. Note that Trump neither oversaw the packing of the boxes nor the vetting of their contents. No word whether or not the GSA took a look at the contents, vetted them for appropriated care of classified. Apparently, it was the contents of these boxes at the heart of the excuse for the FBI raid. Sure does sound like a setup, and orchestrated hit to me. And if Trump is facing jail time for this, all of Dementia Hitler’s flying monkeys in the various Executive Department agencies who participated should face the same risk and penalty. This is why Weissman, Smith, et al have tried so desperately to remove Judge Cannon from this case, as she appears to be the only judge at any level interested in doing her job which tells us the awful state of the judiciary on the DC Circuit and in NY state.
7. Protests. FIB Director Christopher Wray did an interview on NBC (a known Intel community organ) last week with Lester Holt. Wray was asked about the campus protests. He responded that the FIB isn’t actively monitoring the campus protests because they don’t as a general rule but do share intel about specific threats (unless those threats are made against conservative students or Jews) with state and local law enforcement. This is the same FIB Director actively trying to penetrate and monitor Catholics, orchestrating Patriot Front protests, and hunting down Jan 6 protestors like so many dogs. Some protests continue to be more equal than others.
8. Hoax List. We’ve covered various lists of Trump hoaxes in previous editions, most recently in Items 03/04, with a list of 14 Russia-related hoaxes. The intel community / deep state did far more to Trump than simple Russia hoaxes. The following is the most comprehensive I have come across. Listing hoaxes is not without difficulty, as there is no universal agreement as to whether they are actually hoaxes. For example, Biden is still running on the Charlottesville Fine People hoax a full four years after it was thoroughly debunked. I might elevate this list to an active page on the II website. The list is from Scott Adams as of 4/23.
- Russia Collusion Hoax
- Steele Dossier hooker story
- Russia paying bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan
- Trump called Neo-Nazis “Fine people.”
- Trump suggested drinking/injecting bleach to fight COVID
- Trump overfed koi fish in Japan
- Trump cleared protestors with tear gas for a bible photo op
- Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation
- Elections were fair because no court found major fraud
- January 6th was an “insurrection” to overthrow the government
- Trump tried to grab the steering wheel of The Beast
- Border Patrol Agents whipped illegal border crossers
- Trump stored nuclear secrets at Mar-a-Lago
- Governor Whitmer kidnapping plot
- Trump mocked a reporter’s disability
- Government spending to subsidize green products reduces “inflation.”
- Trump invited Nick Fuentes to dinner at Mar-a-Lago
- Twittergate was a dud. We learned nothing new or worrisome
- Twitter doesn’t shadow ban
- Twitter hate speech got worse under Musk.
More later –
- AG