Well written story IMO

Quote:Mitch Herron thought he had left America and its shadows far behind. A master of evasion and lethal skills, Herron had vanished into the global underbelly, distancing himself from a homeland where he was both hunter and hunted. Yet, after narrowly escaping death in the neon-drenched alleys of Hong Kong, he discovers that America's reach is long—and it's pulling him back in. In a world teetering on the edge of chaos, where shadows wage unseen wars, the American government presents Herron with an ultimatum he can't refuse. The price of his freedom? One final mission—rescue a pivotal intelligence operative whose fate could tilt the balance of global power. Failure is not an option. If Herron fails, not only will he lose any chance of a life beyond the crosshairs, but America will also lose a crucial asset in the geopolitical chess game, leaving a key ally exposed to voracious predators. Drawn back into the covert world he sought to escape, Herron must navigate the murky waters of international espionage, where friends are indistinguishable from foes, and every step could be a trap. The man who became a ghost to live must now confront his past to safeguard the future.

Quote:This is the US Coast Guard daring interception of a narco submarine in the middle of the open ocean a few hundred miles off the coasts of Colombia. In the year 2019 The sub was transporting 17,000 pounds of illegal narcotics through the eastern Pacific on its way north to Mexico and the US. counterterrorism experts have been sounding the alarm for years that these subs could be used to transport more than just party drugs, they could just as easily smuggle firearms, explosives, or weapons of mass destruction. Written by: Chris Cappy & Diego Aceituno Edited by: Savvy Studios You might be surprised to learn maritime smuggling accounts for roughly 80% of the total illicit flow from South America into Mexico prior to entry into the US. The DEA estimates 30% of that is transported by narco submarines. And considering only around 10% are caught, that means over $9 billion dollars worth of illegal narcotics reach US shores from just this method alone. That’s why It’s important we understand the full extent of their capabilities and intent. A lot of people who first saw this viral video mistakenly thought these troops were NAVY SEALS. In reality this the Coast Guards elite unit called PACTACLET which stands for Pacific Tactical Law Enforcement Team. Based out of San Diego, they specializes in high risk, non-compliant boardings and deploy worldwide as elite 8 to 10 man Law Enforcement Detachments or LEDETs.

As the title says the left is pulling out all their lies and innuendo to do everything to influence the weak minded during this election season.

Well, this sums it up pretty nicely in under 2 minutes


WATCH: The Democrat Open Borders Plan to Entrench Single-Party Rule | Explained in Under Two Minutes


https://twitter.com/i/status/1769883941878571505

That's a lot of loot, assuming it is down there.

Quote:Since the Colombian navy discovered the final resting place of the Spanish galleon San José in 2015, its location has remained a state secret, the wreck – and its precious cargo – left deep under the waters of the Caribbean.

Efforts to conserve the ship and recover its precious cargo have been caught up in a complicated string of international legal disputes, with Colombia, Spain, Bolivian Indigenous groups and a US salvage company laying claim to the wreck, and the gold, silver and emeralds onboard thought to be worth as much as $17bn.

When Colombia tried to auction off part of the bounty to fund the colossal costs of recovering the ship, Unesco and the country’s high courts intervened.

But eight years after the discovery, officials now say they are pushing politics to one side and could begin lifting artefacts from the “holy grail of shipwrecks” as soon as April.

“There has been this persistent view of the galleon as a treasure trove. We want to turn the page on that,” Alhena Caicedo, director of the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History, said. “We aren’t thinking about treasure. We’re thinking about how to access the historical and archeological information at the site.”



The San José was returning to Europe with treasures to help fund the war of the Spanish succession when it was sunk by a British squadron in 1708, close to the Caribbean port city of Cartagena.

Historians say the wreck could help reveal much about the Spanish empire at the height of its power – and the shared, overlapping histories of Europe and Latin America.

Eventually, Caicedo’s team hopes to raise the wreck itself, and put it on display in a custom-built museum where visitors will be able to explore “all the secrets of the bottom of the ocean”, she said.

But as the expedition continues to explore the site, the scale and complexity of the challenge is coming into focus.

Few ships like the San José have ever been recovered – and none has ever been salvaged from warm tropical waters.

“This is a huge challenge and it is not a project that has a lot of precedents. In a way, we are pioneers,” said Caicedo.

The closest comparison would probably be to the Mary Rose, the flagship of Henry VIII’s fleet, which sank in 1545 while in battle with the French fleet off the coast of Portsmouth.

That 16th-century wreckage was explored by hundreds of divers – many of whom were volunteers – for a decade before being carefully lifted in 1981. The surviving section of the ship’s hull is now on display in a £35m ($45m) museum.

Colombia’s navy has been studying the Mary Rose and other such marine conservation projects to see how it could lift and conserve the 40-metre-long ship and its contents without it all crumbling to dust.

“The San José is a very, very special ship. It’s comparable to the Mary Rose in that it was in action at the peak of Spanish technology and shipbuilding,” said Ann Coats, associate professor in maritime heritage at the University of Portsmouth.

“There are so many questions the San José could help answer!”

The San José’s cargo includes articles of glass, porcelain and leather, and historians hope the haul could inform their understanding of global 18th-century trade networks, Spain’s complex colonial hierarchy and the lives of the 600 souls onboard.

But while the Mary Rose lay in frigid coastal waters, the San José sank in deep, tropical waters which will probably have been cruel to the ship and could make the recovery one of the most costly and complex in history.

“The contents are really varied and we have no idea how the remains will react when they come into contact with oxygen. We don’t even know if it is possible to raise something out of the water,” said Caicedo.

The wreck’s precise location is a state secret to protect the site from looters, but Colombian authorities have revealed that it is 600 metres (2,000ft) below sea level – too far for divers to reach.

The country’s military is currently developing underwater robots that will first photograph, video and map the wreckage before carefully attempting any retrieval.

Exactly how much can be salvaged from the wreck will depend on myriad factors: currents, sea temperature, the type of silt the wreck is submerged in, how the ship’s 60 bronze cannons plunged to the seabed, and even which critters are now living there, says the head of the Mary Rose’s research program, Alex Hildred.

“It was also set on fire,” Hildred says. “Lifting the ship and creating a museum will be really difficult, really expensive and incredibly challenging … And then everyone wants a bit of it. It’s just a nightmare.”

The vessel’s international connections mean that historical research has until now been halted by international litigation over who is its rightful owner.

Although the wreck was found in Colombian waters, Spain has argued that the San José was part of the Spanish fleet and was returning from what was then part of the Spanish empire.

Meanwhile, Sea Search Armada (SSA), a US-based salvage company, has been locked in a legal battle with Colombia, arguing that it located the area in which the San José sank in 1981. SSA has argued that Colombia agreed to split any profits, but in 2011 a US court declared the galleon the property of the Colombian state.

Indigenous communities in Bolivia have also voiced a claim to any possible riches, arguing that their ancestors are likely to have mined the silver and gold used in many of the treasures.

The Colombian ministry of culture says the government has self-funded the first stage of exploration with $7.3m and it will not sell any of the precious artefacts as Unesco pleaded in 2018.

“Money has always driven the story of the San José. The British wanted to capture it to deny money to Spain, then the money onboard drove the archaeological search for the wreck,” said Coats. “Then disputes got in the way of studying the ship. It would be nice if for once money wasn’t driving things and a huge cultural collaboration could take place to study it properly.”

This article was amended on 18 March 2024. The Mary Rose was in the navy of Henry VIII, not “Henry XIII”. Also, it was likely to have been sunk by its instability during combat, rather than as a direct result of French fire, as an earlier version suggested.

Quote:AT THE DOCTOR'S OFFICE

 A gorgeous young redhead goes into the doctor's 
office and said that her body hurt wherever she touched it.

“Impossible!” says the doctor.  “Show me.”

The redhead took her finger, pushed on her left shoulder and screamed, she pushed her 
elbow and screamed even 
more.  She pushed her knee and screamed; 
likewise she pushed her ankle and screamed.

Everywhere she touched made her scream.

The doctor said, “You're not really a redhead, are you?”

“Well, no,” she said, “I'm actually a blonde.”

“I thought so,” the doctor said, “Your finger is broken.” 

Quote: 

 

BLONDE ON TIME

A girl was visiting her blonde friend, who had acquired two new dogs, and asked
her what their names were.

The blonde responded by saying that one was named “Rolex” and one was named “Timex”.

Her friend said, “Whoever heard of someone naming dogs like that?”

   “Helllooooo...! ,” answered the blonde.  “They're watchdogs.”  

And the Arab slave trade, and the British crusade against slavery!  I was never thaught this is school. I left HS in 1990, and was only taught about Dutch history. I hated history because of it, as it was too boring! I wanted them to include world history, but don't recall that every being part of the curriculum.

Anyway. I think as the 1% want to keep us as divide as possible we should try to spread this truth far and wide.






MSM would never cover this 

I find it strange that a social media company that has been offline since January 2021 still sends me newsletters via the email account I used with them. Here is the address, "newsletter@parlermailer.com".

So I looked into Parler again and found this tidbit on Wikipedia . . .

Quote:Parler was acquired by the digital media conglomerate Starboard on April 14, 2023, and was shut down on the same day.[36] According to a statement by Starboard on the website's holding page, now removed, this was a temporary measure to allow the site to "undergo a strategic assessment".[37][38]

On December 15, 2023, the company was sold to a new co-owner group consisting of Ryan Rhodes, Elise Pierotti and Jaco Booyens. Ryan Rhodes was appointed CEO.[39] A 2024 relaunch was hinted at by the new ownership soon after the company purchase. In January 2024, the company's external social media outlets officially restarted operations to announce the relaunch. The platform itself remains inaccessible, but the website has been restored.

Quote:Parler Gets Unexpected Help in Latest Comeback Bid
Blake Montgomery Former Reporter/Editor
Updated Sep. 17, 2021 10:18PM EDT / Published Sep. 17, 2021 10:12PM EDT

Parler, a social network that was driven out by Big Tech after playing an integral role in planning for the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot, is apparently making a comeback using the services of a Silicon Valley giant.

The right-wing social network Parler is sending its email blasts via software made by Salesforce, the largest employer in San Francisco and the owner of the city’s biggest skyscraper.

According to domain registry records reviewed by The Daily Beast, Parler is using Salesforce Marketing Cloud, an automated email marketing product also known as ExactTarget, to send out email blasts like the one it sent Friday night with the subject line “No more being silenced.” Independent open-source researcher Max Kamin-Cross first flagged the domain records.

. . . The social network is sending the emails via the domain parlermailer.com, a domain registered and attached to Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Salesforce is Parler’s sole email marketing provider. The company signed up for Salesforce’s services in April.

Good read with a handful of source links.

Quote:The food transition, the energy transition, net-zero ideology, programmable central bank digital currencies, the censorship of free speech and clampdowns on protest. What’s it all about? To understand these processes, we need to first locate what is essentially a social and economic reset within the context of a collapsing financial system.

Writer Ted Reece notes that the general rate of profit has trended downwards from an estimated 43% in the 1870s to 17% in the 2000s. By late 2019, many companies could not generate enough profit. Falling turnover, squeezed margins, limited cashflows and highly leveraged balance sheets were prevalent.

Professor Fabio Vighi of Cardiff University has described how closing down the global economy in early 2020 under the guise of fighting a supposedly new and novel pathogen allowed the US Federal Reserve to flood collapsing financial markets (COVID relief) with freshly printed money without causing hyperinflation. Lockdowns curtailed economic activity, thereby removing demand for the newly printed money (credit) in the physical economy and preventing ‘contagion’.

According to investigative journalist Michael Byrant, €1.5 trillion was needed to deal with the crisis in Europe alone. The financial collapse staring European central bankers in the face came to a head in 2019. The appearance of a ‘novel virus’ provided a convenient cover story.

The European Central Bank agreed to a €1.31 trillion bailout of banks followed by the EU agreeing to a €750 billion recovery fund for European states and corporations. This package of long-term, ultra-cheap credit to hundreds of banks was sold to the public as a necessary programme to cushion the impact of the pandemic on businesses and workers.

In response to a collapsing neoliberalism, we are now seeing the rollout of an authoritarian great reset — an agenda that intends to reshape the economy and change how we live.


Shift to authoritarianism

The new economy is to be dominated by a handful of tech giants, global conglomerates and e-commerce platforms, and new markets will also be created through the financialisation of nature, which is to be colonised, commodified and traded under the notion of protecting the environment.

In recent years, we have witnessed an overaccumulation of capital, and the creation of such markets will provide fresh investment opportunities (including dodgy carbon offsetting Ponzi schemes)  for the super-rich to park their wealth and prosper.

This great reset envisages a transformation of Western societies, resulting in permanent restrictions on fundamental liberties and mass surveillance. Being rolled out under the benign term of a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, the World Economic Forum (WEF) says the public will eventually ‘rent’ everything they require (remember the WEF video ‘you will own nothing and be happy’?): stripping the right of ownership under the guise of a ‘green economy’ and underpinned by the rhetoric of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘climate emergency’.

Climate alarmism and the mantra of sustainability are about promoting money-making schemes. But they also serve another purpose: social control.

Neoliberalism has run its course, resulting in the impoverishment of large sections of the population. But to dampen dissent and lower expectations, the levels of personal freedom we have been used to will not be tolerated. This means that the wider population will be subjected to the discipline of an emerging surveillance state.

To push back against any dissent, ordinary people are being told that they must sacrifice personal liberty in order to protect public health, societal security (those terrible Russians, Islamic extremists or that Sunak-designated bogeyman George Galloway) or the climate. Unlike in the old normal of neoliberalism, an ideological shift is occurring whereby personal freedoms are increasingly depicted as being dangerous because they run counter to the collective good.

The real reason for this ideological shift is to ensure that the masses get used to lower living standards and accept them. Consider, for instance, the Bank of England’s chief economist Huw Pill saying that people should ‘accept’ being poorer. And then there is Rob Kapito of the world’s biggest asset management firm BlackRock, who says that a “very entitled” generation must deal with scarcity for the first time in their lives.

At the same time, to muddy the waters, the message is that lower living standards are the result of the conflict in Ukraine and supply shocks that both the war and ‘the virus’ have caused.

The net-zero carbon emissions agenda will help legitimise lower living standards (reducing your carbon footprint) while reinforcing the notion that our rights must be sacrificed for the greater good. You will own nothing, not because the rich and their neoliberal agenda made you poor but because you will be instructed to stop being irresponsible and must act to protect the planet.

Net-zero agenda

But what of this shift towards net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and the plan to slash our carbon footprints? Is it even feasible or necessary?

Gordon Hughes, a former World Bank economist and current professor of economics at the University of Edinburgh, says in a new report that current UK and European net-zero policies will likely lead to further economic ruin.

Apparently, the only viable way to raise the cash for sufficient new capital expenditure (on wind and solar infrastructure) would be a two decades-long reduction in private consumption of up to 10 per cent. Such a shock has never occurred in the last century outside war; even then, never for more than a decade.

But this agenda will also cause serious environmental degradation. So says Andrew Nikiforuk in the article The Rising Chorus of Renewable Energy Skeptics, which outlines how the green techno-dream is vastly destructive.

He lists the devastating environmental impacts of an even more mineral-intensive system based on renewables and warns:

Quote:“The whole process of replacing a declining system with a more complex mining-based enterprise is now supposed to take place with a fragile banking system, dysfunctional democracies, broken supply chains, critical mineral shortages and hostile geopolitics.”

All of this assumes that global warming is real and anthropogenic. Not everyone agrees. In the article Global warming and the confrontation between the West and the rest of the world, journalist Thierry Meyssan argues that net zero is based on political ideology rather than science. But to state such things has become heresy in the Western countries and shouted down with accusations of ‘climate science denial’.

Regardless of such concerns, the march towards net zero continues, and key to this is the United Nations Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development Goals.

Today, almost every business or corporate report, website or brochure includes a multitude of references to ‘carbon footprints’, ‘sustainability’, ‘net zero’ or ‘climate neutrality’ and how a company or organisation intends to achieve its sustainability targets. Green profiling, green bonds and green investments go hand in hand with displaying ‘green’ credentials and ambitions wherever and whenever possible.

It seems anyone and everyone in business is planting their corporate flag on the summit of sustainability. Take Sainsbury’s, for instance. It is one of the ‘big six’ food retail supermarkets in the UK and has a vision for the future of food that it published in 2019.

Here’s a quote from it:

Quote:“Personalised Optimisation is a trend that could see people chipped and connected like never before. A significant step on from wearable tech used today, the advent of personal microchips and neural laces has the potential to see all of our genetic, health and situational data recorded, stored and analysed by algorithms which could work out exactly what we need to support us at a particular time in our life. Retailers, such as Sainsbury’s could play a critical role to support this, arranging delivery of the needed food within thirty minutes — perhaps by drone.”

Tracked, traced and chipped — for your own benefit. Corporations accessing all of our personal data, right down to our DNA. The report is littered with references to sustainability and the climate or environment, and it is difficult not to get the impression that it is written so as to leave the reader awestruck by the technological possibilities.

However, the promotion of a brave new world of technological innovation that has nothing to say about power — who determines policies that have led to massive inequalities, poverty, malnutrition, food insecurity and hunger and who is responsible for the degradation of the environment in the first place — is nothing new.

The essence of power is conveniently glossed over, not least because those behind the prevailing food regime are also shaping the techno-utopian fairytale where everyone lives happily ever after eating bugs and synthetic food while living in a digital panopticon.

Fake green

The type of ‘green’ agenda being pushed is a multi-trillion market opportunity for lining the pockets of rich investors and subsidy-sucking green infrastructure firms and also part of a strategy required to secure compliance required for the ‘new normal’.

It is, furthermore, a type of green that plans to cover much of the countryside with wind farms and solar panels with most farmers no longer farming. A recipe for food insecurity.

Those investing in the ‘green’ agenda care first and foremost about profit. The supremely influential BlackRock invests in the current food system that is responsible for polluted waterways, degraded soils, the displacement of smallholder farmers, a spiralling public health crisis, malnutrition and much more.

It also invests in healthcare — an industry that thrives on the illnesses and conditions created by eating the substandard food that the current system produces. Did Larry Fink, the top man at BlackRock, suddenly develop a conscience and become an environmentalist who cares about the planet and ordinary people? Of course not.

Any serious deliberations on the future of food would surely consider issues like food sovereignty, the role of agroecology and the strengthening of family farms — the backbone of current global food production.

The aforementioned article by Andrew Nikiforuk concludes that, if we are really serious about our impacts on the environment, we must scale back our needs and simplify society.

In terms of food, the solution rests on a low-input approach that strengthens rural communities and local markets and prioritises smallholder farms and small independent enterprises and retailers, localised democratic food systems and a concept of food sovereignty based on self-sufficiency, agroecological principles and regenerative agriculture.

It would involve facilitating the right to culturally appropriate food that is nutritionally dense due to diverse cropping patterns and free from toxic chemicals while ensuring local ownership and stewardship of common resources like land, water, soil and seeds.

That’s where genuine environmentalism and the future of food begins.