Oregonians can blame their “progressive” leaders, George Soros, and the voters staring back at them in mirrors for this mess.

The governmental equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle — state progressives, Multnomah county actors, and Portland activists — have worked together to dispirit the people through their lawlessness, destroy their once beautiful metro area with tents and bodies strewn about, and make it a hospitable place, as a local photographer put it, “for people to come to our city to kill themselves.”

These progressives have chased out several retailers. On Monday, Pacific Northwest outdoor outfitter REI told its members it would close its doors in NW downtown, citing break-ins and thefts.

Even REI, a store that sells gear for manly men & womanly women to survive in the wild gives up on Portland due thefts and break-ins.

I was a member there.
Take a bow @tedwheeler, @GovTinaKotek, @multdems, @MultCoDA for your parts in this "controlled demolition" of my hometown.

— Victoria Taft, The Adult in the Room, FITF Squad (@VictoriaTaft) April 17, 2023

Oregon is well-trod ground for Soros. Undermining the dignity of human beings and society is his aim. In the late 1990’s, his Open Society organization shoved through the so-called “Death with Dignity” law to get doctors to help people kill themselves. Then he backed the fraudulent “medical marijuana” statewide measure. Then came his Secretary of State project to undermine elections, and then his District Attorneys project, which threw traditional law out the window. Then came legalizing pot. And now this.

Soros’s hollowing out of the tenets of civil society had a supporting cast of useful idiots. Kassandra Frederique, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, called Measure 110 a blow to the so-called war on drugs. “In a historic, paradigm-shifting win and arguably the biggest blow to the war on drugs to date, Oregon voters passed Measure 110, the nation’s first all-drug decriminalization measure.” She predicted it would become a model. It’s a disaster.

Another Soros acolyte, Kayse Jama of Unite Oregon, said that decriminalizing drugs in the election following the Summer of Love riots would help end “systems of oppression.” If “ending systems of oppression” means bodies lying on the ground from drug overdoses, then mission accomplished.

The certified smart guys tasked with “solving” the “homeless problem” didn’t stand a chance of solving anything when they accelerated the numbers of people coming to the area with the open offer of accountability-free drug use, free tents, and free food.

One person wrote a letter to the editor declaring Measure 110 “very effective.”

How? The price of fentanyl and meth in Portland is a fraction of the price found in other cities. The measure has been effective in making those drugs easily available all over the city. It has been effective in decreasing livability due to crime by drug addicts. Combined with our “compassionate” policies of free tents, free tarps, free sleeping bags, free food, and lack of penalties for shoplifting car break-ins, and bicycle theft, the low drug prices and easy drug availability have been effective in attracting homeless addicts from all over the country. They are overdosing and dying on our streets in record numbers.

The Oregonian calls the downtown Portland troubles a perfect storm. If that’s true, it’s a perfect storm of their own making. Only recently have Portland officials started clearing the open-air drug markets from downtown city streets. Just days ago, Oregon’s new governor stopped throwing good money after bad to fight homelessness.

Drug and alcohol counselor Ken Dahlgren spends his time on the streets with addicts, which describes most homeless people. He said if money solved this problem then Oregon would have solved it long ago. Instead, “The fact is, over the last seven years since the Joint Office of Homeless Services was established, our crisis has gone through the roof. So, as more money is poured into solving this problem, the problem continues to grow, which means money isn’t the solution.”

I’m happy to see @kevinvdahlgren voice being amplified both locally and nationally. He’s one of the very few homeless advocates who hasn’t been bought out by the Homeless Advocate Cartel.https://t.co/kRRajioe9V

— PDX Real (@PDXReal1) April 16, 2023

Dollars are still going to pay all the NGOs created to hoover up all the government grants to “solve” the homeless problem with more money.

Related: Another Premier Business Bails Out of Violent and ‘Hostile’ San Francisco

PDX Real social media site’s Jeff Altonen told CBN News (see video) that what’s happening looks oddly planned. “It’s like it’s in some sort of controlled demolition, really. And when I say that, it’s because a lot of this stuff comes from policy.” His PDX Real partner Angela Todd agrees, saying “Portland is a social experiment. A progressive experiment that has gone colossally bad.”

In simpler times, if you bought something, you paid for it. Rich or poor, tall or short, black or white, female or male, wise or foolish, everyone paid the same amount for a product. But in our more enlightened era, we know how unjust that really is. It deprives the poor of access to vital goods and services, and that injustice must be redressed.

That’s what Communism is all about, at least in theory: leveling out economic differences between people by confiscating earnings from the rich and awarding them to those who have less. This is the fundamental reason why Marxism, despite its extraordinarily bloody historical record, still appeals to so many people, rich, poor, and in between: it appears to redress the injustices in life and provide everyone with a decent living.

The problem with it arises from the fact that capitalism is inescapable. It is an iron law. It is not actually an economic system that can be discarded and replaced with a better one. It is simply the way human interactions work. If the California utility companies are going to make people who have more money pay more for the same goods and services they could get for less money if they had less, there will be several results: wealthier people will seek to hide their wealth through various means, so as to pay the lower rate. Some enterprising entrepreneurs will make a good living by helping them do this. So from the Marxism of the utility companies will come more capitalism.

Also, people will see that there is no point in working harder to try to earn more money, as the state will just confiscate it in various ways. Consequently, people will work less, and less hard. The standard of living will decline, because productivity will have declined. This is why Communist countries have always been economic failures: they block the capitalist incentive that people have to work hard, and thus destroy the only path to prosperity.

That is the disastrous path that Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric, and San Diego Gas & Electric are now planning to follow. ABC 7 in Los Angeles reported Friday that the three utility giants “filed a joint proposal this week for a flat-rate charge based on income.” Not a flat-rate charge, period, but one based on how much money you make. “The plan would break monthly bills in two parts: The fixed-income rate, plus a reduced usage charge based on consumption. Under the proposal, it would cost as little as $15 a month for low-income households and up to $85 more per month for households making more than $180,000 a year.”

What the utility companies don’t realize, because Marxists never realize, is that they will thereby be incentivizing being a low-income household and penalizing those making more than $180,000 a year. They will thus get more low-income households and fewer that make more than $180,000 a year. The old Marxist adage, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” rewards having a need, but not having an ability: those who produce are essentially made the slaves of those who do not. Since no one loves being a slave, this means that there will progressively be fewer people who have ability and ever more who have need. That’s the real “progress” to which Leftist “progressives” are leading us today.

All this is in the works in California because this is the way Gavin Newsom’s state government wants it: “The income-based bill proposal is part of the companies’ compliance with legislation passed by the California state government last year requiring these types of plans for utilities. The California Public Utilities Commission would have to approve the proposal and make a final decision by mid-2024. The fixed rate could start showing up on bills as soon as 2025.” After that, watch for the wall to be built around California to keep those who are productive from escaping becoming slaves to “equity,” unless the whole country has embraced Marxism by then. (read more)

Since 1992 and the Earth Summit in Rio, the West has been living under the spell of a "climate emergency" that is repeatedly renewed but never happened. Since then, the West – and only the West -- has set itself the main goal of reducing CO₂ emissions (and other greenhouse gases, implied in the rest of this article).

It is now 2023, time for a review:

1. CO₂ emissions have not stopped growing and will continue to grow.

Since 1992, global CO₂ emissions have continued to rise. With China opening an average of two new coal-fired power plants a week and India apparently more determined than ever to continue its development curve, as is the entire non-Western world, global CO₂ emissions will continue to rise for the foreseeable future. There is not yet any available, inexpensive alternative to fossil fuels.

This increase in global CO₂ emissions would be inevitable even if the West persists in its efforts to reduce emissions: Western reductions are -- and will continue to be -- more than offset by the increase in emissions in the rest of the world.

2. Will the warming target of the Paris Agreement -- "to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels" -- be met?

Achieving the Paris Agreement target requires drastic reductions in CO₂ emissions. This has not happened. We are not on track. This global reduction will not happen. Therefore, the Paris Agreement target will not be achieved. This is now a certainty or, in the words of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a projection with a very high degree of reliability.

3. Will the EU's target of "decarbonisation by 2050" be met?

Even more extreme than the Paris Agreement is the EU's goal of decarbonisation. As stated earlier, even if the EU ceased to exist, global CO₂ emissions would continue to rise. From this perspective, reducing European emissions only makes sense if it is part of an effective global framework, not a national or regional one. "Setting an example" to regimes and countries around the world that often hate the West simply enables those countries to grow stronger, while the countries setting the example weaken themselves by committing themselves to severe economic disadvantage -- while having virtually no net effect on the climate. Do we really believe that China, Russia and India will let the West dictate their economic conditions and CO₂ emissions? Meanwhile, as they grow, they would doubtless be extremely happy to see the West hobbling itself.

Frans Timmermans, First Vice-President of the European Commission, probably the most zealous extremist to come to power in Europe since 1945 -- whose chief of cabinet is the former leader of Greenpeace's anti-nuclear campaign -- multiplies measures, initiatives and declarations aimed at drastically reducing European CO₂ emissions -- even at the cost of Europe's economic devastation, at the cost of freedom, and at the cost of causing a cruel increase in Europe's dependence on China's rare earth minerals.

The climate knows neither Europe nor Asia. Nothing that Europe and the West accomplish in this field has the slightest meaning if reduction of emissions is not global.

4. Would the economic consequences of even the most pessimistic IPCC global warming scenario matter?

Let us now look at the issue of the economic impact of CO₂ emissions.

The climate expert and physicist Steven Koonin, former Under Secretary for Science during the Obama Administration, notes in his latest book, Unsettled that even if the IPCC's most pessimistic warming scenario were to come true, the global economic impact would be negligible (Unsettled: Dallas, BenBella Books, 2021, chapter 9, 'Apocalypses that ain't', page 179s.)

In its fifth and latest (full) report, the IPCC estimates that a 3° warming -- twice the Paris Agreement target -- would reduce global economic growth by 3%. Three per cent a year? No, 3% by the year 2100. This amount represents a reduction in global economic growth of 0.04% a year, a number that is barely measurable statistically. That is in the IPCC's pessimistic scenario. In the more optimistic scenarios, the economic impact of warming will be virtually non-existent. The IPCC, AR5, Working Group II, chapter 10 states:

"For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers.... Changes in population, age, income, technology, relative prices... and many other aspects of socioeconomic development will have an impact on the supply and demand of economic goods and services that is large relative to the impact of climate change."

In other words, according to the data of the IPCC itself, the economic growth and well-being in Europe and the United States are more threatened by extremist and delusional environmental policies than by global warming. As Jean-Pierre Schaeken Willemaers of the Thomas More Institute, president of the Energy, Climate and Environment Cluster, noted on February 22:

"The EU and its Member States have focused on climate policy, mobilizing enormous financial and human resources, thereby reducing the resources necessary for the development of its industry and weakening the security of energy supply."

The lesson of all this is simple: Future generations will judge us harshly for allowing extremist environmental activism to enfeeble us in the West, while a hostile East – China, Russia, North Korea and Iran -- continue to advance their industrial and military capabilities. Instead of trying to fight [benign & beneficial to agriculture] CO₂ emissions, we would do better to invest in researching ways to make reliable supplies of energy both cleaner and less expensive so that everyone -- by choice -- will rush to use them.

In the new Amerika, if you are white, you are automatically a racist and white supremacist. In the new Amerika, if you are straight, then you automatically are a gay-basher and a bigot. In the new Amerika, if you own guns and voted for Trump, you are a domestic terrorist. In the new Amerika, if you drive a gas-fueled automobile, you are a thoughtless, selfish, narcissist who is causing the world to burst into flames in the next 10 years. In the new Amerika, if you don’t wear a Covid mask 24/7/365, you are a leper who spreads disease on purpose and doesn’t respect authority (Fauci law).

Then there’s Big Pharma. Yes, pharma has always been evil, since it’s inception before WWII, but now, with the Covid clot shots, it’s resist or be killed. Cancer cases have exploded due to spike protein syndrome, and turbo cancer is in full effect, causing tumors to grow exponentially and faster than ever before. The regime likes this. It’s part of the depopulation plan in the New Amerika.

Are you familiar with the new Amerika democrat-run 8-phase communist manifesto?

1. They want everyone to be perverted (and Godless) so they can’t think about what really matters in life at all.
2. They want to eliminate the middle class so everyone is poor and desperate for Big Government handouts.
3. They want everyone injected with clot shot spike proteins so we’re all dying a quickened, expensive death.
4. They want to replace all Americans with illegal immigrants who will vote for free stuff in a new socialist (communist) Amerika.
5. They want everyone to become druggies so they can overdose us all with fentanyl and tranq.
6. They want everyone eating worms, crickets, zombie eggs and test-tube-Franken-meat so they can laugh in their palaces while they eat steaks and caviar.
7. They want everyone to buy energy-wasting electric cars that cost 3 times as much as gasoline fueled automobiles, and that use batteries that cost $20,000 to replace every few years.
8. They want every citizen to support endless wars where the politicians embezzle trillions (a.k.a. fiscal insanity) while dealing weapons to terrorists.

Why is there sudden talk of discarding the dollar as the global currency?

Why are Japan and India saying they cannot follow the United States' lead in boycotting Russian oil?

Why is the president of Brazil traveling to China to pursue what he calls a "beautiful relationship"?

Why is Israel suddenly facing attacks from its enemies in all directions?

What happened to Turkey? Why is it threatening fellow NATO member Greece? Is it still a NATO ally, neutral, or a de facto enemy?

Why are there suddenly ongoing Chinese threats toward Taiwan?

Why did Saudi Arabia conclude a new pact with Iran, its former archenemy?

Why was Egypt secretly planning to send rockets to Russia for use in Ukraine, according to leaked Pentagon papers?

Since when did the Russians talk nonstop about the potential use of a tactical nuclear weapon?

Why is Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador bragging that millions of Mexicans have entered the United States illegally? And why is he interfering in U.S. elections by urging his expatriates to vote for Democrats?

Why and how, in just two years, have confused and often incoherent President Joe Biden and his team created such global chaos?

Let us answer by listing ten ways by which America lost all deterrence:

1) Biden abruptly pulled all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. He left behind to the Taliban hundreds of Americans and thousands of pro-American Afghans. Biden abandoned billions of dollars in U.S. equipment, the most extensive air base in central Asia - recently retrofitted for $300 million - and a $1 billion embassy. Our government called such a debacle a success. The world disagreed and saw only humiliation.

2) The Biden administration allowed a Chinese high-altitude spy balloon to traverse the continental United States, spying on key American military installations. The Chinese were defiant when caught and offered no apologies. In response, the Pentagon and the administration simply lied about how China had surveilled top-secret sites.

3) In March 2021, at an Anchorage, Alaska mini-summit, Chinese diplomats unleashed a relentless barrage at their stunned and mostly silent American counterparts. They lectured the timid Biden administration diplomats about American toxicity and hypocrisy. And they have defiantly refused to explain why and how their virology lab birthed the COVID-19 virus that has killed tens of millions worldwide.

4) In June 2021, in response to Russian cyber-attacks against the United States, Biden meekly asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to at least make off-limits specific critical American infrastructure.

5) When asked what he would do if Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden replied that the reaction would depend on whether the Russians conducted a "minor incursion."

6) Between 2021 and 2022, Biden serially insulted and bragged that he would not meet Muhammad bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, and one of our oldest and most valuable allies in the Middle East.

7) For much of 2021, the Biden administration announced that it was eager and ready to offer concessions to re-enter the dangerous Iran nuclear deal - when Iran has joined China and Russia in a new geostrategic partnership.

8) Almost immediately upon inauguration, the administration moved the United States away from Israel, restored financial aid to radical Palestinians, and publicly and privately alienated the current Netanyahu government.

9) In serial fashion, Biden stopped all construction on the border wall and opened the border. During the 2019 Democratic presidential primary, Biden made it known that illegal aliens were welcome to enter the United States - some 6-7 million did. He reinstated "catch and release." And he did nothing about the Mexican cartel importation of fentanyl that has recently killed over 100,000 Americans per year.

10) In the last two years, the Pentagon has embarked on a woke agenda. The army is short by 15,000 in its annual recruitment quota. The defense budget has not kept up with inflation. One of the most significant intelligence leaks in U.S. history just occurred from the Pentagon.

The Pentagon refused to admit culpability and misled the country about Afghanistan and the Chinese spy balloon flight. The current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called his Chinese communist counterpart and head of the People's Liberation Army to advise him that the U.S. military would warn the Chinese if it determined an order from its commander-in-chief, former President Donald Trump, was inappropriate.

This list of these self-inflicted disasters could be easily expanded.

But the examples explain well enough why our emboldened enemies do not fear us, our triangulating allies judge us unreliable, and calculating neutrals assume America is in descent and too dangerous to join.

Yet without America, the result is a new Chinese order in which, to quote the historian Thucydides, "The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must." (read more)

     Larry also reminds us that, conveniently, an Obama-era whistleblower named Mike McCormick, who accompanied Veep Joe Biden’s delegation to Ukraine in 2014, has stepped forward to detail Biden family grifting operations there, assisted by then-aide (now National Security Advisor) Jake Sullivan. It’s like somebody is laying out a case for impeachment — or resignation. One really off-the-wall theory floating “out there” has Veep Kamala Harris being induced to take Dianne Feinstein’s senate seat (DF, 89, is very ill), and “Joe Biden” then appointing Barack Obama to be Veep — with BHO stepping back into the White House when “JB” exits (or gets exited). Note, the XXII Amendment only prohibits a person from being “elected” president more than twice. No mention of appointment. Now there’s a real Catch-22!

     The blogger who styles himself as “Sundance” at the excellent Conservative Tree House website has another theory. He writes, The Leak Was the Op, saying its purpose was to help get the Restrict Act passed. This loathsome legislation, pimped by Senate Intel Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA), would essentially allow the government to censor everything and anything on the Internet, including blogs and comments on blogs and all websites generally — that is, the entire Alt Media. Senator Warner, you might recall (if you followed the immensely tangled story), was one of the prime movers behind the RussiaGate hoax. What a daisy he is!

      Where is all this going? I will try to tell you. Since disorder is the order of the day, be aware that things will be going non-linear and chaotic. A lot of events are converging and colliding in the weeks ahead. Whatever the Mike McCormick whistleblower matter means, it’s only an additional layer to the rotten onion of Biden family corruption, the millions of dollars flowing into their bank accounts from all over the planet. This treasonous business has been right in America’s face for three years. The Hunter Biden laptop alone is crammed with hard evidence of felonies that the federal justice system has willfully managed to ignore. Rep. James Comer’s House Oversight Committee sits on a raft of Biden family bank records detailing hundreds of flagged suspicious transactions. When are they going to act on it and call witnesses?

     Impeachment hearings can commence at any time. It would only require a 51-percent majority in the House to pass any particular article of impeachment, equivalent to an indictable charge. The hearings alone may be damaging enough to force “Joe Biden’s” resignation. If any articles or charges pass, the matter moves to a trial in the Senate. We have already seen how that spectacle works in the trials of Mr. Trump. Given the Democrats’ Senate majority, it might be difficult to get a two-thirds vote for conviction on anything. But the damage is already done.

      In the meantime, though, we’re likely to see the collapse of the Ukraine war effort. The recriminations from that farrago should be huge, with calls for General Milley and SecDef Austin to step down just for starters and turmoil through the Pentagon command. Imagine also the confused rage of American voters who watched over $100-billion squandered on this stupid misadventure, including the estimated $300-million that Mr. Zelensky stuffed in his pockets.

     Also, in the meantime, watch the rapidly accelerating move away from the dollar in global trade settlements as many other nations lose confidence in the floundering USA. That flight away from dollars, of course, will affect the value of the dollar. The Federal Reserve will be helpless to manage the consequences of that, and the problem will be hugely aggravated if other nations start dumping the US Treasury bonds and bills they hold. In short, at the same time the Ukraine is lost and the “Joe Biden” regime falls apart, we get a king-hell financial crisis combined with a cratering on the-ground economy. Things stop moving, including food.

    Triple-also, in the meantime, the spooky question of Covid vaccine deaths rises to the previously resistant public’s attention, and the people realize that they have been poisoned by their own government, now in ominous convulsion. All of this will make starkly clear that America suffers a dangerous leadership vacuum. This is not civil war. This is something else. But what?

On Friday, photos appeared of a document allegedly containing details on a planned imminent Ukrainian offensive on territories controlled by Russia. The ‘leak’ coincided with suggestions that the NATO Defender 2023 exercises – planned for the end of this month – could be a cover for an operation to supply and support Ukrainian units. However, upon closer examination, doubts arise concerning the document’s authenticity.

When did it appear?

The supposed secret plans to support an offensive by Kiev's forces hit the internet the day before Anthony Blinken made a statement on the subject. The US Secretary of State said the operation will begin “within a few weeks.” 

What information does it contain?

There hasn't been a leak of this nature since Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine began, over 13 months ago. It is noteworthy that the published plans contain not only a schedule for supplying Ukrainian units with NATO weapons and ammunition, but also information about the structure of the brigades and battalions allegedly preparing for the offensive.

The document, dated March 1, says Kiev's brigades need 253 tanks, more than 380 infantry fighting vehicles and APCs, 480 vehicles, 147 artillery pieces, and 571 HMMWV armored vehicles to carry out the offensive.

Which information is most suspect?  

The probable locations of Russian units, indicated on the combat map in red, appear to have been collected from open sources. Several pro-Kiev resources that track military operations contain almost identical information.

Also, the ratios of killed and wounded for the Ukrainian and Russian Armed Forces which initially appeared in these ‘secret plans’ have since been changed. When first posted, the losses for the Ukrainian side were underestimated at about 16,500 –17,000 people. Then (probably to be more realistic), they increased almost fivefold, up to 65,000 – 75,000. At the same time, the numbers given for Russia's purported losses of vehicles and equipment coincide with data published by Kiev's Ministry of Defense.

What else is wrong with the published AFU offensive plans?

The blatant falsification of data on the readiness of Ukrainian military formations catches the eye. The document states that, of the nine supposedly to be trained up to US and NATO standards by March 31 and April 30, five of Kiev's brigades have had zero training: these are the 82nd Airborne, the 32nd, 117th, and 118th Territorial Defense, as well as the 21st separate mechanized.

Even if only two or three companies in these brigades were trained, and self-preparation wasn't completed, their level of training couldn’t be zero. At the same time, the highest percentage of readiness was recorded only in the 47th mechanized(40%) and the 46th airborne assault (60%).

What’s the upshot?

The plan also gives perplexing figures for military equipment.

For example, out of 109 M2 Bradley BMPs sent to armed forces, for some reason only 99 are to participate in the offensive. Moreover, the vehicles are not distributed among the brigades and only assigned to one formation – Kiev's 47th mechanized brigade, which doesn't have heavy tanks.

Rather than Soviet T-72s or T-64BVs, this grouping has only Slovak T-55Ss with 105mm guns, which are difficult to use in a large-scale offensive.

The small, but important, errors and inaccuracies in the calculations of equipment, the adjusted accounting of losses, as well as the presence of units with ‘zero’ readiness, indicate that this document, which was issued as a ‘secret plan,’ was probably prepared and distributed not by the military but by a group of civilians, probably pro-Kiev analysts.

The purpose of this planted misinformation may be to under-report the actual number of combat-ready Ukrainian units to be deployed for the offensive or to distract attention from other events related to the real operation.

This article was first published by ‘Military Chronicle’ Telegram channel

The CIA Operations Center Intelligence Update is a document produced by analysts in the Operations Center to be delivered to the regular CIA analysts. When I worked in the Ops Center I was responsible for monitoring traffic from Latin American posts and flagging items that the analysts in the Latin American Division need to know. I would write up summary paragraphs just like the ones in the documents leaked on line. This was an internal CIA document. It was not broadcast to the other intelligence agencies. In my 23 years working with U.S. military commands around the world, I never saw a copy of this type of report circulating among those with the highest clearances. Never. How did a 21 year old kid get his hands on at least two of these?

The classified documents now in the public domain are focused primarily on Russia and Ukraine. The CIA Ops Center docs now floating around the internet are only partial copies. For example, there are three pages, all classified Top Secret, from an eight page document. If you’re a goofy 21 year old gamer simply intent on impressing your young proteges, why not take all eight pages. My guess is that the other five pages contained no intelligence information on Ukraine or Russia.

The kid reportedly was a cyber analyst assigned to the 102 Intelligence Wing, which reports to the U.S. 16 Air Force:

The 102nd ISS provides intelligence systems maintenance, integration, and operations for the AN/GSQ-272 SENTINEL weapon system, as part of the Air Force Distributed Common Ground System (AF-DCGS) Enterprise, enabling near real-time Collection, Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination (CPED) of

The Sixteenth Air Force (Air Forces Cyber), headquartered at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas, focuses on information warfare in the modern age.  Information Warfare requires integrating: Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance; Cyber Warfare; Electromagnetic Warfare; Weather; Public Affairs; and Information Operations capabilities. 16th Air Force ensures that our Air Force and Nation are fast, resilient, and fully integrated in competition, crisis, and conflict by incorporating Information Warfare at operational and tactical levels, capitalizing on the value of information by leading the charge for uniquely-21st century challenges in the highly dynamic, seamless, and global information domain..

I do not believe it is a coincidence that he served in an information warfare unit. Remember, he was a low ranked enlisted guy. He had a chain of command. He did not show up to work and decide what duties he had to perform while on the job. He reported to and worked at the direction of Non-Commissioned Officers and Commissioned Officers. He did not just waltz into a SCIF and print documents at his leisure. A guy at his level would attract attention if he was printing off a document like the CIA Ops Center report.

I believe that the alleged leaker did have access to Top Secret intelligence by virtue of his job. I don’t know if there was a polygraph requirement for him and his cohorts. Regardless, all of the intelligence that has been leaked was on a Top Secret computer net and could only be accessed inside a SCIF.

Let me explain why I think the story currently being sold to the public about this young man is too good to be true and, in my view, is a smoke screen.

The first problem is BELLINGCAT. Bellingcat is an Open Source Intelligence outfit that has been funded by U.S. and British intelligence. BELLINGCAT is “credited” with sleuthing out the identity of the site where the classified documents were posted and the name of the leaker.

Pictures of the classified documents first appeared outside of Thug Shaker Central in early March, investigative group Bellingcat reported.

A batch of 10 documents surfaced on a Discord server called “Minecraft Earth Map” after a user posted them.

Bellingcat traced an earlier leak to a Discord server called “WowMao,” which appears to have been sourced from the Thug Shaker Central channel.

An amazing coincidence, right?

So how did the Washington Post get on the story? If the reporters were not tipped off by Bellingcat then it had to be someone in the U.S. intelligence or military hierarchy.

The Washington Post report is written perfectly for credulous readers. It touches all the hot buttons — e.g., racist, religious extremist, anti-Semite, loves guns, hates the U.S. Government. The only thing lacking is that the fellow, Jack Texeira, was not wearing a MAGA cap.

To reiterate an earlier point, the leaked material is not random intelligence material. It is designed to tell several stories. The most prominent is the deterioration of Ukrainian capabilities and the major obstacles confronting the United States and the rest of NATO in supplying badly needed air defense, artillery shells, artillery pieces and tanks. In other words, Ukraine is going to crash and burn.

The information about Israel, South Korea and the UN Secretary General also is enormously damaging to U.S. foreign policy equities. This is a real black eye.

Let me suggest one possibility for this leak — create a predicate for forcing Joe Biden from office. The revelations in the classified documents are not fabrications designed to deceive the Russians. Nor are they the kind of material to rally more U.S. support for pouring more resources into the black hole of Ukraine. These leaks feed the meme that the Biden team is incompetent and endangering American interests overseas.

Just consider what has transpired since these documents were first posted in the “private” gamers chat. Putin and Xi Jinping consequential historic summit in March marked the destruction of the Nixon policy that had guided U.S./China relations for fifty one years. In the aftermath of the summit, China facilitated a rapprochement between longtime adversaries, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Those two countries now have formal diplomatic relations and are working together to end the U.S. backed war in Yemen. The U.S. support for the Yemen conflict was an important element in the United States’ effort to contain and weaken Iran.

In addition, China has stepped up its efforts to encourage important countries to bid adios to the dollar and use the yuan instead for international commerce. The Saudis and Brazil have signed on.

China, along with Russia, are also playing a critical role in cutting the legs out from under the U.S. effort to remove Syria’s President Bashir Assad. It was President Obama who persuaded the Gulf Arabs, Saudi Arabia in particular, to help fund and incite the Arab Spring. Part of that effort was the Arab League decision to kick Syria out. That is now being reversed and Syria, once a pariah thanks to U.S. and U.K. pressure, is now being welcomed back into the Arab League. For the United States, the war in Syria was another pillar in its policy to weaken Iran. That pillar is headed for the dustbin of history.

Russia also is playing a key role in brokering a rapprochement between Turkey and Syria. Turkey played a critical role arming Islamic insurgent, with weapons supplied by the United States courtesy of stockpiles in Libya, in the early days of the civil war in Syria. If you don’t think this is pissing off the CIA, then you don’t know the CIA.

There was another leak today that is quite damaging to Joe Biden.

Obama-era staffer

Former Obama stenographer Mike McCormick blows whistle on Biden kickback scheme: He is ‘a criminal’. McCormick claims then-Vice President Biden used American taxpayer money to enrich his family and says Jake Sullivan a ‘conspirator.’ I am unable to post the video so you will have to click on the following link.

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6324957711112

Just another coincidence? I do not think so. Besides painting Biden as a foreign policy failure who is endangering American interests, this twist in the story reinforces the meme of Biden corruption.

With respect to the alleged leaker, Jack Texeira, I will be interested to see if he gets the William Calley treatment (i.e., only Calley was punished for the My Lai Massacre while his chain of command got off scot free) or if his immediate chain of command are called to account.

Sundance at the Conservative Tree House offers another plausible explanation for the leaks. Also worth considering.

The Sundance scenario and mine are not mutually exclusive. Both may be true. I wouldn’t discount the desire of the Deep State to kill two birds with one stone.

Near the beginning, Colonel Macgregor states as follows:

As you point out there are two crimes. The first one is the one that you're referring to, the release of the documents for which there is no excuse. Stiff penalties under the law. If this is the individual who did it he'll end up going to prison for some period of time.

The second crime of course involves that committed by our government and its senior leadership against the American people and for that matter you could argue against most of the people that are in the countries that belong to NATO because this is exposed to lying on a scale that we haven't seen really since the Pentagon papers. In fact you could make an argument in some ways this is worse.

I highly recommend watching this interview with Judge Napolitano.

VIDEO

When I read the article below published by Anti-War.com and saw that the ever useful British intelligence asset that is Bellingcat was involved in an alleged joint investigation with the CIA Mockingbird New York Times, it confirmed for me my initial gut instinct.

That the New York Times is said to have named the suspect before his arrest is also highly suspicious.

Twenty-One-Year-Old Air National Guardsman Arrested as Suspected Leaker

The New York Times named the suspect before he was arrested by the FBI

by Dave DeCamp Posted on April 13, 2023

On Thursday, the FBI arrested a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard as the suspected leaker of the classified documents from the Pentagon and other US government agencies that have surfaced online.

Jack Teixeira was first named before the arrest as the potential leaker by The New York Times. The paper conducted an investigation with the website Bellingcat, which is funded by the EU and often praised by US intelligence officials, to identify the leaker.

According to the Times report, the paper discussed Teixeira with US government officials and asked for a comment from the FBI before the agency made his name public.

“Today, the Justice Department arrested Jack Douglas Teixeira in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention, and transmission of classified national defense information. Teixeira is an employee of the United States Air Force National Guard,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said after the arrest.

Teixeira is a member of the intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, but it’s not clear how the young airman would have access to so many top-secret documents. According to the Times, he was promoted to airman first class last July, the third enlisted rank.

He worked for the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s 102nd Intelligence Wing, which is located at a base in Cape Cod. His job title was a Cyber Transport Systems Journeymen, which entails repairing communications equipment.

Teixeira is accused of posting the documents on a server on Discord, a messaging platform mainly used by gamers. The chat where he was sending the documents was private and had about 25 members, a group of young men and teenage boys.

One member of the Discord server was said to start releasing the documents in other chat rooms in March, and the documents were eventually discovered by the Times. According to The Washington Post, there were 300 photos of documents that Teixeira allegedly posted.

A 17-year-old who was a member of the Discord server and spoke to the Times described the person who allegedly leaked the documents as “antiwar” and a “Christian” who just “wanted to inform some of his friends about what’s going on.”

---

In the following interview with Larry Johnson in which he provides more details about the psyop, he states in part:

This is a coordinated media strategy. This is a disinformation campaign. The documents are real. I'm not saying that the documents are fabrications they are not but this cover story that's been manufactured to explain how these documents came to be produced – it just falls apart.

VIDEO

What an absolute charade. It will be interesting to see how this clown show with incredibly serious real-live repercussions plays out.

The SSCI is the organizational institution that supports the Fourth Branch of Government, the intelligence branch.  The SSCI previously created a bipartisan Restrict Act, to deal with dangerous information on the internet.

According to SSCI Chairman Mark Warner, ‘The Restrict Act’ will give more power and authorities to the Executive Branch to deal with internet danger.  Now the SSCI sees the classified intel leaks as evidence for the importance of the Restrict Act.

Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit, surprise-surprise!  Funny how that happens.

(Via NBC) – The Biden administration is looking at expanding how it monitors social media sites and chatrooms after U.S. intelligence agencies failed to spot classified Pentagon documents circulating online for weeks, according to a senior administration official and a congressional official briefed on the matter. 

The possible change in the intelligence-gathering process is just one potential shift as officials scramble to determine not only how the documents leaked but also how to prevent another damaging incident.

[…] The president and other officials were dismayed when they learned the documents had been online for at least a month.  “Nobody is happy about this,” said the senior administration official. 

The administration is now looking at expanding the universe of online sites that intelligence agencies and law enforcement authorities track, the official said.

[…]  If the administration tries to check online chatrooms more closely, it will have to navigate legal safeguards designed to protect Americans’ privacy and freedom of expression, former intelligence officials said.

Watching a public chatroom is fair game, but law enforcement agencies don’t have the legal authority to monitor a private online chatroom without probable cause, the former officials said.

“We do not have nor do we want a system where the United States government monitors private internet chats,” said Glenn Gerstell, former general counsel of the National Security Agency from 2015 to 2020. 

[…] Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., said the leak raised yet more questions about how the government manages its secrets, only months after revelations that successive administrations appeared to have mishandled classified documents.  […] “I think it’s time that Congress plays a role here in setting some parameters,” Warner said.  (read more)

Just a few “parameters“…

Swear.

Promise.

Uh huh….

The Restrict Act, also known as Senate Bill 686 [SB686 HERE], also known as the bipartisan bill to empower the executive branch to shut down TikTok.  Also known as the ‘online Patriot Act’.

Leaks for me, not for thee

On a flight, reading about the FBI’s arrest of Jack Texiera, already dubbed the “Pentagon Leaker.” A quick review reveals multiple media portraits already out depicting him as a dangerous incel who shared his wares on Discord, a social media app where “racist memes” and “offensive jokes” flourish. Writes the New York Times:

Dark humor about race or ideology can eventually shape the beliefs of impressionable young people, and innocuous memes can be co-opted into symbols of hatred, researchers say.

Well, clearly we can’t have dark humor or innocuous memes! Gitmo cages for all!

The Washington Post went with “charismatic gun enthusiast”:

The New York Times summarized key points in the secret defense documents, which among other things suggested “Ukrainian forces are in more dire straits than their government has acknowledged publicly.” Reading what’s out there, it’s not easy to parse what’s a legitimate intelligence concern in reaction to these leaks and what’s mere embarrassment at having been caught lying, to the public, to would-be U.S. allies the documents show we’ve been spying on, etc.

You’ll read a lot in the coming days about the dangers of apps like Discord, or of online gaming groups, which counterintelligence officials told the Washington Post today are a “magnet for spies.” The Leaker tale will also surely be framed as reason to pass the RESTRICT Act, the wet dream of creepazoid Virginia Senator Mark Warner, which would give government wide latitude to crack down on “communication technology” creating “undue or unacceptable risk” to national security.

The intelligence community has itself been massively interfering in domestic news using illegal leaks for years. Remember the “Why Did Obama Dawdle on Russia’s Hacking?” story by David Ignatius of the Washington Post in January of 2017, outing would-be Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn as having been captured in intercepts speaking with a Russian ambassador? That was just the first in a string of leak- or intercept-based news stories that dominated news cycles in the Trump years, involving everything from conclusions of the FISA court to supposedly secret meetings in the Seychelles.

When civilians or whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange (in jail for an incredible four years now), Reality Winner and now the “Discord Leaker” bring leaked information to the public, the immediate threat is Espionage Act charges and decades of jail time. When a CIA head or a top FBI official does it, it’s just news. In fact, officials talk openly about using “strategic leaks” as a P.R. staple. In a world where media currency is becoming the ultimate power, these people want a monopoly. It’s infuriating.

Watch how this thing will be spun. It’s going to get ugly fast. (read more)

Executives at companies like Nike, Anheuser-Busch and Kate Spade, whose brand endorsements have turned controversial trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney into today’s woke “It girl,” aren’t just virtue signaling.

They’re handing out lucrative deals to what were once considered fringe celebrities because they have to — or risk failing an all-important social credit score that could make or break their businesses.

At stake is their Corporate Equality Index — or CEI — score, which is overseen by the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ+ political lobbying group in the world.

HRC, which has received millions from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation among others, issues report cards for America’s biggest corporations via the CEI: awarding or subtracting points for how well companies adhere to what HRC calls its “rating criteria.”

Businesses that attain the maximum 100 total points earn the coveted title “Best Place To Work For LGBTQ Equality.” Fifteen of the top 20 Fortune-ranked companies received 100% ratings last year, according to HRC data.

More than 840 US companies racked up high CEI scores, according to the latest report.

The HRC, which was formed in 1980 and started the CEI in 2002, is led by Kelley Robinson who was named as president in 2022 and worked as a political organizer for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

The HRC lists five major rating criteria, each with its own lengthy subsets, for companies to gain — or lose — CEI points.

The main categories are: “Workforce Protections,” “Inclusive Benefits,” “Supporting an Inclusive Culture,” “Corporate Social Responsibility and Responsible Citizenship.”

A company can lose CEI points if it doesn’t fulfill HRC’s demand for “integration of intersectionality in professional development, skills-based or other training” or if it doesn’t use a “supplier diversity program with demonstrated effort to include certified LGBTQ+ suppliers.”

James Lindsay, a political podcaster who runs a site called New Discourses, told The Post that the Human Rights campaign administers the CEI ranking “like an extortion racket, like the Mafia.

It doesn’t just sit back passively either. HRC sends representatives to corporations every year telling them what kind of stuff they have to make visible at the company. They give them a list of demands and if they don’t follow through there’s a threat that you won’t keep your CEI score.”

The CEI is a lesser-known part of the burgeoning ESG (Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance) “ethical investing” movement increasingly pushed by the country’s top three investment firms. ESG funds invest in companies that oppose fossil fuels, push for unionization, and stress racial and gender equity over merit in hiring and board selection.

As a result, some American CEOs are more concerned about pleasing BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street Bank — who are among the top shareholders of most American publicly-traded corporations (including Nike, Anheuser-Busch and Kate Spade) — than they are about irritating conservatives, numerous sources told The Post.

This week, Mulvaney’s new ad campaigns with Bud Light and Nike ruffled the feathers of critics from country star Travis Tritt and Kid Rock — who tweeted a video of himself shooting cases of Bud Light — to female Olympians and even Caitlyn Jenner, who said of Nike: “It is a shame to see such an iconic American company go so woke! … This is an outrage.”

Mulvaney, 26, who transitioned from male [attire] to female [attire] in the beginning of March 2021, has reportedly earned more than a million dollars from endorsements including fashion and beauty brands that also include Ulta Beauty, Haus Labs and CeraVe, as well as Crest and InstaCart.

He’s also gained 10 million followers on TikTok. 

But neither Kid Rock nor even Mulvaney are who America’s top execs are trying to impress, experts say.

“The big fund managers like BlackRock all embrace this ESG orthodoxy in how they apply pressure to top corporate management teams and boards and they determine, in many cases, executive compensation and bonuses and who gets re-elected or re-appointed to boards,” entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who is running for president as a Republican and authored “Woke Inc.: Inside America’s Social Justice Scam,” told The Post. “They can make it very difficult for you if you don’t abide by their agendas.”

In 2018, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who oversees assets worth $8.6 trillion and has been called the “face of ESG,” wrote a now-infamous letter to CEOs titled “A Sense of Purpose” that pushed a “new model of governance” in line with ESG values.

“Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose,” Fink wrote. “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.”

Fink also let it be known “that if a company doesn’t engage with the community and have a sense of purpose “it will ultimately lose the license to operate from key stakeholders.”

In December, Florida pulled $2 billion worth of state assets managed by BlackRock. “I think it’s undemocratic of major asset managers to use their power to influence societal outcomes,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said at the time.

Fink has denied that ESG is political, but key staff managing his ESG operations worked in the Obama administration and donate to Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

In his first veto, President Joe Biden last month rejected a GOP-backed bill that sought to block ESG investing — especially in pension funds where, critics say, American retirement funds will be sacrificed to a radical left-wing agenda.

Protesters in Paris targeted BlackRock’s office there this week due to the company’s role in managing and privatizing pensions, which are at the heart of the French government’s recent retirement-age reforms.

ESG and CEI proponents say that adhering to socially conscious values when investing and managing a company will make the world a better place. Not everyone agrees.

Derek Kreifels is the co-founder and CEO of State Financial Officers Foundation, one of several financial officers fighting ESG on a national level.

He calls ESG itself a “highly subjective political score infiltrating all walks of life, forcing progressive policies on everyday Americans [and] resulting in higher prices at the pump and at the store.”

The Corporate Equality Index is an ominous cog in ESG’s wheel, Kreifels told The Post.

“The problem with measures like CEI, and its big brother ESG, is that it introduces an incentive structure outside of the bounds of business, often in ways contradictory to fiduciary duty,” Kreifels said. “Whether Anheuser-Busch was trying to cash in on Dylan Mulvaney’s TikTok following or chasing higher CEI ratings for inclusivity, the backlash has been significant, and the stockholders to whom the company is obligated will feel the pinch.” (read more)