Intel Update · 2025-08-23
Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the Until Update for August 17th through the 23rd, 2025. Things are moving forward at quite a rapid pace, so we've got a lot to cover this week. And let's get right to it. The flavor this week has been immigration, both at home and overseas. Around the United States, there have been many developments in the field of legal and illegal immigration and the challenges that the United States is working through on that front. and our friends across the pond are also coming to grips with some of the issues that they face that are very similar to what we're working through here in the United States with regards to legal immigration. The issue of legal versus illegal immigration is a very hard topic to broach. A lot of people are very much in favor of legal immigration but are not in favor of illegal immigration. Some people support legal and illegal immigration and other people don't support legal or illegal immigration. So, it's a hard topic to broach. It's it's kind of a a very divisive issue obviously and the one thing that unites both sides of the argument unfortunately is narcotics and crime. So the United States is doing what they can to try to combat that sort of thing. And we'll dive more into this highly divisive issue in just a moment. Similar story in the United Kingdom. The UK is facing, I would say, more more of an advanced civilizational crisis with regards to population shift and population displacement. So, we'll have to get more into that in just a moment uh to kind of understand why some of these flagging operations are very very important in the United Kingdom. But suffice it to say, a lot of these immigration problems are coming to light. And the seriousness of immigration issues, as they are very very closely linked to counter narcotics operations, has been very sharply demonstrated this week. Once again, the classic line must be uttered. The past 48 hours has been host to significant naval activity. Over the past few days, the US Navy has deployed significant naval assets, all with the goal of taking up station off the coast of Venezuela to combat drug trafficking. Originally, the US Navy, the White House, and the Pentagon all announced this effort as being really just a task force of three destroyers, which is a fairly common thing. It's not really a new thing. The US Navy, and the US Coast Guard have been conducting patrols of the Caribbean Sea and, you know, down off the coast of Narco land for a long time. So, that's not really new. What is new is sending an ARG or an amphibious ready group. Whenever a few thousand Marines embark on a MW and head down south, well, we should probably pay attention to this quite a bit. Now, this deployment by the Euima ARG has been sort of up in the air. The Euima was originally scheduled to go to sixfleet AO, which is the Med and uh Europe, right? So, she was supposed to go on a regular deployment there, but now recent statements over the past couple of days have made it sound like she's going down south to Central or South America. So, this is exactly the kind of deception operation I would expect if we are trying to put boots on ground in Venezuela, for instance. Again, right now, that's speculation. There's been no talk of that whatsoever. But, you can't ignore a few thousand Marines on board a flattop going down to uh Central America. So, we've got enough resources down there to uh put up a pretty good fight if if a war were to kick off. It could just be intimidation. It could just be a standard routine deployment kind of thing. So, I don't want to raise any alarm bells unjustly. However, we've got to keep this in mind. Uh, she was supposed to go to Europe and now at the last minute, all we're changing deployments, right, to go down to South America. And if you're trying to keep the cartel guessing, right, then that's exactly what you would do. Also, what you would do is send a task force of three destroyers down there to, you know, allegedly in heavy air quotes combat uh ships at sea, right? conduct a visit board search and seaure or VBSS operations when really the Eegis ships are down there to provide missile defense. We saw the exact same thing happen in the Middle East. Remember a couple of months ago we saw that oh there just so happened to be one day like three or four aircraft carriers right within range of anything that might go wrong. So the same kind of flavor certainly appears to be undertaken right now in the Atlantic. What is going to happen? I don't know. It could just be a standard deployment or a show of force. The White House loves their shows of force, don't they? So, it could just be a posturing thing, but something to keep keep an eye on over the next few days. You'll probably see me writing quite a bit about this. And I'm going to be extra attentive to look for any signs of largecale conflict or some kind of action down there. So, as we can see from the overall strategic movement, things are getting pretty serious when it comes to counter cartel and counter narco operations and more importantly, how these are tied to immigration issues here in the United States. So here at home in the United States, we have had a lot of kinetic events occur this week, but the one that I wanted to mention is the announcement, the recent announcement by the White House that the National Guard is going to be deployed to 19 states now uh to assist with immigration issues, to assist with crime initiatives and so on. As of right now when I'm recording this, I don't have a whole lot of details on what's going on with this, but I do have the list of states which are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming. So again, 19 states where National Guard soldiers are going to be activated federally, I'm guessing, for anti-rime initiatives and to assist with immigration efforts. Once again, very few details. I'm very curious as to see what title orders these guys are going to be on because as we can see these are mostly conservative states. So I don't know if the governors are going to be the in the chain of command here or if this is a federal deployment. I'll know I'm sure by the time this brief comes out but this is just something to keep in mind. The total number of soldiers deployed is going to be around 1,700. So we're not talking a whole lot. But if we remember from the COVID era when a lot of National Guard uh deployments were occurring, what we saw is just a dozen soldiers here, a dozen soldiers there, maybe a hundred tops in this one city, and then suddenly they got a lot bigger. So, same thing with the whole deployment to DC post J6, right? That was a a a thing where they tried to hide the numbers a lot. I'm not saying the two these, you know, really sort of nefarious kind of historical things are linked to what's going on now, but it's something to keep an eye on because 1700 can become 17,000 really quickly and nobody would know because they're going off of the old numbers. So, I don't know. It's something to keep an eye on. It's interesting how we've gone from Washington DC still being a crimeridden hell hole just with a lot of uniformed guys walking around and now we've expanded to the entire United States, right? Things are so much up in the air these days, but for right now, at this snapshot in time, President Trump has stated that Chicago is next. They're going to deploy National Guard to Chicago. And after Chicago, they're going to go to New York. That's the story as of right now. And then now we've learned that it's actually 19 states, none of which include New York or Illinois. So, I don't know if we're going to add New York and Illinois to this list to become 21 states. I I don't know. Either way, we're just going to have to see how this works out, but rest assured, I am going to be watching this quite carefully. Things are changing by the day, and we're just going to have to take things as they come. And speaking of the whole uh immigration issue, I wanted to issue a brief update to the Chadari family uh smuggling operation, human trafficking, child slavery operation in Omaha, Nebraska. So, as of uh yesterday, a couple of local news media groups have discovered that two of the four hotels have been closed down, or at least they had, you know, law enforcement closed for investigation signs on the front doors of these hotels. Zero communication, of course, from the owners of the hotels because the owners of the hotels are in prison right now. But the hotels that were closed were the New Victorian and the American. Uh, however, the other two, they're owned by the same people and the same family. They seem like they're still open. It's hard to say. They may have been closed overnight. If the first two are closed, I would assume the second two are going to be closed as well. But one interesting detail that came out from the local um news media talking about this is of course the news media, local local news stations especially are going to come at this from a specific angle. And the angle that the news media was coming at this story from is the customer service impact to this. So really the local news was focusing not on the fact that children were being held as slaves at these hotels. They kind of ignore that part. But what they are focusing on is the inconvenience of people showing up to check into their hotel room or being evicted from their hotel rooms wi with zero notice. Right? So they're talking about a lot of that, which of course should not be surprising to anyone. But one detail that they kind of passively let on is that a lot of these hotels were used as long-term residences by people who could not get lodging any other way. This by itself is ordinarily not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of people are living in hotels nowadays simply because the situation is pretty dang desperate in some places around the country. So that's not a any kind of nefariousness on its own. What is nefarious is the fact that you've got a lot of long-term customers and a lot of long-term residents at a hotel where there is child slavery taking place. That is very suspicious because this could be a much larger slavery child trafficking network than we knew that it was, right? Surely people who lived there long term would know whether or not there's kids being employed at this place to clean rooms and stuff like that. So much more investigation is needed. So at least the feds are doing something in this case thankfully for once. But again, it's a day late and a dollar short, right? This is almost 3 weeks after the initial arrests, right? The fact that there were not closed signs on the hotel the very day the raids occurred is disturbing. But three weeks later, uh hopefully not that many more children were trafficked in that, you know, 2 or 3 week time frame. And hopefully the other two uh sites that we've identified and the whole world has identified will be shut down fairly soon as well. But no guarantees on any of that. So I guess we're just going to have to wait and see. monitor these kind of things because unfortunately nowadays the average citizen has to advocate and urge the feds to actually arrest someone when a crime is committed. So that's just kind of the way that it is and a lot of times there's not a whole lot the average citizen can do. So getting down to the actual regions today, this is more of a nationwide concern, but I did want to remind everyone that the FDA recall on the radioactive shrimp has expanded because of course it has. This is of course a shell game of food distribution. So the company PT Bahari Makmmore Sajati is actually known in the US as BMS foods which is an Indonesian company and they sell raw shrimp or frozen shrimp to two other companies at least two other companies in this case Southwind Foods and Beaver Street Fisheries and those companies repackage that shrimp as their own brand. Well, this becomes a problem when four shipping containers full of shrimp uh were detected to be radioactive or contaminated with the radioactive isotope cesium 137. Cesium 137 is of course uh produced as a byproduct of nuclear fishision. And it is of course something that you would not typically want in your seafood. Now, just to hammer home the importance of this, I don't really care about the frozen shrimp. The frozen shrimp are irrelevant to be honest because the FDA has stated that the shrimp themselves were not necessarily contaminated. They're potentially contaminated. What was contaminated? The shipping containers that these shrimp were shipped in, which is the more concerning part because four shipping containers were discovered at the same time at four different ports, Miami, Los Angeles, Savannah, and Houston, and all four were radioactive. There could be more containers than that. They're really keeping tight lipped on this sort of thing because this is very obviously a very big counterterrorism concern. So bottom line, a food contamination issue could have just accidentally highlighted the concern that maybe some radiological supplies were smuggled into the United States or at least were attempted to be. There is some debate about this uh quite a bit as to whether or not you would find cesium 137 in say something like a dirty bomb or some kind of radioactive contamination. It's hard to say. There's a lot of back and forth on that, but just speaking very generally, when a shipping container shows up in one American port and it's radioactive, that's a little concerning because you're wondering what was in that shipping container before, what was it next to? But when four shipping containers, at least four, uh, shipping containers show up at four different ports all around the United States, that's a little bit more of a concern. Now, just to balance this out, I know that a lot of people are going to freak out uh once they discover once they actually read the story and find out that it's not the shrimp, it's the containers. Once the social media influencer circle reads the articles for once, people are going to get spun up over this. Uh, and it's interesting, but radioactive stuff tries to come into the United States a lot. So, I don't know. I'm I would be very very interested to hear a press statement by uh Customs and Border Patrol on this to see what they've got to say and what they're willing to say. And I think they should be asked the questions of what's the deal with this, you know, what's the history? What's this company's deal? And so on. I mean, if it's just a case of unsanitary conditions like the FDA is saying, okay, fine. But I want to hear that from the people who know what a dirty bomb looks like, not the FDA, right? They've clearly isolated the isotope, which is not that hard to do. A lot of the handheld scanners that are used by customs to scan stuff for, you know, contamination, they can do this on the fly, but sampling the actual radioactive particles, the dust or whatever is on these containers would would be helpful. And they can definitely isolate where that source came from. So, if it was part of say like the Fukushima leak from a few years ago, just some kind of contamination tied to that, that would be very nice to know. But just be wary about what you see on social media over the next few days because I guarantee you people are going to start freaking out about this. And uh really it's just one of those things where more temperance is needed. Sort of in the same vein of panic is the revelation in Washington DC the other day that there are 55 million visa holders in the United States and the White House is looking at investigating all of those visa holders for potential immigration fraud like visa overstays. That's a really common thing. And as one might imagine, uh, this has really resulted in the general public saying, "How many visa holders are there?" Yeah, it turns out 55 million is kind of a lot. Uh, so the White House has been really kind of trying to avoid this question, I think, because the White House is most certainly all about legal immigration, right? That's what the the Trump administration is very much uh hanging their hat on. A lot of conservative power players are also uh really trying to focus on halting the illegal immigration while bringing forth more legal immigration. And it turns out that 55 million legal visitors to the United States is still a pretty big number. So I just wanted to remind everyone that the US population is around 340 million, at least that's what they're publicly stating it to be based on the last census data. And if you add on 55 million people to that, that's a pretty big percentage as far as what illegal immigration is. I mean, if there's 55 million legal visitors here that could get visas, then you would have to assume that there are more illegal immigrants, right? That's a pretty big revelation. And since that just came out yesterday, I think a lot of people are trying to come to terms with it and figure out what this actually means because yeah, it's a big number. And uh it turns out that this is a probably a much larger problem than we had originally previously identified. And that brings us to Florida, more specifically Mr. Hargender Singh and his recent arrest for his involvement in causing the crash that killed three people on the Florida Turnpike a couple of weeks ago. I have been investigating Mr. Singh here just as a very interesting thought experiment. And it turns out, as you could probably assume very easily based on the story, that Mr. seeing is not at the center of this uh story. So, some of you have already seen it, but I'm not going to show my full homework on this just yet because a little bit of discretion is necessary when tracking some of these networks. But the short version of this is that Mr. Singh is not the center of this. Harender Singh worked for a company called White Hawk Carriers, which can be traced back to one Navnet Cower who is probably acting as a registered agent service. So once you investigate Navni Cower a little bit, you can find out that this individual, which I'm assuming is a female because most of the names I searched came up as female. So I'm just going to call her a she. But this individual, it turns out to be the owner and registered agent of a lot of very similar companies that are nearly identical to White Hawk carriers, all of which are registered at a different address, which is usually a residential address. So what's going on here? Uh, this is seems like an interesting data point, but what's going on here? Well, you might be tempted to think that Miss Navit Cow here is the center kingpin in all of this. That's probably not it. She is probably just the paperwork boss, right? She's probably just the person who is registering these companies for illegal immigrants because even in California, some of these people who may have criminal records don't want to be popping up in LLC databases. So, that's probably what's going on here. I have a lot more evidence to back that up, but it's it's a fairly common thing to see. I know that this link analysis chart here looks a little bit busy and you can kind of see where Harender Singh is in this whole thing and Miss Nav Cower here is the that green dot which is at the center of all these other LLC's and other locations and businesses and things like that. So, there are links between a lot of these and I am currently developing this out. This is just my homework as of a few days ago, but I just wanted to show you that this is much larger than just one guy in a truck, which makes sense at face value, right? But in this case, you might be expecting it to have like a CEO and then underneath the CEO, you've got different branch divi division heads and then maybe underneath that you've got uh different uh parts of the company all with co-workers and it's, you know, a nice neat hierarchy. Well, in the case of a lot of these truck driving networks, they're not you really have to track them using the mentality of counterinsurgency. Now, of course, not all of these people are terrorists, right? But when it comes to tracking them and trying to develop out these networks, you can very clearly see these are cellular networks. There's one group of people that is not connected to another group of people, but they're linked by a common point such as a registered agent. So even if these companies are not talking to one another, they're all still managed by a central point. And who's controlling that central point, right? I want to know who Navnet Cower is working for. She may not be working for anybody. She may just be opportunistic because a lot of these uh companies I'm finding are registered in the exact same building. Like if you were to look at the building on Google Maps, across the street is an immigration services office. So something that helps people get citizenship. So the bottom line is that this is a very interesting investigative line of effort because we want to know who's accountable, right? Obviously Harender Singh here, he's been arrested. He's going to jail for a long time because he killed three people. But the next question you must ask, especially if you live in a society and you want accountability, is who did he work for? Well, he worked for White Hawk Carriers. But did he? This could just be his own LLC that he's got registered through somebody else and he's just acting alone. My own investigation seems like that's not really the case. A lot of these are linked together. But in any case, this one guy's incident has identified and really brought to light just how pervasive this problem is. Now, I don't want to make it out to look like this is some kind of grand new revelation. No, there are a lot of people, especially people who are in the trucking industry, who have been shouting and screaming about this for many, many, many years. It's just nobody's listened to them because logistics is boring, right? And nobody cares about the issues of trucking, even though they absolutely should. So, please don't think I'm stumbling upon something grand and un unrevealed. No, this is this has already been wellnown for a very long time. It's just that now is a good time because we're looking at all of these other immigration issues. Now is a good time to reassess what's going on here because now people for once in their life are actually paying attention to what's going on around them. And unfortunately, I think there's also a lot of information manipulation. A lot of people will point and shout and say, "Oh, look at this guy. Look how evil he is. He's just a terrible, terrible person." Right? But then they don't go the next step further and say, "All right, well, we can hold this guy accountable." Sure, that's easy enough. But can we hold accountable the registered agent who is breaking even California law by registering a bunch of businesses in her name that she doesn't own? You see, it's just a paper mill, right? It's just an LLC paper mill is a shell game. That's what it is. And we we want to hold the guy accountable because we've got a mean looking photo of him. But nobody wants to go to the next step and say, "Well, let's dismantle this network here. Let's look into these addresses. This this guy's address is listed right on the California Secretary of State's website. It's not like it's that hard. And the feds have other databases. You can look and see how many people with visas, how many how many visa holders listed as their mailing address, the same address used for this guy. This is simple stuff. So, we've definitely got to to keep uh keep pressure on this sort of thing because unfortunately there is only so much the average citizen can do. I can sit here and talk all day long on YouTube and I can sit here and show you all of my research, but I have no power at the end of the day. I can't go out and issue an arrest warrant for all of these people I've identified. I would like to, but I can't. I don't work for government. And we are beholden to an attorney general somewhere or a federal agency somewhere to actually do their job. And so far, in most cases, the same people who have been employed in government forever are still employed under the Trump administration, which is why you see a lot of times not a whole lot being done. In this case, one guy was arrested. That is fantastic. This is good. We can give him his due process and we can he can explain himself in court, but I would also personally like Miss Need Cower to see the inside of a courtroom and explain why she's registering so many businesses to illegal immigrants in her state. So anyway, this shows how spicy things have have gotten around the United States, but things have gotten even spicier uh in the United Kingdom across the pond. So I of course mean the flagging operations that have taken place throughout uh England over the past few days. This has been rapidly become a very big social thing that has occurred throughout the country. And for an American audience, I thought I would explain just a little bit. Throughout most of Europe, it's fairly odd. It's fairly strange to see national flags flying really anywhere. Uh the concept of having your national flag displayed like at your front door or something like that, that's definitely an American thing. The concept of patriotism as Americans know it just does not apply anywhere else in the world or actually it does. It's just not Western Europe. So, Western uh Europe, Eastern Europe as well tend to not have like national flags out uh as much as you might expect. And in the UK, things have gotten quite severe over the past few years with regards to what is considered to be a hate crime. So much so that flying the Union Jack, the flag of the United Kingdom, uh displaying that flag at say like a Hindu cultural event, that can actually get you arrested, right? much more so the flag of England which is the St. George's Cross which not only conveys the idea of the English people, right? But also there's a saint involved, right? So a Christian component to this is uh equally uh forbidden in many many circumstances in the UK unfortunately. And over the past few days, a huge and I mean huge effort has been undertaken to conduct flagging operations, which is probably the best way to describe it. And what this is is super simple. It's literally just putting the English flag up in England. That's it. That's what this is. Uh some people have taken to graffiti, so painting what they call zebra crossings, pedestrian crossings, right, with red paint to make the pedestrian crossings look like little St. George's flags. So, you can kind of understand how that's a little bit more secret, but generally speaking, one of the primary ways that the British people are showing acts of resistance is simply putting up their own na nation's flag within their own nation. Now, again, to an American audience, this seems incredibly sad. Uh, and it may be, but I would rather focus on the the good part of this, right? So, there's a lot of people who are trying to do the right thing and inspire and bring a lot of hope to the English people and potentially facing arrest or great violence to do so. A few flagging uh teams have been roughed up pretty bad when they get caught. And one guy was hit in the head uh injured pretty severely last night. And Steven is just north of London where again he's trying to conduct flagging in an area and someone threw a Molotov cocktail at him, but it hit him right in the head. So pretty pretty violent sort of thing. You know, the British people are having to risk imprisonment and serious bodily harm just to put up their own nation's flag. And it's a good thing that we're starting to see this level of resistance come out. I think resistance to what exactly? I don't know if you can even define it. Just just resistance to all the badness of the world. Uh, one of the ways to do that is to bring a sense of shared unity and shared national identity because the United Kingdom, much like the United States, is facing an identity crisis. Theirs is much worse than ours, of course. And one of the ways that you can start to identify what does it mean to be an Englishman? What does it mean to be a Scott? What does it mean to be Welsh? Right? Well, the land of Albon is uh figuring this out right now. And they're going to have to figure it out over the next few years, too. This is one of those things that is within the realm of uh the English to start to bring to the table. It's peaceful, doesn't hurt anybody, and it's less it's less vandalism than is uh has been conducted by official government agencies to plaster rainbow flags and all other kinds of paraphernellia all over government buildings. So basically, there's no way to complain about this that doesn't make you sound crazy because there's the flag of India and Pakistan being flown over government buildings. So, this is one of those things that's very innocent and harmless and even the most hardline uh immigration supporter can't really have an avenue of approach for attacking people who want to put up their own flag in their own nation. So, it's an easy thing to do and it is a point of shared unity which is a good thing to see. So, for once ending on a positive note, maybe not a positive context, but a positive note and I think that's a great thing to see. So, good luck to to our friends across the pond and we will see how this works out over the next few days and weeks. So, that's pretty much all I have for today. Let's wrap things up again with the intercepted ghost net reports. Again, another good week. A lot of people uh starting to use the ghost net for exchanging information and doing testing and use a more off-grid manner of communicating. Fantastic to see. These things are very important. Again, the context of uh satellite communication devices such as Starlink and a lot of the direct to cell satellite stuff that's being worked on by major cellular carriers. All of that stuff is good and and absolutely uh necessary to see. But we also want to have a backup, don't we? And radio is one of those ways, especially HF radio is one of those ways to communicate over very long distances with potentially hundreds or thousands of people with nobody in between and nobody really practically being able to jam it either. The ghost net, for example, uh has been jammed quite a lot, both intentionally and unintentionally, and the network hasn't really suffered that much for it. It's still quite effective. It still works. And it may not be perfect. It may be very antiquated, very hard to use, very expensive, and there's a lot of uh cultural problems too within radio, but this is still one line of effort that we can do, one thing in our lives that we can actually control somewhat. And it's a good way to make sure that we can talk to whoever we want to with nobody being able to stop us. So, thank you for all of you who make the ghost net a great thing to see. It would not be what it is without all of you contributing to it and using it and finding it to be a useful thing. Otherwise, it's just me, a crazy dude on the internet with a frequency, and that's not helpful for everybody. But all of you have taken this project and run with it. And now the whole thing is running semi-autonomously, right? I don't have to issue reminders or do anything myself. It just it just flows, right? And that's a good thing to see. It will get better over time. I'm working on the next version of the plan right now. And I I really hope that over the next year we can incorporate some of the more nonrai-based uh stuff into the plan to make it a little bit easier for people to communicate using different methods. I'll just leave it at that. So, thank you again for all of your support. Uh here are the sources as usual. And of course, you can uh get clickable links and uh more information from my Obsidian page. But that's pretty much all I have for today. Thanks again, and I will see you next time. And as always, fight in the shade.
Intel Update · 2025-12-06
Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground. This is the Intel update for November 30th through December 6th, 2025. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived once again at that magical time of year when holiday festivities are underway and we get to talk about everyone's favorite topic, operational risk management and general personal security practices. Oh, I know many of you are struggling to contain your excitement for the inevitable risk management chart this week. But first, let's start with global strategic concerns. Most of the events that have taken place around the world this week are fairly standard. Uh the UK is continuing to be more or less an example of a dystopia. Holiday cheer and diversity barriers have gone up all over Europe. Multiple terrorists have been arrested this week in the United States. Somali continue to defraud the government out of hundreds of millions of dollars in Minnesota. And the ground component of the war in Venezuela is about to kick off. So pretty usual week at this point. Uh I think our scale has shifted for what is considered to be normal these days. But either way, that's the general overview for what's going on this week. For strategic movement this week, all eyes again are on Venezuela, mostly because the president of the United States has confirmed that the ground war is to begin soon. On my end, the indications and warnings of an impending ground operation in Venezuela are continuing to grow. Of course, there are a lot of deception tactics being used to obuscate what is actually going on. So, we're not going to know the exact date and time of when the operation is to begin, and we might not even know what the operation consists of. It may just be initial strikes. It may just be more of a special operations effort to snatch Maduro. Who knows? I know we all get tired of mentioning Venezuela because, well, we've talked about it for months now and nothing has happened. But rest assured, I think that we're going to get an answer one way or another very soon whether or not this is a giant bluff or whether or not we're actually going to go into Venezuela. And personally, I I think we're going to do it. But again, this is all speculation and we're just going to have to see how it works out. Moving to kinetic events for this week, we unfortunately have a very tragically full map. This week has been very busy when it comes to extremely violent attacks and terrorism concerns around the US. But starting off with the terrorist attacks that were halted before they were conducted. There were two this week or at least allegedly two. You can never really be certain with these sorts of things. So the first one was in Dallas. An Afghan man was arrested after he hopped on TikTok in what I suspect is a drunken rant and said he was going to blow up a building in Texas because of this that or the other. It's not really clear as to what he was arguing for or about, but either way, somebody reported him. He got rolled up for making terroristic threats online. So, pretty standard arrest there. There was also the more suspicious arrest which occurred in Delaware. This was again another possibly Afghan, possibly Pakistani national. It's it's hard to say. I haven't been able to confirm that one way or the other. Either way, a man from that general region was arrested after a traffic stop revealed that he was planning a terrorist attack at the University of Delaware Police Department. Once again, details on this incident are kind of sketchy, so there's not a whole lot that we can go on to figure out what this guy's deal was. However, the gist of the story is that man gets pulled over or approached by police in some way. He becomes quite hostile, antagonistic, uncooperative. And what does that do in every single jurisdiction in the United States? Well, you get arrested. And that's exactly what happened. They searched his car, found a bunch of weapons. Well, not a bunch of weapons, just a couple of weapons. But in anyway, they found a notebook which detailed his attack plans and had sector sketches and uh the floor plan drawn of the UD police department. So obviously the investigation continues. They search his house, find a Glock with a switch and an AR, few mags here and there. Not a lot of weapons to be honest comparatively, but a lot for a potential Afghan Pakistani national who's going to UD, right? Once again, like I wrote in the wire, there's a pretty big uh disinformation campaign on that one. So I don't know what the truth is just yet. But I just wanted to kind of briefly mention that. Either way, that's another potential attack stopped before it began. Concerning the attacks that actually went through, there were several this week. Some were just general crime, some were more uh terroristic in nature. The more terroristic attack was, of course, the Molotov attack that took place in Los Angeles at the federal building there in downtown LA, which took the form of an individual throwing molotovs at the entrances to the building. This attack did fail. the suspect was arrested at the scene and the Molotovs didn't actually go off or they weren't lit or something like that. But this does go to show that the pressure continues to mount uh and we continue to have daily terrorist attacks around the around the country when it comes to things like immigration. We have sleptwalked into accepting terrorist attacks because they're against ICE agents and because they're against federal officials and federal facilities. And these attacks will continue because there has not been a very harsh crackdown on terroristic threats like this. And it's also uh something that's very hard to prevent from happening in the first place, especially considering the tens of millions of American citizens which are now taking the side of the cartels, taking the side of the gangs, taking the side of the illegal immigrants, and are now essentially insurgents. This immigration issue has been the catalyst to prod many people into accepting a lifestyle of terrorism. We all know that ICE can't go anywhere in this country in a convoy without some random soccer mom seeing them and ramming her vehicle into the convoy. These kinds of attacks have just slowly become accepted as norm now. And now arson attacks and molotov attacks are becoming just as common. So that's a big concern moving forward. The other two attacks that I focused on this week that were more high-profile incidents were the shooting in Omaha, Nebraska and also the stabbing on board the Charlotte light rail system once again that occurred a couple of days ago. The Omaha incident involved a shootout between police and what is now very likely to be an illegal immigrant, although that's that's a little bit unconfirmed at the moment. The short version is an illegal shoots a man right in the chest while he's shopping for groceries at a local convenience store. Manh hunt ensues, suspect located by police and shootout commences. Two police officers were shot during this incident and a third was wounded by shrapnel. All of which are going to be fine from what I can tell by local media reports. But the suspect was very heavily ventilated during the incident and he uh did not survive the encounter. And finally in Charlotte, there was another stabbing on the Blue Line light rail system throughout the city. Looks like it was a pretty kinetic event. And in the context of the whole Arena Zeritzka stabbing from a while ago, this has kind of put Charlotte back in the spotlight once again because even though that initial Zeritzka murder got a lot of attention because of just how horrific it was, this latest incident has shown that things have changed in Charlotte, but they've changed for the worse uh since that initial murder. Crime has not gone down on the light rail system. As a matter of fact, it's gotten worse. And the same very horrific concerns remain as before. Charlotte has become kind of the poster child for public transit violence. There were a couple of shootings and murders on uh the bus system as well over the past couple of weeks. So, this does highlight once again that Charlotte was a pretty nice city even just a few years ago, but now it's become an utter uh dystopian uh place to be. So, so that's gotten the spotlight put back on Charlotte once again. And speaking of dystopian incidents, yesterday an event came to light in Portland, which we'll talk about in a moment, which is definitely going to have more widespread concerns for public transit safety throughout the nation. And this is yesterday's acquitt of a suspect who stabbed a man, conducted a stabbing attack a couple of months ago. He was acquitted yesterday by a jury who stated that the victim's use of a racial slur after the stabbing attack justified the stabbing attack. So, yeah, you did hear that, right? uh we'll get to it in just a moment, but once again, very kinetic week. It's very likely to be a kinetic week as we move into the holiday season. So, we'll talk a little bit more about that as we go along. Now, moving down into the regions for this week, I guess we'll start with the Southeast, although this is again a national issue. For those of you who did not know, CloudFlare went down yet again yesterday. It was down for a couple hours. This is the second Cloudflare outage to strike within just a very short period of time, taking down a good chunk of the internet while the uh issue was being worked. This time around, Cloudflare states that this outage was intentional. They had to briefly uh take things down to work a security patch, right? To to patch a security issue. I'm sure that the software engineers will come up with a very good logical explanation for why these things are happening. However, from my wheelhouse, the end customer, right? I'm not a software engineer, and maybe it's just me, but I think that it's probably a little concerning that we're now starting to have regular and routine, nearly total outages of the internet at large. Even if it's just for a short period of time, these things are fairly catastrophic problems that highlight a lot of stuff that needs to get fixed. So, the average consumer doesn't really care about the meat and potatoes of how all this stuff works. They just want their internet to work. And if Cloudflare is going to start having regular issues, even if it is something that they cause themselves, that's a problem, right? So, it also means that the average citizen is going to have to start thinking more and more about off-grid communications. And being able to have a plan, even if you don't have an off-grid communications method, like radios or something like that, even just having a plan of what to do in the event that communications go out, is probably a very good idea at this point because these things are becoming vastly more common than they used to be in the past. So, something to keep in mind for sure. Now, digging more into the North Carolina stabbing incident, there aren't a whole lot of details that have come to light yet because this just happened as I'm recording this on Saturday morning. Of course, anytime a situation is still developing, it's going to take a long time for the details of exactly what happened to come out. So, we are of course operating on a lot of speculation at this point, but this stabbing looks like a pretty serious one. So, eyewitness statements don't really help us understand what went on. We don't really know what took place on that train, but somebody was stabbed very, very violently, very brutally on the blue line, the same line that got a lot of attention from the Zerutka murders. So, all in all, we're going to have to wait and see what the details of this case shake out to be. However, personally, I think we have enough information to make a decision. I think we have enough information to conduct our own risk assessment and risk analysis to determine that it would be a good idea to keep your head on a swivel if you are forced to take public transit at this point. If you have the option of avoiding public transit in pretty much any city at this point, it would probably be a very good idea. I know a lot of people can't avoid it. A lot of people have to use uh public transit because that's their only option, right? And it may even be a little bit safer than walking uh the streets in some cases depending on the time of day in the city. But either way, keep your head on a swivel. I'm serious. Things are getting pretty spicy out there and we'll get more into that at the end. Right for now, just know these things continue to happen. Now, moving up to Washington DC, the big story, the hot ticket this week has been the arrest of the alleged J6 pipe bomber who has been identified as Brian Cole Jr. of Northern Virginia. Now, in terms of what we actually know about the suspect and about this investigation, the details are very few and far between. So, there's really not a whole lot to go off of. However, just to cut right to the chase to save some time here, this is incredibly suspicious. This is probably the most suspect case to come out of DC in at least an hour or two. So, uh, there's probably very little trust and faith in any kind of federal investigative effort at this point, especially when it comes to the timing of all of this. But personally, I think that based on the information that we have so far, which is not much, I think there's probably two different outcomes. Either Brian Cole Jr. is the guy and they've known as the guy for years and they've just not wanted to prosecute him for uh the terrorist attacks for some reason. Uh something something prevented them from going after him or the guy who they say it is is not the guy and it's somebody else. Either way, this entire thing smells like Washington and it stinks, right? If Brian Cole Jr. is indeed the J6 pipe bomber, then all right, fair enough, I guess. But that doesn't explain why suddenly everyone was prosecuted except for this guy for many, many years because it looks an awful lot like they had the evidence on this guy for a while. Of course, the other potential is that he's not the guy and this will come out in court or they're trying to burn somebody because the blaze got really close to identifying who really uh was the J6 pipe bomber and they had to give us a name. So, a name materialized and we can tie this up in a neat little bow and we can all forget about it, right? I guess it worked though. I mean, it still muddied the waters enough to where nobody really knows what exactly happened on that day other than there are fingerprints of the CIA and the FBI all over literally every part of the J6 fiasco, right? But especially the pipe bomber. So, I very strongly doubt that we're ever really going to know what the full story of that day was. So either way, have to mention it because it's a pretty groundbreaking development, but once you dig into it, it like, oh man, there's not a whole lot we can go off of. So, switching gears to move out west, we can talk about a different incident that occurred this week, which has a little bit more specific concerns for safety on things like public transit and just out in society in general. This is the acquitt of a stabbing suspect who just shanked a random guy on the street back this summer, but the jury acquitted him for a very unique reason this week. So, the suspect, Gary Edwards, stabbed the victim, Gregory Howard Jr., just on the street in Portland back in July. Once again, fairly standard stabbing attack. It's become kind of a common thing. Uh, but the defense council's argument was just absolutely mind-boggling. So, the criminal defense in this case is that Edwards, the suspect, who is a homeless man who is known for stabbing people randomly on the street. He has a long criminal history of doing this many times before. He pulled a knife out of his pocket and approached the victim and he wanted to trade that knife for cigarettes. Now, neither of these guys know each other and that's the criminal defense. Okay, that is ex that's how the defense attorney [snorts] says things went down. From there, a scuffle occurred in some way, and the story gets a little blurry until the cops show up, in which case the victim shouted a racial slur at the attacker after he had been stabbed. And the jury in this case a couple of days ago said that that was justification for the stabbing. So, the defense council story is that this the victim shouted a racial slur at the attacker that caused the man with the knife who already had the knife in his hand to stab the victim. And that according to the jury was a perfectly acceptable reason for self-defense. Now, once again, the stories diverge, right? The defense council, so Edward's attorney, argues that the slur is what caused the stabbing incident, which first of all is ridiculous in and of itself because shouting a racial slur at someone is not permission to murder them. But either way, leave that for now. But the evidence in the case, like the actual documented history of what actually occurred, only proves that the victim shouted the slur after being stabbed. So right now, not a single shred of evidence actually confirms that the victim started anything. So the truth of what actually happened is this crazy homeless guy ran up to a guy with a knife, stabbed him, and the victim shouted a racial slur back at the guy. And that's the truth of what happened. That is what all of the evidence confirms. But because it's Portland, right, the jury said that that was a perfectly uh acceptable self-defense scenario. So, for all of you who don't live in the crazy insane wonderland that is Portland, what does this mean? Well, the bottom line for all of us now is that the jury in this case states that if you're a white guy who gets stabbed by a black guy in the street and then you yell a nasty word at the guy after you've been stabbed, that is retroactive justification for that stabbing attack. So, yeah. uh pretty dystopian, but something you need to be aware of because these kinds of things are happening all over the place. Even in the worst case scenario, let's just say that in this case, the white guy did shout a word at this guy before the attack, right? And that's word is what prompted the attack. In no way, shape, or form does shouting a word at somebody justify stabbing them to death on the street, right? This is insane, right? So, even if this guy did do it, which no evidence points to him actually shouting a bad word at the guy, there's no justification for this. But a jury went above and beyond to say that there is, right? So, no evidence in this case shows the white guy doing anything wrong. He just minded his own business on the street, gets approached by a homeless guy with a knife in their hand, and the situation devolves from there. So, that's probably the best uh lesson learned that we can kind of glean from this story is that, yeah, tensions are pretty high. Yeah, people are pretty crazy out there and stabbing attacks continue, but you also have a pretty good chance now of the attacker not just being led out of jail before their trial by a judge. I mean, that's a that's a common thing that happens, you know, all around the US, but there's also a pretty good chance that a jury will do something like this and justify someone trying to kill you because you said a word, right? We can see how we're we're moving towards that and now a court has backed that up. So now that's all I have for the United States. Let's shift gears and talk about the United Kingdom for a moment. And I will expand a little bit more on some of the events that have come to light in the grand old UK this week. So first up this week, we have a man who was arrested for the possession of quote unquote extreme music, which allegedly violated terrorism laws in some way. So that was kind of a more of a dystopian sort of situation that occurred this week. separately. Another man was arrested this week for posting photos of of himself going to the United States to engage in the timehonored tradition of shooting stuff in somebody's backyard. Well, he posted these photos of his trip to the gun range of him firing, you know, shotguns and rifles and such. He posted those images on social media in the UK and got a visit, got a knock at the door, which turned into an arrest, as that always does. And finally, probably the more disturbing case this week is a woman who was arrested for using a slur in a private text exchange with a friend, former friend, who ratted her out to police because she called the man who attacked her a bad word. Right. So, regarding the extreme music arrest, the suspect in this case, the hardened terrorist criminal, the man who was arrested was identified as Norbert Gears, who was a collector and reseller of vinyl records. And he was arrested after at least one record from his several thousand record collection contained music that the UK classifies as illegal. So, this guy had a few thousand LP records in his collection. He's just kind of a buyer and seller of records, both for hobby purposes, but also probably more along the lines of kind of like a side hustle sort of thing. But either way, in the process of buying and selling a bunch of records, right? Turns out he had not one but two naughty records, right? They're songs. They're vinyl records of songs that were made by a professional recording studio. And when he listed these particular records online, somebody ratted him out. Somebody he probably listed it on eBay or if there was maybe a local version of uh British eBay. Somebody ratted him out and of course having no no records, having no no speech in the UK is uh very much policed. So they ransacked his house, raided his collection and found the two offending LP vinyl albums. And for this, for owning two music records, he got 40 months in prison. He was sentenced to 40 months in prison for owning music. Honestly, at this point, I'm very curious as to what records he had because I kind of want to buy them now. So, if anybody knows what music albums he had, I'm very curious as to what in the Sam Hill music is so bad. Like even lyrics-wise, like I mean there's some pretty bad music out there, but nothing you should go to prison for 40 months over. Good grief. Either way, that's a pretty dystopian case to come to light. But in the UK these days, it's completely unsurprising. This case, the forbidden music case, came to light after another, probably more disturbing case, to be honest, in which a woman who has been identified as Elizabeth Kenny was arrested and criminally charged for calling a man who had beat her a [ __ ] in a text exchange with a friend. That now former friend reported her use of the word to police and she was arrested. She used the word to describe the man who had assaulted her so severely that she required hospitalization. And what's more interesting is that the judge in her case, JP Robert [ __ ] specifically stated that he personally uplifted her sentence. He personally is throwing the book at her for personal reasons due to her alleged homophobia, which is a severely punished crime in the UK. Like that's worse than murder in many cases to be honest. But nevertheless, the man who attacked her, she was talking to her, you know, what she thought was a friend about a man who had beat her so severely she was in the hospital. But that man who was being described in the text exchange, nothing has happened to him. He has not been charged or arrested uh in any way for nearly killing the woman. So, if we read past the headlines in this case and we dig a little bit deeper, we can see that this is probably a textbook case of people using the criminal justice system to target others for personal reasons. Remember, Kenny was texting a person who she thought was a friend and discussing the brutal attack that the as yet unnamed man had conducted right at that time. She did not know that her friend actually took the side of the attacker. Uh so when Kenny sent photos of her wounds that she had uh sustained from this guy beating her, right? Her use of the word [ __ ] in that text exchange was her former friend's jackpot, right? That was that was the clincher. and the use of that word served as an easy way to get her arrested. So, the British authorities of course dutifully did their part as speech crimes are by far the most heavily police crimes in the UK right now. So, so that's kind of the situation we're at. Both the UK and the US have this uh problem here. In the UK, you say the wrong word to the wrong person, that's justification to throw you in jail forever. Whereas in the United States, if you say the wrong word to the wrong person, that's permission for that person to kill you. Very interesting times in which we live. But either way, continuing the trend, another case of speech crime policing has come to light. Uh, which occurred some time ago, actually, but it came to light this week because criminal charges were filed, which revolved around a man being arrested and criminally charged for posting a photo of himself holding some firearms during a trip to the United States. The man in this case has been identified as John Rishilu Booth and he was arrested by Yorkshire authorities after posting some photos from his trip to America. And we all know how this goes, right? Now, these types of events, the one where the guy posted some photos of himself uh shooting guns in America, these types of events are quite useful for understanding how the British and even American authorities operate. And digging into this case is kind of fascinating. So, Booth was initially visited at his home by police who hit him with the classically British, and I mean classically British warning, right, to be careful what you post online, right? The Br, for those who don't know, the British police love to do this. You You do something that they don't like, but isn't illegal. They will show up at your door and issue you a warning. Warning, citizen. And really, what they're trying to do is both intimidate, but also fish. They're trying to fish for something. They're trying to get you to talk. They're trying to get you to incriminate yourself. And here in the United States, this happens all the time, too. Yes. Even in the land of freedom, uh we have the same exact tactic being used. something that's not illegal that's being done, but we're just going to come to your door and warn you about posts that you've made online. Right? This is a very common thing that happens. And in nearly 100% of cases in the UK, at least whenever someone gets this visit, this knock at the door by the the British police at their door, they're just going to show up a few hours or a few days later and arrest you anyway. So that's just the way things work out. And in this case, he was arrested for posting a photo of himself holding a gun in an entirely different country. So, he wasn't even holding a gun in the UK. He posted vacation pictures that were taken in an completely different country. But, of course, that doesn't matter to British police. They're just following orders, right? Somebody wanted this guy arrested and the police obliged. In the UK at least, it is a very, very bad idea to post a photo of yourself on the internet holding a gun because in the UK at least, the mere sight of a firearm, right, the mere photographing of a firearm, that is enough uh in many cases to catch that criminal uh intent to cause fear of violence charge, right? That's a very broad charge. The police love to to wave it around in the UK. A lot of laws in the UK are kind of like this right now. There's a whole class of laws where essentially they're if you make someone uncomfortable, if you make someone fearful, you know, like these very subjective things that there's no way you could prove it in court, well, guess what? It doesn't matter. Going to jail forever anyway. So, this is a very common thing in the UK now. There are a whole class of laws that uh essentially make it illegal to cause anyone any kind of offense or any kind of fear. Depending on the context, you could be arrested for basically anything in the UK at this point. I mean, you hit the brakes too hard. You put a letter in the mailbox aggressively. You say, "Excuse me," in the wrong tone of voice to someone in a grocery store, and you could get thrown in the slammer for life. So, treading lightly has become kind of a skill in the UK. Uh, it's just the way things work out. But these things are, of course, worth being aware of here in the United States. Not only because, well, we have a a bit of kinship with those in the UK, but we also tend to get a lot of the things that trickle down from the UK to us here uh sometime. So yeah, all around all of these issues are are just a culmination of uh things that are not super great. However, it's also something that I would not personally dwell on or focus on so much that you just kind of let it consume you, right? That's that's not something that's very productive. We want to acknowledge the things that are happening that are concerning, but we also want to take steps to move through some of this stuff. And today, like I mentioned in the beginning, I wanted to focus a little bit more on managing risk. Right? I know, I know. everyone's favorite topic uh when we talk about risk. But a lot of people these days are asking what can I do? What can I do to stop this madness or at least try to reduce it somewhat? And to be honest, I don't know. I don't know how to fix the world. But I do know some things that might help. And the these are easy things that you can do on your own. Things like risk management, right? That's a very easy thing to do. So when we say, you know, somebody's got to do something, well, this is what you can do, right? It's not very productive to sit there and doom and gloom about the situation you may be in and the situation that western civilization may be spiraling towards right without trying to do something and this is something that you can do right you want a solution here it is or at least one of them so when it comes to managing risk during the holiday season I think this is a very important thing to consider as we move forward through these very risky times right terrorist attacks in terms of like the classic you know jihadi style terrorist attacks are spiking or at least it seems like they are statistics-wise I don't actually No, because a lot of these are not classified as terrorist attacks because they want to skew the demographics of who's actually conducting violence. But at least here in the United States, we've had several high-profile terrorist attacks either being conducted, becoming routine, like with the ISIS stuff, the counter ICE stuff, you know, vehicle ramings, molotovs, those have become routine. But we also have things like general crime. Like I've said before, public transit in the United States is very much a death sentence in certain cities and at certain times of day, right? The chance of you being involved in a stabbing or a shooting in some parts of this country are astronomically high during certain situations. And because of that, we have to conduct risk assessment and risk mitigation from a very wavetop level. We have to both balance the way the world is today. We have to see the world for for what it is. We have to see the risks for what they are, but we also have to balance that with living our lives. On the one hand, we cannot ignore the extreme risks to our personal safety and the personal safety of those around us. But we also can't, you know, live like Rambo every minute of the day, right? Even if we may want to. On the one hand, risk aversion is not the answer, right? A lot of the classic prepper arguments are that, well, you should never do anything at all because you might have a bad thing happen at some point, right? Well, that's that's not a realistic view of the world. But on the other hand, we have to acknowledge that there are pretty severe risks sometimes and it's a very delicate balance, right? You have to assess the risk. You have to manage the risk as best you can, but you also have to not let things get too paranoid and too paralyzing so that you don't do anything at all. A good example is public transit, right? A lot of people are forced to take it. They don't have any other feasible option, right? Or it may be the least of two bad options. If you have to take a train or a subway into work and the other option is to walk, you know, a dozen blocks or so past all kinds of very very bad things on the street, you might be better off on the subway system. But that doesn't mean that you can't be a little bit more attentive. You can't be a little bit more prepared, right? You can't be a little bit more ready and aware just in case something does happen. And that's kind of hard to do sometimes because being responsible and assessing the risk and mitigating the risk as best you can is often very inconvenient. Like I've said a few times before, do you think that I personally enjoy carrying, you know, a tourniquet in my pocket everywhere I go? No, it's not convenient, right? Do I enjoy carrying around a lot of medical gear every day? No, I don't. But I do it because the alternative is to not have anything at all. That's not being paranoid. That's mitigating risk. But of course, everyone's going to have to conduct that analysis on their own. And one of the ways that you can sort of start thinking about this mentality is just look at what you did yesterday. Did you go to work yesterday and have the ability to render aid to someone or yourself who has been slashed in the face by an attacker? Did you have the ability to mitigate that situation? Where is the nearest tourniquet to you when you're sitting on the subway going to work in the morning? There is a lot of focus in the prepping and prepared citizenry and the serious citizenry world on things like firearms to stop threats before they get worse or stop threats before they begin hopefully. And that's all well and good. We do need that. We need all this gun content, right? We need this self-defense, concealed carry kind of stuff. We do need all of this stuff, but what we also need for a lot of people who that's simply not an option for, what we also need is a focus on risk mitigation in other ways, such as medical stuff. There needs to be an increased focus on a lot of this stuff. As important as these tools are, they are not the end all beall solution to everything. If we look around at the headlines for the week and if we look around at a lot of the incidents that have occurred, yes, firearms would have made a difference in many of these attacks. But we also have to remember that in many cases firearms would not have helped very much. Not to armchair quarterback or anything like that, but just to kind of solidify this idea looking back at the Arena Zerutska attack, having a firearm on her would not have helped that poor girl a whole lot. It just would not have. It would The attack was too quick. It was from behind. there's she would not have had time to draw. It would not have helped. You know, it's hard to say based on one case study, right? But it's also quite likely that medical supplies would not have helped her either. But in other cases, having the tools on hand to do what you can would have been helpful. And when it comes to the larger example of, you know, risk management, we see this in Europe as well, right? All over social media this year. People in Germany have been taking photos and videos of the diversity barriers, right? the big concrete ballards that they try to make a little bit more festive by putting bows and decorations on and such that are meant to protect a lot of these Christmas markets from vehicle ramming attacks. Well, what does that tell us from a riskmanagement perspective? You know, if if you're going to a Christmas market and there are D-Day level anti-tank fortifications surrounding the market, you've got armed police everywhere. There's metal detectors, there's all kinds of security in place, then doesn't that show you that at least somebody in government thinks that this this place might be attacked? And if that's the case, don't you think that maybe there is something that you can do to help assess risk in that situation? For instance, you can look at a lot of these fortifications and see, well, they're not going to be adequate. Such as this photo that I found circulating the internet uh with regards to the security practices at a few Christmas markets around uh around Europe. I think this one was uh in Germany. Now, anyone, but especially a terrorist can look at the these barriers and see these are not going to stop a vehicle by any means. So, what have the authorities done in this particular case? Well, what have they done? They have identified a vulnerability. So, they've pointed out, hey terrorists, look at this one particular area. We're concerned that you might drive a vehicle here and that this might be a a pretty good target for you, but also we're not going to take the efforts to mitigate the risk. So, we're going to identify which places would be good for a terrorist to attack, but we're also not going to take efforts to mitigate that because we have very inadequate barriers up. In this specific example, having a piss poor barrier in place is worse than having nothing at all. Because if you had nothing at all, a terrorist might not identify this place as being a target. But now that you've put the barrier up, you've pointed out that you're scared of an attack, but also that barrier doesn't do anything. These are the kind of things that we have to think of when it comes to managing risk during the holidays. Yes, it is very very good that in places like Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the more traditional places where Christmas markets tend to be a a big thing. I mean, it's a [snorts] huge thing in Germany, right? So that's why I'm using Germany as the example because they're kind of the forefront of the the Christmas market, the town square that gets transformed into kind of like a winter wonderland for for every season, right? These things are amazing uh to go to and see, but they're also huge security risks and they're a good example for average citizens to be able to look at a situation and assess the risk on their own. And tying all this back to what I said in the beginning of we don't want to just live our lives being ultra paranoid for no reason, right? I'll give you the example, right? If I were to look at a Christmas market and I see a lot of vehicle barriers up, if I see a lot of police standing around, if I see a pretty big security presence, there's a double-edged sword there, isn't there? Because on the one hand, you see, all right, these are good risk mitigation efforts, right? I feel a little bit more safe when there's a concrete barrier beside me that I can hide behind and just in case something goes wrong when you're trying to pick out presents and stuff like that, right? But on the other hand, it does point out that there have been very little mitigation efforts in other ways throughout Germany that would prevent the attackers from being there in the first place. For instance, you can put up concrete barriers all day long and that'll uh that'll do something. That's pretty good. That's a pretty good mitigation effort, but an even better mitigation effort would be to deport the criminals and the terrorists before they even conduct the attack in the first place. Germany has not done that. Germany has not increased their counterterrorism investigations and their efforts. So all they are doing, they're putting all their eggs in one basket and putting a lot of concrete around a soft target. And that's their primary means. No, concrete barriers should not be your primary means of counterterrorism. Concrete barriers and vehicle ballers should be your last line of defense so that after a terrorist slips through all of your other mitigating u measures, they're stopped before they can have any kind of good effectiveness. Right? So that's the higher level thinking that we have to kind of adopt even when we're doing something as innocent and wholesome as you know trying to pick out stocking stuffers for people. And once again, I know I keep saying it, but we want to make sure that we're not being too paranoid sometimes. I have to keep telling myself this all the time because look at my wheelhouse. Look at my line of work. I sit here pretty much every day and look at the horrors of the world going around. And I'm not saying that's something that everyone should be doing. I am most certainly biased to looking to threats. I'm most certainly biased personally towards identifying counterterrorism concerns. Every time I go into a large venue where there's large crowds, I look and I see the risk. I'm not saying that everybody should adopt this position entirely because it tends to be a little bit heavy sometimes. I'm just saying it might be a good idea to have a more casual approach. If you're in a town square, in a big mall, in a big crowded venue or something like that, and you see that security is quite poor, maybe factor that into your own risk assessment. I want to most certainly continually pump the brakes on a lot of the fear that goes out there. There's a lot of money to be made in telling people to be afraid of terrorist attacks. There really is. Just scroll social media, scroll YouTube, and you will see every prepper on YouTube gets on there and says, "Ah, the end is nigh. We're all going to die tomorrow from some mass terrorist attack." That's obviously not true, right? There there's a lot of nuance here and that nuance doesn't really sell, right? Telling people, "No, there's probably not going to be a gigantic 9/11 style attack occurring in the United States anytime soon." Telling people that doesn't get clicks. It doesn't get monetization. It doesn't sell. So, people don't do it. telling people that there are 10,000 al-Qaeda operatives in the United States right now. Well, you know, that gets a lot of clicks, that gets a lot of monetization, even though, you know, these sorts of things are basically impossible to predict, right? So, all in all, be careful. Conduct risk assessment, conduct risk analysis, conduct risk mitigation as best you can. You don't have to live in fear at all, to be honest. You really don't. But that doesn't give you license to be stupid. And what you don't want to have happen is to be in a situation and something happen and you be powerless and you be helpless. Trust me, I have been in those situations before where I was not as prepared as I could have been. And I think back on those situations all the time. So, you don't want to have that retroactive guilt and say, "Look, you know, I I knew I was going into a risky situation. I knew that I was going into a packed venue. I didn't carry any medical supplies. I didn't conduct any kind of analysis to figure out where the exits are. My phone battery was dead, so I couldn't even call the police when an attack happened. You don't want this to be you, right? You want to be smart. You want to be prepared. You want to do what you can without going overboard, right? Don't go overboard with all this stuff, but you want to do the best you can. And I think that's probably a good perspective to have as we move forward into the holiday season. So, that's all I have for today, everyone. We'll call it a day. Rant done. Uh, here are the sources and research. As usual, I've been updating my online maps, my RGIs maps as we go along. I've been pushing fresh KMZs out to my GitHub page for those of you who want just the KMZ part to load into your personal ATAC instance, stuff like that. All this complicated stuff. I know I haven't gone into much detail on it yet. Um, but that's coming. I've just gotten uh quite behind. Been working on a lot of stuff that has just taken so much time to do. So, if any of you have messaged me or uh sent me something and I haven't responded for a while, feel free to ping me again. I get tens of thousands of emails and messages a week and I'm sorry I I just can't reply to all of them. But but I I do try. I really do. It's just man, it's just a lot sometimes. So, please forgive me if I haven't replied to you in a while. Uh it's just taken me a long time to get kind of caught up. Either way, that's what I have for this week. Thank you guys all for all of your support. Thank you for sticking with me uh today. Be safe out there. Do the best you can. Keep moving forward. Keep your chin up. All this bad stuff in the world just means you've got an extra chance to do good stuff. So look at it like that and I think we'll be all right. So thanks again and I will see you next time.