Quote:Humans vs Superhumans | When Monsters Were Real and We Almost Went Extinct Humans are the apex predator. Not *an* apex predator. *The* apex predator. Other than a handful of bacteria and viruses, there’s pretty much nothing stronger, more intelligent, or more adaptable than Homo sapiens. Telling the human story from the beginning is difficult. It was a time when two words defined our world: fear and violence. It was a time when we were *not* the apex predator; we were their prey. We emerged from our caves during the day. Hoping we wouldn’t be hunted by the monsters in the woods. So vicious were these monsters they still live in our myths -- and our nightmares. They created a generational trauma embedded into our DNA over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. These creatures were stronger, faster, and (when it came to combat) more intelligent than we were. It’s a miracle any of us are even here. This is the story of how modern humans conquered the monsters and won the battle for the world. But here's the thing: those fearsome monsters defeated by humans? Were other humans.

An interesting Prep article to share:


https://alt-market.us/a-primer-for-ameri...in-future/

Quote:The average patriot (or prepper) is usually a middle class conservative or libertarian with a tendency towards independent thinking and some experience with economic struggle in their past. Most of us have made something of ourselves from very little, or, we had parents that made something of themselves from very little and we watched as children while they climbed their way up the ladder through hard work and merit.


[b]Our philosophy is based on experience and a willingness to look beyond the veil.[/b] Most of the western public is bombarded with endless messaging about how stable and safe and “prosperous” our society is. We are constantly slapped in the face with propaganda telling us that patriots are not only crazy, but also dangerous. We are the bumbling bad guys in every film and TV show. We’re the “extremists” that refuse to accept that the system works, and if we would just stop trying to be independent from the system, we will find safety and happiness.

We are told a lot of things that aren’t true, and this is really the first thing that sets the preparedness culture apart from everyone else – A healthy sense of skepticism when it comes to establishment claims and mainstream assumptions. We will NOT be sitting idle listening to the band play while the Titanic sinks. We understand, however, that there’s a considerable number of people out there that are content to do so…

There are numerous and unique motivations for people who delve into the patriot life and I think there’s a perception that it requires some kind of abnormal shift in routine or a complete upending of one’s existence. If you become a patriot or prepper you have to live in a compound and wear army garb everyday and be suspicious of everyone. It’s really a very simple addition to the daily grind, a hobby more than anything else. No one is joining a cult; all we are doing is seeking self sufficiency wherever possible and taking a second look at the claims made by people in power.

[b]Which behavior is more bizarre? Being prepared and aware? Or, being willfully ignorant and constantly vulnerable?[/b]
It’s also about realism, not pessimism. It’s not about living under a cloud of constant doom, only accepting that there are extreme problems in the world that may require extreme solutions. All I can say is, as I balance the good with the bad I find that I still remain an optimist. I believe free people have a chance to turn the tide and dismantle the cabal of influence that has created the instabilities we now face.

But, to do this requires something beyond a vague understanding of freedom and a will to live. To change the path of our civilization requires a significant level of dedication to something greater. We need a personal foundation, a mantra, a philosophy that adds structure to our efforts. In other words, preparedness is not only about you. Survival is not the end game. Preparedness is just a means to an end, which is why patriotism is also essential – We prepare so that we can fight for a better future, a future some of us may not live to enjoy.

To this point, I will list what I believe are the top most important ideals for the modern patriot/prepper. These are the rules that I plan to follow in the chaotic world going forward, and I think that if a majority of those dedicated to liberty do the same we may just make it through the pyre with the majority of our humanity intact.


[b]Rule 1: Prepare For Others, Not Just Yourself[/b]
In the midst of crisis there will come a time when you will have to help other people. You may not like other people, you may not trust other people, you might feel better crawling into a bunker and never dealing with another living soul until the breakdown has run its course. It doesn’t matter. If you have a conscience then you will be faced with the reality of need – Other people’s need.
Do they deserve what they get? Maybe some of them do, while others do not. Knowing which is which will be up to you. Having the means to aid the innocent is paramount. Trust me on this – You DO NOT want to find yourself in a situation where good people need your help and you are incapable because you failed to plan ahead. You do not want that weighing on your spirit.
[b]Rule 2: Survival Alone Is Not Victory[/b]
If you are alive but the rest of the world is enslaved, then you have ultimately lost. “Winning” is not possible until the root enemy is erased from existence. If the oligarchy that sabotages us is able to use a collapse to gain power while avoiding consequences, then they have prevailed and no matter how well you think you can hide eventually they will find you too.
Do not think for a second that your life is worth more than the freedom of humanity as a whole. It’s not.
[b]Rule 3: Fear Is Transitory, Regret Is Forever[/b]
Many people’s lives are ruled by fear. They are incessantly worried about what they could lose if they take action, if they deviate from the norm, if they upset the wrong people or rock the wrong boat. Human beings naturally seek acceptance and validation from their peers and from society. We want to belong to a tribe. We also want to remain comfortable and secure, avoiding struggle and conflict at all costs.

But there are worse things than struggle and pain and disapproval, such as regret. Knowing that we could have done something profound, yet we chose instead to sit on our ass and do nothing because standing up is scary. That kind of regret is a poison that eats most people alive, especially in old age when we are less physically able to intervene in the course of history.
Personally, I don’t really understand the fear of death, or the fear of confrontation or conflict, or the fear of facing adversity. I don’t get it. None of us is going to live forever, so we do what we can to make this life count. What I do fear, perhaps more than anything, is being useless when I’m called to make a difference. Do not let fear hold you back from what you know is right.
[b]Rule 4: You Do Not Need To Become The Monster To Defeat The Monster[/b]
War is hell, that’s not in question. And make no mistake, we are in the middle of a war right now. But, ask yourself what you are fighting for in the first place. Is it a set of principles and beliefs, or is it simply to win no matter the cost?

On the other hand, there are also people with a tendency to use the “turn the other cheek” mantra to argue against taking any action in self defense. Sometimes they are afraid, sometimes they truly believe that principles must be held to the letter, even to the detriment of everything else.

It’s a razor thin line to walk between righteous non-violence and monstrous indifference. My position? When someone declares war on you, you fight back and put them down flat. Just make sure you don’t lose your soul in the process.
[b]Rule 5: Be Invisible When You Must, Be Visible When You Must[/b]
Many preppers and patriots are obsessed with the concept of invisibility; the concept of the “Gray Man” and the tactic of blending in and going unnoticed. While this serves a purpose in some situations there are also advantages to being seen, to being visible.
There is an old story of a Roman General talking to a Roman Senator as they walk around the markets of the capitol. The Senator takes note that many of the slaves within Rome looked like regular citizens and lamented the fact that he could not tell them apart from everyone else. He suggested to the General that they force the slaves to wear armbands as identification.
The General spoke up, saying that the idea was a foolish one.

The Senator was shocked by the General’s opposition and asked why? The General explained – “The slave population is vast, but the slaves have no idea. As you say, they blend in with the citizens and the leadership. If we give them all armbands they will see how many of them there are. They will realize they greatly outnumber us and will be tempted to revolt. Better that they not know.”
There are times when visibility is more important that invisibility. There are times when invisibility is the path to defeat.
[b]Rule 6: In Every Moment Of Chaos There Is A Moment Of Peace[/b]
Chaos is mostly a product of a mental reaction, a subconscious decision to panic instead of remaining calm and lucid. Chaos is created by people more than events; it’s how we process those events that makes them a disaster or a moment of triumph. That is to say, in every moment of chaos there is a moment of peace. The question is, can you restrain your impulse to panic and instead act with conscious and deliberate calm?

To be sure, preparedness has a lot to do with this. There is a common misconception about preppers that we are “always afraid and paranoid.” The reality is the opposite – We are rarely afraid or paranoid because we have trained ourselves to be ready for most dangers. The people that are afraid, the people who usually panic, are those that are unprepared.

Beyond this, though, is a deeper mindset that has embraced the inevitability of chaos. We know that the world is built upon a precarious house of cards and history shows us that this house of cards will inevitably fall. To assume otherwise is naive or insane.
[b]Rule 7: What We Do Now Echos In Eternity[/b]
I can’t help but quote this piece of wisdom from Marcus Aurelius; I don’t think I could say it any better. Understand that the future is a summation of the actions we take today. Whether we are personally remembered or not is irrelevant; tomorrow is decided by what we do or don’t do. There is nothing that can stop this. We are the decision makers – Not the globalists, not governments, WE are the people who decide what the next era will look like.

There are moments in history, rare moments, when the confluence of events and crises rest at the point of a fulcrum. It is a nexus, a crossroads that will determine the course of civilization for centuries to come. There are people who will encounter this storm and do nothing more than sit back and drift along with the tides of fate. There are others who are battling for the chance to control the rudder of the ship, aiming humanity to either free shores or the depths of the abyss.

When all our lives are tallied in the great beyond we each may be faced with the terrible question: [b]“What did you contribute?”[/b] As patriots and freedom fighters, I hope when that moment comes we will be able to say that we left nothing undone. That we conducted ourselves with honor. That we set the world right again.

Yeah, I think we all know exactly who the "threat to Democracy Party is".





https://thefederalist.com/2024/01/18/i-b...watchlist/

Quote:Americans who shopped at sporting goods stores and bought religious books “like a Bible” were flagged through their banks as potential domestic terrorists, Rep. Jim Jordan revealed Jan. 17.


The federal government also flagged as potential criminals any transactions that involved the terms “MAGA” or “Trump,” the House Judiciary Committee chairman said. These Americans were tagged as possible “violent extremists” with zero due process or even notification of this criminalization of their constitutional rights to property, free speech, consent to their government’s activities, and religious exercise. The federal government even asked for surveillance of Americans’ messages on private payment apps like Zelle, a competitor to Venmo.




So if you’ve shopped at a sporting goods store, including Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shops, Dick’s Sporting Goods, or myriad gun retailers, you could be flagged to law enforcement as “Lone Actor/Homegrown Violent Extremism.” All these retailers and dozens more appeared on a list Jordan found that a federal financial crime agency distributed to instruct bank employees in how to criminalize their fellow Americans’ religious and political ideas.

“In other words,” Jordan writes in a letter released yesterday, the federal government “urged large financial institutions to comb through the private transactions of their customers for suspicious charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression.”

In the last year, I’ve shopped at multiple sporting goods stores. We have an active family, and I especially buy my kids outdoorsy Christmas gifts. This year, that included a tetherball set from Dick’s Sporting Goods and some camping gear for my oldest son.

A younger son received a $15 slingshot purchased at a local gun store this Christmas, so he can hunt squirrels. I also bought a son a pair of hiking shoes from Cabela’s a few weeks ago. Ooooh, look at the terror! He could kick people soundly with those!


Oh, and I can’t forget the other item of treacherous samizdat I bought in the last year: last Lent, I bought myself a Bible from ChristianBook.com, a terrorist-sounding site if I ever heard one. They sell other “extremist” gear like Bible commentaries, devotionals decorated with hearts, artsy Bible journals complete with marker sets, plush dolls, craft kits, and Jesus stickers.

When I — wearing snow boots, a winter hat, and mom jeans — went shopping at these retailers, I had no idea it could flag me as a “domestic terrorist” to my bank or federal law enforcement. I was just shopping, for completely legal goods. The only terror I meant was to squirrels. We don’t live in communist China, do we?

Turns out, benign, all-American consumerism by a completely peaceful and law-abiding citizen with zero criminal record or activity somehow threatens the people running my own country into the ground. What are they afraid of, and why do they hate Jesus so much?

Amazing how a totally nonthreatening mom of little kids scares these people, but they have zero qualms about the actual terrorists and foreign military plants certainly embedding themselves into the United States thanks to our wide-open border. But, you know, flagging moms buying hiking boots for their middle schoolers only takes a few keystrokes and PowerPoint presentations. Easy to pad the “terrorist” numbers with people like us and make a nincompoop-filled Congress believe they need to give lots more money to these power-mongering freaks who send the FBI after compliant daddies with seven kids and surveil devout Christians and angry moms and dads at school board meetings.


It’s way harder to go after the international drug cartels coordinating with communist China to infiltrate and destabilize our country via our southern border. That would take a lot more than a few keystrokes and secret fascist orders to highly cooperative “private” financial institutions. It might require going after high-level corruption rings within our own government. Nah. Go after the moms instead.

Take note, too, of the connection between the federal government searching for “MAGA” goods purchasers and President Joe Biden’s insistence that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” He is not exaggerating the Democrat Party’s views. They believe that peaceful political opposition to them equals terrorism. “Silence is violence,” right?

The deepest opposition to Democrats comes from serious Christians, because Democrats’ cornerstone policies blatantly violate the Ten Commandments (and lots more, including much of the Bible’s book of Romans). This is why it makes sense for them to connect Bible-buying with dissent from their politics.

And Democrats want to criminalize dissent. You disagree with them, so you are a thought criminal needing punishment. This bank flagging system puts the massive weight of federal resources behind leftist cancel culture — that is to say, behind bloodthirsty mobs.

How different is this from Canada’s debanking of its own citizens attempting to have their voices heard by the government allegedly representing them? How is this different in kind from China’s social credit system? It’s certainly laying the groundwork for such totalitarian acts in this country. You have to identify the citizens infected with wrongthink before you can start punishing them.

All this is blatantly unconstitutional, but almost all federal agencies are intrinsically unconstitutional, and they control the federal government. Harshly worded letters and congressional hearings are better than nothing, but they are not even close to the horsewhipping Congress needs to give these agencies they allegedly oversee.

Sure, different name but it is Reforger.

NATO to hold biggest drills since Cold War with 90,000 troops


https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/nat...024-01-18/

Quote:BRUSSELS, Jan 18 (Reuters) - NATO is launching its largest exercise since the Cold War, rehearsing how U.S. troops could reinforce European allies in countries bordering Russia and on the alliance's eastern flank if a conflict were to flare up with a "near-peer" adversary.
Some 90,000 troops are due to join the Steadfast Defender 2024 drills that will run through May, the alliance's top commander Chris Cavoli said on Thursday.

More than 50 ships from aircraft carriers to destroyers will take part, as well as more than 80 fighter jets, helicopters and drones and at least 1,100 combat vehicles including 133 tanks and 533 infantry fighting vehicles, NATO said.
Cavoli said the drills would rehearse NATO's execution of its regional plans, the first defence plans the alliance has drawn up in decades, detailing how it would respond to a Russian attack.

NATO did not mention Russia by name in its announcement. But its top strategic document identifies Russia as the most significant and direct threat to NATO members' security.
"Steadfast Defender 2024 will demonstrate NATO's ability to rapidly deploy forces from North America and other parts of the alliance to reinforce the defence of Europe," NATO said.
The reinforcement will occur during a "simulated emerging conflict scenario with a near-peer adversary", Cavoli told reporters in Brussels after a two-day meeting of national chiefs of defence.

The last exercises of a similar size were Reforger - during the Cold War in 1988 with 125,000 participants - and Trident Juncture in 2018 with 50,000 participants, according to NATO.
The troops taking part in the exercises, which will involve simulations of getting personnel to Europe as well exercises on the ground, will come from NATO countries and Sweden, which hopes to join the alliance soon.
Allies signed off on the regional plans at their 2023 Vilnius summit, ending a long era in which NATO had seen no need for large-scale defence plans as Western countries fought smaller wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and felt certain post-Soviet Russia no longer posed an existential threat.

During the second part of the Steadfast Defender exercise, a special focus will be on the deployment of NATO's quick reaction force to Poland on the alliance's eastern flank.
Other major locations of the drills will be the Baltic states which are seen as most at risk from a potential Russian attack, Germany - a hub for incoming reinforcements - and countries on the fringes of the alliance such as Norway and Romania.

Quote:At least seven people have been killed after Pakistan pounded Iranian "terrorist hideouts" in a wave of revenge missile strikes The airstrikes on the Sistan and Baluchestan province on Thursday morning come days after an Iranian drone strike left two children dead Pakistan's Foreign Ministry described their attack on Iran as a "series of highly coordinated and specifically targeted precision military strikes" "The action was taken in light of credible intelligence of impending large scale terrorist activities" "This is a manifestation of Pakistan's unflinching resolve to protect and defend its national security against all threats." The latest strikes add to exploding tensions in the Middle East as the Israel and Hamas war rages on and Iran-backed Houthi rebels cause chaos in the Red Sea.

Quote:The unprecedented breakdown in ties between Pakistan and Iran have raised an alarm in a region which is already under turmoil. Though Islamabad and Tehran weren't the best of friends, they did maintain significant economic and security ties. But from Iran being the first country to recognise Pakistan in 1947 to now the 2 countries striking in each others' territory, why exactly did ties deteriorate so much?

Surveillance since J6 has been ramped up by the unconstitutional idiots presently in charge directing their evil minions to spy on citizens.

I see it in chat as well. I was going to post this a few days ago but it wasn't "mainstream" yet. 

The Chinese are still performing massive Gain Of Function "research" on coronaviruses. Now they have managed to tinker with one that has a possible 100% mortality rate in "Humanized Mice".

The mice have Human traits, genetically modified to have human Ace2 receptors in order to closely mimic what it will do to a human host.

I haven't seen it in written stories but the traits of this mutant virus from the information given is Asymptomatic spread with the infected not knowing that they are carriers for a couple of days and infecting others. This appears to last for 2-3 days before you know you are sick, after which, massive invasion of lung and trachea tissue, the eyes and finally destroying the brain within about 7-10 days.

Don't worry though, it will never escape the lab.......

https://www.theblaze.com/news/chinese-la...nized-mice


So, let's speculate, what month are we getting our new Pandemic to trigger mail in voting or are they just going to start WW3 instead?

Fired up my Fire TV a few days ago and saw an offer for a 3-month free trial of Apple TV+ and thought that was nuts it was so long so hit the start trial button immediately. I'm so glad I did!

It was hard to know where to start with so many things I had heard or read about and so much sci-fi type stuff to choose from.

First I binged Monarch - Legacy of Monsters because Godzilla, of course! It place takes place in two eras, current day and in post war 1940s with Kurt Russel playing the modern day character and his son, Wyatt Russel playing the earlier character and it worked very well. I thoroughly enjoyed the story.



I tossed a coin on what to watch next and landed on Invasion. Centering around an alien invasion of earth, the story is told from the perspective of 4 groups of people in different parts of the world like the UK, Japan, America, Afghanistan and South America with their stories converging in the second season. I binged all of it with my only disappointment being the last episode as I thought there should have been one more to wrap everything up.



Continued next message because only 2 videos are allowed per post. Can we change that?

New TSM vid: "In the background of everything, global fertility is actually falling. Wonder why we're seeing so much immigration right now? The population is about to level and fall too. We aren't replacing ourselves, and hardly anyone is talking about it." Don't miss the ending 5 minutes.



The vid garnered over 1500 comments in 12 hours.


Supplemental links/vids:

Total fertility rate (CIA World Fact book)

Total fertility rate (UN Data)

Fertility rate: children per woman (Our World In Data)

Overpopulation: The Making of a Myth (90 sec vid)

2.1 Kids: Stable Population (2 min vid)

Quick thread - good laugh at least. I'm picturing him complaining about the tennis balls in Planet Earth Voice 

Why are tennis balls yellow?

Each morning I meet with my Management Team for a daily metric review, and I always start with a "fun fact" or weird historical story. This was today.

Quote:It was only until David Attenborough noticed while working for the BBC that it was difficult to see a yellow or white ball in colour television that change occurred.

The legendary nature presenter told Radio Times: 'I was controller of BBC2 in 1967 and had the job of introducing colour.