I have a question for the Rogues during this spooky Halloween season, "Where do the classic horror story monsters like vampires, werewolves, and Frankenstein's monster, et al, come from?"

What is the basis of the classic old haunted house or castle, one that is usually in ruins, that is inhabited by some old eccentric aristocrat from some European family bloodline? Or some mad scientist, that one is pretty classic. I am speaking of Gothic Horror of course, as opposed to slasher or other types of stories.

Just fishing around for opinions on this subject, one I have of my own.

Let's hear what you got Rogues, Inquiring minds want to know.

I finished it! (more or less)

Previous thread with the beginings https://rogue-nation.com/mybb/showthread.php?tid=2139

This is not ‘fine furniture”. LOL It is me learning how to do stuff and most will consider it junk.

It can be categorized as farmhouse style, ultra rustic, shabby chic or maybe even faux antique or a vintage reproduction/replica. Whatever it is, is 100% pine and cedar with the later being simple cheap cedar fence pickets that I have run through various degrees of the milling and distressing process and the former being 10” x 6’ pine boards that have been milled, cut and glued together in some places to create 12” shelves and a 16” top.

Even using cheap lumber, materials costs probably run in the ballpark of $400 with around $120 or so just for paint, some of which I didn’t even use and some I have significant leftovers of for future endeavors. I won’t even begin to guess how many hours I have working on this but it was a lot with most of those hours in the scorching Arizona summer heat.

With this being the third actual project other than building shop furniture and doing upgrades, I am still very much in the learning process and have relied heavily on tips and tricks from YouTube woodworkers/makers to learn things I wasn’t sure or didn’t know how to do.

Every tool in my shop, table saw, compound miter saw, jointer, planer, several different routers and multiple sanders along with many hand tools along with hella amounts elbow grease, sweat, tears, cuts, bruises and sore muscles not to mention confusion and being lost at times went into this thing. It is the most complicated and difficult thing I have ever tried to do and while it’s not perfect and a bit rough in places, I am quite pleased with what I have accomplished and will approach my next project with new and better skills and confidence.

Rather than post a bunch of pictures, I put them together in a short video.

Quote:Map Shows US States Where 'Deadly' Whooping Cough Rising

A deadly disease that mostly affects young children is on the rise in the U.S., health officials have warned.
Since 2020, whooping cough cases have increased exponentially. However, these reports have not been evenly spread across the country. "Whooping cough can cause serious and sometimes deadly complications," a spokesperson from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told Newsweek.
The disease, also known as pertussis, is a contagious respiratory illness caused by the bacteria Bordetella pertussis. These bacteria attach to the tiny hairs in our breathing tubes and release toxins that cause our airways to swell. While whooping cough may begin like a common cold, the resulting cough can last for weeks or even months.

Quote:

Quote:A father put his 3-year-old  daughter to bed, told her a story and listened to her prayers which ended by saying: "God bless Mommy, God bless Daddy, and God bless Grandma and goodbye Grandpa."


The father asked, "Why did you say goodbye Grandpa?" The little girl said, "I don't know, Daddy, it just seemed like the thing to do."
The next day grandpa died.  
The father thought it was a strange coincidence.

A few months later the father put the girl to bed and listened to her prayers which went like this: "God bless Mommy, God Bless Daddy and goodbye Grandma.

The next day the grandmother died.

"Holy Moly, " thought the father, "this kid is in contact with the other side."

Several weeks later when the girl was going to bed the dad heard her say:

"God bless Mommy and goodbye Daddy.."

He practically went into shock. He couldn't sleep all night and got up at the Crack of dawn to go to his office. He was nervous as a cat all day, had lunch and watched the clock. He figured if he could get by until midnight, he would be okay. He felt safe in the office, so instead of going home at the end of the day he stayed there, drinking coffee, looking at his watch and jumping at every sound.

Finally, midnight arrived, he breathed a sigh of relief and went home.

When he got home his wife said, "I've never seen you work so late, what's the matter?"

He said, "I don't want to talk about it, I've just spent the worst day of my life."

She said, "You think you had a bad day, you'll never believe what happened to me this morning. My golf pro dropped dead in the middle of my lesson.

Freedom has been twisted, along with everything else we live by, in our modern day upside-down clown show. People have been so subjected to subliminal implants and propaganda that Freedom doesn't even truly exist anymore.

At least not in the minds of the people who are "free."

People's idea of freedom is the right to vote and thus force thier own opinions and ideologies on others. They believe that is freedom. The freedom to impose on others their own leaning views. They speak propaganda as their native tongue, all under the guise of free speech and their rights and freedoms. 

I had a conversation the other day with a young man. He was saying how driving was the greatest privilege in the world. He was saying how he won't be having a relationship with his cousin, because they didn't want a driver's license, and didn't want to drive. I asked the question: what if you and them had a few other things in common and had other interests you could bond over? The answer was a hard no. No, they wouldn't hangout or have any interest in having a relationship with the cousin because of how important driving (and cars) were to him. That driving was a great privilege, and so everyone should be driving, and that it was a part of our freedom. I asked, if it's our freedom to drive, isn't it our freedom to choose not to drive?

I got a resounding no.....then silence. (I just let it go)

I've had many conversations with Vietnam vets. The conversation always goes one of two ways, depending on how much war time was actually  fought, and if the person had gotten injured or not. Tunes change very quickly, if they'd seen real battle, and especially of they were badly injured. One thing I do hear a lot, though. I hear, "Every young man should have to serve at least X amount of years in the military. It would do them some good." (X is varying years)

North Korea implements this rule. Every young man "has to serve" 6 (or 10, I can't quite recall exactly at the moment) years in the military. 

I noticed how these people, who are American, believe in the same ideology as North Korean communism. I've always seen that rhetoric for exactly what it was. Communist propaganda. 

Religion. 

The folks who are the church loving religious types. These people bask in their freedom of religion. There is every spectrum and color of Christianity and churches out there in freedom land. Hundreds of different sects of religion, and they all love the freedom to express that religion in broad daylight, as they so choose.

But, try and open up a church of Satan and all of a sudden it's not okay to express your religious freedom. So long as your religion aligns with their's, it's okay. But oppose their ideology and its one sided "freedom."

This also resembles communistic ideology. (Imo)

Here's the kicker that always makes me laugh. On the matter of voting. I always here, "you have to vote." With a strong emphasis on this. If we have a right to vote, we have a right not to vote. Yet, somehow this angers those who are saying, "You have to vote." After they are finally convinced that, someone "doesn't have to" vote, you will usually hear, "If you dont vote, you don't have a ""right to complain."" (Notice a "right" was stripped; for exercising your own "freedom").

I'm good with not "complaining." I'm good with not arguing politics, as well. I had a guy tell me one time after this conversation, "You don't even have the right to speak about any of it, since you don't vote."

Wow...

As I have observed and listened to all these hypocrisies, and twisted ideas of freedom, and now that I'm old enough to truly be aware of what truth is, versus some manipulated version of it, I have come to realize that we don't even know the difference between freedom and communism anymore. 

The good news is, we don't have to worry about communist ideas ever taking over the minds of the citizens of freedom. 

Because, it already has¿

Not usually a topic I am interested in yet I found some of this interesting.

Quote:COMPILATION: The Science of Ghosts and Ghost Hunting A driver sees a strange light floating above an empty road at night. At the same time, a researcher works on a machine to contact the dead. These events might seem unrelated, but they're part of humanity's long-standing interest in the supernatural. People have always been curious about ghosts, unexplained phenomena, and the possibility of life after death. Even famous inventors like Tesla and Edison were interested in the paranormal. Their competition went beyond just creating new technologies - they also tried to build devices to communicate with spirits. Throughout history, people have reported seeing shadow figures during sleep and mysterious lights in the sky. These experiences push the boundaries of what we understand about the world. Scientists continue to study these phenomena, trying to find explanations. As we learn more about our past, we discover how closely linked science and the supernatural have always been. #GhostHunting #ParanormalScience #HauntedHistory

I had not seen this presentation only heard about it a few years ago. I just started watching.

I guess more UFO threats & wars are in store to make up the loss. Deep state business as usual. Nobody in the US military industrial complex of echelons goes to jail anymore.

Quote:RTX will pay almost $1B for defrauding DOD, allegedly bribing Qatari official

That’s on top of the $200 million levied in August for illegal exports to China and elsewhere.

Defense giant Raytheon will pay the U.S government more than $950 million for defrauding the Pentagon and allegedly bribing a Qatari official, the Justice Department announced today.

RTX admitted to “two separate schemes” to defraud the Defense Department in connection with the Patriot missile systems and a radar system, and other defense services, according to a DOJ release.

“These schemes to defraud caused the DOD to pay Raytheon over $111 million more than Raytheon should have been paid on the contracts,” the release said.

RTX will pay the government more than $124 million for bribing a high-level Qatari military official to win defense contracts, and then concealed those payments by falsifying documents, according to an SEC filing.

“Raytheon engaged in criminal schemes to defraud the U.S. government in connection with contracts for critical military systems and to win business through bribery in Qatar,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kevin Driscoll of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “Such corrupt and fraudulent conduct, especially by a publicly traded U.S. defense contractor, erodes public trust and harms the DOD, businesses that play by the rules, and American taxpayers. Today’s resolutions, with criminal and civil recoveries totaling nearly $1 billion, reflect the Criminal Division’s ability to tackle the most significant and complex white-collar cases across multiple subject matters.”

In a statement, RTX said the misconduct occurred “largely prior to 2020” and the financial impact of these matters is consistent with the reserve announced in the company’s July 2024 quarterly earnings report.

“RTX is taking responsibility for the misconduct that occurred. We have worked diligently during the investigations to remediate that misconduct and continue to do so. We are committed to working closely with the incoming independent monitor to improve and further enhance our ethics and compliance program,” the company said.  

The defense contractor also recently was fined $200 million for the unauthorized export of defense technology to China, Russia, Iran, and elsewhere. In July, the company told investors during an earnings call that it set aside more than $1 billion to settle a number of government investigations.

"While this is one of the biggest penalties in recent memory, it is not an isolated incident with defense contractors. For example, earlier this year Lockheed settled a suit for $70 million to resolve overcharging the Navy for parts. Meanwhile, Boeing on the commercial aerospace end of the spectrum paid some $487 million related to 737 MAX certification," said Rich Pettibone of Forecast International, a sister brand of Defense One. “With RTX taking responsibility for the misconduct and paying the penalty, I don't anticipate any curtailment of their work with the Pentagon.”

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/...65396.html

Quote:Stealth Edit: FBI Quietly Revises Violent Crime Stats

When the FBI originally released the “final” crime data for 2022 in September 2023, it reported that the nation’s violent crime rate fell by 2.1%. This quickly became, and remains, a Democratic Party talking point to counter Donald Trump’s claims of soaring crime.
But the FBI has quietly revised those numbers, releasing new data that shows violent crime increased in 2022 by 4.5%. The new data includes thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults.
The Bureau – which has been at the center of partisan storms – made no mention of these revisions in its September 2024 press release. 
RCI discovered the change through a cryptic reference on the FBI website that states: “The 2022 violent crime rate has been updated for inclusion in CIUS, 2023.” But there is no mention that the numbers increased. One only sees the change by downloading the FBI’s new crime data and comparing it to the file released last year.
After the FBI released its new crime data in September, a USA Today headline read: “Violent crime dropped for third straight year in 2023, including murder and rape.” 
It’s been over three weeks since the FBI released the revised data. The Bureau’s lack of acknowledgment or explanation about the significant change concerns researchers.
“I have checked the data on total violent crime from 2004 to 2022,” Carl Moody, a professor at the College of William & Mary who specializes in studying crime, told RealClearInvestigations. “There were no revisions from 2004 to 2015, and from 2016 to 2020, there were small changes of less than one percentage point. The huge changes in 2021 and 2022, especially without an explanation, make it difficult to trust the FBI data.”
“It is up to the FBI to explain what they have done, and they haven’t explained these large changes,” Dr. Thomas Marvell, the president of Justec Research, a criminal justice statistical research organization, told RCI.
The FBI did not respond to RCI’s repeated requests for comment.

Extensive Revisions in Violent Crime Stats

The actual changes in crimes are extensive. The updated data for 2022 report that there were 80,029 more violent crimes than in 2021. There were an additional 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies, and 37,091 aggravated assaults. The question naturally arises: should the FBI’s 2023 numbers be believed?

Revised FBI Data Showing Crime Rate Increase
RCI
Without the increase, the drop in violent crime in 2023 would have been less than half as large – only 1.6% instead of the reported drop of 3.5%.
The FBI isn’t the only government agency that has been revising its data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics massively overestimated the number of jobs created during the year that ended in March by 818,000 people.
The FBI’s crime stats revisions reveal how much guesswork is involved in even the “final” numbers often seized on by politicians. The FBI doesn’t simply count reported crimes. Instead, it offers estimates by extrapolating data from police departments that report only partial-year data. The Bureau also makes estimates for cities that report no data. The FBI’s method of generating these estimates changes over time, and it affects the figures they report.
“The [FBI’s] processes, such as how it tries to ‘estimate’ unreported figures, has long been a black box, even to the Bureau of Justice Statistics – the Department of Justice’s actual statistical agency,” says Jeffrey Anderson, who headed the DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics from 2017 to 2021. 
Anderson said when he headed the Bureau of Justice Statistics, “We definitely would have highlighted in a press release or a report the 6.6% change recorded for 2022, which moved the numbers from a drop to a rise in violent crime.”

Many Crimes Are Unreported

Another problem with FBI crime data is its reliance on reported crimes. Most crimes go unreported, with only about 45% of violent crimes and 30% of property crimes brought to the police’s attention, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey. Since the FBI only tracks reported incidents and this gap is so large, researchers argue that when the media discusses crime rates based on FBI data, they should clarify that it reflects “reported” crime, not give the impression that total crime is changing.
Nonreporting of crime doesn’t affect all crimes equally. Nonreporting of murder and motor vehicle theft is relatively rare. In murder cases, victims can’t be overlooked, and for auto theft, insurance claims require police reports. However, it’s difficult to fully trust even these numbers because the FBI underreported 1,699 murders and 54,216 motor vehicle thefts in 2022, casting doubt on the reliability of the data.
Although recent attention has focused on the decline in murder rates, even with the revised numbers, the 16.2% drop from 2020 to 2023 still leaves murder rates 9.6% higher than pre-COVID levels. 
A half-century ago, the DOJ provided a total crime measure, including both reported and unreported crime. The results of the department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics 2023 National Crime Victimization Survey, released in mid-September, tell a very different story from the FBI data. 
The NCVS interviews 240,000 people each year about their personal experiences.
Instead of the FBI’s 3.5% drop in the reported violent crime rate in 2023, the NCVS found a 4.1% increase in the reported violent crime rate. Even with the revised FBI numbers, in 2022, the FBI’s 4.5% increase pales in comparison to the NCVS’s 29.1% increase.

FBI - Change in Reported Crime Rates
RCI
Over the past few years, the number of police officers has declined because of cuts in budgets and many retirements. One result is that police departments nationwide – from  Charlottesville and Henrico County, Va., to Chicago, Ill. and Olympia, Wash. – are no longer responding to calls unless the perpetrator is still there actively committing the crime. Instead of police coming out to investigate and take a report, residents in those jurisdictions can still go to the police station and wait in line to get a police report filled out. In addition, despite the widespread belief that calling 911 is enough to report a crime, the FBI officially doesn’t tally 911 calls. It only counts crimes when police make out an official report.

Other Data Show Sharper Rises in Crime

While the FBI claims that serious violent crime has fallen by 5.8% since Biden took office, the NCVS numbers show that total violent crime has risen by 55.4%. Rapes are up by 42%, robbery by 63%, and aggravated assault by 55% during Biden’s term. Since the NCVS started, the largest previous increase over three years was 27% in 2006, so the increase under Biden was slightly more than twice as large.
The increases shown by the NCVS during the Biden-Harris administration are by far the largest percentage increases over any three years, slightly more than doubling the previous record.
Comparing 2023 rates with 2019 pre-COVID violent crime rates, the FBI’s new 2023 data show virtually no improvement – just a 0.2% drop – while the NCVS shows a 19% increase over that period. But the news media didn’t cover the crime survey when it was released last month.
“With the media using the 2022 FBI data to tell us for a year that crime was falling, it is disappointing that there are no news articles correcting that misimpression,” Moody told RCI. “We will have to see whether the FBI later also revises the 2023 numbers.”
At the beginning of this year, the media was running headlines like National Public Radio’s: “Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don’t believe it.” “At some point in 2022 … there was just a tipping point where violence started to fall and it just continued to fall,” NPR claimed. But now the FBI has itself admitted its violent crime numbers were way off.
Even as polls show that Americans are concerned about crime, the FBI and the media are making it difficult to see how crime rates have changed over the last few years. A Gallup survey late last year found that 92% of Republicans and 58% of Democrats thought crime was increasing. A February Rasmussen Reports survey found that, by a 4.7-to-1 margin, likely voters say violent crime in the U.S. is getting worse (61%), not better (13%). A Gallup poll found in March that “crime and violence” was Americans’ second biggest concern, after inflation. But the media and politicians used the inaccurate FBI data to try to convince people that they were wrong.
“This FBI report is stunning because it now doesn’t state that violent crime in 2022 was much higher than it had previously reported, nor does it explain why the new rate is so much higher, and it issued no press release about this large revision,” said David Mustard, the Josiah Meigs Distinguished Professor at the University of Georgia who researches extensively on crime. “This lack of transparency harms the FBI’s credibility.”

Quote:October 16, 2024 / Joseph P. Farrell

When I opened my email a few days ago and saw this story that had been shared by G.A.C.(with our thanks!) I immediately filed it in my "finals" folder, because it's one of those stories that might be just a "minor" blip on the radar, or it might be one of those stories signaling something much larger may be going on. Indeed, that "something much larger" is the subject of today's high octane speculation.

The story, as the headline notes, is that Germany's elite GSG-9 unit has been deployed to the Baltic seaport of Neustedt in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein (which is the German state immediately south of, and sharing a border with, Denmark):

Germany moves to prevent another Nord Stream-style attack – media

Now, there may be some readers here who are unfamiliar with that elite unit of the German police, and unfamiliar with what its history has been. I covered some of this in my book The Nazi international, so I'll review it here:  "GSG" stands for Grenzschutzgruppe, or basically, "border protection group," and as such is in that "fuzzy" area of German police and military units that inhabit both the world of police or law enforcement, and military.  It's Germany's version of Delta force, the Navy seals, and Border police all rolled into one very nasty elite unit, with a wide mission brief depending on tactical circumstances.  As I pointed out in that book, the GSG-9 was deployed decades ago by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt along with British SAS commando units to recapture a Lufthansa airlines flight that had been hijacked and flown to Uganda. The hijackers murdered the pilot and held the passengers hostage. Enter the GSG-9: hostages freed, hijackers shot and killed. End of hijacking. (And you'll note, not a single Lufthansa hijacking from then until now).  It was the first significant deployment of a Germany "military" unit outside its borders since the Second World War.

But not the last. The next time we hear of significant GSG-9 involvement beyond the borders of Germany was, believe it or not, during the Oklahoma City bombing aftermath, when the GSG-9 was allegedly deployed by Chancellor Kohl to the United States where it was used to help smuggle the German national Andreas Strassmeir, a former German army captain, a graduate from its war academy, and son of German federal cabinet member Gunther Strassmeir, a minister without portfolio in Kohl's cabinet and, as it turned out, the man who was in charge of the plan for German reunification. Andreas had become a person of interest to the FBI in connection to the Oklahoma City bombing as he had often been seen in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the company of Timothy McVeigh at a local strip bar. A nationwide manhunt was launched for Strassmeir, until he turned up in Berlin and gave a press conference. The GSG-9, it is alleged, had smuggled him out of the USA through the FBI dragnet. If the allegation is true (and I believe it to be so), then this means the GSG-9 is also trained to conduct covert operations of a type more traditionally associated with espionage and intelligence than with para-military or law enforcement, operations requiring false identities and "legends" able to penetrate and exit a foreign country smoothly.

My point in rehearsing all this history is simply that this is a group of people that one does not want to "just casually encounter", nor is it a group that one just casually deploys. Indeed, as the above two examples suggest, their deployment in certain special situations would seem to require direct involvement or authorization of the German federal Chancellor himself.

So now we come to the article, and to the purported reasons for the deployment of its naval-diving specialists to Neustedt; the reasons, as RT is surmising, are revealed by the headline of the article itself: "Germany moves to prevent another Nord Stream style attack":

Quote:Germany’s Interior Ministry will permanently station a police tactical unit at the Baltic Sea port of Neustadt to ensure a rapid response to any potential attacks on “critical infrastructure,” Der Spiegel weekly reported on Friday.

The move was reportedly prompted by the September 2022 Nord Stream pipeline blasts, which showed there was a “clear” danger of “acts of sabotage,” the media outlet said, citing security sources.

GSG 9, the counterterrorism division of Germany’s Federal Police, features a maritime deployment unit, GSG 9/2, which has specially trained divers within its ranks and is equipped with speedboats, Der Spiegel said. They can also operate from the country’s Federal Police vessels.

The article then provides some further grist for the high octane speculation mill:

Quote:The Nord Stream gas pipelines – the crucial energy infrastructure built to deliver Russian gas to Germany and the rest of Europe - were ruptured by underwater blasts in September 2022. Berlin launched a probe into the incident but has so far not made any results of the investigation public. Moscow has repeatedly stated that the German authorities have refused to share any information with Russia.

Western media outlets have repeatedly reported that a privately funded group of Ukrainian divers was supposedly behind the attack. Some reports also stated that the group allegedly acted on orders from General Valery Zaluzhny, who was later dismissed and became Kiev’s ambassador to the UK.

Russia has repeatedly stated that the US could have had a hand in the incident. In September, the Russian foreign intelligence, the SVR, claimed that Washington and London had masterminded the 2022 sabotage in an act of economic warfare against their EU allies and are now forcing Berlin to hide the truth.

These last three paragraphs are important, because it would seem that the German government is not telling anyone - not Russia, not the United Kingdom, not the United States, nor anyone else - whom its investigation fingered for ultimate responsibility for the bombing. One may safely eliminate two countries from the list of possible or probable guilty parties: Russia, and Germany themselves. Russia would hardly blow up its own pipeline as it constituted a major potential source of income - and hard currency - for Russia. The only circumstances that might have impelled Russia to do so would be to use it as a false flag to enhance its geopolitical goals, a usage of the event which we have not seen Russia undertaking to any great degree. Nor would Germany blow up a source of energy it needs (unless, of course, it was the deranged Mad Madam Merkel who seemed to view all German sources of energy, nuclear and otherwise, as something to be eliminated).

Indeed, the real culprits are strongly suggested by the Russians themselves, the UK and USA, perhaps acting with Ukrainian boots on the ground. I suspect the Russians are correct, and I suspect that Germany also has concluded the same thing. And that places the story about the GSG-9's deployment into a curious light. In the two famous examples of its deployment noted above, the world did not even know the GSG-9 had been deployed until after the operation was completed, and in the case of its rescue of Strassmeir, no official word has ever come from any organ of the German government. It remains a strongly-suspected rumor with only circumstantial evidence in support of it.

So when Germany announces the deployment of the unit via media "leaks and stories" - Der Spiegel  has long been suspected of playing the role of "government mouth piece" like the New York Times or Washington Post - the purpose is to serve notice to the real guilty parties that any further sabotage of German infrastructure will be first met with deadly force, and questions of the national identity and connections of the perpetrators of any such event will be asked post facto.


The bottom line? In my opinion, the cracks in NATO just grew a significantly larger, even though the story may seem "small"...

See you on the flip side...