Wildfires: why so many across the lake?

 

The haze was not so bad over Lake Erie yesterday, but the east coast was under an air quality alert due to the wildfires in Quebec and Ontario. John Carter raises questions about who or what caused these wildfires.  Eco-terrorists?  Canada’s deep state?  From his Substack column:

There are currently over 100 fires raging throughout Quebec and, now, Ontario. The number goes up every time I go to check Google, last I saw was around 160. The closest is just over 100 km from here.

Wildfires on this scale, at the point in the year, are in my experience unprecedented. Ten of thousands of people in outlying communities have already been evacuated. So far about 3.5 million hectares have burned.

click to embiggen or check it out at the link

As you can see, not only are we on track for the worst wildfire season on record, the temporal pattern is completely out of step with what we normally see. In every other year, wildfire season is mid-August, mid-July at the earliest. The beginning of June is unheard of.

   . . .

That leaves, as far as I can make out, three broad categories of perpetrators: a foreign state actor; the Canadian government itself; or non-state actors.

So which is it? Mr Carter leans to the Canadian government itself, and he explains why.  But he concludes with a reasonable disclaimer:

I want to finish by emphasizing that neither I nor anyone else I know has any proof that these wildfires are caused by arson, or if so that this arson is the result of self-inflicted damage by the Canadian state. That is all pure speculation based on the highly anomalous behaviour of the wildfires (a large number starting more or less simultaneously two months earlier than normal), along with the known policy vectors of the current ruling class, and the demonstrated tendency of that ruling class to ‘make their own reality’, so to speak. This is the same ruling class, remember, that blew up the NordStream pipeline and then pretended Russia did it. They’re not above committing acts of terrorism on a vast scale if they think it will benefit them. With the reputation they’ve made for themselves, it’s easy for many of us - certainly for me - to believe that they would do something like set an entire country on fire purely to spook the populace, and that is perhaps the grimmest comment possible on the times in which we live.

Read his column here.

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Digital control of your finances and your Health ID

Ken Macon at America First Report has the update on the excuses we will hear about as the globalists go about controlling our financial transactions:

The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) is working on an AI system to monitor global transactions. It says it’s in an effort to combat money laundering.

The system, dubbed Project Aurora, will use machine learning to track financial transactions globally to flag patterns of money laundering. According to the BIS, the system can identify money laundering structures performed by money mules.

However, for the system to achieve its goal, governments and corporate banks will have to allow streamlined access and open their systems for the AI to monitor transactions. Some banks already use AI systems to flag unusual behavior. However, Project Aurora will require global access on a terrifying scale in terms of privacy.

The idea of combatting “money laundering” is being used to justify giving governments and banks surveillance power over financial transactions.

The project could be abused to target people for both their financial and political activities.

The BIS is also working on Project Icebreaker, which would create a system where all banks can regulate and homogenize all currencies to create one global exchange model and give the BIS the power to punish and country or company that goes against its ideologies.

And then there’s the digital health ID initiative. The headline to this report: “Another COVID-19 Conspiracy Theory Is Coming True.”  Leah Barkoukis reports at Townhall:

The World Health Organization announced Monday it is expanding on the European Union’s digital COVID-19 vaccine passports, using the system as "the first building block" towards creating a WHO Global Digital Health Certification Network. 

"Building on the EU's highly successful digital certification network, WHO aims to offer all WHO member states access to an open-source digital health tool, which is based on the principles of equity, innovation, transparency and data protection and privacy," said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a statement. "New digital health products in development aim to help people everywhere receive quality health services quickly and more effectively." 

According to the WHO statement, the world body will take up the EU system this month, reportedly to “facilitate global mobility” and protect people “from on-going and future health threats, including pandemics.” . . .

"Protect people"? No, it’s all about control.  More at the link here.    

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Remembering D-Day

On this day in 1944, the Normandy Invasion, also called Operation Overlord or D-Day, was launched.  D-Day marked the beginning of the Allied invasion of western Europe during World War II. Below is a Navy team in training:

They landed on Utah Beach. Blogger's late father is first row center -- the skipper.

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Descent into a Clown World

  

At Freedom First Network, J B Shurk explores America’s “Descent into a Clown World.” Here’s an extract:

Just as the beer companies, fake conservative news networks, and so many iconic American companies before them, the sports leagues have turned their backs on generations of loyal fans in a display of repugnant pusillanimity.  I wonder whether the Judases will one day regret it.  I know that the ESG- and DIE-pushing communists are castrating corporate holdouts that resist the Woke Borg, but by bending to the Borg’s will, these companies have destroyed any goodwill with lifelong allies.  When the Marxists come for another pound of flesh from their corporate vassals — and another after that — those in charge will eventually be forced to fight back or surrender.  By that time, though, nobody will be willing to come to their defense.

This has always been the shortsighted corporate gamble of the Woke Wars — there’s never been a communist revolution that did not devour itself.  By yielding to those who have always hated them and betraying those who have long defended them, companies choosing to comply with woke orthodoxy are now entirely dependent on remaining in the Marxists’ good graces.  Yet grace is not something Marxists possess in any discernible quantity.

It is not that politically conservative and religious Americans have blindly defended corporate interests in the past, but rather that liberty-loving, rights-protecting people tend to mind their own business.  Their first reaction to a company’s success is not envy.  They do not immediately turn their sights on how best to confiscate another’s good fortune.

People who work hard for what they own do not worry about what somebody else owns.  They simply seek to be left alone.  . . .

One problem is that while communists are organized, passionate, and good at messaging, conservatives “simply seek to be left alone” – it’s just not an effective marketing message.

The full article is here.

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FISA abuse: corruption at the DOJ and FBI

 

When the DOJ’s abuse of the FISA court procedures first came to light in 2018, this blogger thought that violation of FISA rules – lying to a judge is a felony – would finally result in indictments and successful prosecutions.  It’s now 2023.  The fearless investigative reporter, Sundance, has gone through the Durham Report, footnotes and all, and exposes yet more layers of corruption.  It’s a long read, but it’s also a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the extent of the rot.  Some have commented that the FBI is in need of reform.  No, it needs to be shut down.  Here’s the opening at Conservative Treehouse:

BIG QUESTION and A BIG COVERUP –
Durham Report Brings Sunlight on Detail Never Released
by IG Michael Horowitz About FBI Targeting Trump

I’m going to go into the deep weeds on this story, because many people are missing a key facet.  The names behind the Trump targeting operation are included, along with citations for independent checks by House congressional investigators.

Inside the recently released report by John Durham [CITATION], the special counsel outlines how former FBI Director James Comey was intimately involved in the creation of the Carter Page FISA application.  Durham notes that Comey kept asking the DOJ National Security Division and FBI counterintelligence investigators, “Where’s the FISA, we need the FISA.”  However, John Durham never interviewed James Comey or Andrew McCabe.  The former FBI Director and Deputy refused to cooperate or give testimony to John Durham.  So, how did John Durham have details about the demands of Comey?

The answer is found in the footnotes.  Durham reviewed transcripts of interviews given by Andrew McCabe to the Office of the Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, who previously investigated FBI conduct in the origin of the Carter Page FISA.  Durham pulled quotes from that transcript. [Footnote #1207, page 199 – Durham Report]

[facsimile of transcript with footnote]

♦QUESTION: If Andrew McCabe gave testimony to the OIG about the motives and impetus of FBI Director James Comey in pushing for the Carter Page FISA application, why did the OIG report never outline those transcribed interviews?  Why was the interview transcript never included in the 2019 OIG report?

[NOTE to Congress.  Now that you know a transcribed interview of Andrew McCabe exists in the OIG office, request the transcription and release it to the public.]

Let me answer those questions without the customary pretending from the DC professional political class.  The short version is that OIG Michael Horowitz was trying to protect the DOJ and FBI. The longer version is a coverup that includes Rod Rosenstein, Bill Barr and yes, John Durham.  I will share that story below.

“Where’s the FISA?  We need the FISA?” ~ James Comey

The DOJ-NSD and FBI Co-Intel needed to find a safe and legal way to spy on the Trump campaign. The 2016 FISA Title 1 surveillance of former FBI employee Carter Page became the fraudulent justification for that intent.  . . .

Much more here.  It’s jaw-dropping.  

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Diversity vs competency

Harold Robertson at Palladium Magazine has an essay “Complex Systems Won’t Survive the Competence Crisis” (h/t Andrea Widburg).  He starts off:

At a casual glance, the recent cascades of American disasters might seem unrelated. In a span of fewer than six months in 2017, three U.S. Naval warships experienced three separate collisions resulting in 17 deaths. A year later, powerlines owned by PG&E started a wildfire that killed 85 people. The pipeline carrying almost half of the East Coast’s gasoline shut down due to a ransomware attack. Almost half a million intermodal containers sat on cargo ships unable to dock at Los Angeles ports. A train carrying thousands of tons of hazardous and flammable chemicals derailed near East Palestine, Ohio. Air Traffic Control cleared a FedEx plane to land on a runway occupied by a Southwest plane preparing to take off. Eye drops contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria killed four and blinded fourteen. 

While disasters like these are often front-page news, the broader connection between the disasters barely elicits any mention. America must be understood as a system of interwoven systems; the healthcare system sends a bill to a patient using the postal system, and that patient uses the mobile phone system to pay the bill with a credit card issued by the banking system. All these systems must be assumed to work for anyone to make even simple decisions. But the failure of one system has cascading consequences for all of the adjacent systems. As a consequence of escalating rates of failure, America’s complex systems are slowly collapsing.

And here’s his conclusion:

Americans living today are the inheritors of systems that created the highest standard of living in human history. Rather than protecting the competency that made those systems possible, the modern preference for diversity has attenuated meritocratic evaluation at all levels of American society. Given the damage already done to competence and morale combined with the natural exodus of baby boomers with decades worth of tacit knowledge, the biggest challenge of the coming decades might simply be maintaining the systems we have today. 

The path of least resistance will be the devolution of complex systems and the reduction in the quality of life that entails. For the typical resident in a second-tier city in Mexico, Brazil, or South Africa, power outages are not uncommon, tap water is probably not safe to drink, and hospital-associated infections are common and often fatal. Absent a step change in the quality of American governance and a renewed culture of excellence, they prefigure the country’s future.

Read the rest here. It’s a long read, and Mr. Robertson is not optimistic, but as Ms. Widburg concluded: “If we recognize and address it, maybe it’s still possible to pull the airplane of state out of its deep dive toward the earth.”

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Your Sunday meme with Bert & Ernie

 

Posted in observance of the suspension of any Debt Ceiling

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