Trading Privacy for Safety?

Caption: Living in a “Modern” Society…

Flocking the Public 

You’ve likely been flocked, possibly without your knowledge. There are also flocking deniers. “I’m sure I haven’t been flocked!”  What am I talking about? If you don’t know what Flock cameras are, here is AI’s description…AI defining AI, basically.

A Flock camera is an AI-powered license plate reader created by Flock Safety. Frequently used by local law enforcement and neighborhoods, the cameras capture vehicle details—such as license plates, make, model, color, and unique features like bumper stickers or roof racks.

Flock says these cameras don’t use facial recognition or other surveillance, and data is scrubbed daily. Some Americans say otherwise.

Flock cameras are becoming increasingly common, often hidden in plain sight and mistaken for solar panels. Despite the company’s claims, the cameras offer sweeping, broad coverage of public (and private) spaces that rival the Orwellian European surveillance state.

They’re not exactly “pole cameras” – devices used by law enforcement for clandestine surveillance – because Flock cameras are out in the open, filming you.

Americans from across the country have formed a ‘DeFlock’ movement, and liberty-minded men have been sneaking up on these cameras in the dead of night and cutting them down. In some cases, these liberty bandits are leaving behind American flags before disappearing into the dark. The DeFlock raids started out as isolated cases, but this past week have exploded on the X platform. Raids are being reported from Houston to the Carolinas.

In many cities in America today, intersection cameras mark every single license plate that passes. Every one. It’s the same on the Interstate highways. If the police want to track your car, they do it that way. And they save the data. Forever. That’s not what I’m talking about here. Flock cameras are ANOTHER added layer. Good, bad, indifferent? You be the judge.

There are also game cameras, inexpensive, readily available, digital, that are camouflaged and can be placed in rural environments to track the passage of wildlife or wild lives (depending on what you’re tracking). How do you feel about people who place perimeter cameras? Is there a difference to you between private surveillance and public surveillance (government programs)? Is the world getting a little too small?

The UK has a New Boss (same as the old boss)

Upon arriving at 10 Downing Street, the new PM said, “I have just come from Buckingham Palace, where I have accepted His Majesty the King’s invitation to form a Government. “In doing so, I am acutely conscious that I am the sixth person in the last 10 years to walk up this street—the seventh Prime Minister since 2016—making this a moment for reflection and new resolution. It requires my generation of politicians to raise our game and rise to the new challenge.” He’s worried about the homeless, electric bills (which British government policies jacked up), and keeping the anti-Thatcher socialism alive.

He said nothing about the gangs that rape children, the refugee invasion, or Muslim terrorists—you know, the real problems Britons face that they are not allowed to speak about in public. Political hacks believe he cannot do worse than Keir Starmer, who was selected because they believed he could not do worse than Rishi Sunak, who was selected because they believed he could not do worse than Liz Truss, who lasted all of 45 days as prime minister after Boris Johnson resigned.

To be a prime minister, Burnham (the mayor of Manchester) had to be a member of Parliament. Once Starmer announced he was stepping down, Mayor Burnham’s buddy, Josh Simmons, magically resigned as MP. Burnham stood for election in May to replace Simmons and received 24,927 votes. Now Burnham runs England. That’s 33% more votes than Starmer, who received 18,884 votes and became PM. The difference this time is Parliament didn’t even bother to vote Burnham in.

Liberals decry the American presidential election process as being too long and too expensive. They act as if the Electoral College system somehow is unconstitutional. They still whine that Hillary got more votes than Trump. I cannot remember the exact number; I am almost certain that Trump received more than 24,927 votes.

158 years after Parliament selected its first Jewish PM (Disraeli), Britain finally gave the job to a Catholic. UK even had a Hindu PM before it had a Catholic. I doubt they will wait another 158 years to get a Muslim.

Burnham will govern a country with an average income on par with West Virginia and a GDP below Mississippi’s. Money isn’t everything, of course, but as nice as the British countryside may be, it doesn’t pay the bills or put food on the table—especially when you have no rifle to hunt deer. Great Britain’s economy is sluggish, with 1% annual economic growth. Many in the UK think that 1% number was fudged to make things look good. (retrospective) There’s not much old oak remaining – traded for flying carpets.

Bullet Points:

** (h/t Claudio and Marjin) Map (right) of the methodical destruction of Wildberries logistics center across Russia, which helps transport military hardware. Red means totally destroyed (currently 3), yellow damaged (currently 2), green still standing (currently 15) – with thanks to the Russian civilians who keep diligently uploading video footage of the burning buildings and crying about the damage caused. 18 out of 20 of the largest warehouses that Wildberries operates are currently within range of Ukrainian drones. Meaning Ukraine can seriously hinder Russia’s military and economy by simply continuing these strikes. The two remaining centers (Novosibirsk, Vladivostok) are rather small, and negligible for Russia’s economy and war effort. Wildberries is more significant to Russia than Amazon is in the USA because of the nature of the place.

** How heavy is too heavy? Maybe you need suspenders to keep your trousers up?

** EdB (who should be boating) asks, “Aren’t Canadians supposed to be nice?”

** Cappy Army’s YouTube discussion of US Black Ops in (and around) Iran – sort of a compendium, much of which involved Kurdistan (Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq). There was a time when the Kurds were America’s favorite, and they’re now out of favor, which the video does not discuss. Last Friday, President Trump announced that all of the US Troops (and anti-missile batteries) would be leaving the KRG.

** Fraud News – Abdiaziz Shafii Farah (left), one of the Feeding Our Future fraudsters, was just sentenced to 10 MORE years in prison for attempting to bribe the jury. This is in addition to his 28-year prison sentence for stealing $40 million in taxpayer dollars.

** (h/t Claudio) Could the same thing be done to suppress fertility in the inner cities? It’s a fair question.

** Police work – with EdB – (somebody will be writing a memo)

** President Donald Trump has reportedly approved allowing Saudi Arabia to build a civil nuclear program, potentially letting the kingdom develop its own enrichment facilities. The 30-year deal, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, could be worth tens of billions of dollars to US companies and shuts out Chinese and Russian firms from Saudi’s nuclear power ambitions.

** An interrogation in Ft. Worth.

** The 𝐁-𝟏 𝐋𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐫 flew its first mission of this renewed conflict overnight, striking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targets according to U.S. officials — a serious jump in firepower given the bomber can carry 𝐭𝐰𝐨 𝐝𝐨𝐳𝐞𝐧 𝟐,𝟎𝟎𝟎-𝐩𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐨𝐦𝐛𝐬 or dozens of cruise missiles. They launched from a base in the United Kingdom and joined the July 21 strikes hitting Iranian command centers, maritime infrastructure, drone facilities, aircraft hangars, and the logistics behind Iran’s threats to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran, in response, threatens to unleash the Mother of All Wars on everyone. They need some original material. That’s very tired. Very 1990s.

** Beware the old man.

The Battle Plan

You can’t have a proper battle without a plan (that never fully survives the first shot fired).  Sometime around 600 AD, a Byzantine military manual began circulating under the name of the Emperor Maurice, a soldier who had risen through the ranks before taking the throne. Known as the Strategikon, it was not written as philosophy. It was a working manual for field commanders, covering everything from cavalry formations to how deep to dig a latrine, and its central argument ran against almost every instinct of ancient and medieval warfare.

Open battle, it warned, was the riskiest possible way to win a war. To try to overpower an enemy hand to hand, face to face, the text states plainly, is a very risky business and can result in serious harm, even against an inferior force. Everything else in the manual flowed from that premise.

Commanders were told to gather intelligence constantly, using scouts, patrols, and paid informants, and to study an unfamiliar enemy through small raids before committing to anything larger. They were told to conceal their own numbers and movements, marching units separately so no observer could ever see the full army at once, and to prefer routes through empty country where spies would not find them. Ambush earned an entire dedicated section of the manual, praised as one of the most effective tools in war, capable of destroying whole armies before they ever formed a battle line. Bribery of enemy commanders was standard practice, not a last resort, and later generals like Nikephoros Ouranos sent gifts to border emirs specifically to buy intelligence or inaction. Starving an enemy of supplies was rated better than facing him in the field.

When a battle became unavoidable, the manual insisted on choosing the ground, the weather, and the timing so heavily in Byzantine favor that the fighting itself became almost an afterthought.

The Price of the War against Iran

The war against Iran has cost the U.S. approximately $37.5 billion in direct military spending, alongside billions more in economic and human tolls. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared this official direct spending figure during a congressional hearing while requesting roughly $67 billion to $70 billion in additional emergency funding to replenish munitions and support ongoing operations. 

The bean counters throw everything into the pot from direct salary and food burden rates to the price of a bomb. The reality is that the military costs us, X, just to remain in port. If we have large fleet maneuvers and deployments to the Middle East, it costs another Y.

They say that the initial days of the conflict averaged about $1.88 billion per day, consuming thousands of high-end precision-guided bombs, Tomahawk missiles, and interceptors.

Of course, the companies that build those things are in the US, and they pay taxes (as do service people) that end up back in the national treasure chest that are never factored in. Neither is the $5 trillion in sovereign funds in the Middle East that are being invested in the US, bringing jobs, paying taxes, etc. This means that nobody knows what the actual costs are beyond the 13 American service members who have been killed and hundreds more wounded in retaliatory actions and regional strikes. How many service members die in accidental deaths in maneuvers in the WESTPAC every year? During recent periods of lower combat intensity, more service members consistently died from non-combat training mishaps than from hostile enemy action. For example, a House Armed Services Committee report noted a year where 80 service members died in training accidents compared to 21 killed in combat. Those of us who served under the standard have seen this up close. I don’t diminish our combat and accidental deaths in the Gulf Region, but we need to keep everything in balance as we analyze.

The training in combat (called “real world” in the industry) against peer and near-peer systems is literally priceless. The large Search and Rescue activity to recover two living F-15 crew members from Iran was an example of putting plans into practice while people are shooting at you.

Add to that, nobody in the Middle East (except Iran) is complaining about the dollar being the world’s reserve currency anymore.

Assigning a single exact dollar value to the U.S. reserve currency status is impossible, but economists generally view its net annual value as saving the U.S. government tens to over a hundred billion dollars in borrowing costs, alongside broader economic advantages. While the status provides significant financial leverage.

Financial and Borrowing Benefits: (1) Global demand for U.S. Treasury bonds drives up their price and lowers their yield, effectively saving the U.S. federal government an estimated $20 billion to $50 billion annually in debt-servicing costs. (2) The U.S. can borrow money from abroad in its own currency, shielding American borrowers from exchange-rate risks and foreign debt crises. (3) Billions of physical U.S. dollars circulate overseas, allowing the U.S. to acquire real goods and services abroad in exchange for paper currency that costs very little to print. (4) High global demand makes it easier and cheaper for the U.S. to run persistent trade and budget deficits without immediately triggering high inflation or currency crashes. (5) Centralized control over the global dollar-clearing network gives the U.S. unmatched geopolitical power to enforce targeted financial and economic sanctions. (6) Reduced currency-conversion costs benefit U.S. multinational corporations and financial institutions engaged in global trade.

Identify the Ship

The Puddle Pirates have their day on VM

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