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Brochs: The mysterious circular symbols of Scotland

Travel north through Scotland’s deep glens, its mist and mountains and its velvety moorland and you’ll eventually see them: crumbling stone towers rising against the Highland peaks like ancient crag-top castles. These mysterious Iron Age monuments are known as brochs and they exist nowhere else but here. Yet, while these circular dry-walled structures are as symbolic a feature as any in the Scottish Highlands, their purpose remains unknown.

What is known is that around 2,000 years ago, local tribes started harvesting local stone to build massive prehistoric buildings with walls 5m thick and stretching 13m high. To date, anywhere from 100 to 500 broch sites have been identified, with the densest concentration centred in Scotland’s northern Caithness and Sutherland counties, as well as the Northern Isles.

While early archaeologists thought that brochs (whose name derives from the Lowland Scottish word for “fort”) were the citadels of local chieftains, more recent excavations suggest that the structures were more likely used for residential rather than defensive purposes.

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Kentucky court suspends prosecutor who allegedly had sexual relationship with, received nude photos from defendant in exchange for legal favors

The supreme court of the commonwealth of Kentucky has temporarily suspended a prosecutor after it was discovered that he had repeatedly requested nude photos from a defendant in exchange for prosecutorial favors.

On Friday, the commonwealth supreme court issued its suspension of Ronnie Goldy, who has been the commonwealth’s attorney for Rowan, Bath, Menifee, and Montgomery Counties since 2013. According to investigations, Goldy has been caught requesting — and receiving — nude photos of incarcerated defendant Misty Helton of Salt Lick. The Courier Journal reported that since their meeting in 2015 or 2016, Goldy and Helton have exchanged 230 pages of messages on Facebook Messenger. During their conversations, Goldy repeatedly promised to do legal favors for Helton in return for the photos.

For example, after Helton sent him a series of nude photos of herself in May 2018, Goldy replied, “Wow Nice I do have most of those I think But they are very nice I’m sure you have some even better.” Then later that summer, Goldy told Helton that she “owed” him a video and that “It better be worth the wait.”

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California’s war on internet freedom

California appears to be waging war on internet freedom.

Last week, California governor Gavin Newsom signed off a new social-media transparency law that poses a serious threat to free speech. Known as AB 587, the law will force social-media companies to disclose their content-moderation policies, and submit detailed descriptions of their efforts to police speech in certain categories, including hate speech, extremism and harassment. Failure to demonstrate that they are regulating, editing and no doubt censoring what appears on their platforms could land social-media companies with big fines.

As noted by Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, the law will have draconian consequences. It effectively forces social-media companies to please the regulatory authorities now empowered to watch over them.

But that was not the only attack on online freedom launched by California lawmakers last week. Newsom also signed the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act into law. This is arguably an even more troubling move than AB 587.

The Age-Appropriate Design Code Act aims to protect children from harmful online content, by insisting that children’s interests are prioritised when businesses are designing and developing their online services. This law effectively insists that all internet users should be treated like children.

After all, the law will apply to any business ‘likely to be accessed by a child’, or unable to establish the age of its consumers ‘with a reasonable level of certainty’ – which goes for most businesses. Businesses will therefore have to assume that the child, defined by the act as any individual under 18, is the default user

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Pentagon Opens Review Of Its Clandestine Psychological Operations

A report published last month by research groups Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory detailed the activity of fake accounts on Facebook and Twitter that were promoting pro-Western narratives in posts targeting audiences overseas. The social media companies removed around 150 accounts over the past few years, with some removed recently as they were promoting anti-Russia narratives about the war in Ukraine.

The report did not attribute blame for the accounts, but two unnamed military officials speaking to the Post hinted that US Central Command (CENTCOM) was involved. Separately, the Post said that Facebook removed fictitious personas created by CENTCOM to counter a Chinese claim that Covid-19 originated from the US Army bio lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland.

In response to the Graphika and Stanford Internet Observatory report, Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, ordered the review, which instructed US military command involved in psychological operations to fill the White House in on their activities by next month. Kahl said he wanted to know what types of operations were being carried out and if they were effective.

The US military has a long history of psychological operations, but its activities online in that area are shrouded in secrecy. While there are military units that specialize in psyops, such as the US Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group, the Pentagon also employs more covert forces in this area.

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DHS to spend almost $700,000 of taxpayers’ cash on studying “extremism” in video gaming

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded researchers a $699,768 grant to investigate extremism in gaming.

As reported by VICE, the money will go to Logically, a company committed to the issue of “bad” online behavior, Middlebury Institute’s Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC), and Take This, a nonprofit that specializes in mental health in video gaming.

“Over the past decade, video games have increasingly become focal points of social activity and identity creation for adolescents and young adults. Relationships made and fostered within game ecosystems routinely cross over into the real world and are impactful parts of local communities,” the grant announcement on the DHS website said. “Correspondingly, extremists have used video games and targeted video game communities for activities ranging from propaganda creation to terrorist mobilization and training.”

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Zelensky and NATO plan to transform post-war Ukraine into ‘a big Israel’

The NATO-backed Atlantic Council has proposed apartheid Israel as a blueprint for a hyper-militarized Ukraine. The paper was authored by Obama’s former ambassador to Tel Aviv, now an Israeli spy-tech consultant.

Just forty days after Russia’s military campaign began inside Ukraine, Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky told reporters that in the future, his country would be like “a big Israel.” The following day, one of Israel’s top promoters in the Democratic Party published an op-ed in NATO’s official think tank exploring how that could be executed.

Zelensky made his prediction while speaking to reporters on April 5, rejecting the idea that Kiev would remain neutral in future conflicts between NATO, the European Union, and Russia. According to Zelensky, his country would never be like Switzerland (which coincidentally abandoned its Napoleon-era tradition of nonalignment by sanctioning Russia in response to its February invasion). 

“We cannot talk about ‘Switzerland of the future,’” the president informed reporters. “But we will definitely become a ‘big Israel’ with its own face.”

For those wondering what a “big Israel” would actually look like, Zelensky quickly elaborated on his disturbing prophecy.

“We will not be surprised that we will have representatives of the Armed Forces or the National Guard in all institutions, supermarkets, cinemas — there will be people with weapons,” Ukraine’s president said, predicting a bleak existence for his citizens. “I am sure that our security issue will be number one in the next ten years.”

Though the web post was based on comments Zelensky made to reporters, the president’s office mysteriously excised a section of his remarks in which he declared a future Ukraine would not be “absolutely liberal, European.” Instead, along with his vision for a heavily militarized Ukraine, the post emphasized Zelensky’s readiness to join NATO “already tomorrow.”

For NATO’s power brokers, however, Zelensky’s intimated willingness to join the military alliance was perhaps the least remarkable aspect of his statement. Instead, within 48 hours of his comments, the Atlantic Council – NATO’s semi-official think tank in Washington – published a “road map” exploring how to transform Ukraine into “a big Israel.” 

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America’s War History: How Many Years Has the U.S. Been at War?

How Many Years Has the U.S. Been at War?

The U.S. Has Only Been At Peace For 17 Years Total Since Its Birth.

I have reproduced a year-by-year timeline of America’s wars, which reveals something quite interesting: since the United States was founded in 1776, she has been at war during 229 out of her 246 calendar years of existence as of 2022.

In other words, there were only 17 calendar years in which the U.S. did not wage any wars.

Let’s put this in perspective

  • Pick any year since 1776 and there is about a 93% chance that America was involved in some war during that calendar year.
  • No U.S. president truly qualifies as a peacetime president.  Instead, all U.S. presidents can technically be considered “war presidents.”
  • The U.S. has never gone a decade without war.
  • The only time the U.S. went five years without war (1935-40) was during the isolationist period of the Great Depression.

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