[TransterrestrialMusings]
Peter Girnus 🦅
@gothburz
I have two stacks on my desk. The left stack is financial disclosure forms from members of Congress. The right stack is waivers for members who filed their financial disclosures late.
The right stack is always taller.
On Wednesday morning, I watched a soldier get arrested on CNN.
I am a Disclosure Analyst for the House Ethics Committee. I have held this position for eleven years. My job is to receive the forms, verify their completeness, and file them. I do not investigate. I do not flag. I do not refer. I file. I have a lanyard. The lanyard says ETHICS.
The soldier's name is Gannon Ken Van Dyke. He is thirty-eight years old. He was stationed at Fort Bragg. He was Special Forces. In December, he created an account on a prediction market called Polymarket. On January 2nd, he bet $32,500 that the president of Venezuela would be removed from power. On January 3rd, he helped remove the president of Venezuela from power. He collected $409,881.
He has been charged with five federal crimes. Commodities fraud. Wire fraud. Unlawful use of confidential government information. Theft of nonpublic government information. Unlawful monetary transaction. The Department of Justice called it "the first-ever insider trading prosecution on event contracts."
I watched this on the television in our break room. Then I walked back to my desk and processed a late financial disclosure from a member of the House Financial Services Committee who purchased $250,000 in bank stocks eleven days before his subcommittee held a closed-door hearing on proposed capital reserve changes.
The filing was forty-seven days late. The STOCK Act requires disclosure within forty-five days. The penalty for late filing is $200.
I waived it.
I waive most of them. In 2021, fifty-four members of Congress and senior staff violated the reporting rules. The fines were minimal. Most were waived. I have a form for the waiver. The form has a box that says "Reason." I write "administrative delay." In ethics, "administrative delay" means the member's office forgot and then remembered when a reporter called. My approval rate is one hundred percent. In any other field, that number would trigger an audit. In mine, it is called thoroughness.
Let me show you what I processed this year.
January. A senator on the Armed Services Committee sold defense contractor shares worth $1.2 million. Three days later, his committee received a classified briefing that the Iran campaign had exceeded its projected cost by 340%. The stock dropped 8%. He filed the disclosure sixty-one days late. I calculated the fine. $200. His chief of staff asked if it could be waived. He did not ask what the senator traded on. Nobody asks that. The form does not have a field for it. I waived the fine. The senator's portfolio returned 23.4% in 2025. The S&P 500 returned 16.8%.
February. A representative on the Energy and Commerce Committee bought pharmaceutical stocks worth $400,000. Two weeks later, her committee advanced a bill that would extend patent exclusivity for the exact drug class she purchased. The stocks rose 14%. She filed on time. There was no fine. There was no investigation. There was nothing to investigate because buying stocks in companies regulated by your own committee is not illegal. It is legal. The STOCK Act made it legal by making it disclosed. In Congress, disclosed means legal. In my office, legal means filed.
March. A member whose spouse manages a portfolio worth $9.2 million reported forty-three separate transactions in a single quarter. Twelve of them were in sectors directly affected by legislation the member co-sponsored. The timing on eight of those twelve was within a two-week window of committee action. I logged all forty-three. None were flagged. We do not flag. We file.
I asked my supervisor once what would happen if I flagged a filing. She said we do not have a form for that. I never asked again.
In 2020, I processed 847 disclosures. In 2023, 1,211. In 2025, 1,614. The number of enforcement actions in each of those years was zero. The numerator changes. The denominator does not.
I want to tell you about the soldier again.
He made $409,881. He tried to delete his Polymarket account by calling customer service and saying he lost access to his email. He moved his profits into a foreign cryptocurrency vault and then into a new brokerage account. He used his real identity. He placed thirteen bets. Every single one was connected to an operation he personally participated in.
In my eleven years, I have processed disclosures from members of Congress who traded on:
Pending FDA approvals they learned about in committee.
Defense appropriations they voted on.
Trade policy they negotiated.
Pandemic response measures they drafted.
Interest rate decisions they were briefed on before the public.
None of them have been charged. None of them have been investigated by the Department of Justice. None of them have been referred to the SEC. The STOCK Act has produced zero prosecutions since it was signed on April 4th, 2012.
Fourteen years. Five hundred and thirty-five members. $635 million in trades last year alone. Zero cases.
My daughter asked me once what happens when someone breaks the rules. I told her we write it down. She asked what happens after that. I said it depends. She was nine. She is twenty now. It does not depend. Nothing happens after that.
The soldier made $409,881 and faces decades in prison. Nancy Pelosi entered Congress in 1987 with a portfolio worth approximately $785,000. It is now worth $133.7 million. That is a return of 16,930%. The Dow Jones returned 2,300% over the same period. Professional fund managers who beat the market for three consecutive years are considered exceptional. She has beaten it for thirty-seven. If a hedge fund produced those returns, the SEC would subpoena the records on a Thursday. She produced them from a building with a chapel and a gift shop.
She announced her retirement last year. No investigation was opened. No disclosure was flagged. Her filings were on time. In my office, on time means compliant. Compliant means closed.
I want to tell you about the fine.
$200. That is the maximum penalty for violating the STOCK Act's disclosure requirements. $200 for a member of Congress whose portfolio gained $4.7 million in a single quarter. I calculated what $200 represents as a percentage of $4.7 million. It is 0.004%. I could not find a comparison that made it meaningful. It is less than the price of the parking pass in the Rayburn garage. It is less than lunch at the members' dining room if you order the crab cakes, which I am told are excellent though I eat at my desk.
Since 2012, thirty-one bills have been introduced to restrict congressional trading. I keep a list. The list is longer than the STOCK Act itself.
On March 5th, 2026, a representative from Michigan introduced the thirty-second. He called it the "No Getting Rich in Congress Act." The bill would prohibit the President, Vice President, members of Congress, and their spouses from trading individual stocks, cryptocurrency, futures, and commodities while in office.
The bill was referred to committee. The committee has not scheduled a hearing. The committee is chaired by a member whose spouse executed $2.1 million in trades last year.
The bill will be reviewed. In my office, reviewed means read. Read means acknowledged. Acknowledged means a status has been assigned. A status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.
The soldier used classified information to make $409,881 on a prediction market. He has been charged with five federal crimes. The Department of Justice announced the case on the same day I processed three disclosures from members who traded on committee knowledge worth a combined $3.8 million.
The difference between the soldier and the members is not what they did. It is the building they did it in. He did it from Fort Bragg. They did it from the Capitol. He used a prediction market. They used the New York Stock Exchange. He bet on a military operation. They bet on the legislation they write.
He did not write the law. They did. They wrote the STOCK Act. Then they funded its enforcement at zero dollars. Then they set its maximum penalty at $200. Then they gave my office the authority to waive it. Then they traded $635 million.
The soldier flew to Caracas. He breached a compound. He put his body between a mission and a bullet. The people who ordered the operation were in a building with a credenza and sparkling water. They did not go to Caracas. They went to their brokerage accounts. The soldier made $409,881 and is now in federal custody. The people who knew what he was going to do before he did it made more and filed less. His prosecution is not a failure of the system. It is the system. One conviction per decade, at the lowest level, so the briefing slides can say enforcement exists. The $409,881 is not the crime. It is the cost of making $635 million look supervised.
In my field, we call this self-regulation.
The soldier's Polymarket account has been frozen. His military career is over. He will spend years in federal prison. My office will process every congressional disclosure filed this year. Every trade logged. Every $200 fine calculated and waived. The system is immaculate.
Fourteen years. Zero prosecutions. $635 million a year. A 16,930% return.
I have not leaked a document. I have not filed a complaint. I have not deviated from the process one single time. The process was written by the people whose forms I process.
As long as the disclosures go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.
My lanyard still says ETHICS. In eleven years, nobody has asked me to define the word.
[HotAir] Hasan Piker is the darling of the media, and that the New York Times featured Piker and Jia Tolentino, a writer at The New Yorker, to describe their love for stealing.
Stealing, you see, is a form of promoting social justice, just as open borders, decarceration, DEI, rioting, assaulting law enforcement officers, and killing health care executives are.
Yes, you heard that right. The Times' favorite Democrat also explained how Luigi Mangione murdering Brian Thompson was really totally justified.
Spiegelman: But then when you feel this much anger — and it doesn’t feel like there’s hope for it to be changed in a regulatory way — I think that’s when you get to things like Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing the C.E.O. of United Healthcare, and there being an outpouring of glee for murder online, because it feels like, finally, someone can actually do something about health care.
I think 41 percent of Gen Z-ers felt that murder was morally justified. But it’s scary to be in a society where people feel that murder is morally justified. And I’m curious how we thread that line.
Piker: Yeah. Friedrich Engels wrote about the concept of social murder. And Brian Thompson, as the United Healthcare C.E.O., was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder. The systematized forms of violence, the structural violence of poverty, the for-profit, paywalled system of health care in this country — and the consequences of that are tremendous amounts of pain, tremendous amounts of violence, tremendous amounts of deaths. And that was a fascinating story for me, because Americans are very draconian about crime and punishment. They’re very black and white on this issue.
And yet, because of the pervasive pain that the private health care system had created for the average American, I saw so many people immediately understand why this death had taken place. Even before they knew who the shooter was or what the motive was, we had universalized this pain so much so that virtually every American has a similar experience. A shared experience, where they have a loved one who spent their last days — instead of spending them with their family — spending it on the phone, talking to their health care provider to maybe get a little bit of economic respite so they don’t carry on medical debt for their next generation, for their next of kin.
That’s a harrowing process for a lot of people. And for them, that is murder; for them, that is torture. And that is the reason why, I think, the reaction to Luigi Mangione, especially by younger generations, was not so negative.
Yep, just a normal conversation at the New York Times, whose newsroom erupted in rage and fear that the paper allowed a U.S. senator to write an Op/Ed, and which fired the editor who approved it.
And that Op/Ed? It argued that allowing people to riot and loot was wrong.
You can't make it up. Total moral inversion.
Piker: Yes.
Tolentino: I would not be logistically capable of executing such a fact, but would I cheer on every news story of people that I see doing it? Absolutely.
Piker: I think it’s cool. We’ve got to get back to cool crimes like that: bank robberies, stealing priceless artifacts, things of that nature. I feel like that’s way cooler than the 7,000th new cryptocurrency scheme that people are engaging in.
Spiegelman: Would you steal from Whole Foods?
Tolentino: Yes. And I have, under very specific circumstances. I will say, I think that stealing from a big box store — I’ll just state my platform — it’s neither very significant as a moral wrong, nor is it significant in any way as protest or direct action. But I did
steal from Whole Foods on several occasions.
I’ve been involved in a neighborhood mutual aid group since 2021. And so every week I would go get groceries for Miss Nancy, my now family friend who lived nearby, and she wanted to go to Whole Foods. She wanted food from Whole Foods. And I was like, OK, great. And so I’d be getting Miss Nancy all of her groceries, and then I would finish, and I’d be like, oh my God, four lemons, I forgot four lemons. And on several occasions I was like, I’m just going to go back, grab those four lemons and get the hell out.
It's apparently now called "microlooting" and is perfectly acceptable because the system is oppressive.
No, I am not kidding. Capitalism and property are evils that must be eliminated, so stealing is a form of #resistance or something.
This is why, in urban areas, everything is behind a plexiglass shield.
Piker and Tolentino are two of the most privileged people in the entire world. They have access to things that average people in the United States, no less the third world, can only dream about.
And they are complaining about the system. As they sit down with a New York Times reporter in a nice room, discussing how the system oppresses everyone.
#3
"Societal Justice" handed out by Texas Ranger Frank Hamer and a small posse of Texas and Louisiana law officers. May 21, 1934 near Bienville Parish, Louisiana. *Stolen 1934 Ford.
#9
Why would anyone spend years and years in med school, spending vast amounts of money just to live and pay tuition without any expectation of making good money as a doctor upon finally completing all the requirements to become a doctor?
Silly me. I always had to work for my health insurance. I never took it for granted. I always figured that if I got sick or injured and didn't have health insurance, I'd die because that's just the way it is. I wouldn't have anybody to blame but myself.
Somebody has to pay. I always had to pay for mine and now these socialists think I should also pay for all the deadbeats who didn't work as hard as I did? They might say that I'm fairly well off and I should be willing to help other people. Charity is a fine thing when people contribute voluntarily. But when the government imposes a tax, that's more like armed robbery. It's shocking to hear people talking like armed robbery and murder are OK. It makes me feel threatened.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/25/2026 12:52 Comments ||
Top||
#10
A very wise distillation of our political divide can be boiled down to a simple absolute. Do you believe people can own property (remember money is a form of property to make it fungible) or not! Conservatives believe it is an absolute right, liberals, even the best of them, believe it is conditional.
#11
Do you believe people can own property ... or not!
It seems to be an important question. In his book "The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else", Hernando de Soto (no, not that one!) came to the conclusion the key factor was property rights and a legal system that supported them.
the tl;dr: If you own something, land for example, you can use that to create wealth.
[WMBriggs] Might I beg you, if you find it useful, to show this article to those who are growing concerned or agitated about this story? Don’t miss the ending.
We hear lately of a number of scientists who have been killed, or have died, or who have plain gone missing. Here’s a headline and juicy story: Mystery surrounds death of NINTH scientist tied to US secrets as disturbing pattern grows.
Another scientist with ties to America’s space program has now joined the growing list of deaths and disappearances around the US.
Michael David Hicks, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), passed away on July 30, 2023 at the age of 59, but the cause of death was never made public, and no record of an autopsy being performed could be found....
While there have been no public allegations of foul play, Hicks’ case marks the ninth person with ties to America’s space or nuclear secrets who has died or mysteriously vanished in recent years, which has set off alarm bells among US national security experts....
Two other men with deep ties to JPL died recently, including a long-time coworker of Hicks, Frank Maiwald, who died in July 2024 at age 61, with even less public acknowledgement of his untimely passing.
Meanwhile, astrophysicist Carl Grillmair, 67, was murdered on the front porch of his home on February 16, 2026....
The disappearance of McCasland, who reportedly held nuclear and UFO-related secrets, has been tied to Reza and Grillmair through their work on advanced missile or rocket science....
Chavez, 79, worked at the nuclear research lab until his retirement in 2017. Casias, 54, was an active administrative assistant at the facility and is believed to have had top security clearance...
In another mysterious incident, Jason Thomas, a pharmaceutical researcher testing cancer treatments at Novartis, was found dead in a Massachusetts lake on March 17, 2026, after disappearing without a trace three months earlier.
There are plenty of lurid details here, but I cut a lot, so go to the original to read it all. I particularly enjoyed the Daily Mail noticing there was no autopsy on one of the dead. Which sounds bad. But you could say the same, I’m betting, about your Great Uncle Fred, whose death you can make sound ominous by remarking, "My great uncle Fred died, and the one thing we always wondered was why they didn’t do an autopsy on him." Try it in company.
Since that first story, it was early last week reported another man went missing: "Steven Garcia, 48, vanished without a trace on August 28, 2025. He was last seen leaving his Albuquerque, New Mexico home on foot, carrying only a handgun." Note the date. Note all dates.
Update: After I had written this, there were last Thursday more lurid headlines, like this, again from the Daily Mail (they were far from alone): "BREAKING NEWS: Eleventh scientist found dead". For good reason, I’ll save this for last, leaving the rest of what I wrote untouched. Below, I will reveal the most shocking death of all, heretofore unreported, bringing the tally to 15.
Here’s the Daily Mail’s most recent graphic (which leaves out some people):
From the reports I’ve seen, I make it 5 missing and 5 dead. Two of the dead were at JPL, one only had "connections" to that lab, and the other two dead were at Los Alamos or elsewhere. The missings you can see from the graphic. They all, dead or missing, were in a range of jobs, from secretarial to administrator to engineer to scientist.
ODDITIES
The strangest missings, or at least the two most remarked on, are the bottom: Reza and McCasland.
According to a more detailed report, Reza (60) went out hiking on a "a ridgeline in the Angeles National Forest." She waved at a person she was hiking with (500 feet below), and then, like rare things will, she vanished. They haven’t recovered her body. This was 22 June 2025. (The DM and other sources have different ages for many.)
McCasland (79) on 27 February 2026 walked out his Albuquerque house "and into the Sandia Mountain foothills." No one is known to have seen him since.
The graphic makes it appear he and Reza were pals, whereas McCasland was an administrator at Kirtland AFB (I’ve been, nice place), which oversaw funding that went to Wright-Patterson, which gave some to JPL, which Reza got a portion of. Along with many others.
Last week, the most competent and benevolent government of these once United States announced they were going to investigate these strange occurrences. Let’s beat them to it.
THE THEORIES
If you are like me, especially if you’re like me since I resemble these guys, you notice that the dead were all entering the Great Downward Slope of Life. It is not unusual (sadly) for those sliding into their sixties to peg out. It’s less likely, given ordinary conditions, any would be whacked, though it all depends on circumstance. And you know what I mean.
The proposition before us, at least how the lurid headlines paint it, is this: Some entity is taking out scientists involved in certain secret research.
We want to know the chance of that. We don’t per se want the chance a person in his or her 60s keels over or disappears while hiking.
The two probabilities are not the same. We mustn’t confuse the rarity of people handing in their dinner pails, if it turns out to be a rarity, with the opposite likelihood that Peter Thiel, or whomever we suppose is behind the mysterious plot, is sending out minions on manhunts. It must be somebody or some group doing the killing and abducting if all these people share the same cause of demise and disappearance.
Just saying that, putting it into concrete terms, makes the idea of a Conspiracy, for that is what it has to be, seem unlikely. Not impossible. Unlikely. To me. Because Conspiracies require real work, real organization, a lot of planning and intricate machinations. Think to yourself about how to whack one scientist and make it look like an accident while also keeping your tracks perfectly covered, and covered so well even your favorite fictional TV detective couldn’t finger you.
Then you have to multiply that by ten. That’s a lot of secrets the Conspiracy has to keep! Not that it can’t be done by an earnest organization. But it cannot be conceived as easy. Think: making folks disappear, with no corpora delecti. Hard labor, that.
THE DEAD
There are some 5 to 6 thousand JPL employees, a majority of whom can be classed scientists or technicians. But consider we’re not only discussing scientists, as many headlines have painted it. And as many are sharing the story. We have secretaries, admins, and others kinds of employees and contractors, along with scientists. That’s our first glaring clue how to think about all this: sloppy irresponsible reporting (in other words, the usual) and taking that reporting at face value, which at this late date is remarkable.
Call it 4,000 for a conservative number of any we can class as "scientist" alone. But you have to add in some number of ex-employees, people who have moved on and are still above ground. Maybe it’s back up to 5,000.
The CDC, taking into account whatever measures they have on dead and living bodies, says there’s about a 1% chance a white man ages 55-64 permanently loses the ability to join any new wars (deaths from any and all causes). A little less for the Equal sex. That seems a reasonable guess to me, given my long experience with medical data.
With this premise and 5,000 employees in this age range, we’d thus expect about 50 to die in a year, with more than a 99% chance from 30 to 70 would croak. If they only had, say, 1,000 in this age group, then it’s obviously less: Some 10 per year, with a range of about 5 to 15. The numbers dip a bit if you consider women separately, but not to zero. Somebody should call a local florist and see how often they’re sending over bereavement bouquets to the labs.
Los Alamos boasts of some 14,000 to 18,000 employees, so we expect a bigger pile of bodies there. And that’s what was found. One more than JPL, anyway. It depends on how many of these you want to consider to be in the scientist pool, but there is going to be a slow and steady attrition rate from death. And then the people listed in the reports weren’t all scientists: there were secretaries, and etc. We might guess well over all 100 people connected or employed at Los Alamos die each year (the "expected" value is 140 to 180). If only half were in the age group, then we’d guess 70 to 90.
So far, we can conclude that the number of deaths is not unusual, and is even expected given our background information on employment and demographics. It’s stranger, in fact, that we don’t hear of more such deaths, given the number of employees these labs have. It could, as I said, be that our "denominator" is wrong at JPL. Maybe they only have, say, 1,000 scientists and ex-scientists 55 or over. Yet even then we’d still expect about 10 deaths, with a over a 90% chance there’d be 5 to 15 a year. And then about three times these numbers at Los Alamos.
And then there will be the odd death of those under 55. So it doesn’t matter much, either, if we lower that 1% chance per adult. Even if were one tenth of that, we’d still have a nice crop of corpses each year (below I use this modified number in the Missings analysis). And again, we’re talking several years here, not just one.
"But I don’t hear of all these deaths. Just these mysterious ones. It’s suspicious."
Right. You don’t hear about most deaths, thank God. About 8,5000 people die each day in the States. That’s about 3.1 Million a year. Imagine having to hear about all 8,50o deaths every single day. And we’re not talking about only one year here, but at least two, if not three. This is a very large pile of bodies from which to choose stories. Consider that second Daily Mail story. Sounds like they went to great efforts to find that extra body. The Daily Mail is stretching to find bodies and connections.
Below, we’ll try the exercise ourselves.
THE MISSING
What about missing people? "Missing" isn’t dead, necessarily, because some that can’t be found eventually turn up alive or their bodies are found. One source reports around 400,000 adults go missing per year in the States. There are about 270 million adults in the USA. That’s a rate of about 0.1%. That surely varies by age, but I didn’t look into how, because it isn’t that crucial.
Again, Los Alamos has some 14,000 to 18,000 employees. We might expect about 14 to 18 each year to be reported missing. And maybe 5 at JPL. Each year. If that 0.1% chance for adults holds. And here we have not just one year, but two to three. Meaning we expect stories on 15 to 45 from Los Alamos over three years, and 5 to 15 from JPL. More, if we’re including people merely connected to these labs.
THE CONNECTIONS
The Daily Mail graphic makes it clear connections can be made between people working at each lab, and even between them, suitably mediated by government funding administrators. All these people were working on projects which seemed to be related, at least loosely. They are all science projects at least.
I once had a job at Lawrence Livermore but I was pre-fired after one of the global warming True Believers found out I was a "climate denier" (apparently I deny there is a climate). But at that near-miss job, I would have been in charge of a statistics group involved in all manner of activities and projects, including the nuclear side (I had a Top Secret-SCI clearance; I did electronic cryptography in the Air Force). And that would not have been unusual. It’s easy at and between these labs to be said to be working on "similar" projects or even the "same" projects.
The probability is certain as can be that you can find at least funding connections between people at different labs who all work for the government on similar matters. For one, they all work for the government. For another, they’re all working on similar matters. And because they’re at national labs, and this is where the research on nukes and such things happens, there’s a lot of natural overlap.
It would be harder, and probably close to impossible, to find no connections. They are connected by definition because they work at, for, or with these labs. There must be connections. And notice that not all are working on the same project, say a nuclear shell to repel Aliens, but merely similar ones. Again, those jobs must be similar. If they weren’t, they be working somewhere else.
THE CHANCES OF OUR THEORIES
These numbers were computed assuming the Natural Causes theory was the cause of these deaths and missing people. Another name for this is the Nothing To See Here theory. It is a dull theory that excites no one. People that promulgate it are not loved, even hated, the party poopers.
What numbers would we expect if Peter Thiel’s Band of Assassins Conspiracy or similar theory were true? Same numbers!
The tally of dead and missing are so tiny, relative to employment, they wouldn’t bump up the Natural Causes stats enough to seem suspicious, especially over a multi-year period. The connections are also perfectly banal. You cannot work at these labs and not have Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon not come into play. Even I have an Erdos number of 5 (for those who know what that is).
To believe the Conspiracy, or give it real weight, we’d thus need evidence beyond that of body count and vague assertions of project similarities at labs run for the purpose of making similar-project jobs. The numbers we have aren’t even close to letting the Conspiracy theory carry the day.
What might this Conspiracy evidence look like? Could be many things. Like somebody reveals emails connecting, say, six or seven of these guys dead scientists, with cryptic messages about The Secret (whatever that might be). Or the same kind of communications from minions boasting of how they did the deeds. Any number of things could work, but they grow increasingly esoteric.
For instance, a leading alternate theory is—shall I tell you?—UFOs. Yes, really. Hello, 1970s. Our "scientists", which we see includes secretaries and others, were either killed by Men In Black, beamed up to ships, or are in witness protection programs (yes, people say this). No evidence is presented for these views, except insinuation. But insinuation is enough when you want to believe. "Wake up" is a popular phrase.
For this we can blame desire. The desire is strong in many that there should be a connection, and that powerful secret entities are carrying out mysterious assassinations and kidnappings as part of their plan to Rule The World. Desire is what accounts for many not looking beyond or into the media headlines. How at this late date any media story is believed is perhaps the most disappointing aspect, to me, anyway. This lesson ought to have been learned better by now.
People who favor the Conspiracy hate hearing criticisms (like these), and think those that make them are bad or are ignorant and naive or are in on it. So don’t take this as me trying to talk you out of anything if you want to believe. I understand. We can still be friends.
THE SHOCKING ELEVENTH BODY
The headlines last Thursday all announced an eleventh scientist was "found dead". Some gave the name, most just blared the increased tally. This is an excellent demonstration of how a truth, the scientist was indeed "found dead", can be false. For the scientist, Amy Eskridge (34) was "found dead" in 2022 after she shot herself (videos of her show an unhappy person).
She wasn’t just found. She was found four years ago. Which shows that once these mini-panics get going, they are difficult to stop. We saw above that there is an excellent chance each of these labs have multiple deaths a year. Now we’re talking over four years. And yet there are only reports so far on half a dozen deaths, from a pool that is almost surely much larger. That make the chance all but certain that we will see more headlines. Beyond number 11, I mean.
I am going to provide them.
Reporters (not a good word here) and rando researchers will reach back and sift through obituaries, looking for any connection to these, and surely other, labs. And they will be rewarded in their efforts. There are bound to be many more deaths "uncovered". Just saying "uncovered", like stating "there was no autopsy", makes the deaths seem suspicious, does it not? Because you can’t "uncover" something known to all, so the temptation to believe these some entity tried to "cover up" these deaths is powerful.
After a full three minutes of searching (two spent in not realizing my enemies placed a typo in my search terms) I uncovered the death of Thomas Eldon O’Hare (88), who was found dead in his Los Alamos home, from what they say was metastatic cancer. There is no record of an autopsy. O’Hare was Air Force and "flew missions as an ECM Operator on B-36 ’Peacemaker’ aircraft that took him to locations throughout North America and the Atlantic Ocean".
Significantly (my emphasis), "After leaving military service he spent the rest of his career in New Mexico while maintaining a government security clearance by working for a contractor to the Sandia National Laboratories, which then led to a twenty year career with the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)."
That brings the body count to 12!
No, 13! For we have to add S. Fredric (Fred) Marsh who was a "Los Alamos National Lab analytical chemist", working at the mysterious "Materials, Science and Technology (MST-12) group", and was found dead in 2023.
Make that 14! Add in Roy White, Jr., who was found dead in 2022, and who worked "over 30 years as a facilities engineer in C Division. He was very involved with all the new supercomputer installations and maintenance."
I was wrong. It’s 15! And the most shocking death of all. Charles F. McMillan (69) who died in a suspicious car accident in 2024. Get this: McMillan was the 10th Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), from 2011 to 2017, and the President of Los Alamos National Security, a private company. He was deeply involved in "planetary exploration via the Mars Rover." Think about that. There wasn’t anything this guy didn’t know.
And dead in a car crash? How dumb do they think we are?
In **2024**, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimated that **39,345** people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in the United States, marking a **3.8% decrease** from the 40,901 fatalities recorded in 2023. This figure represents the first time since 2020 that annual traffic deaths fell below 40,000, continuing a trend of quarterly declines that began in the second quarter of 2022.
Looking at the most recent full-year data from 2023, the **Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS)** reported **40,901** total motor vehicle crash deaths, which corresponds to a rate of **12.2 deaths per 100,000 people** and **1.26 deaths per 100 million miles traveled**. The National Safety Council (NSC) also recorded **40,901** traffic deaths for 2023, while preliminary estimates for the first half of 2025 show a continued downward trend, with **17,140** fatalities projected for that six-month period.
Key factors influencing these statistics include:
* **Demographics**: Males have higher per capita crash death rates than females, with males aged 20–24 having the highest rates.
* **Contributing Behaviors**: Alcohol impairment, speeding, lack of seat belt use, and distracted driving remain primary causes of fatalities.
* **State Variations**: Fatality rates per 100,000 people ranged widely in 2023, from **4.9 in Massachusetts** to **24.9 in Mississippi**.
* **Vehicle Types**: In 2023, **59%** of fatalities were passenger vehicle occupants, **18%** were pedestrians, and **15%** were motorcyclists.
A few of them may have been affiliated with some STEM projects.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the organisation's secretary-general from 2009 to 2014, said a new security architecture was needed after Donald Trump threatened to withdraw from Nato.
Mr Rasmussen has suggested expanding the Coalition of the Willing - an alliance of 35 countries set up to defend Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire - so it can take over Europe's conventional defence role.
He identified France and Britain as the leading members of an expanded alliance, citing their nuclear capabilities as a key factor.
At present, the coalition is headquartered in Paris, with plans to relocate to London after its first 12 months of operation.
Mr Rusmussen's comments come following President Trump's expression of 'doubts' about his commitment to Nato and Article 5 - the mutual defence clause stating that an attack on one member is an attack on all - the European pillar of Nato must be strengthened.
Following direct remarks from both Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, a triggered Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says the U.S. will not be permitted to dictate terms of the USMCA renegotiation, now scheduled for formal talks with Mexico only beginning May 25th.
According to the Canadian leadership they do not need the United States in order to maintain their economy. The unfortunate people of Canada are very close to finding out exactly what that level of arrogance delivers.
USTR Jamieson Greer was just in Mexico meeting with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and the Mexican trade delegation. “Mexico’s economy minister Marcelo Ebrard said on Monday that formal negotiations to review the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade pact, known as the USMCA, are due to begin the week of May 25.”
“Tomorrow and this afternoon we will hear the U.S. side’s views. Once that is done, we will move on to the next phase, which is formal negotiations. We expect formal negotiations to begin the week of May 25,” Ebrard said following a meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.” {source}
Meanwhile Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney continues talking to his domestic audience about fighting Donald Trump and refusing to accept any terms that do not meet his current pontifications: “It’s not a case that the United States dictates the terms. We have a negotiation, we can come to a mutually successful outcome – it will take some time,” he continued.
In Washington, Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said unless Canada engaged in talks about broadening the so-called rules of origin that allow goods to enter the United States tariff-free, Washington might have to impose other border controls. {source}
As the rhetoric continues increasing, the possibility of a full block against the import of Canadian goods increases.
It is worth remembering, the recent Supreme Court decision that overturned the IEEPA tariffs also reinforced the unilateral power of the U.S. President to regulate any/all trade with any foreign country including a full block of trade if designated. Canada is positioned to be the first nation to discover the expressed power of the U.S. President as affirmed by the United States Supreme Court.
One of the reasons why Canadians are oblivious to the potential collapse of their economy is because U.S. media reports are blocked from Canadian social media sites. One of the infringements within the USMCA is the Canadian Law Bill [C-18, the Online News Act] that blocks information to Canadian citizens that is not supported by the Canadian government.
The people of Canada are stuck inside an Orwellian government constructed echo-chamber unable to hear opposing viewpoints. They simply have no idea what is heading in their direction. Which is incredibly ironic considering how much Mark Carney rails against Russian President Vladimir Putin, yet Canada has more restrictions on information than Russia. Think about it. The need for control is a reaction to fear.
This information control dynamic helps to explain why Canadians, in the aggregate, simply do not realize the nature of the trade conflict that has been created by their own government. Perhaps a full 30-day blockade would help their eyes to open; perhaps not. However, something needs to happen in order for the Canadian people to have time to prepare for the economic collapse soon to fall upon them.
On June 1st Jamieson Greer anticipates telling congress that the U.S. intends withdrawal from the USMCA (CUSMA), pending unilateral negotiations with both Canada and Mexico to resolve conflict. Greer described two different protocols within any negotiation to deal with the structural differences between both Canada and Mexico.
Those differences include a completely different import/export profile with each country, different sectors of goods, difference in the wage rates within each country and a structural difference in the way each country is establishing their own, independent free trade agreements with other third-party countries. These baselines form the reason to tell congress of the dissolution, and on July 1st inform both Canada and Mexico about it.
In the interim, the points of conflict are currently being negotiated with Mexico toward resolution. Hence Jamieson Greer in Mexico meeting with officials on Monday and Tuesday.
It is not just Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer who are publicly warning the Canadian government about what lies at the end of this self-destructive path they have chosen, Deputy USTR Rick Switzer recently also sounded the alarm. WATCH (prompted):
The Canadians have been talking to U.S. media looking for sympathetic ‘Orange man bad’ coverage. However, within the contacts between Canadian government officials and U.S. corporate allies, the sentiment from team Trump is very clear:
“The key thing that has struck me, and I think it has struck all Canadians, is so many of these guys in the Trump administration, frankly, they just hate Canada,” said Brian Clow, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s deputy chief of staff who led Canada-U.S. affairs. {source}
It’s not hatred, it’s annoyance.
Years of compounding parasitic annoyances and sanctimonious, ‘holier-than-thou’ pontifications from the arrogant and uppity Canadian government.
The only time Canada has been honest with themselves and with President Trump was when Justin Trudeau was exiting office and admitted Canada cannot function without all of the one-way benefits it receives from the USA {GO DEEP}.
When President Trump was asked about Prime Minister Mark Carney creating a new trade agreement with China, President Trump responded that he didn’t care – it was irrelevant to him. Yet, simultaneously inside the USMCA President Trump has the power to veto any trade agreement between Mexico or Canada and a non-member nation.
So, why didn’t President Trump care? Easy, because in President Trump’s mind there’s not going to be a USMCA; so, he really doesn’t care if Canada runs to violate it. In real terms, Canada doing bilateral deals with other countries, especially deals potentially detrimental to the USA, only strengthens his position on dissolving the USMCA.
#1
"...It’s not hatred, it’s annoyance. Years of compounding parasitic annoyances and sanctimonious, ‘holier-than-thou’ pontifications from the arrogant and uppity Canadian government. ..."
Perfect! This is a fundamental, and patently correct, observation.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
04/25/2026 6:50 Comments ||
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#2
OH YEAH????? You just wait until we get our elbows all the way up!!!
One of the reasons I traveled from Western Russia to Poland -specifically driving across Ukraine- was to see for myself. I shared that story before.
The reality of the Ukraine conflict, World War Reddit, is entirely against the interests of those who are constructing the false impression of it.
In reality the Eastern Donbas region is very pro-Russian and when the Russian Federation took over towns and geography, driving back the Ukraine military, Russian troops were factually greeted as liberators. Now, there is a slow-grinding stalemate, and the losses on the Ukraine side are well beyond what has been reported by government officials.
I provide this context of reality -vs- media presentation because Iranian Prince Reza Pahlavi is strongly calling attention to the bias and willful blindness of European media. WATCH:
“I want to speak directly to the people of Europe. In the past two weeks I have had two major press conferences — one in Stockholm, one in Berlin. Between them 150 journalists attended. We spent more than two hours together.”
Not a single one of those 150 journalists asked about the 40,000 Iranians slaughtered on the streets of my country on January 8th and 9th! Not a single one of the 150 journalists asked me about the 19 political prisoners executed in the last two weeks.
When I told them 20 more are currently sentenced to death, nothing. Not a single one of the 150 journalists asked me about them. When I stood next to a mother and next to a father who lost their sons on January 8th and 9th, and asked them to hear their stories, not a single one of the 150 journalists asked them a question.
[…] It is clear to me that my 40,000 brave, innocent compatriots who were slaughtered in the fight for liberty are of little interest to these journalists. They seem more interested in criticizing America and asking why the United States and Israel killed the dictator that has slaughtered our people for 47 YEARS — than criticizing the regime doing the slaughtering.
They seem more interested asking questions about Iran’s past and history than about what is happening in Iran today; or about the democratic future Iranians are seeking. One member of parliament even told me they didn’t think Iranians are ready for democracy. To that member of Parliament, to those journalists, I remind you: Iranians aren’t just “ready” for democracy. 40,000 people just gave their lives for it, and I won’t let that be in vain.”
So know this, whether or not Europe stands with us; whether or not your journalists do their jobs; whether or not your politicians demonstrate their courage to act, I will fight for my people and my country. Even if we have to do this alone – we will fight until Iran is free”!
I don’t know if this guy is the right one to lead the charge to bring a more politically democratic outcome for the people in Iran, but what he is saying about the willful blindness of western media is absolutely correct.
Posted by: NoMoreBS ||
04/25/2026 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[1774 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
I must be on a "I hate the 'press' " kick today. I think that the presstitutes as a whole are treasonous, anti-democratic (small 'd') and anti-American. There are some decent ones, but the rest, say 95% of them, can drop dead right this moment and the world would experience a wholesome cleansing.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
04/25/2026 7:00 Comments ||
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#2
“Sundance” is about as valid an opinion source as ZeroHedge. His attempt to align and justify his “thoughts” about Ukraine with Pahlavi and Iran is as discontinuous as comparing heffalumps to moonbats. CTH has some peculiar obsession with making everything about Ukraine, and kneeling in worship to Vlad. Like Tucker and Candace, he ain’t no conservative.
#4
The comparison between Ukraine and Iran is perfectly valid. It just goes to show that the reporters have an agenda and they're only interested in presenting that agenda. Nobody cares about executions in Iran and nobody cares if ethnic Russians in the Donbas were being persecuted by the Kiev government. Nobody cares because nobody knows and they'll never know because the publishers and broadcasters don't want them to know. The reporters are only following orders. I have no idea if their consciences bother them or not.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/25/2026 13:58 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
