The mass media's biased view of survivalism. Ransomware Attack.

SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods— a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from “JWR”. Our goal is to educate our readers, to help them to recognize emerging threats, and to be better prepared for both disasters and negative societal trends. You can’t mitigate a risk if you haven’t first identified a risk. Today, we look at the mass media’s biased view of survivalism.

Inside a Prepper Convention

Over at U.S. News & World Reports, an AP piece written by Christopher Sparta of The Tampa Bay Times: Surviving a Day of Doom at a Florida Prepper Convention. Here is a quote:

“A humid breeze blew over the attendees at the second annual Florida Homesteading and Prepping Summit, mostly gray-haired men whose patriotic T-shirts clung to their bellies. Some had spouses or children with them. They raised hands to ask about radio matrices, cross-body holsters and moleskin, to protect their feet from blisters. Were these the survivors who would someday rebuild civilization?”

A Reusable Canning Lids Sale

Brad at Harvest Guard Reusable Canning Lids wrote to let me know that they are running a deep discount pre-season sale from now through June 12th, 2022. You may use discount code PRE33 at checkout to get 33% off your entire order. Share this discount code with all your friends. With inflation coming on strong, I doubt that they will be able to repeat this sale. Stock up!

“According to The Hill, Haley during a closed-door meeting with members of the Republican Study Committee (RSC) said that if China takes control of Taiwan, Beijing will be emboldened to seize other territories around the globe.“

NATO Countries Have Heavily Cut Troop Levels

Reader “Francis” forwarded this piece, over at Zero Hedge: NATO Countries Have Heavily Cut Troop Levels.

A Schism Breaking Apart the “Prepper” Community?

With some web wandering, I found this severely “outside, looking in” piece, over at the leftist Slate: The Schism Breaking Apart the “Prepper” Community. JWR’s Comments: Only a dedicated woke-leftist journalist would focus on the minuscule minority-within-a-minority of “transgender preppers” who dwell in Reddit forums. This hardly constitutes a “schism” to shout in a headline.

Jury Acquits Clinton Lawyer Sussman of Lying to the FBI

Liberal Jury Acquits Hillary Clinton’s Lawyer Who Was Accused of Lying to the FBI. JWR’s Comment: With the Lisa Page connection, why didn’t the judge recuse himself?

A Tale Of Two Mass Shootings

Why is it that this mass shooting in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA on June 1st, leaving five people dead, (including the murderer) made national news with wall-to-wall coverage, interrupting normal programming?

But this mass shooting in Caguas, Puerto Rico, USA in December 2021, leaving five people dead, was hardly even mentioned? (Warning: Very graphic video, with the audio out of sync.)

(Oh, and in the Puerto Rico killings, the bad guys used at least two contraband full autos…)

Europol: Criminal Groups Could Use Ukraine Weapons For Years

Francis also sent this, from Zero Hedge: Europol Warns Weapons Shipped To Ukraine Could Be Used By “Criminal Groups” For Years. The article begins:

“In a weekend German media interview the head of the European police agency Europol has issued a dire warning about the huge amount of weapons being pumped from the West into Ukraine.

Europol Director Catherine De Bolle told the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag that the flood of weapons on the Ukraine-Russia battlefield could end up in the hands of criminal groups for years to come. “At some point the war will be over. We want to avoid a situation like the one that followed the war in the Balkans 30 years ago,” she said to the publication in reference to conflicts in the wake of Yugoslavia’s collapse.

“The weapons from this war are still being used by criminal groups today,” De Bolle emphasized in speaking of Balkan conflicts, and what’s looking to be a similar situation emerging in Ukraine.”

Tucker Carlson on The Uvalde Massacre: Why The Obfuscation?

Over at Fox News, current events commentator Tucker Carlson breaks down how the local police dithered around, while the Uvalde Massacre took place, and their later obfuscation of the facts: Tucker: This is a power grab.

California Faces Worst Drought Since 1895

Linked over at the Whatfinger.com news aggregation site: California Faces Worst Drought Since 1895, Threatening Food And Power Supply.

Ransomware Attack Sends US County Back to 1977

Reader H.L. spotted this: Ransomware attack sends US county back to 1977. Here is an excerpt:

“According to Somerset County Administrator Colleen Mahr, the outages were likely to remain in effect for at least the rest of this week. “We have an outstanding IT department that is working around the clock to evaluate our situation, prevent further damage, and ultimately recover,” Mahr said.

The county government has not responded to a request for an update on their status, but they’re probably a bit busy.

Malwarebytes has discovered an advanced persistent threat (APT) group attacking Russia, and in a bit of a twist said that the organization shows signs of being from China.

Starting in February, the unknown group launched four separate spear-phishing campaigns against Russian government entities, including the state-controlled Russia Today television network. The attacks themselves aren’t novel: one launched days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine contained malware designed to look like an interactive map of Ukraine, a second contained a fake patch for Log4j, and another contained a .doc file with a fake job offer in it with some embedded malicious macros.”