SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods. This column is a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from JWR [1]. 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’s column begins with some praise for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
The Man Who Saved the Second Amendment
Linked over at the Whatfinger.com [2]news aggregation site, there is this article about one of my heroes, Justice Clarence Thomas: The Man Who Saved the Second Amendment [3]. A quote:
“Last June, in the landmark case of NYSRPA v. Bruen [4], the Supreme Court significantly strengthened the case law supporting Second Amendment rights. In a 6 to 3 opinion authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court recognized that the Second Amendment protects not only the right to bear firearms, but to carry them in public. More importantly, the Court put an end to “means-end scrutiny,” the rationale that lower courts had used repeatedly to uphold gun control statutes. Under this doctrine of review, any statute that was viewed as furthering an important government interest was upheld as constitutional. Placed in the hands of liberal judges who found firearms to be repugnant, the implementation of means testing had essentially removed the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights. On the contrary, Thomas wrote, the proper standard of judicial review was “to assess whether modern firearms regulations are consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding” — and the most important historical period was the late eighteenth century, the time during which the Second Amendment was written and adopted.”
South Carolina House Passes Constitutional Carry
Some great news, by way of the NRA-ILA: South Carolina House Passes Constitutional Carry [5]. With legislation also pending in Florida, there will soon be 26 or 27 states with permitless concealed carry. This is part of a growing trend: Constitutional Carry Now the Law in Half the Nation [6].
The New Tranq Drug Epidemic
This television news segment is troubling: Philadelphia’s zombie drug ‘tranq’ already in New York City [7]. Some more details on the drug (an animal tranquilizer, Xylazine) can be found in this Pew Trusts article: States, Cities Scramble to Combat Animal ‘Tranq’ in Street Drugs [8].
1,000,000 Migrant Encounters at Southern Border in FY 2023
Migrant encounters at southern border hit 1,000,000 mark for FY 2023, outpacing prior year: sources [9].
El Salvador’s New Mega Prison
Reader H.L. sent us this at MSN: Behind bars: Thousands of criminals, including notorious MS-13 gang members, start filling new ‘mega prison’ [10].
How the CIA Played a ‘Direct’ Role in the Creation of Google
British journalist shows how the CIA played a ‘direct’ role in the creation of Google [11]. Here is an excerpt:
“Ahmed explained [12] that Brin and his Google co-founder, Larry Page, developed “the core component of what eventually became Google’s search service” “with funding from the Digital Library Initiative [13] (DLI),” a program of the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, and DARPA.
In addition, the intelligence community’s Massive Digital Data Systems (MDDS) initiative, a project sponsored by the NSA, CIA, and the Director of Central Intelligence, “essentially provided Brin seed-funding, which was supplemented by many other sources.”
Brin and Page “regularly” reported to Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham and Dr. Rick Steinheiser, who were “representatives of a sensitive US intelligence community research programme on information security and data-mining,” Ahmed shared.”
Governments Often Shut Down the Internet
As reported by The Washington Post: Governments shut down the internet more often than ever, report says [14].
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