World News Update Jan 20 2025

Do you know what the ‘i’ in iPhone stands for?

You’re not alone — and here’s the answer
Brooke Kato
Tue, December 24, 2024

There’s more to the name than meets the “i.” If you’ve ever wondered what the “i” in Apple products like
“iPhone” or “iPad” stands for, you aren’t alone. Throughout the years, customers have attempted to guess what
the letter could possibly stand for — and little did they know, there was already an answer.

During a 1998 speech announcing the iMac, Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, revealed that the “i” stood for
“internet,” according to NPR and The Economic Times.

The “i” in “iPhone” and “iPad” actually stands for something, according to experts. REUTERS

Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs once said that the “i” stands for “internet, individual, instruct,
inform [and] inspire.” REUTERS

At the time — amid the “dotcom bubble” — the internet was booming in popularity as more people logged on
to the world wide web. But Apple’s humble “i” also stood for so much more, according to tech experts.

“Steve Jobs said the ‘I’ stands for ‘internet, individual, instruct, inform, [and] inspire,’” Comparitech privacy
advocate Paul Bischoff told Reader’s Digest.

This year, Apple released its latest smartphone generation, the iPhone 16, and with it, iOS 18. The newest
update for the operating system is equipped with AI-powered features, the “i” in this case standing for
“intelligence.”

“He also alluded to it referencing ‘I’ as a personal pronoun, and ‘instruction’ for education purposes,” Bischoff
added. AP

The integration of Apple Intelligence, however, has been met with some pushback from consumers who are
refusing to update to the latest iOS version, a decision that could leave their data vulnerable to malicious actors.

A bug in the old iOS allowed cybercriminals to gain access to users’ sensitive data.

________________________________________________________________________________
Archaeologists Find Rare Lamp Decorated with Temple Menorah
1,700-year-old lamp uncovered in Jerusalem

Nathan Steinmeyer December 27, 2024

Archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) uncovered a remarkable and rather surprising oil
lamp during an excavation near the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Although oil lamps have been common
household objects throughout history, the decorations of this particular lamp make it extremely rare, as it
depicts various Jewish ritual objects from a time when few Jews lived in the area of Jerusalem.

Lighting Late Roman Jerusalem

The clay oil lamp, which dates to roughly 1,700 years ago, features several Jewish ritual objects, including the
Temple menorah, an incense shovel, and a lulav (a date palm branch used during the festival of Sukkot). While
the lamp itself is quite expertly made, it is the lamp’s date that makes it particularly intriguing. There is little
evidence of Jewish settlement in the area in the third to fifth centuries CE, following the expulsion of the Jews
from Jerusalem by Roman Emperor Hadrian at the end of the Bar-Kokhba Revolt (c. 135 CE).

According to Benjamin Storchan of the IAA, “The nozzle and lamp shoulders were decorated with geometric
designs and the center features a detailed depiction of the seven-branched menorah with a tripod base. Oil lamps
with menorah decorations are exceedingly rare and only a few similar lamps can be found in the National
Treasures archive. The choice of symbols on the lamp is not accidental. This is a fascinating testimony
connecting everyday objects and faiths among ancient Jerusalem’s inhabitants.”

Close-up of the menorah, incense shovel, and lulav. Courtesy Emil Aladjem, IAA.

“The lamp was made using delicately and intricately carved limestone molds using drills and chisels,”
continued Storchan. “The molds were made in two parts (upper and lower). To create the lamp, the potter
pressed the clay into the molds and then pressed them together. Finally, the vessel was fired, and it could be
used. This method of producing lamps in molds allowed for refined designs, as well as the addition of delicate
and intricate decorations.”
‘Godfather of AI’ says it could drive humans extinct in 10 years
Daily Telegraph, Tom McArdle, Fri, 27 December 2024

Artificial intelligence could wipe out the human race within the next decade, the “Godfather of AI” has warned.

Prof Geoffrey Hinton, who has admitted regrets about his part in creating the technology, likened its rapid
development to the industrial revolution – but warned the machines could “take control” this time.

The 77-year-old British computer scientist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics this year, called for
tighter government regulation of AI firms. Prof Hinton has previously predicted there was a 10 per cent chance
AI could lead to the downfall of humankind within three decades.

Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today program if anything had changed his analysis, he said: “Not really. I think 10
to 20 [years], if anything. We’ve never had to deal with things more intelligent than ourselves before.

“And how many examples do you know of a more intelligent thing being controlled by a less intelligent thing?
There are very few examples.”

He said the technology had developed “much faster” than he expected and could make humans the equivalents
of “three-year-olds” and AI “the grown-ups”.

“I think it’s like the industrial revolution,” he continued. “In the industrial revolution, human strength [became
less relevant] because machines were just stronger – if you wanted to dig a ditch, you dug it with a machine.

“What we’ve got now is something that’s replacing human intelligence. And just ordinary human intelligence
will not be the cutting edge any more, it will be machines.”

Prof Hinton predicted AI would change ordinary people’s lives dramatically, just as the Industrial Revolution
did, as documented by Charles Dickens. He said what the future held for life with the technology would
“depend very much on what our political systems do with this technology”.

“My worry is that even though it will cause huge increases in productivity, which should be good for society, it
may end up being very bad for society if all the benefit goes to the rich and a lot of people lose their jobs and
become poorer,” he added.

“These things are more intelligent than us. So there was never any chance in the Industrial Revolution that
machines would take over from people just because they were stronger.

“We were still in control because we had the intelligence. Now, there’s a threat that these things can take
control, so that’s one big difference.”

He said he “hoped” other “very knowledgeable” experts in the field were right to feel optimistic about the future
of the technology.

However, Prof Hinton added: “My worry is that the invisible hand is not going to keep us safe. So just leaving it
to the profit motive of large companies is not going to be sufficient to make sure they develop it safely.

Prof Hinton previously said how he had some regrets about introducing the technology to the world.

“We have no experience of what it is like to have things that are smarter than us.”
ARCHAEOLOGYALIGNMENT OF WALLS, ENTRANCES DOESN'T MATCH CELESTIAL OBSERVATIONS

Mystery unsolved: Ancient Golan

stone circle not an astronomical
observatory after all
Geomagnetic analysis and tectonic reconstruction refute widespread theory about
‘Stonehenge of the East’; dozens of unknown structures also found near intriguing Rujm
el-Hiri site
By GAVRIEL FISKE

 27

Rujm el-Hiri (CC-BY SA Asaf Z/Wikipedia Commons)

A new study utilizing advanced remote sensing technology and data analysis has found it is
unlikely that Rujm el-Hiri, an ancient stone megalithic structure in the Golan Heights, was
used as an observatory as many had surmised.

By using “geomagnetic analysis and tectonic reconstruction” of land movement in the Golan
over time, the Tel Aviv University team discovered that Rujm el-Hiri has shifted and rotated
at an average rate of 8-15 mm per year — meaning it had moved tens of meters since its
construction around 3000–2700 BCE.
Rujm el-Hiri is located on a flat plateau in the central Golan Heights, about 16 kilometers (10
miles) from the Sea of Galilee. The site is open to the public, but accessible only via dirt roads.

“This finding challenges the widely held theory that the structure was used as an
astronomical observatory, as the original alignment of the walls and entrances does not
correspond to celestial observations, as previously hypothesized,” the university said.

In the study, the researchers noted that “the Rujm el-Hiri site has rotated counterclockwise
and shifted from its original location by tens of meters,” so speculations that the site was
“aligned with celestial bodies of the past are not supported. Therefore, Rujm el-Hiri was
unlikely an observatory.”

The study, “Discussion Points of the Remote Sensing Study and Integrated Analysis of the
Archaeological Landscape of Rujm el-Hiri,” was published in November in the peer-reviewed
journal Remote Sensing.
It was conducted by Dr. Olga Khabarova of the Tel Aviv University Geosciences Department,
Dr. Michal Birkenfeld of Ben-Gurion University’s Department of Archaeology, and Dr. Lev
Eppelbaum of the Geophysics Department at Azerbaijan State Oil and Industry University.

Rujm el-Hiri, sometimes called “Stonehenge of the East” or the “Wheel of Ghosts,” is a series of
concentric stone circles encircling a central burial mound with a small chamber. Constructed
of up to 40,000 tons of rock, the site’s purpose is unknown, but some researchers have
speculated that it was used for religious rituals related to the solstices.

Entrance to the small chamber at the center of Rujm el-Hiri. (Ani Nimi/Wikipedia Commons/CC BY-SA)
By “aligning the directions of the solstices, equinoxes, and other celestial bodies as they
appeared between 2500–3500 BCE, coordinated with the symmetry and entrances of Rujm
el-Hiri in its current position… The findings show that the entrances and radial walls during
that historical period were entirely different, reopening the question of the site’s purpose,”
the researchers said.

The plain around Rujm el-Hiri contains numerous man-made structures dating to the same
period, and by utilizing satellite and remote sensing technology, the team was able to provide
“the first comprehensive mapping of the archaeological landscape” in the area, the notice
said.

The team discovered “unique landscape features,” they said, “including circular structures
with 40–90 meter diameters, thick walls, and round enclosures approximately 20 meters in
diameter, which appeared to serve agricultural or herding purposes. Dozens of burial mounds
(tumuli) were documented in the area, some of which were likely used as storage facilities,
shelters, or dwellings, in addition to their traditional role as burial sites.”

In their conclusion, the researchers noted that their findings invite “comparative studies with
other megalithic structures and tumuli worldwide” and “highlight the need for further
interdisciplinary research that combines archaeological, geophysical, and
paleoenvironmental data to understand these monuments’ origins and purposes better.”

____________________________________________________________________________________
Bill Gates-Backed Study Uses Mosquito Bites to
Deliver Bioengineered Malaria Vaccine
by yourNEWS Media Newsroom | Dec 29, 2024

A Gates-funded experiment involving mosquito-delivered malaria vaccines has sparked ethical and safety
debates over its novel methodology and potential risks.

By yourNEWS Media Newsroom

A groundbreaking yet controversial study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has explored a new
method of delivering malaria vaccines through mosquito bites. Conducted by researchers at Leiden University
Medical Center (LUMC) in the Netherlands and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the trial
evaluated a genetically engineered malaria-causing parasite to boost immunity.
The study involved bioengineered parasites of Plasmodium falciparum (P. falciparum), which is responsible for
malaria in humans. Two versions of the parasite were created: GA1, designed to arrest development within 24
hours, and GA2, which halts progress after six days of liver replication.

Methodology and Findings

In a controlled clinical trial, participants were exposed to 15 to 50 bites from infected mosquitoes. In Stage B of
the experiment, healthy adults were randomly assigned to receive bites from mosquitoes carrying GA2, GA1, or
a placebo. However, infections were monitored for only 25 days, a window critics have called inadequate.

While some participants showed potential immunity markers, 20% exhibited elevated troponin T levels, a
biomarker for heart muscle damage. The study claimed these elevations were “unrelated to the trial
intervention” without detailing how that conclusion was reached.

Dr. Richard Bartlett, a critic of the experiment, voiced concerns over the study’s methodology and lack of long-
term safety data. “Tracking participants for just a few weeks is completely inadequate,” said Dr. Bartlett in a
critique. “We need at least six months to a year to assess safety and efficacy properly. Elevated troponin T
levels, a marker for cardiac injury, cannot be ignored.”

Gates Foundation Involvement

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has supported the development of next-generation malaria vaccines,
donating over $2.2 million to LUMC in November 2024. The foundation’s extensive involvement in vaccine
research has drawn criticism from skeptics of experimental vaccine methodologies, especially following debates
surrounding mRNA technology during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ethical Concerns

Critics argue that using mosquito bites as a vaccine delivery vector may bypass informed consent protocols in
future public health campaigns. The experiment’s short observation period has also fueled ethical concerns
about transparency and participant safety.

“The potential for cardiac injury, coupled with inadequate monitoring, raises serious red flags,” said Dr.
Bartlett. “We must prioritize long-term safety over rapid experimentation.”

As researchers push the boundaries of vaccine delivery methods, questions remain about the safety, ethics, and
long-term implications of such experiments. With mosquito bites emerging as a novel vaccine vector, the need
for rigorous oversight and public trust becomes even more critical.

_________________________________________________________________________________
‘I Think Things Are Going to Be Bad, Really Bad’:
The US Military Debates Possible Deployment on
US Soil Under Trump
Michael Hirsh
Sun, January 12, 2025 at 3:00 PM EST·16 min read
11.1k

Mark Elias/AP

The last time an American president deployed the U.S. military domestically under the Insurrection Act —
during the deadly Los Angeles riots in 1992 — Douglas Ollivant was there. Ollivant, then a young Army first
lieutenant, says things went fairly smoothly because it was somebody else — the cops — doing the head-
cracking to restore order, not his 7th Infantry Division. He and his troops didn’t have to detain or shoot at
anyone.

“There was real sensitivity about keeping federal troops away from the front lines,” said Ollivant, who was
ordered in by President George H.W. Bush as rioters in central-south LA set fire to buildings, assaulted police
and bystanders, pelted cars with rocks and smashed store windows in the aftermath of the videotaped police
beating of Rodney King, a Black motorist. “They tried to keep us in support roles, backing up the police.”

By the end of six days of rioting, 63 people were dead and 2,383 injured — though reportedly none at the hands
of the military.

But some in the U.S. military fear next time could be different. According to nearly a dozen retired officers and
current military lawyers, as well as scholars who teach at West Point and Annapolis, an intense if quiet debate is
underway inside the U.S. military community about what orders it would be obliged to obey if President-elect
Donald Trump decides to follow through on his previous warnings that he might deploy troops against what he
deems domestic threats, including political enemies, dissenters and immigrants.

On Nov. 18, two weeks after the election, Trump confirmed he plans to declare a national emergency and use
the military for the mass deportations of illegal immigrants.

One fear is that domestic deployment of active-duty troops could lead to bloodshed given that the regular
military is mainly trained to shoot at and kill foreign enemies. The only way to prevent that is establishing clear
“rules of engagement” for domestic deployments that outline how much force troops can use — especially
considering constitutional restraints protecting U.S. citizens and residents — against what kinds of people in
what kinds of situations. And establishing those new rules would require a lot more training, in the view of
many in the military community.

“Everything I hear is that our training is in the shitter,” says retired Army Lt. Gen. Marvin Covault, who
commanded the 7th Infantry Division in 1992 in what was called “Joint Task Force LA.” “I’m not sure we have
the kind of discipline now, and at every leader level, that we had 32 years ago. That concerns me about the
people you’re going to put on the ground.”
In an interview, Covault said he was careful to avoid lethal force in Los Angeles by emphasizing to his soldiers
they were now “deployed in the civilian world.” He ordered gun chambers to remain empty except in self-
defense, banned all automatic weapons and required bayonets to remain on soldiers’ belts.

But Covault added that he set those rules at his own discretion. Even then Covault said he faced some
recalcitrance, especially from U.S. Marine battalions under his command that sought to keep M16 machine guns
on their armored personnel carriers. In one reported case a Marine unit, asked by L.A. police for “cover,”
misunderstood the police term for “standing by” and fired some 200 rounds at a house occupied by a family.
Fortunately, no one was injured.

“If we get fast and loose with rules of engagement or if we get into operations without a stated mission and
intent, we’re going to be headline news, and it’s not going to be good,” Covault said in the interview.

Trump has repeatedly said he might use the military to suppress a domestic protest, or to raid a sanctuary city to
purge it of undocumented immigrants, or possibly defend the Southern border. Some in the military community
say they are especially disturbed by the prospect that troops might be used to serve Trump’s political ends. In
1992, Covault said, he had no direct orders from Bush other than to deploy to restore peace. On his own
volition, he said, he announced upon landing in LA at a news conference: “This is not martial law. The reason
we’re here is to create a safe and secure environment so you can go back to normal.” Covault said he believes
the statement had a calming effect.

But 28 years later, when the police killing of another Black American, George Floyd, sparked sporadically
violent protests nationwide, then-President Trump openly considered using firepower on the demonstrators,
according to his former defense secretary, Mark Esper. Trump asked, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot
them in the legs or something?” Esper wrote in his 2022 memoir, A Sacred Trust. At another point Trump urged
his Joint Chiefs chair, Gen. Mark Milley, to “beat the fuck out” out of the protesters and “crack skulls,” and he
tweeted that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Esper wrote that he had “to walk Trump back” from
such ideas and the president didn’t pursue them.

Some involved in the current debate say they are worried Trump would not be as restrained this time. He is
filling his Pentagon and national security team with fierce loyalists. The concern is not just in how much force
might be used, but also whether troops would be regularly deployed to advance the new administration’s
political interests.

This topic is extremely sensitive inside the active-duty military, and a Pentagon spokesperson declined to
comment. But several of the retired military officials I interviewed said that they were gingerly talking about it
with their friends and colleagues still in active service.

And Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer who has long represented military and intelligence officers who run afoul
of their chain of command, told me: “A lot of people are reaching out to me proactively to express concern
about what they foresee coming, including Defense Department civilians and active-duty military.” Among
them, Zaid said, are people “who are either planning on leaving the government or will be waiting to see if there
is a line that is crossed by the incoming administration.”

After the D.C. National Guard was ordered to clear demonstrators from Lafayette Square across from the
White House in 2020 using tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades, a group of lawyers founded “The
Orders Project” aimed at connecting up lawyers and troops looking for legal advice.

One of the founders, Eugene Fidell of Yale Law School, said that the group disbanded after the first Trump
administration but is now being resurrected.

“With the return of President Trump, we’re ready to help people in need,” Fidell said.
The Lafayette Square incident remains a topic of some debate inside the military community. One DC
guardsman, Major Adam DeMarco, an Iraq war veteran, later said in written testimony to Congress that he was
“deeply disturbed” by the “excessive use of force.” “Having served in a combat zone, and understanding how to
assess threat environments, at no time did I feel threatened by the protesters or assess them to be violent,” he
wrote. “I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. Anthony Pfaff, a retired colonel who is now a
military ethics scholar at the U.S. Army War College, said this confusion reveals a serious training deficiency:
Domestic crowd control and policing “is not something for which we have any doctrine or other standard
operating procedures. Without those, thresholds for force could be determined by individual commanders,
leading to even more confusion.”

For active military, most of the current debate is happening behind closed doors. As a result, some retired
military as well as scholars and lawyers are trying to bring the issue into public view.

“It’s legally and ethically dicey to have open conversations about this,” says Graham Parsons, a philosophy
professor at West Point who urged military officers and troops to consider resisting “politicized” orders in a
New York Times op-ed in September. One concern is whether the military could tarnish itself with an incident
like Kent State, when four college students were shot to death by jittery and poorly trained Ohio National
Guardsmen in 1970.

“Soldiers are trained predominately to fight, kill and win wars,” says Brian VanDeMark, a Naval Academy
historian and author of the 2024 book Kent State: An American Tragedy. “Local police and state police are far
better trained to deal with the psychology of crowds, which can become inherently unpredictable, impulsive and
irrational. If you’re not well trained to cope, your reaction might be inadequate and turn to force.” He adds that
at the Naval Academy as well as West Point, “my impression is this is an issue that is being thought about and
worried about a lot but it’s not openly discussed.”

Some lawyers and experts in military law say a great deal of confusion persists — even among serving officers
— over how the military should behave, especially if Trump invokes the Insurrection Act and calls up troops to
crush domestic protests or round up millions of undocumented immigrants. In most cases, there is little that
officers and enlisted personnel can do but obey such presidential orders, even if they oppose them ethically, or
face dismissal or court-martial.

But as Covault puts it bluntly: “You don’t always follow dumb orders.”

Under long-standing military codes, troops are obliged to disobey only obviously illegal orders — for example,
an order to conduct a wholesale slaughter of civilians as happened in the village of My Lai during the Vietnam
War. But under the more than 200-year-old Insurrection Act, Trump would have extraordinarily wide latitude to
decide what’s “legal,” lawyers say.

“The basic reality is that the Insurrection Act gives the president dangerously broad discretion to use the
military as a domestic police force,” says Joseph Nunn, an expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. “It’s an
extraordinarily broad law that has no meaningful criteria in it for determining when it’s appropriate for the
president to deploy the military domestically.” Nothing in the text of the Insurrection Act says the president
must cite insurrection, rebellion, or domestic violence to justify deployment; the language is so vague that
Trump could potentially claim only that he perceives a “conspiracy.”

The Insurrection Act, a blend of different statutes enacted by Congress between 1792 and 1871, is the primary
exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, under which federal military forces are generally barred from
participating in civilian law enforcement activities.

Most Americans may not realize how often presidents have invoked the Insurrection Act — often, in the view
of historians, to the benefit of the nation. While it’s been 32 years since Bush used it to help quell the Los
Angeles riots, the Insurrection Act was also invoked by President Dwight Eisenhower following the Supreme
Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, when Ike deployed the 101st Airborne Division (with
fixed bayonets on their rifles) to help desegregate the South. George Washington and John Adams used the
Insurrection Act in response to early rebellions against federal authority, Abraham Lincoln invoked it at the
start of the Civil War, and President Ulysses Grant used it to stop the Ku Klux Klan in the 1870s.

But when it comes to the next Trump administration, the real question for most military lawyers and personnel
will likely be less purely legalistic and more ethical: Even if Trump decides something is legal and the courts
back him up, are troops still bound to do as he says under the Constitution?

One lawyer, John Dehn of Loyola University — a former Army career officer and West Point graduate — calls
this the “Milley problem,” referring to the well-documented angst of the former Joint Chiefs chair during
Trump’s first presidency. Milley stirred controversy by publicly apologizing after Trump used him in a staged
photo of the Lafayette Square incident. During the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, he reportedly assured then-Speaker
Nancy Pelosi that he would “prevent” any unwarranted use of the military, and he has acknowledged calling his
Chinese counterparts to assure them that no nuclear weapons would be launched before Trump left office.

Milley, who has called Trump “fascist to the core,” later told Bob Woodward for the 2024 book War that he
feared being recalled to active duty to face a court-martial “for disloyalty.” At one point Trump himself
suggested Milley could have been executed for treason.

In a newly published law review essay, Dehn argues that while Milley might have breached his constitutional
duties, the Constitution “is not a suicide pact,” and Milley served a higher purpose by protecting the nation. He
quotes Thomas Jefferson as writing “strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of
a good citizen: but it is not the highest. [T]he laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when
in danger, are of higher obligation.”

Similarly, some within the military community are urging troops to “lawyer up” and prepare to resist what they
consider unethical orders, saying resistance can be justified if the soldier thinks it would jeopardize the soldier’s
own conception of military “neutrality.”

“By refusing to follow orders about military deployment to U.S. cities for political ends, members of the armed
forces could actually be respecting, rather than undermining, the principle of civilian control,” wrote Marcus
Hedahl, a philosophy professor at United States Naval Academy, and Bradley Jay Strawser, a scholar at the
Naval Postgraduate School, in a blog post on Oct. 25.

Others within the military community disagree, sometimes vehemently. Such thinking is seriously misguided
and could lead to widespread legal problems for military personnel, says retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles
Dunlap, a former deputy judge advocate general now at Duke Law School. “I am concerned because I do think
there's been some mistaken information that’s out there. The fact is, if an order is legal then members of the
armed forces have to obey it even if they find it morally reprehensible.”

In a Washington Post op-ed published after the election, another retired general, former Joint Chiefs Chair
Martin Dempsey, agreed, saying it was “reckless” to suggest that “it is the duty of the brass to resist some
initiatives and follow the ‘good’ orders but not the ‘bad’ orders that a president might issue.”

Dunlap cites the military’s standard Manual for Courts-Martial, which states clearly that “the dictates of a
person’s conscience, religion, or personal philosophy cannot justify or excuse the disobedience of an otherwise
lawful order.” Dunlap and other lawyers also note that Supreme Court precedent backs that up; in 1974 the
Supreme Court ruled: “An army is not a deliberative body. It is the executive arm. Its law is that of obedience.”

Inside the military this conundrum is known as “lawful but awful”: Active-duty troops have no choice,
especially if the order comes from the commander-in-chief. “No one should be encouraging members of the
military to disobey a lawful order even if it’s awful,” says Nunn. “And it’s crucial that is as it should be. We do
not want to live in a world where the military picks and chooses what order to obey based on their own
consciences. We don’t want to ask a 20-year-old lieutenant to interpret an order from the president.”

Indeed, that could set another dangerous precedent, some military lawyers say, by undermining the principle of
civilian control that the Founders said was fundamental to the U.S. republic. “You don’t have to look far for
examples of countries where the military is picking and choosing which orders to follow,” says Nunn.

Most legal experts agree that troops must obey all nominally legal orders. But military lawyers say it’s
important for troops to remember that even if called into action they must obey peoples’ constitutional rights —
including the right to assemble and to be protected from unlawful arrest and seizure or unreasonable force.

“You have to follow the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth amendments. They don’t get waived,” said Dehn. When it
comes to the Fourth Amendment, for example, which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures
by the government, “the requirement of reasonableness applies” to the military just as it does to police, said
Dehn. So do protections for due process and other rights of the accused enshrined in the Fifth and Sixth
Amendments.

“Due process still applies,” Nunn agreed. “Military personnel deployed under the [Insurrection Act] can’t do
what law enforcement can’t do. They can’t shoot peaceful protesters.”

Yale’s Fidell says any successful legal challenges to Trump’s orders will likely be more “retail than wholesale.”
By this he means that even if the president can broadly justify the Insurrection Act legally, “you might able to
show a particular order is unlawful, for example if you’re ordered to use your helicopter to create a downdraft to
disperse rioters — remember that happened at Lafayette Square — or shoot at students.”

In the end much will depend on what Trump’s senior legal advisers tell him and what courts decide, lawyers
say. But for the first time in memory, “we have to consider the possibility we could have a commander-in-chief
who is willing to order the military to do something that is pretty threatening to the constitutional order,” says
Parsons, the West Point scholar.

“Even if we get the law straight, what’s the right thing to do?” adds Parsons. “If the president invokes the
Insurrection Act we don’t really know what the ethical boundaries are. Among the military lawyers this is just
uncharted territory.”

Says one lawyer who has studied many cases of military-civilian conflict and spoke on condition of anonymity
because he fears retribution from the new Trump administration: “I think things are going to be bad, really bad.
This is going to be worse than last time. Trump is angry. He desperately wants to turn on his TV and see guys in
uniform on the streets.”

But Dunlap, for one, hopes that “cooler heads will prevail”: “I’m cautiously optimistic that people are going to
realize that not all the campaign rhetoric is going to be translatable into action.”

__________________________________________________________________________________
Prepare For WAR: NATO Chiefs Calls For
“Wartime Mindset”
by Mac Slavo | Jan 15, 2025 |

Do you LOVE America?

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Secretary-General Mark Rutte has urged bloc members to
“prepare” for war and increase defense spending. He recommended the West get into a “wartime mindset.”

Rutte said on Wednesday that NATO members have increased defense investments and conducted more
frequent military exercises. However, he argued that these efforts are “not sufficient to deal with the dangers
coming our way in the next four to five years.” The bloc’s “future security is at stake,” Rutte claimed in his
opening remarks at a meeting of the Military Committee in Chiefs of Defense in Brussels. He accused Russia,
China, North Korea, and Iran of attempting to “weaken our democracies and chip away at our freedom.”

“To prevent war, we need to prepare for it. It is time to shift to a wartime mindset,” Rutte was quoted as saying
by RT. He also urged NATO states to allocate more resources toward defense and develop “more and better
defense capabilities.”

On Tuesday, Rutte announced that NATO would bolster its presence in the Baltic Sea – a strategic area for
Russian naval operations and energy exports – by launching a new mission under the pretext of protecting
undersea infrastructure.

The NATO chief revealed that this presence will involve frigates, maritime patrol aircraft, and a “small fleet of
naval drones” that are expected to provide “enhanced surveillance and deterrence.” –RT

Rutte has also stressed the importance of providing increased support to Ukraine to “change the trajectory of the
war,” and called for enhanced cooperation with global partners. At the same time, Moscow has repeatedly
denied assertions that it represents a threat to any NATO member states and has instead accused the United
States-led bloc of waging a proxy war against Russia and encroaching on its territory.

Stop The Denial: Ukraine Is A Proxy War That Will Lead To Wider World War
News

Financial expert warns all-digital monetary system

would enable ‘complete control’ of citizens
Catherine Austin Fitts is stressing that an ‘all-digital monetary system’ – not necessarily central bank digital
currencies – is all that is needed to crush our freedom.

Emily Mangiaracina
Tue Jan 14, 2025 - 4:14 pm EST

(LifeSiteNews) — Financial expert Catherine Austin Fitts warned in a recent guest appearance at Hillsdale
College that any “all-digital monetary system” – not only one issued directly by central banks – poses the threat
of enabling “complete control” of citizens.

Fitts, a former public official who now publishes The Solari Report, warned that a potential all-digital monetary
system involving commercial banks is just as dangerous as a system of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)
issued by central banks. Many have been sounding the alarm about the potential of CBDCs to allow totalitarian
state control, whereas liberty advocates do not as often frame private digital money in the same terms.

Fitts pointed out that CBDCs can be directly issued by central banks “on a wholesale basis,” as well as issued
through commercial bank “retailers,” which can relay digital currency back to a central bank.

“The challenge with CBDC is it gives the central bankers complete control and the ability to program your
money,” said Fitts, noting that such currencies allow for “complete surveillance and control of where and how
people use their money.”

She stressed, however, that while “CBDCs are quite dangerous,” such “complete control” does not require
CBDCs, but merely “an all-digital monetary system.”
“What we want to stop is an all-digital monetary system, because it is possible to do the equivalent of CBDCs
on a private basis,” said Fitts. For example, merchant codes can be used to bar someone from an online payment
system because a government or corporation disapproves of their speech, said Fitts.

In fact, such punitive de-banking has already occurred in recent years across the globe. Most famously,
Canadian supporters of the Freedom Convoy, which aimed to reverse coercive government COVID mandates,
had their bank accounts frozen and flagged for life in an effort to crush the convoy.

In another high-profile instance of financial punishment, Brexit leader Nigel Farage and his family members
had their bank accounts closed without explanation. The reason for the debanking was later revealed to have
been that Farage was supposedly “politically exposed” – that is, he held beliefs contrary to the banks’ values. At
the time, Farage lambasted the debanking as “serious political persecution.”

Fitts pointed out that now, with many “digitized” aspects of our lives, governments and corporations can
leverage more than our money to punish or control us. “Our homes are full of digitized equipment that can be
identified and surveilled,” she said, also noting that “our cars are more and more electric” and can be stopped or
shut down remotely.

A key to enabling totalitarian control through an all-digital monetary system is digital ID, which allows “great
precision” in personal identification, noted Fitts.

“Then suddenly all those different digitized items and equipment’s and systems snap into one complete control
grid,” she warned. This becomes a governance problem more than a financial problem, said Fitts, whereby a
non-transparent or abusive system has “the power to basically turn on and shut off your transactions,” in what is
essentially a world “coup d’etat.”

Fitts shared an example of how digital ID and money could be weaponized against citizens, citing a recent real-
life worldwide event: The COVID outbreak and its accompanying lockdowns, during which many activities
were restricted.

If a repeat of the crisis were to occur in which citizens were instructed, say, to travel no more than a mile from
their home, and to do so only on Tuesdays or Thursdays, “in an all-digitized economy with satellites flying
overhead, they can literally track you and if you don’t do what they say, they can turn off your money,” said
Fitts.

This would mean financial coercion by bankers and their cohorts would effectively “usur[p]” not only our
federal representative government in the U.S., but states’ powers, since “under the Constitution the powers [n]ot
delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states,” she continued.

Fitts envisions a potential system of “total control” whereby even what we eat is controlled, and “if you don’t
eat cricket flour and synthetic meat made in a lab,” your money will be cut off.

Fitts advised listeners to “use cash,” as well as encourage local businesses and banks to support and use cash
and checks. She has previously recommended opting out of the big banks and finding a good local bank or
credit union instead. Her website, The Solari Report, has a template letter that citizens can use to inform their
bankers about the dangers of CBDCs. It reads, in part:

It strikes me that creating a different, yet centrally controlled fiat currency that can be created from thin air and
manipulated by unelected central bankers does not promote U.S. financial stability or provide citizens with
consumer and investor protections – except in the sense that totalitarian governments can be financially stable
through the power of taxation without representation and the ability to micromanage and regulate the spending
of families and small enterprise.
 China Planning to Cripple USA Infrastructure:

...there are over 300,000 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) People’s Liberation Army (PLA)
saboteurs here in the USA, to take down our electrical grid, poison our water supply, burn our
food processing plants, burn our oil and chemical refineries, food distribution centers, destroy
our railways and main highways.
...Over 52,700 Chinese migrants alone entered the country in 2024.

https://x.com/TonySeruga/status/1766272698966249728
*** Essentially what he is saying here, is that China already has an army within the USA, this
not speculation, this is 'reality', yet it's interesting that many in the COG believe this to be a
"nothing burger", I find that fascinating.
Tony Seruga - who is the CEO of a Data tracking corp. that can track IP addresses, has also
stated that the MSM numbers of Illegals in the USA is way lower (10-12 Million) than what he
is tracking, he has stated emphatically that it is more likely around 32 Million, that have
entered into the USA via the southern and northern borders as well as being flown in by the
Biden Admin. He states also that many of these are Muslims who hate the USA with a
vengeance, and does not see the Trump Admin deporting them all with out heavy
consequences. He is warning that many major cities in the USA will see LA fires 2.0, (some
what like a long time COG member in St Charles, MO sent me recently) in Isaiah 1 -
“I have nourished and brought up children, And they have rebelled against Me;...
Alas, sinful nation, A people laden with iniquity, A brood of evildoers, Children who are
corrupters!
Your country is desolate, Your cities are burned with fire; Strangers devour your land in
your presence; And it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. So the daughter of Zion is
left...As a besieged city. -CFF
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