Random News and Notes 1 September

On this date:

• 1676 – Nathaniel Bacon leads an uprising against English Governor William Berkeley at Jamestown, Virginia, resulting in the settlement being burned to the ground. Bacon’s Rebellion came in response to the governor’s repeated refusal to defend the colonists against the Indians.
• 1773 – Phillis Wheatley, a slave from Boston, publishes a collection of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, in London.
• 1775 – Richard Penn and Arthur Lee, representing the Continental Congress, present the so-called Olive Branch Petition to the Earl of Dartmouth on September 1, 1775. Britain’s King George III, however, refused to receive the petition, which, written by John Dickinson, appealed directly to the king and expressed hope for reconciliation between the colonies and Great Britain.
• 1807 – Aaron Burr is arrested in Mississippi for complicity in a plot to establish a Southern empire in Louisiana and Mexico.
• 1821 – William Becknell leads a group of traders from Independence, Mo., toward Santa Fe on what would become the Santa Fe Trail.
• 1836 – Protestant missionary Dr. Marcus Whitman leads a party to Oregon. His wife, Narcissa, is one of the first white women to travel the Oregon Trail. The Oregon Trail emigrants who chose to follow Stephen Meek thought his shortcut would save weeks of hard travel. Instead, it brought them even greater misery.
• 1864 – Confederate forces under General John Bell Hood evacuate Atlanta in anticipation of the arrival of Union General William T. Sherman‘s troops.
• 1870 – The Prussian army crushes the French at Sedan, the last battle of the Franco-Prussian War.
• 1876 – The Ottomans inflict a decisive defeat on the Serbs at Aleksinac.
• 1882 – The first Labor Day is observed in New York City by the Carpenters and Joiners Union.
• 1902 – The Austro-Hungarian army is called into the city of Agram to restore the peace as Serbs and Croats clash.
• 1905 – Alberta and Saskatchewan become Canadian provinces.
• 1916 – Bulgaria declares war on Romania as the First World War expands.
• 1923 – An earthquake levels the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, killing 300,000.
• 1939 – Germany invades Poland. German operatives dressed in Polish uniforms attacked a German radio station at Gleiwitz on the border and broadcast an anti-German message, creating a false flag excuse that Poland had attacked first.
• 1942 – A federal judge in Sacramento, Cal., upholds the government’s detention of Japanese-Americans and Japanese nationals as a war measure.
• 1951 – Australia, New Zealand and the United States sign the ANZUS Treaty, a mutual defense pact.
• 1969 – Colonel Muammar Gaddafi seizes power in Libya following a coup.
• 1972 – America’s Bobby Fischer beats Russia’s Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland, to become world chess champion.
• 1979 – US spacecraft Pioneer 11 makes the first-ever flyby of Saturn.
• 1983 – Soviet jet fighters intercept a Korean Airlines passenger flight in Russian airspace and shoot the plane down, killing 269 passengers and crew-members.
• 1985 – The wreck of the Titanic found by Dr. Robert Ballard and Jean Louis Michel in a joint U.S. and French expedition.
• 2004 – Chechen separatists take some 1,100 people—including 777 children— hostage at School #1 in Beslan, Russia. The situation would end in a Russian security services raid three days later. 334 people died, including 186 children, alongside 31 of the attackers. Over 700 others were wounded.

We start September’s news with a story out of Florida. Governor Ron DeSantis just had the Florida’s Department of Transportation issue a memo revoking all permits for ALPR devices like Flock cameras on state highway rights-of-way due to privacy concerns, misuse reports, and rapid expansion. Agencies must remove them within 30 days or face state action.

The order applies only to state roads, not local or private ones. Duval County (Jacksonville area) Sheriff T.K. Waters announced his office will end all use of the technology.

I have made my disdain for ALPR cameras clear since they started to become a thing. I really don’t care how good of a law enforcement tool they might be, they are a clear violation of both the 4th and 5th Amendments. Anyone who argues otherwise is A) being paid to do so or 2, a bootlicker. There is no middle ground.

And before anyone says my phone is tracking me, I can opt out of nearly all device tracking on my phone and even if I do not, law enforcement is required to obtain a warrant before they can access any of the data from that device/carrier. Do you know what it takes to access Flock or other ALPR data? A subscription.

Next.

An electric facility in Jänschwalde, Brandenburg, Germany was hit with rockets this morning. The assault hit the Turnow-Preilack substation in Brandenburg’s Spree-Neiße district, close to Cottbus and the Polish border, aiming to disrupt the nearby 1,500-megawatt Jänschwalde plant. At least one device detonated causing a short term outage.

The police found several more devices on site and defused them. The substation operator reports a “short-term disconnection” and asks from the local population to be on alert. The facility is operating normally, again. The intention was to cause an energy cascade, eventually taking out the nearby powerstation.

With the limited amount of info available at this time I am going to point my fingers in one of two directions. First – and the most likely – is Russia. This is not the first direct-ish attack on Germany by either the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki or the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie in recent months. German intelligence has connected a couple of recent drone incursions, including one that nearly took out a cargo jet at Leipzig airport to Russian intelligence services.

The California legislature just passed a bill requiring companies to disclose any ties to slavery. The Truth in Disclosure Act targets companies with over $100 million in annual revenue that existed before 1964, requiring them to check records for involvement in buying, selling, or financing enslaved people and file sworn affidavits. A public database would list the results.

So, what, 2 companies? Maybe 3? There cannot be many that are based in the Land of Fruits and Nuts? All I can see is more companies moving out of California.

SCOTUS released a ruling regarding the White House ballroom yesterday. A 5-4 Court is allowing the construction to go forward while the case continues in the lower courts.

While I think that much of the drama surrounding the construction is histrionic and overblown, I think actual procedures and laws were violated. Just not the ones everyone else is screeching about. We’ll see as the case continues.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced the results of Operation Rotten Apple, a month long effort to nab criminal illegals in New York. Between July 27 and Aug. 29, ICE arrested 2,197 individuals across the state, including those convicted of murder, rape, kidnapping, and child sex offenses. Mullin announced the results at a press conference, stressing the operation made New York safer despite no help from local sanctuary policies.

The operation unfolded amid New York’s new Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, which limits police cooperation with ICE—a law now facing a federal lawsuit from 15 sheriffs who say it harms public safety.