#Activation Agency in New Mexico
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Activation Agency in New Mexico
Activation Agency in New Mexico: Boosting Brand Engagement Through Experiential Marketing
In a competitive marketplace, simply promoting a brand isn’t always enough to capture consumer interest. For companies looking to create memorable connections with their audiences, activation agencies provide a fresh, interactive approach. Activation agencies specialize in developing campaigns that engage consumers on a personal level, often through hands-on experiences that leave a lasting impression. This article explores the importance of activation agencies in New Mexico, the services they offer, and how they can help brands connect with local audiences.
What is an Activation Agency?
An activation agency specializes in brand engagement strategies, focusing on direct, interactive experiences that bring brands to life. These agencies work to create a unique bond between a brand and its audience by designing experiences that encourage participation, foster loyalty, and inspire consumer action.
Key Areas of Focus:
Experiential Marketing: Crafting events or pop-ups that allow consumers to experience a brand firsthand.
Product Sampling and Demos: Letting consumers try products before they buy, increasing trust and interest.
Digital and Social Media Integration: Combining in-person experiences with digital marketing to maximize reach and impact.
Community Engagement: Building connections with local communities to foster a sense of brand authenticity and loyalty.
Why New Mexico is an Ideal Place for Brand Activation
New Mexico has a unique cultural landscape that makes it an ideal place for experiential marketing. The state is known for its diverse population, strong sense of community, and cultural heritage, providing a rich foundation for activation agencies to craft experiences that resonate with local audiences. New Mexico’s cities, like Albuquerque and Santa Fe, host annual cultural events, art markets, and festivals, creating ideal opportunities for brands to engage with the community in a meaningful way.
Advantages of Brand Activation in New Mexico:
Cultural Diversity: Engaging a variety of communities allows brands to reach a wider audience.
Growing Tourism Sector: Activation events can reach both locals and visitors, maximizing brand visibility.
Engaged Local Market: New Mexicans appreciate brands that understand and reflect their values, making well-executed brand activations highly effective.
Top Services Provided by Activation Agencies in New Mexico
New Mexico’s activation agencies offer a wide range of services that cater to businesses of all sizes. Here are some of the core services offered:
1. Event Marketing and Management
Event marketing is one of the most powerful tools in activation. Agencies organize and execute live events that allow consumers to interact with brands. These events may include pop-up shops, concerts, art installations, and product showcases. By providing a memorable experience, event marketing helps to create a positive association with the brand.
2. Product Sampling and Demonstrations
Product sampling is a tried-and-true activation method that allows customers to experience a product before making a purchase. Whether it’s food samples at local festivals or product demos in busy retail locations, sampling allows brands to introduce products in a personal and engaging way.
3. Social Media and Digital Campaigns
In today’s digital age, brand activations are often amplified through social media. Agencies create digital campaigns that tie in with physical events, encouraging attendees to share their experiences online. This expands the reach of the activation and engages a larger audience.
4. Influencer Marketing and Partnerships
Influencers are a key component of modern brand activations. By partnering with local influencers who resonate with New Mexico audiences, agencies can amplify brand messages and create more impactful campaigns. Influencers can help brands connect with new audiences, build credibility, and drive engagement.
5. Community and Sponsorship Activations
Partnering with local communities or sponsoring events can be a highly effective way to engage with consumers. Activation agencies help brands identify and sponsor events that align with their values, positioning them as supportive community members and enhancing their visibility within target markets.
Leading Activation Agencies in New Mexico
Several standout agencies in New Mexico are making a mark with creative and effective brand activation strategies. Here are a few that offer top-notch services in the state:
1. 3 Advertising
Location: Albuquerque, NM
Specialization: Event marketing, digital integration, and experiential campaigns.
Overview: 3 Advertising has a reputation for developing unique, engaging campaigns that resonate with local and regional audiences. Known for creative approaches, they work with clients across industries to design experiences that align with brand values.
2. Sunny505
Location: Albuquerque, NM
Specialization: Community events, influencer partnerships, and digital integration.
Overview: Sunny505’s approach combines traditional marketing with modern activation techniques. They are known for their strong community focus and dedication to creating campaigns that highlight New Mexico’s cultural vibrancy.
3. Esparza
Location: Albuquerque, NM
Specialization: Experiential marketing, storytelling, and content creation.
Overview: Esparza specializes in crafting brand stories that engage audiences on a deep level. With a team that understands New Mexico’s unique market, Esparza has successfully activated brands across a range of sectors, from tourism to consumer goods.
4. HK Advertising
Location: Albuquerque, NM
Specialization: Event management, sampling, and sponsorships.
Overview: HK Advertising offers a comprehensive range of activation services designed to foster community engagement and brand loyalty. Their work often involves public art, cultural events, and local partnerships that create meaningful brand interactions.
5. Luna Strategies
Location: Las Cruces, NM
Specialization: Digital and social media activation, community engagement.
Overview: Known for their creative approach to brand activations, Luna Strategies focuses on social media and digital campaigns that reach wider audiences. They are a great choice for brands looking to bridge the gap between in-person events and digital engagement.
How to Choose the Right Activation Agency in New Mexico
Selecting the best activation agency for your brand is a critical decision that can impact the success of your campaign. Here are some tips to help you choose the right partner:
Assess Your Goals: Start by identifying your brand’s objectives for activation. Do you want to increase brand awareness, drive sales, or build customer loyalty? Different agencies may specialize in different types of activations, so align your goals with the agency’s strengths.
Review Their Portfolio: Look at the agency’s past work to see if they’ve created campaigns that resonate with your target audience. An agency with experience in your industry will better understand your audience and how to engage them.
Consider Local Expertise: New Mexico’s market is unique, so an agency with strong local knowledge will be more effective in connecting with audiences. Choose an agency that understands the state’s cultural nuances, festivals, and community values.
Check Client Testimonials: Positive reviews and testimonials from past clients can offer insight into the agency’s performance and reliability.
Evaluate Their Creative Approach: Brand activation relies on creativity, so ensure that the agency has a reputation for innovative ideas that can help your brand stand out.
The Benefits of Working with a New Mexico Activation Agency
By partnering with a local activation agency, brands can leverage insights into New Mexico’s unique market, including its demographics, cultural diversity, and community interests. These agencies offer an array of benefits:
Enhanced Local Engagement: Local agencies understand New Mexico’s communities and can design campaigns that resonate authentically.
Strong Cultural Connections: Agencies based in New Mexico are well-versed in the state’s festivals, art scene, and community events, creating opportunities for deeper engagement.
Creative and Unique Experiences: Activation agencies specialize in developing memorable, interactive experiences that help brands leave a lasting impression on their audience.
Conclusion
An activation agency can be a game-changer for brands seeking to build stronger relationships with consumers. By working with a skilled activation agency in New Mexico, businesses can leverage the power of experiential marketing to reach audiences in fresh and innovative ways. From live events and product sampling to influencer partnerships and community activations, these agencies know how to create impactful campaigns that bring brands to life.
For businesses ready to engage with New Mexico’s vibrant, culturally rich market, partnering with a local activation agency is a smart investment. Whether you're launching a new product, building brand loyalty, or expanding your reach, a top activation agency can help you make a memorable impact on your target audience.
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This is a gift article.
The truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality. As Hurricane Milton churned across the Gulf of Mexico last night, I saw an onslaught of outright conspiracy theorizing and utter nonsense racking up millions of views across the internet. The posts would be laughable if they weren’t taken by many people as gospel. Among them: Infowars’ Alex Jones, who claimed that Hurricanes Milton and Helene were “weather weapons” unleashed on the East Coast by the U.S. government, and “truth seeker” accounts on X that posted photos of condensation trails in the sky to baselessly allege that the government was “spraying Florida ahead of Hurricane Milton” in order to ensure maximum rainfall, “just like they did over Asheville!”
As Milton made landfall, causing a series of tornados, a verified account on X reposted a TikTok video of a massive funnel cloud with the caption “WHAT IS HAPPENING TO FLORIDA?!” The clip, which was eventually removed but had been viewed 662,000 times as of yesterday evening, turned out to be from a video of a CGI tornado that was originally published months ago. Scrolling through these platforms, watching them fill with false information, harebrained theories, and doctored images—all while panicked residents boarded up their houses, struggled to evacuate, and prayed that their worldly possessions wouldn’t be obliterated overnight—offered a portrait of American discourse almost too bleak to reckon with head-on.
Even in a decade marred by online grifters, shameless politicians, and an alternative right-wing-media complex pushing anti-science fringe theories, the events of the past few weeks stand out for their depravity and nihilism. As two catastrophic storms upended American cities, a patchwork network of influencers and fake-news peddlers have done their best to sow distrust, stoke resentment, and interfere with relief efforts. But this is more than just a misinformation crisis. To watch as real information is overwhelmed by crank theories and public servants battle death threats is to confront two alarming facts: first, that a durable ecosystem exists to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality, and second, that the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes but willing participants.
Some of the lies and obfuscation are politically motivated, such as the claim that FEMA is offering only $750 in total to hurricane victims who have lost their home. (In reality, FEMA offers $750 as immediate “Serious Needs Assistance” to help people get basic supplies such as food and water.) Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, and Fox News have all repeated that lie. Trump also posted (and later deleted) on Truth Social that FEMA money was given to undocumented migrants, which is untrue. Elon Musk, who owns X, claimed—without evidence—that FEMA was “actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own. It’s very real and scary how much they have taken control to stop people helping.” That post has been viewed more than 40 million times. Other influencers, such as the Trump sycophant Laura Loomer, have urged their followers to disrupt the disaster agency’s efforts to help hurricane victims. “Do not comply with FEMA,” she posted on X. “This is a matter of survival.”
The result of this fearmongering is what you might expect. Angry, embittered citizens have been harassing government officials in North Carolina, as well as FEMA employees. According to an analysis by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an extremism-research group, “Falsehoods around hurricane response have spawned credible threats and incitement to violence directed at the federal government,” including “calls to send militias to face down FEMA.” The study also found that 30 percent of the X posts analyzed by ISD “contained overt antisemitic hate, including abuse directed at public officials such as the Mayor of Asheville, North Carolina; the FEMA Director of Public Affairs; and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.” The posts received a collective 17.1 million views as of October 7.
Online, first responders are pleading with residents, asking for their help to combat the flood of lies and conspiracy theories. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said that the volume of misinformation could hamper relief efforts. “If it creates so much fear that my staff doesn’t want to go out in the field, then we’re not going to be in a position where we can help people,” she said in a news conference on Tuesday. In Pensacola, North Carolina, Assistant Fire Chief Bradley Boone vented his frustrations on Facebook: “I’m trying to rescue my community,” he said in a livestream. “I ain’t got time. I ain’t got time to chase down every Facebook rumor … We’ve been through enough.”
It is difficult to capture the nihilism of the current moment. The pandemic saw Americans, distrustful of authority, trying to discredit effective vaccines, spreading conspiracy theories, and attacking public-health officials. But what feels novel in the aftermath of this month’s hurricanes is how the people doing the lying aren’t even trying to hide the provenance of their bullshit. Similarly, those sharing the lies are happy to admit that they do not care whether what they’re pushing is real or not. Such was the case last week, when Republican politicians shared an AI-generated viral image of a little girl holding a puppy while supposedly fleeing Helene. Though the image was clearly fake and quickly debunked, some politicians remained defiant. “Y’all, I don’t know where this photo came from and honestly, it doesn’t matter,” Amy Kremer, who represents Georgia on the Republican National Committee, wrote after sharing the fake image. “I’m leaving it because it is emblematic of the trauma and pain people are living through right now.”
Kremer wasn’t alone. The journalist Parker Molloy compiled screenshots of people “acknowledging that this image is AI but still insisting that it’s real on some deeper level”—proof, Molloy noted, that we’re “living in the post-reality.” The technology writer Jason Koebler argued that we’ve entered the “‘Fuck It’ Era” of AI slop and political messaging, with AI-generated images being used to convey whatever partisan message suits the moment, regardless of truth.
This has all been building for more than a decade. On The Colbert Report, back in 2005, Stephen Colbert coined the word truthiness, which he defined as “the belief in what you feel to be true rather than what the facts will support.” This reality-fracturing is the result of an information ecosystem that is dominated by platforms that offer financial and attentional incentives to lie and enrage, and to turn every tragedy and large event into a shameless content-creation opportunity. This collides with a swath of people who would rather live in an alternate reality built on distrust and grievance than change their fundamental beliefs about the world. But the misinformation crisis is not always what we think it is.
So much of the conversation around misinformation suggests that its primary job is to persuade. But as Michael Caulfield, an information researcher at the University of Washington, has argued, “The primary use of ‘misinformation’ is not to change the beliefs of other people at all. Instead, the vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” This distinction is important, in part because it assigns agency to those who consume and share obviously fake information. What is clear from comments such as Kremer’s is that she is not a dupe; although she may come off as deeply incurious and shameless, she is publicly admitting to being an active participant in the far right’s world-building project, where feel is always greater than real.
What we’re witnessing online during and in the aftermath of these hurricanes is a group of people desperate to protect the dark, fictitious world they’ve built. Rather than deal with the realities of a warming planet hurling once-in-a-generation storms at them every few weeks, they’d rather malign and threaten meteorologists, who, in their minds, are “nothing but a trained subversive liar programmed to spew stupid shit to support the global warming bullshit,” as one X user put it. It is a strategy designed to silence voices of reason, because those voices threaten to expose the cracks in their current worldview. But their efforts are doomed, futile. As one dispirited meteorologist wrote on X this week, “Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes.” She followed with: “I can’t believe I just had to type that.”
What is clear is that a new framework is needed to describe this fracturing. Misinformation is too technical, too freighted, and, after almost a decade of Trump, too political. Nor does it explain what is really happening, which is nothing less than a cultural assault on any person or institution that operates in reality. If you are a weatherperson, you’re a target. The same goes for journalists, election workers, scientists, doctors, and first responders. These jobs are different, but the thing they share is that they all must attend to and describe the world as it is. This makes them dangerous to people who cannot abide by the agonizing constraints of reality, as well as those who have financial and political interests in keeping up the charade.
In one sense, these attacks—and their increased desperation—make sense. The world feels dark; for many people, it’s tempting to meet that with a retreat into the delusion that they’ve got everything figured out, that the powers that be have conspired against them directly. But in turning away, they exacerbate a crisis that has characterized the Trump era, one that will reverberate to Election Day and beyond. Americans are divided not just by political beliefs but by whether they believe in a shared reality—or desire one at all.
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(long post from The Atlantic) I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is
What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis.
Charlie Warzel is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of its newsletter Galaxy Brain, about technology, media, and big ideas. He can be reached via email.
October 10, 2024
Updated at 9:43 a.m. ET on October 11, 2024
The truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality. As Hurricane Milton churned across the Gulf of Mexico last night, I saw an onslaught of outright conspiracy theorizing and utter nonsense racking up millions of views across the internet. The posts would be laughable if they weren’t taken by many people as gospel. Among them: Infowars’ Alex Jones, who claimed that Hurricanes Milton and Helene were “weather weapons” unleashed on the East Coast by the U.S. government, and “truth seeker” accounts on X that posted photos of condensation trails in the sky to baselessly allege that the government was “spraying Florida ahead of Hurricane Milton” in order to ensure maximum rainfall, “just like they did over Asheville!”
As Milton made landfall, causing a series of tornados, a verified account on X reposted a TikTok video of a massive funnel cloud with the caption “WHAT IS HAPPENING TO FLORIDA?!” The clip, which was eventually removed but had been viewed 662,000 times as of yesterday evening, turned out to be from a video of a CGI tornado that was originally published months ago. Scrolling through these platforms, watching them fill with false information, harebrained theories, and doctored images—all while panicked residents boarded up their houses, struggled to evacuate, and prayed that their worldly possessions wouldn’t be obliterated overnight—offered a portrait of American discourse almost too bleak to reckon with head-on.
Even in a decade marred by online grifters, shameless politicians, and an alternative right-wing-media complex pushing anti-science fringe theories, the events of the past few weeks stand out for their depravity and nihilism. As two catastrophic storms upended American cities, a patchwork network of influencers and fake-news peddlers have done their best to sow distrust, stoke resentment, and interfere with relief efforts. But this is more than just a misinformation crisis. To watch as real information is overwhelmed by crank theories and public servants battle death threats is to confront two alarming facts: first, that a durable ecosystem exists to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality, and second, that the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes but willing participants.
Read: November will be worse
Some of the lies and obfuscation are politically motivated, such as the claim that FEMA is offering only $750 in total to hurricane victims who have lost their home. (In reality, FEMA offers $750 as immediate “Serious Needs Assistance” to help people get basic supplies such as food and water.) Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, and Fox News have all repeated that lie. Trump also posted (and later deleted) on Truth Social that FEMA money was given to undocumented migrants, which is untrue. Elon Musk, who owns X, claimed—without evidence—that FEMA was “actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own. It’s very real and scary how much they have taken control to stop people helping.” That post has been viewed more than 40 million times. Other influencers, such as the Trump sycophant Laura Loomer, have urged their followers to disrupt the disaster agency’s efforts to help hurricane victims. “Do not comply with FEMA,” she posted on X. “This is a matter of survival.”
The result of this fearmongering is what you might expect. Angry, embittered citizens have been harassing government officials in North Carolina, as well as FEMA employees. According to an analysis by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an extremism-research group, “Falsehoods around hurricane response have spawned credible threats and incitement to violence directed at the federal government,” including “calls to send militias to face down FEMA.” The study also found that 30 percent of the X posts analyzed by ISD “contained overt antisemitic hate, including abuse directed at public officials such as the Mayor of Asheville, North Carolina; the FEMA Director of Public Affairs; and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.” The posts received a collective 17.1 million views as of October 7.
Online, first responders are pleading with residents, asking for their help to combat the flood of lies and conspiracy theories. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said that the volume of misinformation could hamper relief efforts. “If it creates so much fear that my staff doesn’t want to go out in the field, then we’re not going to be in a position where we can help people,” she said in a news conference on Tuesday. In Pensacola, North Carolina, Assistant Fire Chief Bradley Boone vented his frustrations on Facebook: “I’m trying to rescue my community,” he said in a livestream. “I ain’t got time. I ain’t got time to chase down every Facebook rumor … We’ve been through enough.”
It is difficult to capture the nihilism of the current moment. The pandemic saw Americans, distrustful of authority, trying to discredit effective vaccines, spreading conspiracy theories, and attacking public-health officials. But what feels novel in the aftermath of this month’s hurricanes is how the people doing the lying aren’t even trying to hide the provenance of their bullshit. Similarly, those sharing the lies are happy to admit that they do not care whether what they’re pushing is real or not. Such was the case last week, when Republican politicians shared an AI-generated viral image of a little girl holding a puppy while supposedly fleeing Helene. Though the image was clearly fake and quickly debunked, some politicians remained defiant. “Y’all, I don’t know where this photo came from and honestly, it doesn’t matter,” Amy Kremer, who represents Georgia on the Republican National Committee, wrote after sharing the fake image. “I’m leaving it because it is emblematic of the trauma and pain people are living through right now.”
Kremer wasn’t alone. The journalist Parker Molloy compiled screenshots of people “acknowledging that this image is AI but still insisting that it’s real on some deeper level”—proof, Molloy noted, that we’re “living in the post-reality.” The technology writer Jason Koebler argued that we’ve entered the “‘Fuck It’ Era” of AI slop and political messaging, with AI-generated images being used to convey whatever partisan message suits the moment, regardless of truth.
This has all been building for more than a decade. On The Colbert Report, back in 2005, Stephen Colbert coined the word truthiness, which he defined as “the belief in what you feel to be true rather than what the facts will support.” This reality-fracturing is the result of an information ecosystem that is dominated by platforms that offer financial and attentional incentives to lie and enrage, and to turn every tragedy and large event into a shameless content-creationopportunity. This collides with a swath of people who would rather live in an alternate reality built on distrust and grievance than change their fundamental beliefs about the world. But the misinformation crisis is not always what we think it is.
Read: Florida’s risky bet
So much of the conversation around misinformation suggests that its primary job is to persuade. But as Michael Caulfield, an information researcher at the University of Washington, has argued, “The primary use of ‘misinformation’ is not to change the beliefs of other people at all. Instead, the vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” This distinction is important, in part because it assigns agency to those who consume and share obviously fake information. What is clear from comments such as Kremer’s is that she is not a dupe; although she may come off as deeply incurious and shameless, she is publicly admitting to being an active participant in the far right’s world-building project, where feel is always greater than real.
What we’re witnessing online during and in the aftermath of these hurricanes is a group of people desperate to protect the dark, fictitious world they’ve built. Rather than deal with the realities of a warming planet hurling once-in-a-generation storms at them every few weeks, they’d rather malign and threaten meteorologists, who, in their minds, are “nothing but a trained subversive liar programmed to spew stupid shit to support the global warming bullshit,” as one X user put it. It is a strategy designed to silence voices of reason, because those voices threaten to expose the cracks in their current worldview. But their efforts are doomed, futile. As one dispirited meteorologist wrote on X this week, “Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes.” She followed with: “I can’t believe I just had to type that.”
What is clear is that a new framework is needed to describe this fracturing. Misinformation is too technical, too freighted, and, after almost a decade of Trump, too political. Nor does it explain what is really happening, which is nothing less than a cultural assault on any person or institution that operates in reality. If you are a weatherperson, you’re a target. The same goes for journalists, election workers, scientists, doctors, and first responders. These jobs are different, but the thing they share is that they all must attend to and describe the world as it is. This makes them dangerous to people who cannot abide by the agonizing constraints of reality, as well as those who have financial and political interests in keeping up the charade.
In one sense, these attacks—and their increased desperation—make sense. The world feels dark; for many people, it’s tempting to meet that with a retreat into the delusion that they’ve got everything figured out, that the powers that be have conspired against them directly. But in turning away, they exacerbate a crisis that has characterized the Trump era, one that will reverberate to Election Day and beyond. Americans are divided not just by political beliefs but by whether they believe in a shared reality—or desire one at all.
This article previously stated that Bradley Boone is the assistant fire chief in Pensacola, Florida. In fact, he is based in Pensacola, North Carolina.
#the atlantic#disinformation#shared reality#lies#lies and the lying liars who tell them#trump#liar#fascist#cult#vote#harris walz 2024#kamala harris#kamala 2024#hurricane#helene#milton#refrigerator magnet
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Water pact signing
Record Group 48: Records of the Office of the Secretary of the InteriorSeries: Photographs Documenting the Secretary's Activities, and Agency Officials, Events, Programs, and Managed Sites
Zuni leader Wilford Eriacho, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Dave Anderson, Zuni Pueblo's Carmelita Sanchez, Zuni Councilman Eduard Wemytewa, Secretary Gale Norton, Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, Zuni member Joan Sandy, New Mexico Congressman Steve Peace, left to right
This color photograph shows a woman seated at a table in front of of large document. Several people stand behind her looking on as she picks up (or puts down) a pen. The document is in a portfolio on top of a colorfully woven cloth. The walls of the room they are in are decorated with images of Native Americans.
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THE FREE NATIONS AU, PLEASE, UNHETALIA. GIVE US MORE INFORMATION ON THAT AU, AND MY LIFE IS YOURS. 😭🙏
I'm constantly reconsidering things about this AU, in terms of how it would actually work. One of those things is Arthur. In the post I made, I talked about how he and Ivan carefully extricated themselves from their governments. Thinking about it further, I think having every Nation leave their government post would be counterproductive, and there would need to be Nations who are 'double agents', so to speak. Arthur would be one of them.
He has one of the longest, closest, and most successful relationship with his government. England's intelligence agency is no joke. Arthur remaining is ideal for achieving their goals.
I'd put the Nations into 3 categories - Hidden, Active, and Trapped.
Hidden Nations include Nations like America, Canada and Mexico, who have never had ties with their governments, or Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, who've severed ties.
Active Nations include Nations like England and Germany, who actively maintain connections with their government.
Trapped Nations are Nations who need help escaping their governments. Part of the goal is the to get the T status Nations into H status (which is referred to as changing 'hats').
One thing that's constant in this AU is me making Arthur and Ivan the 'leaders', specifically leaders who actively dislike each other. I definitely develop Ivan and Arthur so that they're suited to the leadership role. In this case, Arthur basically funds the whole thing. He has endless coffers, as an ex-pirate and someone who has access to the crown's private funds (and they have more funds than they publicly share).
However, despite Arthur's skill, he is limited because he's an active member of the government. Ivan doesn't have these limitations. He'd wiped all of his records. No one knows what he looks like, his prints aren't in any database, and he has a lot of experience with military operations. When they need to act on information Arthur's passed on, Ivan is the one who can actually go out and do that.
(There's a lot of internal conflict here for Arthur - he knows they need him to play a role, but as a former pirate, and as someone who has always grabbed life by the balls, so to speak, it's incredibly hard for him to 'pass on' missions to someone else, especially someone he actively dislikes. Plus Arthur often has to miss out on meetings because he has to balance his role as leader with his role in his government.)
Still a lot I have to think about regarding Ivan, Arthur and Alfred. One thing to note is that fact that Arthur and Ivan both have feelings for Alfred, but that this is actually not even in the top 20 reasons why they dislike each other. (For comedic purposes, because I'd still want things to be funny, maybe it's actually something they bond about). Alfred's role is both set in stone and elusive. Hacker/inventor, I wanted Alfred to have a more cerebral role, because that's on of the things I always like to highlight about his character. He's a genius. Still, I wondered if despite his intelligence, he'd take on this role unless there was a reason. I'm still looking for that reason.
One thing I'm really clear on is the relationship between Gilbert and Roderich in this AU.
The first thing: In this AU, Roderich is a wheelchair user as a result of events that occur in World War II.
Gilbert is the one who rescues Roderich. Ludwig becomes aware of what is happening too late. This causes a rift between the brothers, which grows even more when Ludwig decides to maintain ties with the new German government. Ludwig does this because he feels immense guilt for not realising soon enough what was happening, and believes keeping a close eye on their governments is the way to prevent it from happening again. Gilbert has a lot of rage towards all governments, and can't always separate his brother's good intentions with the fact he's 'working with the enemy'.
Gilbert's work is entirely in freeing T Nations and basically fucking shit up as much as he can for governments while he does it. He has a personal vendetta against governments - Roderich believes it's because of World War II and the dissolution of Prussia. Really, it's because of what was done to Roderich during that time. Everyone else knows the truth, and knows how deeply Gilbert loves Roderich.
(I'm of two minds about whether or not these two are in an established relationship. Generally, I always make it so that they've been together for a long time, and are considered a 'success story' for Nations, but I'd also love it if Roderich doesn't realise Gilbert's real reason for hating governments because he doesn't know Gil's feelings.)
Roderich himself became very interested in Nation physiology and biology and became the foremost expert in being able to treat a Nation's injuries.
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Here's the complete list of DHS flagged search terms. Don't use any of these on social media to avoid having the 3-letter agencies express interest in your activities!
DHS & Other Agencies
Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
Coast Guard (USCG)
Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
Border Patrol
Secret Service (USSS)
National Operations Center (NOC)
Homeland Defense
Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE)
Agent
Task Force
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Fusion Center
Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
Secure Border Initiative (SBI)
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS)
Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS)
Transportation Security Administration (TSA)
Air Marshal
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
National Guard
Red Cross
United Nations (UN)
Domestic Security
Assassination
Attack
Domestic security
Drill
Exercise
Cops
Law enforcement
Authorities
Disaster assistance
Disaster management
DNDO (Domestic Nuclear Detection Office)
National preparedness
Mitigation
Prevention
Response
Recovery
Dirty Bomb
Domestic nuclear detection
Emergency management
Emergency response
First responder
Homeland security
Maritime domain awareness (MDA)
National preparedness initiative
Militia
Shooting
Shots fired
Evacuation
Deaths
Hostage
Explosion (explosive)
Police
Disaster medical assistance team (DMAT)
Organized crime
Gangs
National security
State of emergency
Security
Breach
Threat
Standoff
SWAT
Screening
Lockdown
Bomb (squad or threat)
Crash
Looting
Riot
Emergency Landing
Pipe bomb
Incident
Facility
HAZMAT & Nuclear
Hazmat
Nuclear
Chemical Spill
Suspicious package/device
Toxic
National laboratory
Nuclear facility
Nuclear threat
Cloud
Plume
Radiation
Radioactive
Leak
Biological infection (or event)
Chemical
Chemical burn
Biological
Epidemic
Hazardous
Hazardous material incident
Industrial spill
Infection
Powder (white)
Gas
Spillover
Anthrax
Blister agent
Exposure
Burn
Nerve agent
Ricin
Sarin
North Korea
Health Concern + H1N1
Outbreak
Contamination
Exposure
Virus
Evacuation
Bacteria
Recall
Ebola
Food Poisoning
Foot and Mouth (FMD)
H5N1
Avian
Flu
Salmonella
Small Pox
Plague
Human to human
Human to ANIMAL
Influenza
Center for Disease Control (CDC)
Drug Administration (FDA)
Public Health
Toxic
Agro Terror
Tuberculosis (TB)
Agriculture
Listeria
Symptoms
Mutation
Resistant
Antiviral
Wave
Pandemic
Infection
Water/air borne
Sick
Swine
Pork
Strain
Quarantine
H1N1
Vaccine
Tamiflu
Norvo Virus
Epidemic
World Health Organization (WHO and components)
Viral Hemorrhagic Fever
E. Coli
Infrastructure Security
Infrastructure security
Airport
CIKR (Critical Infrastructure & Key Resources)
AMTRAK
Collapse
Computer infrastructure
Communications infrastructure
Telecommunications
Critical infrastructure
National infrastructure
Metro
WMATA
Airplane (and derivatives)
Chemical fire
Subway
BART
MARTA
Port Authority
NBIC (National Biosurveillance Integration Center)
Transportation security
Grid
Power
Smart
Body scanner
Electric
Failure or outage
Black out
Brown out
Port
Dock
Bridge
Canceled
Delays
Service disruption
Power lines
Southwest Border Violence
Drug cartel
Violence
Gang
Drug
Narcotics
Cocaine
Marijuana
Heroin
Border
Mexico
Cartel
Southwest
Juarez
Sinaloa
Tijuana
Torreon
Yuma
Tucson
Decapitated
U.S. Consulate
Consular
El Paso
Fort Hancock
San Diego
Ciudad Juarez
Nogales
Sonora
Colombia
Mara salvatrucha
MS13 or MS-13
Drug war
Mexican army
Methamphetamine
Cartel de Golfo
Gulf Cartel
La Familia
Reynose
Nuevo Leon
Narcos
Narco banners (Spanish equivalents)
Los Zetas
Shootout
Execution
Gunfight
Trafficking
Kidnap
Calderon
Reyosa
Bust
Tamaulipas
Meth Lab
Drug trade
Illegal immigrants
Smuggling (smugglers)
Matamoros
Michoacana
Guzman
Arellano-Felix
Beltran-Leyva
Barrio Azteca
Artistics Assassins
Mexicles
New Federation
Terrorism
Terrorism
Al Queda (all spellings)
Terror
Attack
Iraq
Afghanistan
Iran
Pakistan
Agro
Environmental terrorist
Eco terrorism
Conventional weapon
Target
Weapons grade
Dirty bomb
Enriched
Nuclear
Chemical weapon
Biological weapon
Ammonium nitrate
Improvised explosive device
IED (Improvised Explosive Device)
Abu Sayyaf
Hamas
FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces Colombia)
IRA (Irish Republican Army)
ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna)
Basque Separatists
Hezbollah
Tamil Tiger
PLF (Palestine Liberation Front)
PLO (Palestine Libration Organization)
Car bomb
Jihad
Taliban
Weapons cache
Suicide bomber
Suicide attack
Suspicious substance
AQAP (Al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula)
AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb)
TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan)
Yemen
Pirates
Extremism
Somalia
Nigeria
Radicals
Al-Shabaab
Home grown
Plot
Nationalist
Recruitment
Fundamentalism
Islamist
Weather/Disaster/Emergency
Emergency
Hurricane
Tornado
Twister
Tsunami
Earthquake
Tremor
Flood
Storm
Crest
Temblor
Extreme weather
Forest fire
Brush fire
Ice
Stranded/Stuck
Help
Hail
Wildfire
Tsunami Warning Center
Magnitude
Avalanche
Typhoon
Shelter-in-place
Disaster
Snow
Blizzard
Sleet
Mud slide or Mudslide
Erosion
Power outage
Brown out
Warning
Watch
Lightening
Aid
Relief
Closure
Interstate
Burst
Emergency Broadcast System
Cyber Security
Cyber security
Botnet
DDOS (dedicated denial of service)
Denial of service
Malware
Virus
Trojan
Keylogger
Cyber Command
2600
Spammer
Phishing
Rootkit
Phreaking
Cain and abel
Brute forcing
Mysql injection
Cyber attack
Cyber terror
Hacker
China
Conficker
Worm
Scammers
Social media
SOCIAL MEDIA?!
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Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:
The United States District Court for the District of Maryland has tossed a flawed environmental assessment that grossly underestimated harms to endangered and threatened marine species from oil and gas drilling and exploration in the Gulf of Mexico.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) prepared the assessment known as a biological opinion—BiOp for short— in 2020 under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). NMFS is a federal agency within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The biological opinion is required to ensure that drilling and exploration for fossil fuels in the Gulf does not jeopardize endangered and threatened species, and is a prerequisite for oil and gas drilling permits auctioned by the U.S. Department of the Interior.
That same year, Earthjustice, a national nonprofit, filed a suit challenging the biological opinion on behalf of Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth and the Turtle Island Restoration Network. The American Petroleum Institute, Chevron and several other groups representing the oil and gas industry intervened as defendants in the case.
The environmental groups argued the biological opinion underestimated the potential for future oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico and did not require sufficient safeguards for imperiled whales, sea turtles and other endangered and threatened marine species from industrial offshore drilling operations.
The Gulf of Mexico is home to a range of threatened marine species protected under the ESA, including the endangered Rice’s whale, which exists nowhere else on the planet.
It also caters to much of the nation’s oil and gas extraction under federal waters known as the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). This includes a region known as the Gulf OCS that experiences a high volume of ship traffic to production platforms, tens of thousands of active wells and thousands of miles of underwater pipelines.
In its Aug. 19 ruling, the district court agreed with the environmental groups that the biological opinion violated the law in multiple ways. Among other deficiencies, it found the opinion wrongly assumed that a catastrophic oil spill like the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon will not occur despite NMFS’ own finding that such a spill can be expected.
The court declared the 2020 BiOp unlawful and ordered NFMS to produce a new biological opinion by December 2024.
“The new opinion should come along with more protections for the Gulf’s threatened and endangered species that are already struggling to survive in the face of an onslaught of threats, including existing oil and gas activity, climate change and others,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans program litigation director for the Center for Biological Diversity.
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Our country's regional visa-free policy for foreigners mainly includes:
Hong Kong and Macao foreign tour groups to enter Guangdong 144-hour visa-free policy. Citizens of countries with diplomatic ties with China holding ordinary passports may visit the nine cities in the Greater Bay area and the Shantou Bay Area without the need for a visa after entering the region through a group of Hong Kong and macao-registered travel agents, activities will be held in the cities of Guangzhou, Foshan, Zhaoqing, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Huizhou, Zhuhai, Zhongshan, Jiangmen and Shantou, group in and out, stay less than 144 hours.
Visa-free entry policy for tour groups from ASEAN countries to Guilin, Guangxi. Group tours (2 or more) from ASEAN countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Singapore, Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia) , with an ordinary passport, you can enter or leave the country visa-free through the Guilin Airport and travel agencies in Guilin, stay no longer than 144 hours.
Visa-free entry policy for foreign tour groups by cruise. Foreign tour groups (2 or more persons) on cruises and received by travel agencies in China, visa-free group visits are available from 13 cruise ports in Tianjin, Dalian, Shanghai, Lianyungang, Wenzhou and Zhoushan, Xiamen, Qingdao, Beihai, Haikou and Sanya, the tour group shall travel with the same cruise to the next port until the departure of this cruise, activities for Tianjin, Hebei, Liaoning, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Shandong, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan and other 11 coastal provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities directly under the central government) and Beijing, stay no longer than 15 days.
4th, 59 countries personnel entry Hainan 30 days visa-free policy. Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Norway, Ukraine, Italy, Austria, Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ireland, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Monaco, Belarus and 59 other countries hold ordinary passports, for short-term reasons such as tourism, business, visit, family visit, medical treatment, convention and exhibition, sports competition, etc. (except for work and study reasons) , visa-free entry to Hainan may be granted, the scope of activities shall be within the administrative area of Hainan province, and the entry and exit ports shall be all open ports of Hainan province, and the stay time shall not exceed 30 days.
Visa-free 144-hour entry policy for foreign tour groups from Hong Kong and Macao. Citizens of countries with diplomatic relations with China who hold ordinary passports and visit Hong Kong and Macao may visit Hainan visa-free if they are in a group of two or more members of a travel agency legally registered in Hong Kong and Macao, activities for the administrative area of Hainan province, the entry and exit ports for all open ports in Hainan province, the use of group entry and exit mode, stay less than 144 hours.
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Dark Nights in Georgia
Hurricane Helene’s winds surged in strength as the storm churned over unusually warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico and closed in on the Florida Panhandle and southern Georgia on September 26, 2024. When the deadly Category 4 storm struck Florida’s Big Bend area and then pushed north, winds in some areas exceeded 140 miles per hour (225 kilometers per hour)—strong enough to snap trees, tear the roofs off buildings, and topple power lines.
After the storm passed, millions of people across several states were left without electricty. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite has a low-light sensor, the day-night band, that measures nighttime light emissions and reflections. It captured views of some of those losses in hard-hit communities in Georgia, including Augusta (above), Savannah (below), and Valdosta (second pair below).
Scientists with the Black Marble Project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Science Systems and Applications, Inc., and the University of Maryland, College Park, processed VIIRS data to show nighttime lights before and after Helene passed through the Southeast. Data from September 28 were compared to a pre-storm composite (August) and overlaid on landcover data collected by the Landsat 8 and 9 satellites. These three cities were not the only communities in Georgia that lost power.
Data published by Georgia Power showed that power had been restored to more than 840,000 customers by October 1. However, more than 400,000 Georgians still lacked power on that date, including 65,000 customers in Richmond County (Augusta), 38,000 in Chatham County (Savannah), and 40,000 in Lowndes County (Valdosta), according to data compiled by PowerOutage.us. More than 61,000 customers in Florida, 589,000 in South Carolina, and 383,000 in North Carolina were also without power on October 1.
Precision is critical for studies of night lights, said Ranjay Shrestha, a scientist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and member of the Black Marble team. Raw, unprocessed images can be misleading because moonlight, clouds, pollution, seasonal vegetation—even the position of the satellite—can change how light is reflected and distort observations. The processing by the Black Marble team accounts for such changes and filters out stray light from sources that are not electric lights.
“Satellite-derived nighttime lights products like Black Marble are invaluable for capturing widespread outages in distributed energy systems,” said Shrestha. “These images not only reveal the immediate impact of disasters at the neighborhood scale but also provide insights into recovery trends over time, aiding in response, resource allocation, and damage assessment.”
The rate at which power is restored after hurricanes can vary significantly based on a variety of factors. Researchers from Florida Atlantic University and Georgia State University analyzed VIIRS data from Hurricane Ian, which roared across Florida in September 2022, and found notable differences in power restoration rates between urban and rural areas and between disadvantaged and more affluent communities.
NASA’s Disasters Response Coordination System has been activated to support agencies responding to the storm, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Florida Division of Emergency Management. The team will be posting maps and data products on its open-access mapping portal as new information becomes available about flooding, power outages, precipitation totals, and other topics.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Black Marble data courtesy of Ranjay Shrestha/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Story by Adam Voiland.
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In a time when the expansion of the United States–Mexico border wall looms over more nuanced discourses on national citizenship, it is urgent for architects and designers to envision what it means to be a citizen today.
Questions of belonging, of who should be included and how, are posed with every athlete taking a knee, every #metoo, every presidential tweet, and every protest sign or fist raised. Yet as transnational flows of capital, digital technologies, and geopolitical transformations expand, conventional notions of citizenship are undermined. We define the term as a tangle of rights, responsibilities, and attachments linked to the built environment. And so we ask: How might architecture respond to, shape, and express rhizomatic and paradoxical conditions of citizenship?
The US Pavilion explores seven spatial scales: Citizen, Civitas, Region, Nation, Globe, Network, and Cosmos. These scales, telescoping from body to city to heavens, broadly position citizenship as a critical global topic. Commissioned installations by architects, landscape architects, artists, and theorists investigate spaces of citizenship marked by histories of inequality and the violence imposed on people, non-human actors, and ecologies. These works aim to manifest the democratic ideals of inclusion against the grain of broader systems: new forms of sharing economy platforms, the legacies of the Underground Railroad, tenuous cross-national alliances at the border region, or the seemingly Sisyphean task of buttressing coastline topologies against rising tides.
The installations and the film and video works on view do not solve the complex relationships of governance, affinity, and circumstance that bind us, citizen to stranger, self to other. Instead, they use architecture’s disciplinary agency to render visible paradoxes and formulations of belonging. Only when spatial understandings of citizenship—legal, cultural, and ecological—are in sight might we struggle free from antiquated definitions, forms, or bureaucracies and activate potent spaces for design. —Dimensions of Citizenship, US Pavilion, Biennale Architettura 2018, May 26–November 25, 2018, Venice (http://dimensionsofcitizenship.org)
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Borderline La Niña may brighten winter for U.S, Mexico, Brazil
In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, forecasts drier and sunnier conditions in the forthcoming winter across key solar areas in the southern United States, Mexico and Brazil, driven by borderline La Niña conditions.
Seasonal forecasts for the upcoming winter point towards drier and sunnier conditions for key solar regions of Texas, California, the southeastern United States, Mexico and Brazil. Forecasts also agree on reduced precipitation and cloudiness across broad areas of North and South America, excluding Central America and remote parts of Canada.
The forecast is driven by borderline La Niña conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean, whereby tropical convection favors the far western side of the ocean. The reduced convection over tropical eastern pacific waters leads to reduced cloud and storm activity downstream over the adjacent subtropical and mid-latitude continental areas of North and South America, where solar resources are located.
The current consensus between modeling agencies leans towards ‘neutral’ conditions, meaning neither El Niño or La Niña, but on the La Niña side of the spectrum. Most models suggest that while conditions should remain largely within the neutral range, there is a small chance of La Niña becoming stronger. US agency NOAA stands out as one of the few agencies still predicting La Niña conditions to develop during the winter. This marks a shift from earlier forecasts that had anticipated more movement away from neutral conditions.
Continue reading.
#brazil#united states#politics#mexico#environmentalism#mexican politics#brazilian politics#us politics#image description in alt#mod nise da silveira
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14 December 2022, Dreamcatcher To Take Long Vacation of One Month... "We'll be back after recharging ourselves"
The group Dreamcatcher is taking their end-of-year vacation.
According to a statement released on the 14th by Dreamcatcher Company, the team's agency, Dreamcatcher is planning to take a month-long vacation now that all official schedules of the year are over.
Dreamcatcher promoted relentlessly this year, and are hoping to take some time to recharge themselves with this vacation. The team's only non-Korean member, Handong, is planning to spend the New Year’s with her family in China.
This April, Dreamcatcher took home their first win in 1924 days since their debut with "MAISON", the title song of their 2nd studio album which opened the Apocalypse series. In October, they released their 7th mini album ‘Apocalypse: Follow us’, promoting an environmental message and furthering their position as K-Pop messengers.
Their career high was mirrored overseas as well. Their North American tour, coming 3 years after their previous one, reported a ticket sales rate of 92% across 8 US cities and Mexico City. Their tour of 5 European countries including Germany, the Netherlands and Poland boasted larger venues than their previous tour there, proving their growing standing.
In addition, in November, all members of Dreamcatcher decided to renew their contracts even before the expiration of their previous ones with Dreamcatcher Company. This news came as a most welcome gift to InSomnias all over the world. The group plans to continue their activities to repay the love shown by the fans.
After their end-of-year vacation, Dreamcatcher is set to continue diverse activities in many facets.
Source : MyDaily
[Reporter Oh Yoon-joo]
Translation by 7-Dreamers HojuneTL Please do not take translation without credit
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Earlier this year, a Pennsylvania man beheaded his father, who worked as a federal employee, and displayed the severed head in a video where he urged viewers to rise up against the government. Another man in Illinois was building bombs he hoped to one day use against a “corrupt government.” In two separate cases, people were arrested for threatening to kill President Joe Biden and federal officials. An Arizona man plotted a mass shooting at a rap concert in Atlanta because he wanted to spark a race war ahead of what he believed was “impending martial law.”
All five of these cases, which occurred over the past eight months, have been linked by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis to what it sees as a concerning trend: fantasies and conspiracies of an impending civil war mobilizing individuals toward violence surrounding the US election.
The memo, first reported by WIRED, was circulated last month to law enforcement agencies.
“Some domestic violent extremists (DVEs) are reacting to the 2024 election season and prominent policy issues by engaging in illegal preparatory or violent activity that they link to the narrative of an impending civil war, raising the risk of violence against government targets and ideological opponents,” the memo states.
Online chatter about civil war has become an inevitable knee-jerk response to any divisive sociopolitical news event in recent years—from prosecutions of Capitol rioters and the attempted assassination of Donald Trump to disputes over enforcement at the US–Mexico border. And that chatter has, perhaps unsurprisingly, only continued to ramp up ahead of the 2024 election.
Intelligence analysts say that they have seen online discussions about preparing for future violence against public officials and federal agents and are aware that some extremists are using the heightened political environment as an opportunity to engage in “illegal preparatory or violent activity,” according to the DHS report. The assessment aligns with earlier WIRED reporting that indicates the paramilitary movement has been organizing and training ahead of the election. The report was first obtained by Property of the People, a nonprofit focused on transparency and national security, under open records law. “Donald Trump is yet again inciting election and immigration-related violence," says Ryan Shapiro, executive director of Property of the People. "The documents make plain that many of his followers are listening.”
DHS also cautioned that it is unable to get a grasp on the full scale of the threat. “We lack a complete threat picture due the ability of some DVEs to evade law enforcement using advanced encryption,” the agency wrote. And because extremists have gotten tech-savvier, intelligence officials don’t really know whether they’re joining forces.
This is a trend that researchers and experts have observed especially since the Capitol riot nearly four years ago. “We’ve seen people move from mainstream platforms, where they were active in organizing January 6, and shift to platforms that offer more perceived anonymity, less moderation, and less reporting to law enforcement,” said Katherine Keneally, US director of threat analysis and prevention at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “It is a law enforcement intelligence gap, it’s a gap for the whole field. We don’t see everything we once did.”
Regardless of whether extremists are coalescing or whether the threat remains atomized, the assessment recognizes that online chatter about civil war had already inspired plans for real-world violence.
In January, Justin Mohn, a 32-year-old man from Levittown, Pennsylvania, beheaded his father, a federal employee, and displayed the severed head in a 15-minute tirade uploaded online. In the video, titled “Mohn’s Militia-Call to Arms for American Patriots,” Mohn urged viewers to rise up against the government and hunt down federal agents and judges.
Months later, in March, federal agents arrested Benjamin Brown, a 45-year-old man in Waterville, Maine, for making threats to kill President Biden and other officials. The man allegedly claimed he was stockpiling weapons and ammo for a civil war and, according to an affidavit, said he wanted to hunt migrants and “burn Washington to the fucking ground.” Brown was charged with making interstate threats.
Then, in May, a stop for a minor traffic violation in Pekin, Illinois, led police to discover a padlocked canvas bag inside the vehicle containing a .45-caliber pistol and two homemade pipe bombs belonging to 34-year-old Dalton Mattus. When investigators searched Mattus’ home, after a brief standoff, they allegedly found more pipe bombs. A local radio station reported that Mattus told police he hoped to use the bombs defensively against “undocumented immigrants and a corrupt government.” It turned out that Mattus also had an extensive social media presence; for years, he had promoted QAnon conspiracy theories and civil war fantasies, advocated violence against federal officials, Democrats, and immigrants, and urged his followers to prepare for imminent conflict.
In June, an Arizona man who worked as a vendor at gun shows was indicted for allegedly plotting a mass shooting targeting Black people at a rap concert in Atlanta with the goal of inciting a “race war” ahead of the 2024 election. According to an affidavit, Mark Adams Prieto, 58, believed that “martial law will be implemented shortly after the 2024 election.” He also said he hoped to leave confederate flags at the site of his planned mass shooting, to send the message that “we’re going to fight back now and every whitey will be the enemy across the whole country.”
Also in June, 27-year-old Joseph Rose, a US veteran living on New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range, was arrested for making threats online against Biden and federal employees. He vowed to declare war on the US and “attack federal employees on sight” over Biden’s immigration policies and said if anyone voted for Biden, “I'll shoot you on sight for supporting pedophiles.”
Intelligence analysts say that they’re most concerned about lone offenders or “small cells” taking violent action in the coming months, citing the ongoing prosecutions of the January 6 rioters as well as “false flag allegations that an event is orchestrated by the government to entrap and arrest attendees” as likely deterrents to large-scale mobilization.
DHS says it is continuing to advise federal, state, and local partners and urges law enforcement and the public to remain vigilant and report suspicious activity to authorities.
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Texas law enforcement officials charged seven suspects with human smuggling and organized crime-related charges after discovering a stash house on Thursday with 26 victims.
Last Thursday, the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office and other agencies broke up a human smuggling operation involving a long, goose-neck trailer traveling to a rural home outside San Antonio, which officials described as an open-air shack.
Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said the trailer came from the Laredo area and contained a large false compartment underneath, with 26 migrants lying inside.
The suspects were identified as 39-year-old Abeldaro Herrera, 26-year-old Rafael Mendoza, 28-year-old Cristobal Eduardo Deleon, 21-year-old Jose Marvin Hernandez, 23-year-old Mario Enrique Elizondo, 30-year-old Vanessa Castillo, and 45-year-old Ismael Hernandez.
Herrera, Mendoza and Deleon were all charged with 26 counts of human smuggling. The trio was also charged with engaging in organized criminal activity, alongside Elizondo, Castillo, and Hernandez.
Hernandez was not charged with either crime, but instead faces a single charge of evading arrest.
The sheriff’s office said the 26 victims were safely secured and given medical care.
BIDEN CRITICIZED BY HIS OWN PARTY FOR ‘USING THE SAME TOOLS’ AS TRUMP TO CONTROL THE BORDER
Of the 26 victims, 12 were taken to University Hospital and treated for minor injuries and heat-related illnesses.
One migrant remained in the hospital for further treatment of dehydration and cardiac-related issues.
The victims consisted of 20 men and six women, all between the ages of 18 and 54.
They all came from Mexico, Honduras, Venezuela and Guatemala, officials said.
SUSPECTED HUMAN SMUGGLER BREACHES AIR FORCE BASE A WEEK AFTER ILLEGAL MIGRANT HOPS FENCE
The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office seized several vehicles driven by the suspects that were on the property.
U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told Fox News Homeland Security Investigations is assisting the sheriff’s office with the investigation.
When asked whether the suspects were in the U.S. illegally, ICE declined to comment on the matter.
The sheriff’s office received information on Thursday morning that a human smuggling operation was taking place involving several dozen people.
After receiving the tip, the sheriff’s office and multiple other law enforcement agencies followed the trailer to the home that Salazar called an open-air shack with windows open in triple digit temperatures, no air conditioning, no running water, and buckets for toilets.
Investigators said they also discovered multiple bulletproof vests and long rifles behind the residence.
Salazar told reporters he was not sure if any of the rifles were automatic or semi-automatic, adding the guns and vests were "natural" things to find in a smuggling operation like the one his team broke up. He also said the operation was "clearly cartel related."
The sheriff described the smuggling operation as "big money," saying a Guatemalan woman within the group told officials she paid $16,000 to be smuggled into the U.S.
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writing my verses tonight . under the cut there's a fast round up of the ones i've been thinking about :
spy au : part of the private intelligence company known as the roy agency , roman is in charge of making contact with potential clients for things that go from coverups of illegal activities to democracy destabilization , working with secret services and criminals alike all across the world .
post apocalyptic au : ( twd inspired ) trying to reach his brother's ranch in new mexico from new york city in a chaotic world where money means absolutely nothing , roman needs to learn what it means to rely on the kindness of strangers to survive .
superpowered au : ( xmcu inspired ) ATN has dedicated its entire existence to smear and taint the reputation of powered individuals around the globe . roman has aerokinesis , he has no idea how to control it , but no one must know , least of all his father .
fantasy au : ( got inspired ) youngest son of the throne's master of whisperers , roman was sent away from home from a very young age to serve as the eyes and ears of his father in a faraway land . now it's time decide where his true loyalties lie .
sci-fi au : ( dune inspired ) living in their huge star cruiser their whole lives , the roys never knew hunger , never knew wars or conflict . their whole operation revolved in news outlets for faraway planets , propaganda and intergalactic travel . roman has traversed the whole universe during his life , yet still he knows nothing .
vampire au : a young man living in berlin in the 1920's , roman was chosen by logan roy , usa's coven leader , as a potential right hand man in the operation of maintaining the world of darkness hidden in plain sight , while giving vampires the free reign they were denied in the old continent . but almost a century has passed , and logan is getting tired of his "son" .
#these need more work#but that's the gist of it#and i still need to add the fandom specific ones#* out of character.#IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED LMK
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Photo: Mitch Warnick (2022)
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Rising from the heart of the Tularosa Basin is one of the world's great natural wonders — the glistening white sands of New Mexico. U.S. Department of the Interior: At White Sands National Park, great wave-like gypsum dunes cover nearly 300 square miles of desert. The sand is soft and cool under your feet and provides a beautiful contrast to the bright blue sky. The dunes are ever-changing, growing, cresting, but constantly advancing. One of the best ways to experience the park is sand sledding, a popular activity and great fun for children and adults alike.
[Scott Horton]
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“Despair is paralysis. It robs us of agency. It blinds us to our own power and the power of the earth… Restoration is a powerful antidote to despair. Restoration offers concrete means by which humans can once again enter into positive, creative relationship with the more-than-human world, meeting responsibilities that are simultaneously material and spiritual. ... Restoration is imperative for healing the earth, but reciprocity is imperative for long-lasting, successful restoration. Like other mindful practices, ecological restoration can be viewed as an act of reciprocity in which humans exercise their caregiving responsibility for the ecosystems that sustain them. We restore the land, and the land restores us.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
#Scott Horton#Mitch Warnick#quotes#White Sands National Park#gypsum dunes#Robin Wall Kimmerer#Braiding Sweetgrass
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