BERRIEN SPRINGS, Michigan
Apologies for the lack of blog content this week, but my wife and I have been on the road, and won’t return home until Tuesday. On Sunday, our youngest daughter Reagan graduated cum laude from Andrews University, with a double major in history and Spanish. Her senior honors thesis was, “The Significance of the Malvinas Issue in the Politics of President Javier Milei.” She left early Monday morning for a six-week journey around Latin America, three weeks of which are a school trip, a course requirement for her Spanish major, which will be followed by three weeks in Argentina visiting her novio and his family.
We look forward to her novio being able to come here and visit us, but when he applied for a travel visa last year, he was turned down by the U.S. Embassy personnel in Buenos Aires. That was under the Biden administration, of course, and now that Trump is president, I’ve assured my daughter that I’ll take care of this problem by calling in a favor from my old pal Marco Rubio. Gotta remember to write that letter . . .
If @SecRubio is looking for advisers on Argentina, please note the topic of my daughter’s honors thesis. Just sayin’ … pic.twitter.com/sDTvgAwhfm
Because of the travel schedule — we are now about 600 miles west of home — I’ve had to wedge in my day-job work (which I never talk about) into marathon sessions where I do three days’ worth of work in a single day. And today will be another road day, as we drive about 260 miles to Madison, Wisconsin, where our son Jefferson will be graduating from law school Friday. We are obviously quite proud of Jeff because, although he is a third-generation college graduate (my dad was Class of 1950 at Tuscaloosa), he is the first* law-school graduate in the family. The asterisk beside “first” is required because our oldest daughter’s husband is a lawyer and also, incidentally, the son of Argentine immigrants, so there’s some kind of weird pattern involved here. Maybe in a generation or two, all my descendants will be bilingual lawyers.
In the short term, however, there’s that 260-mile drive to Madison — dangerous! After all, in recent months the UW campus has been overrun by pro-Hamas protesters, and for all we know those Jew-hating scumbags have plans to disrupt the graduation ceremony, and I might have to strangle one with my bare hands, which would be unfortunate.
Also, when I checked the route to Madison, the quickest toll-free route was through Chicago, where 110 people have been shot to death so far this year, and another 424 were wounded. Dodging gunfire is one of those road hazards that Chicago residents probably don’t think much about, but it’s my first time. For inspiration, I’ve got the immortal words of Elwood Blues: “It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark… and we’re wearing sunglasses.”
Posting this early since I need to get packed up and leave early tomorrow for Vegas en route to DC, where I’ll be putting the Surface Pro to the test as a blogging device. This week’s cutie is, I believe, from @kbdabear on X. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
The Senators had a good week. Took two out of three from the Phillies at RFK and then split with the O’s in Baltimore, which makes us 3-2 for the week and 48-58 overall. We’re out of the cellar, two games ahead of the A’s and two behind the Brewers, most of our injured players and pitchers are off the DL, and Pete says we may just squeak into a wild card slot. The chances of us reaching .500 are pretty slim according to Grok, since we have to win 33 of our remaining 56 games, but that’s what we play the games to find out. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
Can Ted lead the Senators to 33 more wins? Tune in next week!
Shiloh Hendrix was at a park in Rochester, Minnesota, when she says a child stole something from her infant son’s diaper bag. In response, she called the child the n-word, and was then confronted by a man who recorded her on video. That video went viral, as a result of which Hendrix was doxxed and threatened. So she put up a fundraiser with a goal of $1,000 to enable her to relocate for her family’s safety.
As of 9 a.m. ET this morning, she’d raised more than $500,000.
Man, if saying the n-word is worth $500,000, I know some people who would be richer than Bill Gates. But beyond the cheap laughs, what exactly is going on here? In part, I think it’s a reaction to the absurdity of a Kamelo Anthony fundraiser that collected more than $500,000. Some people are just fed up — they are sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Far be it from me to endorse or encourage rudeness. We should strive to be courteous and civil, even when provoked. Keeping a “stiff upper lip” in crisis situations is a duty that a gentleman ought never neglect. Yet courtesy, properly understood, is rooted in empathy, and it strikes me as curious that in 21st-century America, lower-class whites are somehow seen as undeserving of the kind of empathy that we are usually expected to extend to the poor. J.D. Vance would understand this, I think. His memoir Hillbilly Elegy is about the plight of poor whites in an era when our elite find it convenient to pretend that such people don’t exist, or that the problems of poor whites are unworthy of concern as a matter of public policy. And guess what? That’s how you get more Trump.
Predictably, the mainstream media are oblivious to this aspect of the Shiloh Hendrix saga. The media narrative is about “white nationalists” using her as a rallying cry, and I suppose that every liberal commentator in the country who hasn’t already written a column about it will have such a column online by Monday. Instead of shrieking about the menace of “white nationalists,” however, intelligent people should be asking questions about the underlying conditions that inspire such attitudes.
It has not escaped my notice that some people on social media are claiming that the man who recorded the video is a Somali immigrant who has been charged with raping a 16-year-old. While I cannot verify that claim, (a) it’s obvious the man recording the video has some kind of foreign accent, (b) obviously there are Somali immigrants in Rochester, Minnesota, and (c) some of these immigrants are implicated in crimes.
The Somali community in Rochester, Minnesota is well-served by various organizations providing support and services. The Rochester Somali Community Center (RSCC) is a prominent immigrant-led, minority-run organization that offers services focused on self-sufficiency and cultural preservation. Additionally, the Somali Community Resettlement Services (SCRS) provides assistance with basic needs, resources, and acclimation to American life. Other organizations and initiatives contribute to the Somali community’s well-being in Rochester.
Is this relevant to the Shiloh Hendrix story? Perhaps so, but there is no “Rochester White Community Center” to give us that side of the story.
Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Doug Hagin’s fundraiser is almost to 80%. Chip in if you can. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
In February 2021, the FBI issued an alert about a 12-year-old girl from southern Virginia who had been abducted from her home. The next day, she was found in North Carolina with Kaleb Christopher Merritt, then 21, who had traveled from Texas and set up a camp in the woods near the girl’s house where he raped her before abducting her. Merritt had first contacted the girl via Instagram, and was eventually sentenced to 350 years in prison. It turns out that the tip about Merritt had come from Discord, and authorities were alerted that Merritt was “from a group of users that go by ‘CVLT’ who extort minor women into committing self-harm and uploading their own child pornography.”
Meanwhile, in November 2020, Iowa State University Police got a call “from a student who reported she was being blackmailed by a man she met online in 2018.” That investigation led to a 41-year-old man in Hawaii and eventually “identified more than 30 victims – some as young as 11 years old – and provided evidence for Homeland Security to build its case against CVLT, the online group that espoused neo-Nazism, nihilism and pedophilia as its core principles.”
Two men were arrested [January 30] on federal charges of participating in a neo-Nazi child exploitation enterprise that groomed and then coerced minors to produce child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and images of self-harm. The group allegedly victimized at least 16 minors around the world, including two in Southern California. Collin John Thomas Walker, 23, of Bridgeton, New Jersey, and Clint Jordan Lopaka Nahooikaika Borge, 41, of Pahoa, Hawaii, were arrested this morning pursuant to a grand jury indictment that charges them with one count of engaging in a child exploitation enterprise. They are expected to make initial court appearances later today in New Jersey and Hawaii.
The indictment charges two other defendants who are already in custody: Rohan Sandeep Rane, 28, of Antibes, France, and Kaleb Christopher Merritt, 24, of Spring, Texas. The indictment, which was returned by a grand jury on January 17 and unsealed today, also charges Rane and Walker with one count of engaging in a child exploitation enterprise.
Bradley Cadenhead
As early as January 2021, the FBI was getting tips about a group of Discord users known as “764.” The group’s name turned out to be a reference to the ZIP code of Stephensville, Texas, home of Bradley Cadenhead. Then only 15 years old, Cadenhead had dropped out of school and holed up in his bedroom where he became the leader of perhaps the most monstrous online cult ever. Some accounts describe 764 as a spinoff of the CVLT, but these are ever-shifting online aggregations that are difficult to map. Cadenhead was arrested in August 2021 and in May 2023 was sentenced to 80 years in prison. However, the 764 cult continues to make headlines:
Leonidas Varagiannis, also known as “War,” 21, a citizen of the United States residing in Thessaloniki, Greece, and Prasan Nepal, also known as “Trippy,” 20, of North Carolina, were arrested and charged for operating an international child exploitation enterprise known as “764,” a nihilistic violent extremist (NVE) network. Varagiannis was arrested yesterday in Greece; Nepal was arrested on April 22, 2025, in North Carolina and had a court appearance. Court hearings in Washington, D.C. are pending for both defendants.
The charges were announced by U.S. Attorney Edward R. Martin Jr., U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi, FBI Assistant Director in Charge Steven J. Jensen of the Washington Field Office, and FBI Assistant Director in Charge Christopher G. Raia of the New York Field Office.
According to the affidavit in the District of Columbia, 764 is a network of nihilistic violent extremists who engage in criminal conduct in the United States and abroad, seeking to destroy civilized society through the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable populations, which often include minors. The 764 network’s accelerationist goals include social unrest and the downfall of the current world order, including the United States Government.
As alleged, the defendants engaged in a coordinated criminal enterprise and led a core subgroup within 764 known as 764 Inferno, operated through encrypted messaging applications. As alleged, they directed, participated in, and otherwise caused the production and distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), and the defendants facilitated the grooming, manipulation, and extortion of minors. Veragiannis and Nepal allegedly ordered their victims to commit acts of self-harm and engaged in psychological torment and extreme violence against minors. The affidavit alleges that the group targeted vulnerable children online, coercing them into producing degrading and explicit content under threat and manipulation. This content includes “cut signs” and “blood signs” through which young girls would cut symbols into their bodies.
The defendants and their co-conspirators around the world used the CSAM and other gore and violent material to create digital “Lorebooks,” which NVEs used as digital currency within the 764 network — traded, archived in encrypted “vaults,” and used as a means to recruit new members or maintain status within the network. The affidavit also details how the defendants instructed others members in grooming tactics and set content production expectations for new recruits. In multiple instances, defendants threatened and caused their victims to engage in self-mutilation, online and in-person sexual acts, harm to animals, sexual exploitation of siblings and others, acts of violence, threats of violence, suicide, and murder.
Also according to the complaint affidavit, the defendants exploited at least eight minor victims across multiple jurisdictions, with some content traced back to children as young as 13 years old. The network’s activities spanned from late 2020 through early 2025, with core leadership roles attributed to both defendants throughout the period.
