I recently went to see the movie Sound Of Freedom with the expectation of a moderate level of political commentary or religious pontificating, given the rabid and widespread attacks on the film by the leftist media. All I knew going in was that the indie production was about child trafficking and that the mainstream media HATES IT. After the film was over, my first thought was that it was an excellent story about a very dark and difficult issue. My second thought was – “What the hell was all the fuss about? There’s not a single political moment in the entire movie!”
The media war on the low budget flick is so bizarre given this fact that I am immediately suspicious of their intentions. Not one political message, not one momentary critique of the political left, not one moment where MAGA or Trump or “Q-Anon” is mentioned, not one “conspiracy theory.” So why all the hate?
Before reading this review any further I highly recommend you check out some of the hatchet job articles published about Sound Of Freedom to get a sense of what I’m talking about – examples are here, here, here and here.
The first thing you’ll probably notice is that the majority of these vitriolic diatribes use the exact same talking points – They suggest that The Sound Of Freedom is based in conspiracy theory, far-right extremism and that it is funded by a subversive network of “Q-Anon adjacent” conservatives. Some journalists have even attacked the veracity of the film’s true story – the career of DHS agent Tim Ballard, who operated covertly to take down child sex traffickers in Central America.
The Guardian asserts:
“Caviezel stars as special agent Tim Ballard, a Homeland Security Investigations operative who really did work for the state busting up child-trafficking rings for more a decade. (Or so he claims – the DHS can neither confirm nor deny the real Ballard’s employment history.) Even if he did not literally have the face of Christ, Ballard would still exude an angelic aura as he gently hoists dirty-faced moppets out of peril with the gravely uttered catchphrase: “God’s children are not for sale.”
Rolling Stone fumes:
“Ballard, Caviezel, and others of their ilk had primed the public to accept Sound of Freedom as a documentary rather than delusion by fomenting moral panic for years over this grossly exaggerated “epidemic” of child sex-trafficking, much of it funneling people into conspiracist rabbit holes and QAnon communities. In short, I was at the movies with people who were there to see their worst fears confirmed.”
Perhaps Rolling Stone has never heard of Epstein’s Island? Why are they pretending like this global criminal enterprise is not a thing?
These reviews are dripping with venom, though a simple investigation into Tim Ballard reveals endless evidence that he did in fact quit his job at DHS to operate in Central America to stop child trafficking rings. And the sting that is the core of the film on an island Ballard set up as a trap to capture an entire network of pedophiles as well as save 120 kids? Yeah, that was real, too.
In fact, there’s a documentary about Tim Ballard’s successful sting called ‘Triple Take’ and the Sound Of Freedom movie includes real life arrest footage from that event. There is no question that almost every detail in Sound Of Freedom is real. Any media outlet that says otherwise is lying, and the fact that they are attempting to sow seeds of doubt about the legitimacy of Tim Ballard based on politics is villainous.
One interesting part of the the film that is NOT accurate was the depiction of a Latin billionaire funding Tim Ballard’s efforts. In reality, Ballard says that it was primarily conservative host Glenn Beck that raised money for his operations that led to the rescue of hundreds of children. Why Glenn Beck was not mentioned in the final cut of the film is hard to say, but Ballard’s connection to Beck might partly explain the media’s fury over the movie. How DARE these conservative men save children from sex slavery, right? It makes conservatives look like (GASP!) good guys.
But there’s something more going on here than mere envy on the part of leftist journalists. The campaign against the movie is far too coordinated and far too expansive (global). It is as if these people are interconnected and they all agreed together to try to subvert the film, or they were all ORDERED to subvert the film.
This kind of behavior suggests a personal stake in creating conditions for failure; it makes it seem like these journalists want to sabotage the movie because of its premise and message. Why would someone want to sabotage a movie which exposes child trafficking and pedophiles? Could it be that we need to check the hard drives of some of these establishment media writers and producers?
I think it’s important to note that such people have been criminally prosecuted for child sex abuse in the past. For example, long time CNN producer John Griffin was recently arrested and convicted of child rape, using online apps to connect with mothers willing to sell their children to him for thousands of dollars so he could abuse them at his Vermont vacation home.
Last year the FBI raided the home of renowned ABC News producer James Gordon Meek and arrested him on charges of transporting child pornography. Rolling Stone Magazine was later accused of trying to cover up the reason for the arrest with selective editing and omission. Rolling Stone is now one of the main outlets attacking Sound Of Freedom.
Maybe the movie makes these journalists angry because it exposes one of their favorite hobbies?
I’m a long time film buff and I can say with some authority that as a movie, Sound Of Freedom is well made and well executed. The overall acting is effective, the child performances are amazing, the editing is excellent and the cinematography is top notch. The film is good all around; it reminds me of one my favorite movies of all time, a criminal procedural directed by Akira Kurosawa called ‘High And Low’ (also known as ‘Heaven And Hell’ in Japan) about police investigating a child kidnapping.
My only complaint is that I felt they should have shown Tim Ballard with his family a little more, so that when he makes the decision to go to Columbia and risk his life, the choice carries more weight. Other than that, Sound Of Freedom is one of the best dramas I have seen in a long time, and at no point did I feel “preached at.” I can’t say the same for most Hollywood films the past several years, which are replete with non-stop leftist propaganda.
The depiction of the process of child trafficking is very uncomfortable, but it’s meant to be. I rarely squirm in my chair with discomfort or get angry at characters on a screen, but every time there was a scene with a pedophile all I could think was “That guy needs to go in a wood chipper.” That’s good film making.
So again, there are few if any valid criticisms to make about the production itself and the story is largely accurate. Why are leftist journalists raging against this movie? I think because it sheds light on the fact that pedophilia is not only about isolated cases of loners stalking school playgrounds, it’s an international industry worth billions upon billions of dollars, and there are very rich and powerful people involved in that industry (including people in mainstream journalism).
They don’t want people to consider the pervasive nature of this criminal underworld. They want people passive and unaware. For some reason, they want people to assume that child slavery is a conspiracy theory.
Another issue to consider is that the political left has been aggressively targeting children with sexualization for the past several years, primarily through the imposition of trans ideology. They are turning the sexualization of minors into an activist movement. Children as young as kindergarten are being indoctrinated with “gender identity” propaganda and HIGHLY pornographic books (with pornographic images) posing as educational LGBT content are being planted in public schools. We all know what the end game of this movement is – The normalization of pedophilia.
Leftists may be consciously or unconsciously hostile to Sound Of Freedom because when they see the organized networks of child groomers on the big screen, they see themselves.
To conclude: Go see this movie. The media attacks are clearly designed to dissuade people from watching it based on political bias. Check it out and you’ll realize quickly that all their claims are false. Furthermore, you’ll start to wonder aloud why they hate the film? The saying “Methinks thou dost protest too much…” comes to mind, as such journalists reveal there propensity for evil.
Article cross-posted from Alt-Market.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.