Business

The Congo Bloodbath – Why You Should Care

Michael Cessna January 31, 2025

On Monday, January 27, the city of Goma, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (the former Zaire), fell to an assault by the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group, Causing a sudden escalation in the fighting of one of the worlds least-known conflicts, a conflict that has run, in various phases, since the 1960’s. This does not mark an end to the fighting, by any means, but it does hint at a new phase, a phase which – coupled to the Trump administration’s upset to the region by its 90-day suspension of foreign aid across the board – could prove to be a disaster for high tech manufacturing industries around the world.

At the center of the fighting, are the vast mineral deposits of “rare earth elements” in the region, on both sides of Lake Kivu, in the DRC and in Rwanda, which is also home to its own vast mineral deposits. These rare earth elements are fundamental to the workings of everything from nuclear power plants to the computer device you are reading this on.

*Lake Kivu, Africa, as seen from space, 2003. NASA Image. Public Domain.*

So – if there is plenty of mineral wealth to go around, what’s the problem?

There are two factors at work, here. First, is the long history of mostly-European (and a few American) mining conglomerates, seeking to maximize profits by operating largely with what amounts to slave labor. This has been going on since at least the 1880’s, but today, disgruntled rebel groups have access to the same weapons as the governments and corporations that oppose them, as was predicted in 1940.

*Detail from Page 8 of **The Small Wars Manual** (1940), USMC. Public Domain.*

Second, is the phoenix-like rebirth of the DRC’s neighbor, Rwanda.

When most people in the west hear the word “Rwanda”, their first thought is likely a dim memory of the horrors of the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, and the abject failure of the “world community” to intervene to stop the genocide.

But, out of that fire, Rwanda emerged with a new face.

Rwanda’s transformation since 2000 represents one of Africa’s most remarkable recovery stories. Following the devastating genocide of 1994, which claimed an estimated 800,000 lives and shattered the country’s social fabric, Rwanda embarked on an ambitious development strategy under President Paul Kagame’s leadership.

The country adopted “Vision 2020“, a comprehensive development program focusing on transforming Rwanda from an agricultural subsistence economy into a knowledge-based, middle-income nation. This strategy prioritized several key areas: good governance, human resource development, private sector development, infrastructure, and regional economic integration.

Rwanda’s economic approach emphasized technology and business-friendly reforms. The government invested heavily in digital infrastructure, establishing widespread internet connectivity and promoting tech education. This earned Rwanda the nickname “Africa’s Singapore,” reflecting its ambition to become a regional hub for technology and services. The country consistently ranked among Africa’s easiest places to do business, attracting significant foreign investment.

In education, Rwanda made dramatic progress, achieving near-universal primary school enrollment and significantly increasing secondary school attendance. The country also emphasized women’s empowerment, achieving one of the world’s highest rates of female parliamentary representation.

Parallel to its domestic development, Rwanda emerged as a significant contributor to international peacekeeping operations. This involvement served multiple purposes: demonstrating Rwanda’s recovery, providing professional development for its military, and generating revenue through UN peacekeeping reimbursements.

The Rwandan military, rebuilt after the genocide, has become one of Africa’s most professional forces. By the early 2020’s, Rwanda ranked among the top contributors to UN peacekeeping missions globally. Rwandan troops earned particular praise for their effectiveness in challenging environments like South Sudan and the Central African Republic.

This peacekeeping role reflected Rwanda’s broader regional ambitions. The country positioned itself as a stabilizing force in central Africa, though this role sometimes generated controversy, particularly regarding its involvement in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.

Rwanda’s development model, while successful in many metrics, has faced criticism regarding political freedoms and regional relations. Nevertheless, its economic achievements are substantial: sustained GDP growth, reduced poverty rates, improved healthcare access, and increased life expectancy. The country’s per capita income more than tripled between 2000 and 2020.

The country’s approach to reconciliation and justice through the Gacaca courts system, while controversial, has been studied as a unique model for post-conflict societies. Rwanda balanced the need for justice with practical considerations of processing hundreds of thousands of cases, while simultaneously working to rebuild national unity.

This combination of domestic development and international engagement has transformed Rwanda from a symbol of tragedy to a notable example of post-conflict recovery and development. Its experience offers important lessons about the relationship between security, governance, and economic development in post-conflict situations.

However, another aspect of the other side of the “Rwanda Coin” is its involvement with and support of the M23 rebel group.

The March 23 Movement (M23), formed in 2012, emerged from earlier rebel groups in eastern DRC, drawing its name from a March 23, 2009, peace agreement between the DRC government and the CNDP rebel group. The organization primarily consists of ethnic Tutsis from North Kivu province, sharing ethnic ties with Rwanda’s ruling elite.

Rwanda’s relationship with M23 has been consistently controversial. While Rwanda officially denies supporting the group, multiple UN reports and international investigations have documented evidence of Rwandan military support, including weapons transfers, tactical guidance, and direct military assistance. This support appears motivated by several factors: security concerns about anti-Tutsi forces in eastern DRC, economic interests in the mineral-rich region, and strategic ambitions for regional influence.

The first M23 rebellion (2012-2013) captured international attention when the group briefly occupied Goma. UN investigations during this period found substantial evidence of Rwandan support, including direct military intervention. This led to international pressure and aid suspension from several Western donors, eventually contributing to M23’s defeat and exile of its leaders to Uganda and Rwanda.

The M23 resurfaced in late 2021, launching new offensives in North Kivu. Fresh evidence emerged of Rwandan support, including allegations of direct military involvement. Rwanda has consistently argued that its actions are defensive, citing the presence of FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) – a group partly composed of perpetrators of the 1994 genocide – in eastern DRC.

The conflict reflects deeper regional tensions. Rwanda’s involvement with M23 has strained relations with neighboring countries and complicated its carefully cultivated international image as a model of post-conflict development. The DRC government has repeatedly accused Rwanda of using M23 as a proxy force to maintain influence over eastern DRC’s resource-rich territories.

The international response to Rwanda’s alleged support for M23 has been complex, partly due to Rwanda’s important role in regional stability (especially in Mozambique, to battle that country’s islamist insurgency) and its significant contributions to UN peacekeeping missions elsewhere in Africa. This has created a paradoxical situation where Rwanda is simultaneously a major contributor to African peacekeeping while being accused of destabilizing a neighboring state.

The situation highlights the complex interplay between regional security, ethnic politics, and economic interests in the Great Lakes region. Rwanda’s support for M23, while officially denied, appears to follow a pattern of intervention in eastern DRC that dates back to the aftermath of the 1994 genocide.

*The Great Lakes of Africa. 2015 Image by MellonDor. CCA/4.0 International.*

The implications of M23’s capture of Goma are severe, if Rwanda is actually deploying its own forces to back the rebels, given M23 stating their intent to march on the DRC capitol of Kinshasa to overthrow the government there.

While it may seem cold, given the scale of human suffering, the economic impact on the readers of this article and their neighbors could potentially be immense. The Trump administration’s 90-day suspension of foreign aid creates additional complications in an already volatile situation. Rwanda, which receives significant US assistance for both development and military programs, might find its peacekeeping capabilities affected just as regional tensions escalate. Similarly, the DRC’s government, already struggling to maintain control in its eastern regions, could see its military effectiveness further diminished by this temporary funding gap. This aid suspension, while brief, comes at a critical moment when both nations are positioning themselves for potential broader conflict, potentially accelerating the region’s descent into deeper instability.

Given the professional nature of Rwandan troops in general, there is a very real chance that this training may have been transferred to the M23 rebels after their unsuccessful rebellion a decade ago. The best example of this is the treatment of some 280 captured Romanian mercenaries, a profession with a long history in the region, which is jnot known to be very lenient in its treatment of non-African ‘operators’ when captured – the Romanians are in the process of being repatriated as this article goes to press, happy that they are not meeting a far worse fate than an unexpected plane flight home.

There is a solid chance that there may be serious disruptions to rare earth mineral extraction in the offing, disruptions that could potentially impact US and Western tech industries in a very short span of time. Events in Africa may not impact you, immediately or directly, but they will do so, eventually.

Forewarned is forearmed.

*The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To*

Global Shipping Container Rates Jump 29%

Michael Cessna May 30, 2024

NewsBlurb

A new report shows that global container shipping rates have jumped some 29%, as of the end of April, 2024. While the Pentagon is confident that military actions against the Iran-back Houthi terrorists in Yemen are succeeding in tamping down attacks on shipping, the mess of port congestion around the world is also seriously impacting the shipping world, which will inevitably cause significant price increases on all imported goods.

American Companies Relying More and More on CCP Ad Dollars

Paul Collier March 8, 2024

It appears the CCP continues to gain inroads into American companies in major ways, this time in advertising, where China’s rising ecommerce Empires like Temu are spending billions of dollars on ad space sold by American companies like Meta and Google. China as a client for Meta, for instance, already accounts for 10 percent of Meta’s business.

Excerpt from nytimes.com

… Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said on a call with analysts that Chinese-based advertisers accounted for 10 percent of its revenue, almost double over two years ago. In the last year, Temu has placed about 1.4 million ads globally across Google services, and at least 26,000 different versions of ads on Meta, according to Meta’s Ad Library.

… The rush of spending by Temu and Shein has “single-handedly” driven up the cost of digital advertising, Josh Silverman, chief executive of Etsy, said on a call with analysts in November.

Discount Chinese e-commerce companies have grabbed increasing attention in the United States over the past few years, tempting buyers with low-cost goods when inflation was driving up prices.

Bezos’ WaPo Bleeding Money, Loses 0 Million in 2023

Bezos’ WaPo Bleeding Money, Loses $100 Million in 2023

Freedomist Editor July 24, 2023

Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post, a flagship of DNC-CCP agit prop aimed at destroying the American republic, is losing money hand over fist since the ungrateful leftist billionaire took over. This year, the Molotov-cocktail-styled publication has lost over $100 million, causing Bezos to take more of a direct role in running the DNC-CCP organ of hate.

He made billions thanks to American liberty and power and chose to use those billions to attack the American people themselves with his Orwellian-themed paper that claims “Democracy dies in Darkness,” revealing the seditious nature of the hate rag by insisting America is a Democracy, one of the worst forms of government in the world, and not a republic, one of the best forms of government in the world.

Bezos is clearly not happy with actually losing money to promote hate and fear, having recently pushed out chief executive Fred Ryan, An insider told Fox News of the news of Ryan’s departure, “Hard to say whether he was pushed or jumped… We’re still hiring, still expanding. But Fred is 68. So… if I had to guess—and it’s strictly that—I’d say Bezos is getting impatient and wanted to get fresh blood. Pretty clear Bezos is worried.”

Apparently, the subscriber loss for the anti-American publication is substantial, so much that whatever benefits he is getting from selling America out is not enough to offset the millions in losses.

U.S., European Businesses Lobby Governments to Bend the Knee to the CCP

Paul Collier July 6, 2023

An article in Yahoo Finance claims American business leaders are lobbying the Biden administration to go gentle on China as they continue to gain great financial advantage selling out American principles for profit to a fascist state that, even as this writer reports this news, are currently engaging in a holocaust against the Uighur people in the western-most Xinjiang province.

It seems international corporations, be they American or European based, are hellbent on pressuring their respective governments to continue to allow the fascist state of the Chinese Communist Party ruled by a totalitarian leader, Chairman Xi Jinping, to continue to be able to invade their nations using bribes, loans, and market access promises to control the thought leaders within the nations they hope to turn into serfs of the CCP.

From the article in Yahoo Finance:

“Han Lin, China country head at consulting firm The Asia Group, said US businesses could ‘find comfort’ that US and China leaders are seeking ways to de-escalate tensions, and mitigate the contractionary and inflationary ramifications of decoupling.

‘This gives businesses a breathing space to focus on China’s economic fundamentals as they plan their 2024 budget,’ he added.

Chinese officials have also pinned their hopes on US business actively playing a role to mediate and bridge the gap, and they have taken chances to send strong signals against decoupling.”

So it is clear that the Chinese are confident that their paid stooges, our American corporate leaders, will come through for them and pressure the near-one-party-state of America under the DNC-CCP to back off their efforts to advantage their position for the final battle, which will come after both our American corporate leaders beholden to the DNC-CCP and the Chinese Communist Party itself complete their joint project of destroying the American republic.

As we have stated before, the DNC is a frenemy of the CCP, and thus it seeks to continue to use the CCP to help its fight against the American republic while plotting to one day be the last fascist highlander standing. There can be only one, and both the CCP and the DNC imagine they will be that final one.

The DNC finds itself dancing between needing to shore up its power before the final battle while not so critically harming its frenemy so that it can no longer aid in the destruction of the American republic. It seems “US business communities are divided over whether Washington should soften its approach or become more hawkish with China, but analysts said keeping lines of communication open is key to de-escalating overall tensions,” according to the Yahoo Finance article.

That means half of “American businesses” are more than willing to be vassals of the CCP so long as the owners of these businesses continue to live the billionaire lifestyle choices they’ve become accustomed to. Half of “American businesses” hope to shore up DNC power, banking on the DNC to be the last fascistic highlander standing. None of these mega-corporations have the interests of the American republic in mind. If they did, they would seek to do business and share tech with such a dangerous fascistic state determined to destroy American power and replace it with its own.

Investors Turn on ESG Political Scheme

Paul Collier June 9, 2023

U.S. Investors are wising up to the indoctrination efforts of the anti-American left through their Diversity, Equity, Inclusion(DEI) scheme being used to justify demanding companies support all the policies of the DNC-CCP, from abortion on demand to grooming kids for sexual re-assignment surgery. Support among investors dropped by one third for such measures from 2022 to 2023.

In 2022, over 30 percent of shareholders voted in favor of a de facto investor trade union that would force anti-American, anti-human leftist policies on corporations, else face the removal of investment capital. Just one year later, support dropped by nearly one third to 21 percent. Support for “green” mandates among shareholders also dropped in that same time period from 36 percent to 23 percent.

Both BlackRock and Vanguard Investment remain leviathans enforcing the anti-American, anti-human, de facto trade union standards on corporations despite the fact that both firms are using other peoples’ monies to force their ideology of fear and hate on American corporations. BlackRock repeated the lie that it continues to focus on delivering “long-term financial value” to its customers, though everyone knows it is run by a far left seditionists willing to sacrifice the profit of its clients for its twisted ideology.

Rumors of…Something

Michael Cessna May 30, 2023

On May 21 of 2023, CBS news released a story concerning the Senate Sergeant at Arms, retired US Army LtGen Karen Gibson, offering satellite telephones (pdf link) to the 100 members of the United States Senate, as an “enhanced security measure.” The wording in the wider reporting on this occurrence is odd, with at least one outlet opining that the ‘offer’ of the devices “…has been extended to all 100 senators…”.

*Karen Gibson, Sergeant At Arms of the United States Senate. Official photograph. Source: US Senate. Public Domain.*

Odd…So – Not all Senators were offered the phones initially? Why? It’s not like the Houses of Congress have ever been shy with budgetary items for themselves.

Moving on.

While the public reason for issuing Senators with these devices is to “enhance security” in the wake of threats to members of Congress – citing the January 6, 2021 protests and the recent attack on the husband of former house Speaker Nancy Pelosi – the deeper picture is not so straightforward.

“Continuity of Government Operations” (or “COGOPS”) are operations, protective measures and security procedures designed to maintain government functions in the face of some catastrophic event. An artifact of the Cold War, the idea behind ‘continuity of government’ came from the very real threat that a Soviet surprise nuclear strike could destroy the entirety of the United States’ elected leadership in a single, Pearl Harbor-like strike. Numerous measures and programs were instituted (the Congressional bunker at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia among them), and one of the many was a monitoring system that can and does track the locations of all members of Congress.

The problem with a cell phone-based tracking system is that, in the event of major damage being done to the cell tower network in a region (by whatever mechanism), your personal cell phone will not be able to connect to the network. While the cell phone identification numbers of the members of the “National Command Authority” (the President, Vice President and the President’s Cabinet), the Supreme Court and both Houses of Congress all have priority access to the nation’s cellular telephone network in case of a “disruptive event,” that priority access is worthless if there is no network to connect to.

In contrast, a satellite phone network works by connecting a phone directly to the satellite communications network. This network is largely immune – at least in theory – from being significantly damaged by most conceivable “disruptive events.” It also allows a much cleaner and clearer signal when trying to locate a particular person.

The notion that members of Congress require satellite phones for their personal and family security is, to be blunt, laughable to the point of being offensive.

There are very few things could potentially impact the cell grid to the point of requiring satellite phones as a substitute emergency communications device. We’ll briefly look at a few of those possibilities below.

The preeminent threat of this type, as of mid-2023, is a large scale nuclear attack on the United States, an idea that would have been unheard of barely ten years ago. This would obviously have a vast and destructive impact on the nation as a whole, but would particularly impact the telephone system. The primary vectors of a nuclear-induced incident would include electromagnetic pulses (EMP) critically damaging unprotected and unhardened points within the network across a wide area.

But there are other possibilities, many of which may seem to approach a level of hysterical hyperbole.

The notion of a “supervolcano” such as Yellowstone, erupting is a certainly extremely remote as a possibility…but not an impossible one. Similarly, a smaller volcanic eruption at – for example – the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, has the potential (YouTube link) to generate a tsunami that would make the tsunamis in the Indian Ocean in 2004 (YouTube link) or the 2011 event at Fukushima, Japan (YouTube link) look tiny in comparison.

An even more remote – but still very real – potential avenue of disruption would be a cometary or meteoric impact. The Earth is being continually bombarded by meteors; they can be seen as “shooting stars” in the night sky. The vast majority of these objects never actually reach the Earth’s surface, burning away to vapor long before coming close to the surface…some, like the 1908 Tunguska Event, are another matter entirely.

However, an event such as the Burckle Impact Event – which occurred, in geological and astronomical terms, only yesterday – or a smaller-scale version of the 1994 impact of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 into Jupiter (just on a smaller, Earth-sized scale) would obviously damage the systems of the world to the extent that the survivors may well be reduced to barbarism…but that is not an option that any government – and especially that of the United States – is willing to entertain. And mitigating that fall – no matter how remote a possibility the causative event may be – requires some level of a functioning government, which as always, is rooted in those placed in authority.

*Meteor impact; artist concept. Credit: Don Davis, 1991, NASA.*

It is perfectly acceptable to detest those in government – especially when they deserve it – but it also must be acknowledged that any civilization above the most basic level requires some form of leadership in order to function. What you, the Reader, should be doing, is figuring out your own strategy to get through what may well be coming.

…Because governments rarely update their COGOPS in public.

Infrastructure – America’s Jugular Vein

Michael Cessna February 4, 2023

Unless a person has paid essentially no attention to any news for the last twenty years, strident complaints and warnings about the abysmal state of basic infrastructure in the United States is nearly impossible to avoid.

Highways, local roads, bridges, railroads – the arteries that carry both commerce and the work force, both inter- and intrastate – are in terrible condition. The situation has become critical enough, that it has noticeably slowed the velocity of the supply chain, compounding the impacts of both the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the grounding of the MV Ever Given container ship in 2021.

Critically, failures in the railroad network caused by favoring profiteering over operational efficiency – one of the few examples of actual failure in deregulation policies – are leading to staff cuts of up to twenty-nine percent, while the mileage of operating rail track has steadily decreased, even though per-mile profits rise.

*An eastbound freight train at West Drive overpass in Brampton, Ontario. CCA/4.0*

This is a toxic situation, as the imbalance between railroads and over-the-road (OTR) trucking continues to grow. Even given the inefficiencies inherent in OTR vs Rail (as freight trains commonly haul between 200 and 300 intermodal containers, or dedicated freight cars, allowing a crew of three or four to do the work of 200 or more people), slowdowns caused by poor infrastructure increasingly impact the economy…

All of this has been known for decades, although it is little remarked about in the mainstream press, unless there is some major newsworthy nugget to titillate the audience…That said – what does this have to do with a critical strategic threat to the United States? What does this have to do with security and defense, aside from the obvious logistics advantages?

A recent YouTube video by the channel “Real Life Lore” (YouTube link) pointed out that the Continental United States, i.e., the “Lower 48”, is uniquely blessed with a unique terrain that practically guarantees global economic dominance to anyone who can control this territory. This has, in fact, been the reason for the meteoric rise of the United States over the course of the last one hundred and thirty-odd years.

*A map of the Mississippi River Basin, made using USGS data. CCA/4.0*

The driving engine behind this geological and geographical system lays in the facts that, first, no major agricultural or manufacturing center in the Lower 48 is further than 150 miles (240km) from a navigable waterway. East of the Rocky Mountains, the majority of navigable waterways feed into the Mississippi River system (which is itself navigable all the way to Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota), which then flows south, to the port of New Orleans.

From there, the Intracoastal Waterway chain of barrier islands provides a near contiguous navigable seaway, for almost the entire length of the US coast, from Brownsville, Texas, to Virginia, and from there, to the Hudson River, which connects to the Great Lakes, all with little exposure to open sea conditions. No other continent has this precise mix of features. And, as water transport is anywhere from ten to thirty times more efficient than any other type of transport, the titanic economic advantages are obvious.

However – there is a catch: Vidalia, Louisiana.

Most readers will have never heard of Vidalia. This is not surprising, as it is a tiny town of barely 4,300 people, even though it is the seat of Concordia Parish. Vidalia, however, is home to perhaps the single-most critical point of physical security in the world:

The Old River Control Structure.

Completed by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1963, the Old River Control Structure was built to prevent the Mississippi River from diverting its course into the Atchafalaya River. The Mississippi River’s tends to wander over time. For the entire existence of the United States as a nation, the Mississippi followed (more or less) its current course. As a result, the city of New Orleans – and its seaport – was built and expanded into the critical complex that it is today. Indeed, it was a pivotal point in the War of 1812, in a battle that launched the career of a future President, and later formed a cornerstone of Federal strategy in the Civil War.

*The delta of the Atchafalaya River on the Gulf of Mexico. View is upriver to the northwest. 1999. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.*

In 1953, however, the Corps of Engineers concluded that the Mississippi was beginning to shift its course again, and that if left unchecked, it would divert into the Atchafalaya Basin by 1990. Thus, they launched the Old River Control Structure project at their predicted point of divergence at Vidalia, as the result of such a diversion would be catastrophic, as the Mississippi river would quickly and violently carve a new channel and river delta complex, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico some sixty miles to the west of New Orleans, an even that would leave both New Orleans and the Louisiana state capital of Baton Rouge not simply ‘high and dry’, but would leave both major cities without a source of fresh water.

Aside from the catastrophic environmental impact on the United States and major cities along the river’s route –as well as the significant impact on the strategic military system of the US in the Lower 48 – the impact on the economy of the United States would almost certainly lead to another “Great Depression”, virtually overnight, an economic contagion that would almost certainly crash the world’s economy, as the United States’ economic system is not designed to flow “upriver”.

The Corps of Engineers did a fantastic job on the control project; the only significant natural threat to the structure was the Mississippi flood of 1973, with damaged the structure to a degree.

*Mississippi River inundating Morgan City, Louisiana, May, 1973. Environmental Protection Agency. Public Domain.*

But now, we live in the world of the early 21^st Century, and “lateral thinking” about security has to be taken into account…Specifically, the “Poor Man’s Nuclear Weapon”.

On April 16, 1947, an explosion in the port of Texas City, Texas mostly vaporized the SS Grandcamp, formerly, the SS Benjamin R. Curtis, a Liberty Ship built during World War 2 and later gifted to France to help rebuild that country’s merchant marine. The ship had been loaded with approximately 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate – used in fertilizer or explosives – as well as small mounts of other cargo. The explosion leveled nearly 1,000 buildings within 2,000 feet of the explosion, killing at least 560 people (including all but one of the town’s 28-man volunteer fire department) and injuring more than 5,000 people, almost 1,800 of whom were admitted to area hospitals. Some 63 people were unidentifiable, and were buried in a memorial cemetery; an additional 113 people were declared “missing”, because no identifiable parts could be found. The Grandcamp’s 2-ton anchor was hurled over 1.5 miles, digging itself into a 10-ft deep crater, while one of her propellers was thrown 2 miles inland. More than 1,100 vehicles, 360 rail freight cars and 500 homes were damaged; 10 miles away, in the city of Galveston, half the windows in town were shattered. All told, damages totaled between $1,000,000,000 and $4,500,000,000, in 2019 dollars.

*Texas City disaster. Parking lot 1/4 of a mile away from the explosion, 1947. University of Houston Digital Library.*

Then, on August 4, 2020, an estimated 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer – confiscated from an impounded ship nearly a decade before – detonated in a gargantuan explosion. The blast – estimated as equal to 1.1 kilotons of TNT – killed at least 218 people, injured over 7,000, and left nearly 300,000 people homeless.

*Port of Beirut, Lebanon. Before (Left, 7/30/2020) and after (R) comparison showing blast damage from the August 4,2020 explosion (circled area). Google Earth Pro and Maxar Technologies.*

Such a blast would critically damage the Old River Control Structure; two or three, should they happen simultaneously, would certainly destroy it outright. Neither ships, nor ammonium nitrate, are hard to come by. And they are not, comparatively, all that expensive. Both are within easy reach of many “extra-national hostile groups”. And the MV Rhosus, the ship at the center of the Beirut blast story, would have been capable of transiting for most of the Mississippi’s length…

…And yet, there are no real security measures in Vidalia that would prevent an American version of the St. Nazaire Raid.

Someone should really look into this.

Really.

Wall Street Banks Pressured to End Fossil-Fuel Investing

Paul Collier January 26, 2023

WOKE MOBS WANT BANKS TO BECOME EXTENSIONS OF MARXIST IDEOLOGY – The Woketarian mobs are threatening cancellation of our major banks if they don’t use their financing power to reflect the Marxist-DNC-CCP party platform. They want banks to refuse to allow their institutions to be used to fund new fossil-fuel projects less the world dies.

In reality, they hope to further demoralize Americans and shut down our independence and mobility by forcing us to rely on impractical, expensive energy alternatives they all coincidently find themselves invested in.

The Woke Investment Code is Destroying America and Investors Are Waking Up

Paul Collier January 26, 2023

ESG BECOMING INVESTOR LIABILITY AS SHAREHOLDERS REVOLT – Efforts by the DNC-CCP and its corporate allies to create a Woke moral purity code to penalize American-values companies while rewarding Marxist-CCP-DNC ones are being met by shareholders who are sick of seeing their investment dollars being used as political weapons of war aimed at the American republic itself.

The overt acts of sedition by these corporatists is being overshadowed right now by the bottom line, Woke companies don’t make money, to the detriment of the shareholders, whose dollars are treated as if they personally belong to the cult of death that drives ESG.

The Congo Bloodbath – Why You Should Care

Global Shipping Container Rates Jump 29%

NewsBlurb

American Companies Relying More and More on CCP Ad Dollars

Bezos’ WaPo Bleeding Money, Loses $100 Million in 2023

U.S., European Businesses Lobby Governments to Bend the Knee to the CCP

Investors Turn on ESG Political Scheme

Rumors of…Something

Infrastructure – America’s Jugular Vein

Wall Street Banks Pressured to End Fossil-Fuel Investing

The Woke Investment Code is Destroying America and Investors Are Waking Up

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