Some things, people don’t really think too much about. Even when people see pictures of it, they don’t really think about, much, unless it is specifically referenced. This week, we’re going to look at one of those things.
Soldiers carry stuff; sometimes, a lot of stuff. That is fairly well understood by most people, but for most, the idea of carrying this around centers on a backpack, purse or some other type of satchel. Armies around the world have had to deal with this problem for millennia. For the most part, armies before roughly the 1890’s had variations of a single solution: the baldric.
A baldric is simply a wide and heavy leather strap that goes over one shoulder, and holds something over the opposite hip, much like a lady’s purse, or a modern “messenger bag”. From the 17th to the 19th centuries, most European armies used a pair of baldrics to carry a cartridge box on one side, and a bayonet on the other; occasionally, some type of “haversack” was slung next to the bayonet. Anything heavier typically went into either a rather primitive (by modern standards) backpack, or onto wagons or pack animals. As long as soldiers used simple muzzleloading muskets, this was sufficient for most campaigns.
Watercolor depicting the uniform of the Continental Army’s 2nd Canadian Regiment. Painting by Charles M. Lefferts, 1926. Public Domain.
However, as small arms technology dramatically advanced in the late 19th century, new methods of carrying weapons were needed.
The problem was not simply new “bits-n-bobs”, but increasing weight. Weight is the bane of any soldier’s existence. Carrying heavy loads – frequently exceeding 120lbs/54kg – beats down any person quickly, and in a time where motorized transport was not an option, this could halt an army faster than any destroyed bridge.
American soldiers arriving at Schiphol Airport, North Holland, during the NATO exercise “Reforger”, 1978. Photo Credit: Rob Croes. Dutch National Archives. CC0/1.0
The solution, at first, was to connect a belt to suspenders. This distributed the weight between the waist and shoulders, and proved to be a great help in load carrying. This lasted into the 21st century, best known as “ALICE Gear” (All-purpose Lightweight Individual Carrying Equipment).
Basic ALICE rig. United States Army, FM 21-16, Care and Use of Individual Clothing and Equipment, 1972. US Army. Public Domain.
The ALICE system, and its foreign copies, was an excellent and highly customizable way to carry equipment, opening up the ability to carry more tools into combat (because there is no rest of the weary). But then, something new began to appear in combat zones.
Degar/Montagnard troops with U.S. Army soldiers during the Vietnam War. US Army Photo. Public Domain.
In the mid-1950’s, Communist China decided that it needed a load-carrying system for its troops, adapted to their adoption of the Russian SKS rifle. Since the SKS uses fixed, 10-round strip-clips, the Chinese created a bandolier that could hold some 200 rounds, along with a small bottle of cleaning oil.
Vietcong Exhibit, Fort Lewis Military Museum, Fort Lewis, Washington, USA, 2009. SKS bandolier is on the mannequin, on the right. Photo by Joe Mabel. CCA/3.0
While this was fine for the SKS, the Chinese quickly adopted their homegrown variant of the Russian AK-47 right after adopting the SKS. Since AK-type weapons all use a very prominent curved magazine, this required a completely new type of carrying equipment.
The result was the Type 56 Carrier (the first “Chest Rig”).
Chinese Type 56 Chest Rig (circled in red). Unknown Author.
Like the SKS bandoleer before it, the Type 56 Carrier fit over the front part of the body, but was completely off the waist, using its shoulder straps to carry all the weight. Will not at all modular (as that was not really a concern for any military forces at the time), it was a simple, easy to produce design that got the job done.
The Type 56 Carrier design swiftly began to spread around the world. It’s simplicity and ease of manufacture allowed it to be copied in small “guerrilla” manufacturing shops, giving small armies, as well as insurgent/guerrilla forces a huge advantage, bring them into the same equipment capability range as regular armies. In the United States, at least, new chest rigs developed from the Type 56 can be bought for as little as $36. As well, the chest rig design is highly adaptable, allowing for the carrying of hand grenades, radios and all sorts of other gear.
Chicom Chest Rigs of the Soviet Afghan War, c.1989. CCA/3.0
But there are added benefits to the design that other load-carrying systems cannot match: vehicles.
More conventional, ALICE-type harnesses can be problematic when the wearer tries to enter a vehicle, as the various pouches on the harnesses belt do not fit well with most vehicle seats. In fact, fully loaded pouches can be downright painful when sitting in most car seats.
In contrast, the chest rig allows the wearer a much more comfortable rid. An additional distinct benefit for the chest rig in a vehicle is the ability to reload a weapon easily; more conventional rigs to not lend themselves to this ability.
Chest rigs are certainly not without the issues: “hitting the deck” (i.e., getting as flat onto the ground as possible) is much harder in a chest rig than in a more conventional harness. At the troop level, however, troops find ways to compensate – training is, after all, more important than the tools themselves: you learn to train with what you have, not with what you might want.
So.
Why an article on something most people don’t give much thought to? Simply put, weapons are very, very good things to have. But, to make the best use of those weapons, a person needs to learn to use other tools to utilize those weapons to their fullest potential – when you look at pictures of troops, don’t “just” look at their weapons, look at what they are wearing, to carry all the other gear that they need.
It is said that you “fight as your train”. That is driven not just by the weapons you carry but by the gear you need to make those weapons work to their potential.
You never know when that might become necessary knowledge.
Forewarned is forearmed.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Note: The following article is a very gently edited excerpt/extract of an article that appeared in our April monthly edition, available by subscription only. The original article is much more extensive, touching on a variety of issues. This extraction was made, because of an encounter an acquaintance of the author had recently, in North Texas. The subject of this article was touched upon as part of a previous story. Sharp-eyed readers will recall the author’s comments on social media regarding certain Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests made concerning this article. This is the full story.
Snoopin’ n Poopin’
Two of the first tasks in planning any sort of military operation are the gathering of relevant intelligence, and the testing of various methods of execution: What are you attempting to accomplish? How can you conduct “actions on target” when your forces are limited in the equipment that they can bring with them?
While it has long been understood around the world that the United States is a very “permissive” society – especially when it comes to the civilian populace acquiring firearms – for a foreign intelligence service, this is something that must be tested. While it may seem, at first, that foreign intelligence services would be doing this kind of thing all the time, in fact, this is usually a very rare event, because the potential fallout from the discovery of a blown operation would be incalculable, very likely leading directly and immediately to an all-out war. This is why Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi never actually supplied weapons to gangs in Chicago (unlike Obama in Mexico).
While having “agents in place” stage “test attacks”, such as shooting up step transformers, staging catastrophic train derailments, and potentially committing widespread arson attacks targeting forest lands, among other types of actions, are comparatively low-risk, actually organizing armed paramilitary units is simply not something that could be successfully done against a nation like the United States.
Deng – who had emigrated from Communist China, claiming religious persecution as a Christian – had never served in any branch of the United States armed forces. However, that did not prevent him, just as it does not prevent any person in the United States, from walking into an “Army-Navy” store and buying a couple of then-current US Army uniforms, in his case an “ACU-pattern” combat uniform, and a then-current “Dress Green” officer’s uniform. Deng also purchased appropriate patches and ribbons that identified him as a Colonel in the Special Forces…to anyone who didn’t look too closely.
Suitably attired, Deng then “acquired” (the details were never clarified in the news reports of the day) a large commercial building in Temple City, and had it outfitted to appear as a US Army recruiting center. Deng then went on an impressively successful one-man recruiting spree, which – had it been legitimate – would have been the envy of every military recruiter in the country.
Deng’s recruiting targets were Chinese immigrants newly arrived in the United States. His “recruits” were low-level workers, with little or no technical expertise. They worked in service industries, such as restaurant wait-staff, at dry cleaners, and the like. Deng presented his “unit” – the “United States Army/Military Special Forces Special Reserve” (which likely sounds very impressive in Mandarin), of which he was the “Supreme Commander”.
The “sales pitch” Deng used was uniquely tailored to his recruiting base: he presented the United States Army as a “tong”, which in Chinese society is a term for a “social club” – a tong can be anything from the equivalent of the Rotary Club to the Mafia; it all depends on what the tong is organized for.
The key relevant aspect, here, is that a tong charges an “entry fee”, plus “yearly dues”, as well as additional fees to advance in rank within the organization. Deng’s “recruits” paid an entry fee of $400 dollars, and yearly dues of $120; varying amounts of money also got the hapless recruits promotions, at least up to a point. Added to this, Deng pushed the normal advantages outlined by real recruiters, such as college assistance after c.4 years of “service”, and preferential consideration when applying for citizenship.
While this might seem laughably unworkable as a recruiting strategy, it must be remembered that Deng’s target pool were recent Chinese immigrants with little knowledge of the United States and its institutions – obviously, no legitimate recruiter will ever ask potential recruits for money. For all of its problems, however, Deng’s strategy netted him at least 200 victims; according to some reports, he may have recruited as many as 800.
Deng “sold the image” to his victims, though, by taking their initial pay-in, jotting down their information and vital statistics, having them sign a “recruitment form” (which they of course could not read), and telling them to return in a week – at which time, Deng produced an official-looking identification card, a set of ACU’s, a pair of combat boots and a standard-issue army beret, in the recruit’s size. The recruits were then advised when to return to Deng’s center for “training” on a given schedule. (Some news sources at the time suggested that Deng was “training” his troops with “BB guns”; given the general lack of knowledge about weapons training in general among various news reporters, it is highly likely that any “training” done used AirSoft weapons, which are close enough visually to be indistinguishable for most people unfamiliar with firearms.)
In reviewing pictures of Deng’s “recruiting center”, it is easy to see why it would fool most people who had never been in a military service. This author is a former Active-Duty US Marine, and I would have been fooled, at least for a few minutes, by Deng’s set-up. Having shown pictures to both former and current US Army personnel, these contacts were in unanimous agreement that the center would have passed muster for them, as well, again at least for a few minutes.
But Deng went further: he managed to get his “army” into photo-ops with politicians of Asian descent – some of whom were prior US military personnel – and got them an official tour of the aircraft carrier museum ship USS Midway, moored in San Diego, California.
But…what was the point? As presented, Deng’s purpose was a simple fraud scam: lure in hapless recruits, siphon off money from them (that they could ill-afford), and presumably vanish at some point. Deng’s scam was blown when some of his recruits tried to pay their “yearly dues” at actual Army recruiting offices, immediately prompting calls to the FBI which up-ended the entire scheme, leading to Deng’s arrest, trial, conviction and sentencing in 2011…at surprisingly high speed for the state of California, even on a good day.
The problem with this whole idea was money: Even by padding the numbers of Deng’s recruits up to one thousand, there simply wasn’t enough money coming in from the scam to maintain it. Leaving aside the cost of simple utilities like water, sewage, trash pick-up, electricity and phones – in the Los Angeles of 2008-2011, recall – all of which require significant money up-front to city services, there was the problem of uniforms. Deng supplied his recruits with a set of ACU’s (complete with custom name-tapes) along with standard issue combat boots and a black uniform beret. While ACU-pattern uniforms and equipment are laughably cheap in 2024, the polar opposite was true in 2008-2011: a set of secondhand ACU’s (jacket and trousers) cost between $80 and $100, total. A pair of combat boots ran about the same price, back then. Thus, half of the initial buy-in for one of Deng’s “recruits” was immediately spent. Even by liberally massaging the numbers, Deng could not have brought in more than $1 million dollars, gross, over the course of his scam’s life…before accounting for his overhead costs.
Given that the charges against Deng were limited to simple fraud at the state level – which is certainly strange, given his multiple violations of Federal laws concerning counterfeiting a government seal via him forging military ID’s for his recruits – even the most casual of observers is left wondering what was actually going on.
A realistic answer is required to the following question: What benefit would there be in having a fake US Army unit in Los Angeles in the late-2000’s?
Even given real weapons, which Deng never seemed to have possessed, such a haphazardly trained group would never be able to stand up to an actual military unit, especially a battle-seasoned unit of US Marines, who could be deployed against them from nearby Camp Pendleton (in a matter of an hour or two), for more than a few minutes, if that. Conversely, local police would have been severely handicapped to deal with such a group, if they were acting in any kind of real concert; the North Hollywood Shootout aptly demonstrated this, and those conditions persist to this writing.
However, the Greater Los Angeles Basin has always been a very volatile place; the Rodney King Riots had happened barely fifteen years prior, and there had been smaller riots since then. Given a suitable trigger for a riot, helicopter news cameras would have been handed the spectacle of what appeared to be a unit of the US Army charging rioters, firing into the crowd – recalling that Deng’s “troops” had no real training – the impression flashed around the world would be US troops mowing down American civilians, in an American city; even if the full story came out later, it wouldn’t matter – all that mattered would have been the visuals.
Despite the foregoing, no evidence has come to light that definitively connects Yupeng Deng to a foreign intelligence service; Freedom Of Information Act requests to the FBI have been met with pointed rebuttals and denials of any substantive investigation records from that agency as of this writing, despite news articles of the day pointedly relating that the FBI was, in fact, conducting such investigations. On the other hand, nothing has come to light, which says that he is unconnected to any such group. Additionally, it is entirely possible that Deng could have been set up as an unwitting patsy by a foreign intelligence service, and could have been supplied with money to cover his expenses for the scam operation.
The bottom line here, is that a person – years after the 9/11 attacks, and during active combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan – was able to recruit a fake US Army unit of realistic operational strength (company-size units run anywhere from 100 to 250 personnel) in one of the nation’s major metropolitan areas, and supposedly went undetected – even while meeting with local political leaders, marching in local parades as a unit, and touring actual military bases – for some three years. Yupeng Deng could not afford to run his scam with the cash he was taking in from his victims – this means that either he had a large reserve of cash to operate his scam, was drawing from an alternate income (all to no known purpose)…or, Deng was being supplied with money by “parties unknown”…and faced no Federal prosecution for his crimes.
That, by itself, was terrifying for 2011…in the world of 2024, the potential is far worse.
The paper outlines the possibility of the Soviet Union deploying special forces-like commando teams into the Continental United States in preparation for a “first strike” nuclear attack on the country. The teams would, in theory, infiltrate into the United States in advance of the attack, and move to sabotage both nuclear missile bases, nuclear-capable bomber bases of the USAF Strategic Air Command(deactivated at the end of the Cold War), and those ports that were home to the US Navy’s ballistic missile submarine fleet.
The commando units would – again, in theory – attack targets with the intent of leaving them incapable of launching their nuclear weapons; actual destruction was not necessary, simply making it impossible to operate at their full potential for some amount of time, while the Soviet first strike went in.
In particular, Section 6 of the report (beginning on page 16 of the .pdf file linked above) offers a detailed breakdown of the methods of infiltration available to a hostile commando force. The numbers of illegal border crossings and illegal aliens resident in the country, both date from late 1974…in contrast to modern numbers, those figures appear laughably small.
However, as the North Hollywood Shootout referenced above, the 9/11/2001 attacks and the terror attack on the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008demonstrate, the numbers required to paralyze not simply a major metropolitan area, but to terrorize the entire country, are almost vanishingly small. This is coupled to the shocking ease with which civilian vehicles can be converted into armored fighting platforms over the course of a single day, something that severely restricts the ability of civilian police departments to respond to determined threats effectively despite decades of increasing efforts at police militarization, as Freedomist/MIA pointed out recently.
Given the comparative ease of obtaining weapons and training for “light infantry” and “commando” type warfare (especially within the United States), which – as Freedomist/MIA has written about at length in the past – the notion of any number of terrorist groups, independent or state-sponsored, staging attacks inside the United States around the 2024 election is not hyperbole that is to be casually dismissed.
Even discounting the idea of “guerrilla bio-war labs”, the actions of the Democrat Party over the preceding fifteen years or so, to say nothing of the direct and deliberate actions of the Biden administration over the last three years, have left the United States completely open to a dedicated wave of crippling (even if “low tech”) attacks, despite the frantic efforts of the Biden administration and the mainstream media to “memory hole” the idea of hostile state action against highly vulnerable targets such as the power transmission grid within the United States, insisting that the recent surge in attacks is limited solely to “far right groups”.
Communist China has certainly maintained plans for decades to disrupt and destabilize the United States, both overseas and at home. A kaleidoscope of other factors and players on the field are contributing to Chinese wargame ideas and plans. China is certainly involved in some of these factors and players; however, even they understand that they have little to no control of such a situation, whether it happens spontaneously or not.
The Democrat Party and the festering pool of functionaries around Joe Biden have created an environment where the United States can be blown wide open at any time. Both the military and local police forces are ill equipped to deal with even the smallest of the potential threats outlined about, not least because they are largely prevented from doing so by the very laws that are supposed to guarantee the freedom of the American populace. This is aggravated by the legal impossibility of effective organization of the literal “last ditch” of defense for the United States, namely that of the Militia, as citizens have been legally barred from organizing and training in any meaningful manner without the direct approval of their state governments since 1886, not least because doing so will immediately place them at risk of arrest by any number of government “law enforcement” [sic] agencies in search of “good optics” for the mainstream media.
The next few months are going to be…“interesting” is a word. Every American citizen will need to decide on what actions they believe are necessary for themselves and their families.
Because the Federal Government is certainly not going to be of any help.
Addendum
On February 12, 2024, Freedomist/MIA submitted a Freedom Of Information Act request concerning information on Yupeng/David Deng and his 2008-2011 operations in the Greater Los Angeles Area. This request was broken into four sections, to address separate, but specific, details relating to the “ask”. Note that this is normal practice with FOIA requests…What is not normal practice, were the results, especially considering that the FBI is on public record as commenting to local reporters about the case:
Requests #’s 1618937-000/“US Army Volunteers Reserves” and 1619566-000/“Chinese Military Clubs”, were closed on February 20 and 22, respectively, stating that the FBI’s FOIA department was unable to locate any information on FBI investigations on those subjects for the period from 2008 to 2011, despite public articles indicating the contrary.
Request # 1619223-000/“DENG, YUPENG” was closed on February 20 because, quote: “…The mere acknowledgement of the existence of FBI records on third party individuals could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of privacy. This is our standard response to such requests, and should not be taken to mean that records do, or do not, exist. As a result, your request has been closed…” And, again, this is concerning a publicly available case where the perpetrator was arrested, arraigned, charged, tried, convicted, sentenced, and served a little over one year in a California state prison. (On a side note, the State of California responded promptly to a request for a summary of Deng’s prison records.)
Request # 1619316-000/“US Army Military Special Forces Special Reserve” was closed on March 14, advising that correspondence concerning the request had been snail-mailed to this author; as of May 31st of 2024, no correspondence concerning that request has been received, despite previous mailings of closed cases taking less than one working week to arrive, and repeated inquiries into why have gone unanswered.
Make of that what you will.
These responses blatantly contradict FBI statements in 2011, made to both local news agencies in Southern California, but also to Los Angeles County law enforcement officials. Additionally, Deng was never charged with a Federal crime, despite multiple violations of either or both United States Code, Title 18, Section 1017, and/or Title 18, Section 1028, as he manufactured fake identification documents purporting to be United States military identification documents on multiple occasions.
The takeaway from this can only be seen in one of three lenses: either Deng was given a light sentence on the pretext of becoming an informant for the FBI; or, that Deng was already working for the FBI and was inadvertently exposed, blowing some bizarre FBI operation; or, finally, that Deng was in the employ of a foreign entity, and for reasons known only to the FBI, he was given a featherweight sentence, likely in trade for some sort of follow-on work for various US government entities that are not the FBI.
Whatever the reality might be, you the American citizen reading this, have been lied to – not on some valid or insignificant matter, but on something far worse than what resulted in the incarceration without trial of over 125,000 American citizen some 85 years ago.
The President of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, as well as Iran’s Foreign Minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, was killed in a very “sketchy” sounding helicopter crash in the far northwest of the country, in mountainous terrain near Iran’s border with Azerbaijan, in bad weather on May 19th.
The death of Raisi, a dedicated revolutionary hard-line cleric – responsible for the 1988 massacre of Iranian political prisoners, resulting in his nickname of “The Butcher of Tehran” – potentially opens the way for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to gain dominant power within the country, as they wield significant influence in choosing Raisi’s successor. The reason for this opening is that under the Iranian Constitution, a committee whose appointments are largely approved by the IRGC is responsible for confirming the eligibility of candidates for the Presidency, but is also responsible for selecting the country’s next “Supreme Leader” – the position originally taken by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini in the late 1970’s – which is now a critical juncture, as the current Supreme Leader, Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, is known to be in ill health, and could either die or retire at any time.
Needless to say, the IRGC is also the driving force behind arming the Houthis in Yemen with advanced weapons, which that group has been using to both attack Israel, as well as sink, damage or pirate commercial shipping in the Red Sea, resulting in widespread disruption of the world’s vital shipping traffic, actions that directly impact you, the Reader.
Opening Round 2 – The DRC
Next up – Africa…but not the part of Africa you’re thinking.
Also arrested in the coup’s aftermath were Malanga’s son, Marcel, and his friend, Benjamin Reuben Zalman-Polun, described as a “business associate”.
While this would-be comic opera revolution – which it would have been, had no one been killed or seriously injured – bears a striking resemblance to the attempted coup/kidnap “operation” Venezuela in 2020. More importantly, this marks an escalation in the ongoing instability in the DRC. The reason that this is important?
The computers and electronic devices you rely on in your daily life depend on a variety of “rare earth minerals”, many of which are only (barely) “commercially recoverable” in the DRC’s eastern regions. These metals, along with diamonds (both for industrial use, as well as in jewelry) are the source of both the continent’s wealth, but also one of the major drivers of war throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, which is also one of the driving factors of the region’s many recent coups d’état.
As a result, Western “developed” nations are as bound to the internal economics and politics of the region as the locals are, and neither has any reasonable option to counter the problems that have plagued Africa for over one hundred and fifty years.
Opening Round Three – West Taiwan Goes Full Patagonia
Rounding off the week – as of Friday the 24th – Communist China (a.k.a., “West Taiwan”) has upped its ante in saber rattling against the actual legitimate government of the ancient country, by staging a massive series of “punishment drills” around the island. In doing so, the Communist regime in Beijing has revealed both its “intentional arrogance” in dealing with the United States, but has also revealed its desperation.
Chinese Communist Party strongman Xi Jingpin – a person who makes Vladimir Putin look positively saintly in comparison – is increasingly becoming desperate. His regime is deeply unpopular in general, but especially because of the communists state’s flagging economy, seemingly unsolvable demographic crisis, and the fact that the world is quietly laughing at their comic-opera military. This is a dangerous combination.
In 1982, Leopoldo Galtieri, then the leader of the military junta ruling Argentina, was in a very similar position as Xi is now, and for many of the same reasons. With his nation’s economy falling apart – because military officers are not usually economic geniuses – Galtieri was desperate for an event that could distract his increasingly angry populace, and hopefully swing popular opinion in his junta’s favor…and what better way to do that, than to start a war that should be popular at home?
Right?
The result was the Falkland’s War, a war well worthy of study for every person reading this article, in which the armed forces of Great Britain showed that the British Lion still had some real fight left in it, smashed and humiliated the Argentinean military on a scale equivalent to what the US-led coalition would do to the Iraqi armed forces of Saddam Hussein some eight years later.
Now? It appears increasingly possible that Xi may be channeling Galtieri’s ghost, as the “battle calculus” in his head may be leading him to a decision that attacking – or at least trying to force a showdown with the “recalcitrant” province – Taiwan might be a good way to “kill multiple birds” with one stone.
As Freedomist/MIA has pointed out before, this would be tantamount to slaying the world’s economic goose, taking the Communist state with it.
What Is Happening?
There are many reasons behind why these scenarios are playing out the way they are at this moment in time, but the core reason is the same in all cases: the crippling weakness, on open display, of the United States under the regime around Joe Biden.
Now, I know that we tend to harp on this subject a lot, but it is absolutely true: nations and peoples around the world do not have to like us, but it is vital to the survival of the United States as a nation for those states to respect, if not fear us…and for more than thirty years, with the single four-year interregnum of Donald Trump’s administration, the world’s view of the United States as a powerful, even dominant, leading force in the world has steadily eroded. The reasons for this erosion are many, of course, but can be summed up as an increasingly incompetent and unreliable – if not incoherent – series of poor policy decisions has left the international reputation, image and impression of the United States in the gutter, far moreso than at any point between 1946 and 1990.
Xi feels free to threaten Taiwan at will, because of the induced weakness of the United States armed forces, who are so critically undermanned, it is becoming difficult to effectively crew sufficient warships (the ones that work, anyway), where the US Army had to admit defeat and reduce its official strength by some 24,000 troops, because it was consistently failing to meet its recruiting targets. Likewise, in both the Middle East and Africa, state actors increasingly recognize the United States as a non-consequential factor.
That is something you should very much be worried about, come November.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
The rot inside Washington, D.C. has turned truly gangrenous.
Leaving aside the immediately abysmal series of disastrous decisions that have invalidated the Biden “administrations” actions that began with the June 2021 cancellation of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, costing the United States some 59,000 jobs and over $9 billion over a largely-finished system that would have sent an estimated 830,000 barrels of oil every day from the Canadian shale oil fields, to their handling of the COVID-19 crisis in releasing untested drugs on a desperate and unsuspecting public, to their limp-wristed “warnings” to Vladimir Putin’s Russia over invading Ukraine, displaying such a level of inability and incompetence, that not only has it confirmed the critical weaknesses in Western military structures that many suspected, it has also given Russia – and thus, Communist China – critical experience in learning how to deal with “cutting edge” western military technology, to the extent that Russia is now able to tweak the nose of the West, by staging a static display of captured western equipment in Moscow.
Doubling down on “Vice President” Kamala Harris’ “stunning and brave” – and utterly tone-deaf – finger wagging at as many African states as she could over a continent-wide rejection of pro-LGBTQ+ policies, the Biden “Teletubby” group in the District of Columbia struck Uganda from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which allows African countries to export selected products to the USA duty-free.
In doing so, the Biden group attempted to use open and naked “strong-arm” tactics to impose what amounts to colonial rule over African states that “behave all naughty-like”, believing that those states are too stupid, backward and crippled to do anything about it, and would thus be forced to “kowtow” to their demands.
Here’s the problem.
If you want to impose colonialist rule on a place, you have to be willing and able to impose it by military force. The reason for this simple dictum is that there are plenty of other countries in the world who have lots of money to invest in the countries you are trying to impose your will on…and the Biden group has failed so miserably at such a basic function of ‘realpolitik’, that even their nominal supporters are now referring to the elder abuse victim at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. as “Genocide Joe”.
On July 26, 2023, Nigerien General of the Presidential Guard Abdourahamane Tchiani deposed the government of his chief executive, President Mohamed Bazoum, in a coup d’état. The reasons behind the coup are lost in the nitpicking common to most coups. The point here, however, is the foreign response.
France, the former colonial power that ruled what would become Niger from 1900 to 1958, was immediately humiliated, as it openly threatened a direct military invasion of the country – the junta installed by the coup’s response?
As a result, French influence on the continent is in full retreat.
Apparently seeking to emulate the French, the United States also charged at the Nigerien junta like a blind picador on a three-legged horse with heart trouble. Sending in what apparently passes for their “best and brightest”, in the person of Molly Phee, the State Department’s top official for African affairs, Foggy Bottom’s Finest “laid down the law according to Biden”, managing to threaten and insult the junta’s appointed Prime Minister, Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine, a formally-trained economist, by dictating from on high that Niger was to refrain from engaging with Iran and Russia in ways objectionable to Washington if Niger wanted to continue its security relationship with the United States. Zeine also said Phee had further threatened sanctions if Niger pursued a deal to sell uranium to Iran.
And other states in Africa’s “Coup Belt” are watching closely.
African countries that have had coups between 2020 and 2023. By WikiMedia User Discombobulates. CCA/4.0
The few sane people left in “Sodom on the Potomac” are desperately trying to patch the holes in the sinking diplomatic boat that the Biden group keeps shooting holes in with Grandpa Joe’s double-barreled shotgun, but it is unclear if they can hold the line until the 2024 election, and much-hoped for return of Donald Trump to the White House.
Meanwhile, as should be expected, Russia is the proverbial “Johnny on the Spot”, moving in to replace the United States and France with its own “Africa Corps” (really, the jokes, while bitter, write themselves), to the extent of occupying parts of the drone base known as “Niger Air Base 201” near the Nigerien city of Agadez, a base which was first occupied by the US in 2016, and which began operating in 2019. Once US troops are fully out of the base, the Russians will have unfettered access to one of the most strategically vital military installations on the African continent…courtesy, of course, of a c.$100 million “investment” by US taxpayers (that would be you, the Reader)…
Ultimately, what does all this mean, in the “grand scheme of things”?
Essentially, the Democrat Party knows that it is about to go down in an epic, flaming defeat in November of 2024, a defeat that they cannot undo with any amount of “trumped up” (pun intended) court cases, nor ballot-stuffing.
The only logical conclusion to be reached in observing the insanity of the Biden group’s operations since 2021, is that they intend to burn down as many bridges as the possibly can before their defeat, which would force a second Trump Presidency to spend all of its time trying to get the country back to at least the same level it was at in 2017.
Think about that carefully in six months.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Mercenaries have existed for most of human history, likely dating from before the first established settlements, and we have certainly covered them here, in the past. While many find the practice unsavory – and it certainly can be – the fact is that it is rarely an overly dangerous occupation; if mercenaries get slammed, it is almost always because they badly failed to understand the situation they were walking into.
However, since the bizarre incident in August of 2023, where Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Russian Private Military Company (PMC) then known as the “Wagner Group”, apparently tried to stage a coup d’état against the government of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, the popular news media has seemingly gone “radio silent” on any talk of PMC’s that are not Russian in origin.
Beginning in the early 1990’s, with the rise of the South African company Executive Outcomes, the traditional model of mercenary endeavors, characterized by word of mouth recruiting in “ex-soldier bars” and paid for with briefcases of cash in shady deals in meeting rooms entered via the building’s back door, began to give way to a much more regularized and businesslike system, complete with formal and legally-drawn contracts, much like the old “condottieri” practices of Renaissance Italy.
Moument to the Condottiero Bartolomeo Colleoni, Venice, Italy, c.1870’s. Photo by Carlo Naya (1816–1882). Public Domain.
Executive Outcomes conducted full-scale military operations, deploying combat troops, armored vehicles, aircraft and ships against various hostile groups throughout Africa. Unfortunately for the company, they were too efficient and effective, regularly making a mockery of United Nation’s “peacekeeping” operations. Political and economic pressure against South Africa brought an end to that phase of the company – much to the cost of the people of Sierra Leone.
But Executive Outcomes was not alone, by any means. Many “pseudo” mercenary companies rose during the 1990’s, amid the fallout from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI) supplied teams of instructors to various non-Serbian states that arose from the breakup of Yugoslavia, and helped train the Croatian Army for the decisive “Operation Storm” in August if 1995, later moving on to providing higher-level staff and command training to the armies of many small nations around the world.
At this point, it should be pointed out that MPRI was founded in 1987, and was headed almost exclusively by retired United States senior officers, including Carl Vuono, a former Chief of Staff of the US Army. In effect, MPRI was a “deniable cutout” for the US government…
…In much the same way as Blackwater – now Constellis, following its corporate merger with the Triple Canopy PMC in 2014 – was essentially a deniable extension of the US government.
While most of the 90’s-era PMC’s restricted themselves to training and providing support functions to militaries around the world, such as DynCorp, which focused mainly on aviation and vehicle maintenance, and Vinnell, which focused on creating logistics and supply systems (things many world armies have only a very sketchy knowledge of), many companies – most operating out of Great Britain – offer a much wider array of services. Companies like KBR provide everything from base construction to food services support.
However, all of these companies engage in both training and providing actual “shooter teams” to their clients. In fact, Vinnell supervised at least part of the training of the Saudi Arabian National Guard during the 1970’s, and was initially given the contract to rebuild the Iraqi Army in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of that country…although the US government was apparently highly displeased with their efforts.
But to return to the present day, there are far more PMC’s operating openly throughout the world than the “popular press” seems to be aware of, such as the tiny Dyck Advisory Group from South Africa, that fought in support of the nation of Mozambique’s military forces in the Battle of Palma in 2021.
While the Wagner Group has apparently rebranded itself (in the face of competition) into the “Africa Corps” (really, the jokes write themselves, at this point), the rebranding – inspired, undoubtedly, by Wagner veterans’ very recent experiences in savage, all-out urban warfare in Ukraine – has resulted in a mature organization, offering (the support from the Russian government, obviously) a wide range of services to the nations of Africa’s “coup belt” , perhaps permanently breaking the back of France’s ancien regime in Africa once and for all. The reason for this is very simple: African’s in the former French colonies of the continent are so sick of French interference in their nations’ affairs, which has been happening since the 1950’s. The Russians may not be the “nice guys”, but they get the job done, and don’t moralize about ‘civilizing’ their “Little Brown Brothers”.
African countries that have had coups between 2020 and 2023. By WikiMedia User Discombobulates. CCA/4.0
But recently, a new play has “entered the chat”: The People’s Republic of China.
Communist China, as part of its world-spanning “Belt & Road Initiative”, has been quietly creating a wide group of companies focused in both the private military, as well as the private security (PSC) spheres. This allows Beijing all the normal advantages of deniability internationally, but also offers a little-referenced advantage domestically.
Generally speaking, national populations tend to be very touchy about the use of their military forces – staffed, usually, by their own literal sons and daughters – in both domestic security, as well as in “foreign adventures”. At the same time, few if any, of the same populations care over-much if “mercenaries” (even mercenaries from their own nation) end up as casualties in some foreign land, because – unlike the regular armed forces – mercenaries are placing themselves in harm’s way for mere money, not the immediate defense of the nation.
Beijing saw these advantages as it remodeled its economy in the 1990s, then carefully watched both the Western and Russian experiences. As a result, it has been quietly moving PMC’s and PSC’s into countries throughout the world, giving it a pseudo-military presence in all of these nations. It remains unclear how many of those states realize the implications of Chinese PMC’s and PSC’s.
As we move into the middle part of 2024, PMC’s from around the world are very much alive, and doing very well, albeit more or less out of the view of the popular press.
To say that Douglas MacArthur was a controversial general officer would be making a massive understatement. While still lauded by many, and despite being awarded the United States Medal of Honor – the highest medal for valor in combat that can be awarded in the United States – there remains a large (and increasing) number of people who are not simply uncertain of MacArthur’s ultimate competence, but who actively reject it.
While this might appear to be a simple debate that is best restricted to staid academics in dusty rooms, it most certainly is not…because, like it or not, Douglas MacArthur is the prototype for the modern general officer. Let me explain.
Before MacArthur, there were basically four kinds of officers. According to German GeneralKurt von Hammerstein-Equord, the first type were the dashing, energetic and brilliant commander, the sort you could easily see leading a valiant charge across Pelennor Fields…or at least to relieve Vienna. The second type was the lazy, but brilliant officer, who could out-think and out-plan virtually anyone they were likely to face in battle. Then, there was the stupid and lazy officer; you couldn’t give them any job requiring dynamic and energetic thought, but they were useful in positions that weren’t critical, but that required an officer to be in command. But then…there was the fourth type: the officer who was stupid, but energetic.
That would be where Douglas MacArthur enters the picture.
An “Army Brat” (MacArthur’s father, Arthur MacArthur, Jr. had been a hero of the American Civil War, on the Union side, and had been the Military Governor of the Philippines from 1900-1901), had carefully stage-managed his career in the Army (stage managed by the ‘helicopter parenting’ of his mother). While performing decently as a battalion commander in the First World War, MacArthur spent the remainder of the “interwar period” alternating between acting as the Army’s spokesman, learning how the (comparatively) new technologies of radio and film could present the Army in a positive light (as well as burnishing his own personal image) to a public that had been exhausted by the “War To End All Wars”.
At the end of 1937, MacArthur “technically” retired from the United States Army, having already been named as Field Marshal of the Philippine Army. Although the Philippines was still technically a colonial territory of the United States, it had been decided to begin creating a Filipino armed forces establishment as a result of the 1934 Tydings-McDuffie Act, declaring that the Philippines would become fully independent on July 4, 1946. Also factoring into MacArthur’s appointment, were the rising tensions with Japan in the Pacific as the Interwar Period progressed.
MacArthur was recalled to active duty by the US Army on 26 July 1941, as a major general (and was promoted to lieutenant general the next day) and appointed as commanding general of United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE). The results were…“not optimal” is probably the most polite term that can be used.
MacArthur was awarded the Medal of Honor in the aftermath of the disaster in the Philippines not because of his performance, but in spite of it: by early 1942, the United States was, to put it bluntly, getting its ass handed to it by a nation that US leaders and media organs frequently dismissed as “little yellow monkeys”. In that environment, the United States needed as many heroes as it could scrape together. Admiral Kimmel and General Short – the Navy and Army commanders, respectively during the Pearl Harbor attack – were already under investigation by their armed services, as well as by Congress, and the military did not need to disgrace someone who had been the face of the Army barely ten years before. Thus, MacArthur remained in charge.
Aided by the virtually bipolar staff he had assembled, one that vacillated between simpering toadying and rock-solid (if rather uninspired) brilliance, MacArthur was able to conduct a reasonably competent, if very uninspiring, campaign to march across the Pacific to liberate the Philippines from the stunning savagery of the Japanese occupation of the archipelago. Further feeding his narcissistic tendencies, after the surrender of Japan, MacArthur was appointed Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) and given command of all Allied Forces in Japan…In effect, he was made an Imperial Viceroy in all but name. More than that, Japan – previously a major world state – was essentially reduced to the status of being his personal plaything, to do with as he willed.
As part of his role as SCAP, one of MacArthur’s major functions was to be placed in charge of overseeing the defense of the newly liberated South Korean republic. Of course, the forces of Kim Il Sung’s North Korea – armed, equipped and trained by the Soviet Union – stormed across the border defined by the 38th Parallel on 25 June 1950. In a disturbingly similar repeat to what had happened in the Philippines some nine years before, South Korean forces – badly equipped and laughably under-trained – were swiftly overrun and destroyed, and the survivors – along with the equally poorly trained and equipped US advisors and troops sent to their immediate aid – rapidly pushed back into a tiny, Dunkirk-like perimeter centered on the port city of Pusan.
Then, with reinforcements beginning to arrive from the United States, as well as many member-states of the United Nations, MacArthur made the single gutsiest move of his entire career, by launching a breakout from the Pusan Perimeter, in direct concert with an amphibious assault at the port of Inchon, near the South Korean capital of Seoul well to the north, near the 38th Parallel. This caused the near-immediate collapse of the North Korean army, sending Kim’s forces into headlong retreat, all the way to the Yalu River.
Newly-Communist China (the Chinese Civil War had ended decisively in 1949) – not a combatant at this point – pointedly warned the US and UN leaders in early October of 1950 not to advance to the Yalu, as it would not tolerate such a massive armed force on its border. Advised (incompetently) by MacArthur, President Harry S. Truman decided that the Chinese were bluffing, and ordered his general’s offensive to continue.
The US-led UN forces were shattered and driven back below the 38th Parallel line. Entire regiments, brigades and divisions were shattered, if not completely annihilated; the 1st Marine Division (USMC) was specifically targeted for destruction (a decision that went rather badly…for the Chinese), but was able to successfully escape by sea evacuation. United Nations – and United States – forces were so badly beaten in this offensive, no serious attempt was ever made to recross the 38th Parallel in strength for the remainder of the war’s active phase. In fact, the Korean War has never ended; a ceasefire agreement was reached in 1953, and the conflict has been frozen in place ever since.
MacArthur’s response to the Chinese counter-attack was, to be frank, psychotically hysterical: MacArthur demanded an immediate wave of attacks using atomic bombs against targets throughout China…At this point, Truman had had enough, and recalled MacArthur to the United States, and into forcible retirement.
So – What was the point of the foregoing narrative?
The attitudes both of MacArthur, but also of the establishment that allowed him nearly free rein for almost five decades, despite extremely, if not catastrophically, substandard performance are still alive and well within the United States Armed Forces. As pointed out by authors Thomas Ricks in his book “The Generals”, and James Dunnigan and Albert Nofi in their book “Shooting Blanks: War Making that Doesn’t Work”, military leaders – particularly in the United States – are no longer “leaders”, as such, but more “managers”.
While this is certainly not a criticism in the world of civilian business, it is catastrophic in the military world. MacArthur was a reasonably good manager; however, his deep-seated narcissism made him an absolute disaster as a military leader.
There are very few – if any – currently serving general (or, “flag”) officers in the United States Armed Forces who can be confidently identified as “leaders”, much less “combat leaders”. With the world in the state that it is in, and the threats the United States is facing – both internally and externally – the time for “military managers” is long past. But, there is essentially no way, short of some miracle, for this problem to be fixed, short of all-out war.
And we’ve been down the “sudden, all-out war” path before – one would think that we would have learned our lesson, after the last “on the job training” exercise that we call “World War 2”, a war that cost the United States over a million casualties.
But, apparently not.
“Thank You For Your Service” is a nice sentiment, but it is a poor substitute for endemically poor military leadership, in a country that supposedly prides itself in its civilian control over the military…especially when the children of the Reader are the first ones lined up to pay the price.
By definition, anyone who enters the United States illegally has committed a crime. What this means, regardless of what side of the immigration debate the reader may fall on, is that any person entering the country illegally cannot – or should not – be able to legally possess or acquire a firearm for any reason or purpose, because of their status as a criminal.
But not according to Judge Sharon Coleman, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Ruling on March 8th, Judge Coleman reversed an earlier determination she had made in the case of U.S. v. Carbajal-Flores. Judge Coleman had earlier, in 2022, rejected Mr. Carbajal-Flores’ claim that 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(5)(A) unfairly criminalized his act of possessing a firearm as an illegal alien.
To say that this is an extraordinary ruling should be a given. In fact, when this author first heard of this case, I was mortally certain that it was a terrible ruling, as it opened the door to all manner of criminal abuses. At first brush, that would seem to be incontrovertibly true.
However, there is a much further-reaching set of implications implicit in this ruling.
In order to be legally protected in possessing a firearm, a person must have the ability to legally acquire a firearm, in the first place. The problem? An illegal alien, by definition, cannot produce the most basic legal documents needed to legally acquire a firearm in almost any state in the Union:
A valid and legal form of identification, such as a “green card”, a diver’s license listing an address in the state of purchase, or another type of identification issued by the state of residence and purchase
A legally filled-out Form 4473 (note question 21(l))
It is irrelevant if an illegal alien acquires a firearm through an unregistered private transaction; the above laws are applied to every person in the United States.
Until now.
What the judge’s ruling means, despite her repeated attempts in her revised ruling to apply her decision only to Mr. Carbajal-Flores is that all of the above documents are no longer required for any legal sale from a Federal Firearms License (FFL). While this may sound extreme, it most certainly is not – in order to exercise a right of any kind, a person must be able to have unfettered access the tools necessary to exercise the right in question, even if they have to pay a private entity to obtain those tools.
If the judge’s ruling applies to illegal aliens, it also applies to all legal citizens. There is no “wiggle room” on this, as all are deemed to be equal in the eyes of the law.
Various bad actors within both the United States and its “Several States” governments have, since 1934, engaged in the promulgation and enforcement of illegal restrictions on firearms sales, possession and transmission, usually to limit the access to weapons for racial or political groups that those entities do not like.
The difference is vital to understand: No person in the United States has a “right” to operate any kind of motor vehicle on public roads, anywhere in the United States, unless they possess a valid driver’s license. However, no one needs a license to exercise their rights under the 1st Amendment – this is why you are allowed to operate a website, or print and hand out flyers on a street corner (despite continual attempts at all levels to attempt to do so).
This especially applies to firearm ownership. The 2nd Amendment is explicit:
In the 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, the SCOTUS expanded the definition of the 2nd Amendment to include the right to own, keep, and possess weapons for self-defense, in addition to the originally understood purpose, which was to ensure the ability of the People to be adequately equipped to help defend the nation if called upon to do so in the form of an armed militia. While this use was clarified in subsequent rulings, various governmental parties within the nation have relentlessly sought to limit, if not outright criminalize, the ownership of firearms in general.
To the point of this particular case, while Judge Coleman’s ruling may seem outrageous, my opinion on it has changed since reading through her ruling. I am now foursquare in favor of the judge’s ruling, as it has – at a single stroke – the unlawful control mechanisms that have illegally destroyed lives and unjustly incarcerate American citizens for nearly one hundred years.
All that is wanting, is a lawsuit against an FFL holder for refusing to sell to someone who refuses to present identification at point of sale – based on Judge Coleman’s ruling, a seller cannot refuse a sale for lack of identification.
I don’t make the rules – I just read them.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Since the dawn of warfare, the most prized battlefield trophy that soldiers present to their commander is the enemy’s battle flag.
In the early Sixties, the objective of the Vietnam conflict, as established by Eisenhower and Kennedy, was to contain China’s Communist expansion in South East Asia. At the outset, our American leaders assessed the campaign with auspicious optimism. The Americans had the North Vietnamese out-gunned, and we enjoyed unassailed air superiority. How could we lose?
Indeed, up until 1975, when the South Vietnamese government lost in the Fall of Saigon, the American forces had decisively won every major kinetic battle in the war. Those victories would eventually grow hollow. Ho Chi Minh plotted to drag the American Forces into an endless hornets nest of guerrilla warfare.
A journalist once asked General Vo Nguyen Giap, Commander of the North Vietnamese Army, how long he would have continued to fight against the American forces had they not withdrawn in 1975. “Twenty years,” he replied. “One hundred years. Even more, if necessary. We would have fought indefinitely until we prevailed.”
In the Spring of 1968 the North Vietnamese Army suffered a bitter loss in their attempt to seize the Marine airfield at Khe Sanh. With B-52 bombers and F-4 fighter-bombers, the Americans dropped more bombs on the North Vietnamese defending that siege than all the bombs the US forces dropped in World War II. American commanders estimated that the NVA suffered as many as 15,000 KIAs at Khe Sanh.
Despite the horrific losses heaped on Giap’s army, Khe Sanh became a turning in the Vietnam War. The nightly news bombarded the American people with horrific images of the Tet Offensive and the siege of Khe Sanh. After the siege, Walter Cronkite broke his career-long tradition never to divulge his personal viewpoints on a news story. Cronkite declared on his nightly broadcast that the Vietnam War was a lost cause. President Johnson’s favorability rating plummeted so low that he closed his reelection campaign. Fed up, the American people were ready to bring the troops home.
And from the ashes of Khe Sanh, the North Vietnamese had discovered a surprising windfall – a political victory won on the American home front.
Finally, on April 30, 1975, at the Fall of Saigon, the North Vietnamese handed the mighty United States a humiliating defeat on the world stage.
Today Vietnam enjoys a thriving economy and a growing middle class. They have western shopping malls that sell the bourgeois brand names of Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Lacoste, and Rolex. As of this writing, each year the country hosts 12 – 15 million tourists adding $27 billion to their annual GDP. Their thriving aviation industry has a superb safety record. Vietnam is on pace to be the world’s 10th largest economy by 2050.
Their economy can be labeled as anything but “Communist.” A more accurate description would be “Free Market Authoritarianism.” But wasn’t the defeat of Communism America’s prime war objective in 1965? Of course. And so in 1986, the Vietnamese politburo passed economic reforms that have led to the prosperity they enjoy today.
To this end, the United States actually won the Vietnam War against the Communists.
We should never have fired a single bullet. The 57,939 service members need not have given their lives. Nor did the countless service members need to have sacrificed the healthy bodies of their youth, nor the soundness of their souls. The cauldron of death we waged upon our own boys and against the Vietnamese people lay in abject waste.
Without firing a shot, we ultimately defeated the Vietnamese Communists. And we did so by General Giap’s own measure: not over a matter of years, but over the course of decades; over generations.
And who were the grand prizewinners of the war? The Vietnamese people. The war reunited the North and South Vietnamese people under a unified flag, and they now enjoy a cornucopia of wealth bestowed by the Free Market.
Today Vietnam is Communist in name only. The Vietnamese people offer the party only a grudging appearance of respect, hollow of any sense of personal loyalty or pride. They regarded me as a fool when I purchased these flags. “Party members are the only ones who buy those flags,” they snickered.
In the same way the North Vietnamese failed to recognize their political power on the American home front, so too did the American leaders, at the dawn of the Vietnam conflict, fail to recognize the might of the Free Market.
The last shot of the Vietnam War was fired on December 18, 1986, when the Vietnamese Communist Politburo surrendered to the Free Market.
This hammer and sickle flag is their tattered, defeated battle flag; our prized trophy of their surrender.
LET US NOT LEARN THE WAYS OF POLITICIANS BEING MOTIVATED BY GREED AND FEAR BUT RATHER LET US BE MOTIVATED BY LOVE
We can be motivated by love, truth, and a form of righteousness that isn’t all judgy and rude but humane and enlightened, warm and kind.
Some are motivated by greed, they want more than is their due and what they have earned, and they pay never a mind to who actually pays the bill. This can come both on the form of money as well as things like environmental impact and social impacts which won’t affect you but will affect others.
Some are driven along their decision-making path by hobgoblins and boogeyman, caricatures and stereotypes of anyone different from themselves, from whom they need protection, and which protection they are willing to pay for with the rights and wealth of others being laid upon the altar of their gods of fear and panic.
You can be sure that, regardless of their Party or staged ideology, almost every politician appeals to the latter two and almost none would appeal to the first group and their motivations. We can, however, have eyes wide open and just assume whatever any politician says comes from greed or fear, and if we scratch a little beneath the surface we’ll see the true color very easily. So scratch below the surface and ask yourself how much the first group is appealed to, then you will learn to view most every politician, even the one you support, with suspicion and contempt, because most are not to be trusted.
Politicians are too easy to pick apart, however. Most of them got there by being cagey, self-absorbed twits who fool most of the voters, or who manage to get the most votes counted in their name (you be the judge), by fooling enough people to pass the post.
What about me. What about you.
I have ascertained, sadly, that TOO MUCH of what I say is motivated too much by the latter thing, fear and the anger that comes with it. I’m not above being greedy, it’s just that I am far more conscious of it, so it’s not really a pet vice of mine. That doesn’t make me better than you as fear is also, in my estimation, a vice when it’s not rational or justified, and most of the time is isn’t.
I think both the greed and fear motivators are down to a heightened self-importance and conceit about what one deserves and is entitled to. As to fear, I’m no entitled to feeling safe from things and people I ought not fear, especially as a Christian who should rest in the Lord, come what may!
I am broken and I think maybe we all are. Ironically, I think, the more you engage in politics, and I literally make a living from politics (well, around 70% of what I do), the more you get the infection.
The thing about greed, and I remind you I’m specifically talking about wanting something you didn’t earn, aren’t owed, and should not expect at other people’s expense, is that those who promise to slake your thirst are always lying. No sane person believes that taking that which others are rightly due and giving it to others whose do not deserve it is sustainable. It doesn’t matter if it’s business owners being told they will get what their workers are due or non-working people will get it from business owners (and therefore also workers), it’s always a lie and never sustainable.
As for fear, it is so easy to become afraid of the other side, of people who are different, of things that you don’t like or that you think are wrong, go against being on the right side of history, or are a sin. When someone promises to cure the fear by clamping down on what you fear, they always demand you surrender all or part of your own agency so they can save you from the things they probably taught you to fear in the first place!
Greed and fear are terrible motivators but ask yourself if you’ve ever been motivated to vote based on love? Imagine a politician saying their agenda is to pave the way through good public policies that benefit all of society and not just a preferred demographic or other special interest so that people can feel and walk freely in love, to be loved and to love others, without greed or fear stalking their conscience and unsettling their heart. It’s not gonna happen.
In the US it’s Biden or Trump. Do they motivate people by love for their fellow man and by being loved and being free to love and pursue their life in peace, or do they use appeals to greed and fear mostly to exclusively? In my opinion, they both use greed and fear, in spades, in extremes that are not common even in US politics. Indeed, we have to go back to the 1850’s and right before the Civil War to match the tone we have seen set today.
I followed the Nigerian elections closely and the side I thought would be best for the country lost to a genius vote counter who plied the people with an appeal to greed and made promises the federal government could never keep without bankrupting the part of the constituency they do not cater to for votes, especially the Igbo and Christians! But what politician appealed to love for Nigeria, to each other, and for yourself to be able to experience love through a life of freedom and abundance? Not one, in my opinion!
In Germany not one Party appeals to love and as the AFD grows so grows the call to censure them and invalidate them through boogeyman fears about “Mustache Man 2.0”, because the lame establishment UNIPARTY of corpostate shills has only ever played the people based on different measures of greed and fear, depending on if it’s the SD or CD, Greens, of FDP. As an aside, the FDP is to me the most purposeless party in human history and is hardly anything to get rowdy about. The AFP is more about fear and their dalliance with Russia is alarming, albeit not because their alternative views on German foreign policy should be labeled treasonous as they have. None appeal to love.
Even India’s Mohdi, who maintains a solid lock on Indian politics, is most certainly not driven by love, despite his religious posturing as if he is himself a Hindu Monk (if their is such a thing)! His policies are greed and fear like all the rest and his opponents, who keep losing to him over and over again, offer nothing different in substance but only in form.
Wherever you are in this world the politicians are an extreme caricature themselves of the most negative currents in society and they become part of a self-feeding loop that perpetuates more and more extremes until finally it eats itself and society collapses. See Haiti of recent history and the French Third Republic of the 1930s which lost to the Germans despite having better and more of the right equipment to fight a war!
As I recall no examples of a political movement or leaders who appeal almost exclusively to love, slightly to legitimate fear, and not at all to greed, I am not certain politics will ever be more than slowing the speed of collapse so private people can prepare and get themselves hidden from the deluge to come. If anyone knows of an example where this isn’t true, enlighten me, but if you are an American and say Trump or Biden, let me stop you right now and just say, “no!”
Going back to where I speak of appealing slightly to legitimate fear, the Bible itself in Proverbs 22 explains how when the wise see danger coming they hide themselves and when the foolish see danger coming they keep on moving along until eventually they get wacked, or punished. Of course if China is building out a strong offensive military force we would be idiots to ignore that and let our own military decline to the point we can’t beat the CCP, as an example.
Neither fear nor greed, understanding that wanting what you deserve, are owed, and have earned and having your own self-interest are not greed but wanting what isn’t by right yours to demand IS greed, are terrible motivators for life. We should start to eschew the ways of our politicians and both become sensitive to their true nature and to our own propensity to be infected by their rhetoric to become like them.
Pictured here is my mom to the left and Dora to the right to illustrate love, they loved each other and had a blast, no greed or fear between them.
Obviously, anyone reading this is aware – or should be – that Israel and Iran are now trading missile volleys. This is a situation that rightfully scares anyone with the capacity to think, as it widens the scope of Israel’s response to the war that Hamas started with their massacre of October 7, 2023.
Beginning on April 1, 2024, Israel launched an airstrike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria. This attack demolished an annex (a stand-alone building within the embassy compound), wherein a major meeting was taking place. This meeting included at least eight high-rank officers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) (including two general officers), members of Lebanese Hezbollah, and the Front for the Liberation of the Golan (FLG) (a puppet force organized and trained by Hezbollah in 2017), although further casualties have not been identified as of April 19. While the “usual suspects” instantly made hysterical condemnations against Israel over this attack (as well as Iran’s repost on the 13th), it should be pointed out that officers of Hezbollah – a group openly acknowledged as being under the control of the Iranian state – was assembled inside the Iranian embassy, and were clearly a primary target of the Israeli raid.
Iranian missiles passing over w:Al-Aqsa after IRGC hit Israel with multiple airstrikes. Mehr News photo. CCA/4.0
The legal issue with this first exchange is a complete non-starter. While embassies are considered to be inviolate to military action, there is a significant caveat: when those embassies are used as military planning and coordinating locations, they are no longer “civilian structures” under the Laws of War, but become legitimate military targets, in exactly the same manner that religious churches and temples are considered inviolate – until they are deliberately used by one combatant for military purposes. The inviolability of an embassy remains intact, technically, if that nation’s intelligence agencies run spying operations out of it, but not if the embassy is aiding in the planning and conduct of military operations against another power.
Both Hezbollah and the FLG have been engaging in active terror attacks on Israeli citizens and in military strikes against Israeli troops for years. Their personnel and commanders meeting with Iranian military officers, on Iranian soil (all national embassies are considered to be the sovereign territory of the nation they represent), means that Iran has openly admitted that its military forces are coordinating with force actively engaging in combat against Israel. This made the Iranian embassy to Syria a legitimate military target, whether Israel chooses to explain its actions or not. The public record speaks for itself.
Following the Israeli raid, Iran vowed to retaliate. It did so some twelve days later, firing a hail of drones and ballistic missiles into Israeli airspace, in coordination with the Houthi terror group in Yemen, and an Iraqi state-sponsored group, the Popular Mobilization Forces – both groups being sponsored by Iran, as well as the Shiite government of Iraq.
Then, in the early morning hours of April 19 (local time), Israel responded, attacking targets near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and Natanz – both cities being noted for their association to Iran’s nuclear weapons program – as well as SEAD strikes against Syrian and reportedly Iraqi bases, to knock out early warning radar sites.
An F-4G Phantom II wild weasel 1991. These aicraft conducted SEAD missions during the conflict. USAF photo. Public Domain.
The Israeli attacks were very limited and restrictive in nature. The speculation, as of April 19, is that Israel was sending a clear message to Iran, that they (Israel) were clearly capable of striking targets deep inside Iran at will. Much more interesting, however, is the current Iranian response.
Despite the posturing of Hossein Amirabdollahian, the Iranian Foreign Minister, in vowing an “immediate and severe” response to any Israeli attack on Iran, Iran seems to be backing down. Unless Iran attempts to launch another raid in the near future, this may represent a de-escalation on their part.
If true, this raises a very disturbing question:
Is the Iranian government losing control of its IRGC “Praetorian Guard”?
At this stage, de-escalation by Iran is a tacit admission of defeat, as it demonstrates that the Iranian chest beating over their military prowess does not intimidate Israel. This is certainly not something the religious leadership of Iran can afford, as the appearance of weakness places their regime – highly unpopular at home – on even shakier ground than it already is.
Iranian military losses over the last decade have been limited to the IRGC. It was IRCG troops from the Quds Force who entered Iraq to shore up the beleaguered Iraqi government and military in the early days of the Sunni Islamic State forces’ drive on Baghdad in 2014. Its senior commander, Qasem Soleimani, was targeted by the United States government in a drone strike in 2020, while he was inside Iraq, coordinating the organization of Shiite militias. Additionally, the force has been described as “an industrial empire with political clout”, in addition to the command casualties it suffered in the Israeli attack on the Damascus embassy…In many ways, it very much resembles the Waffen SS of Nazi Germany.
In a very real way, a perceived defeat against Israel will seriously undermine the IRCG, far more than the Iranian government and its regular armed forces. The problem, here, is that dismantling a Praetorian Guard is never easy, and is always violent. If this stewing situation turns out to be real, versus speculation, there is a very serious chance that it could result in a catastrophic collapse within Iran, one mimicking the swift collapse of the Shah’s regime in 1978. If either side continues shooting at the other, the regional expansion of the conflict will be guaranteed.
And this is something to be feared.
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