September 24, 2023

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Interrogating Your Feelings
11 min read

Interrogating Your Feelings

Bill Collier August 27, 2023

This is part of the Freedomist self-improvement effort to support the radical empowerment of our readers in actualizing their own individual spiritual sovereignty. I am not a doctor or mental health professional, I am not diagnosing or treating any ailment. What I am doing is sharing from the inner abundance of my spirit man, from my heart, guided by my mind, from my own experiences and because sharing this has helped others, I am sharing with you.

Feelings are often either followed into our own ruin or feared and discarded as if they are always sus and should never be heeded. Although much of the conversation surrounding them is focused on the bad feelings that give us pain, even the good feelings can and should be suspected, as some believe, and never trusted.

So we have an entire society either wholly driven by emotions with nary a suspicion they might be misleading us in our constant struggle to avoid pain and seek pleasure OR people who absolutely do not trust any emotion and who think they are able to transcend emotions altogether and almost be robotic, logical thinkers. Neither approach is useful.

People who follow their emotions can be easily led down whatever track you send them on, as long as pain follows behind and pleasure is offered at the end of the line, even if it’s a lie, and it usually is. But people who ignore their emotions will lose opportunities or ignore dangers sensed by their subconscious but not yet verbalized in their consciousness.

The thing about emotions is they are neither our bosom pal who’s always right nor our devilish foe always trying to trip us up. They reflect many things, but when they reflect something our subconscious sees but our consciousness doesn’t, they can in fact be like a radar, alerting us before things become an unwelcome surprise or alerting us to an open door we didn’t see.

Developing the habit of interrogating your feelings is part art and part science. I can verbalize some of this, but is is sometimes difficult to use mere words to convey meaning to something that is more transcendent and, dare I say, is almost a sense and a feeling, but one you cultivate and trust. There is a feeling that I can describe as an eye-opening sensation, like a “wow,” silently screamed into the subconscious, something that has anchors lain deep into the sea of the mind.

While often when I share how to interrogate feelings, people focus on their painful emotions, the truth is that feelings of deep pain and utter euphoria are both either deceptive or massive clues from our subconscious. Now, some argue for a stasis of emotion, to avoid highs and lows, and in interrogating my own feelings over time my own emotional states are more stable, but I still have deep lows and dizzying highs, most of which I allow to pass through me and over me until they are gone and only my inner sanctum of consciousness remains, unperturbed.

The first thing you must understand is that feelings are not to be ignored or followed without question. The stronger the emotion, the more urgent the need to interrogate it. But to interrogate the feeling, you must sit in it for a spell, step away from all things for a time, take a break, and get into quiet, but mostly LET YOURSELF FEEL THE EMOTION. This is difficult for painful feelings, and if you feel rage or sadness, you need to stop immediately trying to suppress it and let yourself feel it.

All emotions pass. Keep that in your mind. Your mind is the master of your emotions, and if it isn’t now, this will help to make it so. The blissful, sensual, pleasurable feelings will pass just as surely as the most painful feelings will. Everything in this life is temporary. That’s another article, this sense of permanence that is actually never permanent but feels that way for a time. But your feelings will pass because they always have.

I use the term “interrogate your feelings” because it is initially almost a hostile interrogation. You want to know who sent them. You want to identify their source because often, the actual source isn’t the obvious thing you think it is.

When I have a strong feeling, especially when it is a distraction, I work out the source first. This is the part that’s hard to put into words, but the best I can say here is that I begin to guess different things through my imagination and I pay close attention to whether one of those things triggers or subdues the feeling.

Through this method, I have realized a looming deadline I forgot, but my subconscious had anxiety or excitement about it. I have discerned that someone might be lying to me because my subconscious saw a pattern of behavior that gave it anxiety, or I have discerned that someone I didn’t think was one my side was making me feel inexplicably content and I realized it was because they had demonstrated by their deeds that they were for me and I needed to show them appreciation. Shout out to friends like Joe and Tim, my twin brother Paul, my parents, my siblings (blood and adoptive!), Scott, Steve, Phil, and many more who have shown they are for me, and I am for them.

Once I sense the source, and it is a sense that cannot be rationalized, I begin to dig into why that source is activating this feeling. Again, I let myself keep feeling it, in fact I need to keep feeling it or I can’t move to the next step.

Now I imagine scenarios, things that happened or might happen, and as I do, again, the feeling will get stronger or weaker. The stronger it gets, the better, although in the case of painful feelings, if I imagine scenarios where someone or something is gone from the picture, or added thereto, I know I have begun to decipher not only a hidden message but possibly a secret solution.

We aren’t there, we are trying to identify the source and what about the source that is causing this.

It is super important here to say that many feelings will not sort themselves out. They do not have a subconscious genesis but come from other sources, sometimes just chemical reactions or health issues. Assuming you get to a place where nothing you imagine triggers the feeling more, you can basically treat the bad feeling as a headache or body pain; I often say of such things “it’s only pain, it will pass.” We will dig into how to “dismiss” these feelings when necessary, after we have allowed ourselves to feel them and after our interrogation yielded no concrete results.

Recently, I started a medication regiment for pain and began to have really dark thoughts, inwardly just wanting to disappear or something. These weren’t suicidal thoughts. They felt more like I had died and was just a living carcass, that I wouldn’t get up in the morning, and that would be fine because life was just pain. Now, I am a man of deep faith in Jesus Christ, and I do not embrace or endorse suicide and, this is just me and isn’t meant as a judgment of others, I believe if I ended myself its a ticket sraight to hell, which I’m not keen on going to.

So I researched and, sure enough, that was a side effect. I still interrogated the feeling and could find no cause. Despite some hard things in my life, there is nothing that is making me feel that way other than a drug.

So I told my doctor, and she gave me another med that is both good for the pain and that counteracts this side effect. I used it, and it worked, but as a long-term thing, its potential to wreak havoc on my liver wasn’t worth it. I knew the source now of these dark feelings, and I know how to dismiss feelings when I am done with them and have allowed them to run their course, which you must do.

Here is a word of caution: you can dismiss most all emotions, but if you haven’t let them run their course and sat in them, and then interrogating them they will keep returning and gain strength until they become debilitating.

Back to my dramatic example, these dark feelings. I weaned myself from the second medication, but still have it on hand if I need another course some time, and am even working to reduce the first, because I know what the source of the pain is and I have learned to live with pain, which is another subject altogether. More on how to dismiss the feeling will follow.

The deepest interrogation is meant to ensure you understand the source, why the source is causing you that feeling, and what you should do about it. If it is a happy feeling, and you know the source is, say, someone you fancy who may fancy you in return, and the cause is you want to pursue more, but when you imagine telling them you have anxiety, it is often a sign you need to do just that, knock on the door, and accept the happiness or rejection that will follow as the universe’s way of guiding your relationships.

In other cases, however, you may imagine reactions to your knowledge, i.e. the source of the feeling and the reason why, but if all your scenarios give you angst, you fall back on wisdom and logic and the idea your actions will either give you happiness or not but that imagining doing them produces an inner peace that shows you this must be your path. Alternatively, you may imagine responses and actions to this knowledge that actually give you “good vibes”, and then it become obvious this is what your heart is telling you.

Now, to be clear, your subconscious, your heart and soul, are not always right. Even if you find a solution that makes you happy when you imagine it, you must plumb line it according to your own values and beliefs and according to things like logic, reason, experience, and science. As you do this, often going through various scenarios in your mind, you may dismiss something that feels good but that you know is immoral.

Do not distrust yourself, but do not trust yourself. Many times, your heart and subconscious are right. Sometimes, they are wrong. Thus, if the actions/solutions you discern as bringing happiness and/or peace pass all your plumb line tests, you now have new wisdom and if you are careful to note patterns, use a journal, you begin to develop a personal and useful philosophy of life. If the solutions seem to bring bliss, but don’t make it past your plumb line, then keep at until peace and bliss match your plumb line.

This is a disciplined approach, and it can be rigorous. Even I am still learning and becoming more skilled at not only doing this well but also getting closer to the point where every distracting emotion and some that aren’t are nearly always interrogated or dismissed.

The key is to get to a quiet place as soon as you are able. Creating a quiet place in the midst of chaos is also a difficult and deep subject not covered here. Being a Freedomist subscriber will continue to give you access to this content when we move on to those discussions.

For now, we have explored the interrogation process. Get to a quiet place, let yourself feel the emotion, find the source by imagining different sources, find why this source is doing this, determine what your heart wants you to do, plumb line this, and, if necessary keep at it until your heart and your plumb line of truth align as one. Now you have obtained the thing that feeling was meant to communicate.

This won’t end the emotion now or in the future, most likely until you have followed through with the plumb lined things your heart wants you to do. But sometimes it’s not something you CAN do, and this emotion isn’t helping you any more. If it is bliss and euphoria, it can be just as distracting as a feeling that isn’t pleasant and even painful feelings.

So, now you’ve either wrenched the truth out of that feeling or determined it has no cause or solution you can find (this can change at later times because some things are very deep) and you are essentially done with it. You want to dismiss it.

Understand, as frustrating as it may be, that your ability to dismiss a feeling will take time to develop, like a muscle, but it is never perfectly and entirely possible to eliminate all feelings, especially negative ones. Sometimes, you accept that this is “just pain” and keep practicing your dismissal until it passes, and it will, even if it takes days or weeks. But if you do all this and it’s not helping, you may need medical intervention, and you should consult your favorite medical provider.

Let’s get into dismissal.

To dismiss a feeling, some people argue with it. Sure, speaking truth to a lie that is hurting you is not a bad idea, but it often doesn’t work on its own. When I feel so and so about myself and know God’s says different things, I speak what I know God says about me or that situation. I do this in faith, I do this to align my spirit and my heart and also my mind. But the feeling doesn’t necessarily go away.

Dismissal of feelings, especially ones you don’t want, isn’t all in your head. Usually, the only way to dismiss a feeling it to replace it. But this isn’t imagining a new subject and talking yourself into focusing on it. What you have to do is somehow move yourself.

I have a few tricks:

  • Listen to music- make a happy music list and just hear the words, try to create word images in your mind and eventually your focus moves to this
  • Imagine something happy and enact it in your imagination, relive something from the past or inagine something from the future until your focus shifts
  • Create dialogs and conversations about random things if need be, imagine talking to someone about something you are good at and showing them how to do it
  • Pet your dog or cat and play fetch or something, just keep at it until your focus shifts
  • Go do something different, sometimes I get in the car and drive to somewhere new or go eat somewhere new, anything to engage my brain and senses
  • If the thoughts keep coming back, just keep doing the dismissal. It will get better and become easier, and if you persist, that feeling cannot survive

Your feelings are not to be feared, sometimes they can be huge help, but following them without engaging them with logic and reason, morals and values, is a good way become the victim of a pied piper. Nonetheless, while perfect and total control can never be achieved by mere mortals, a high degree of control IS POSSIBLE.

RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR UPDATE: Move Along – Nothing To See Here
4 min read

RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR UPDATE: Move Along – Nothing To See Here

Michael Cessna June 26, 2023

 

 

 

 

Well, then. The Apocalypse has been rescheduled.

As we reported previously, on June 23, troops of the Wagner “Private Military Company” (PMC) – at the orders of their leader, hot dog vendor-turned mercenary warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin – apparently abandoned their positions in southern Ukraine in an apparent mutiny; there were scattered reports of regular Russian Army units engaging in firefights with the mercenary troops, many (if not most) of whom have been recruited directly from prisons.

As the hours wore on, more reports came in: Wagner troops captured the city of Rostov-On-Don, Russia’s primary regional headquarters tactically controlling the ongoing battles in the breakaway Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donbas; there were reports of army commanders “defecting” to Wagner; there were reports of scattered attacks by the Russian Air Force on columns of Wagner troops advancing north along the M4 highway, eventually reaching the critical junction of the city of Voronezh, in an apparent bid to storm the Russian capital city of Moscow, with attendant reports of loyalist forces frantically fortifying sections of the city, as well as mutinies at some military bases around the capital. Russian leader Vladimir Putin was reported to have fled the capital as did, apparently, many of the business “oligarchs” who control the Russian economy, leading to many Western governments and sophomoric, desperate-for-news pundits to chortle at Putin’s seeming demise…

…And then – it was over.

Late on June 24, the story suddenly flipped: Alexander Lukashenko, long-time dictator of the nation of Belarus and a staunch Putin ally, apparently negotiated an agreement between Putin and Prigozhin that saw the mercenary leader “exiled” to Belarus, in trade for ordering his prison-mercs to reverse course, and return to their original cantonments on the front lines of Southern Ukraine.

The world – and especially Western intelligence services – were dumbfounded…ourselves, included.

After careful analysis, the staff at FreedomistMIA has reached a general conclusion as to what we think has happened.

As we remarked in our article from June 23, our second point of analysis was the possibility that Prigozhin had actually launched his “putsch” at the direct order of Putin, in a bid to strengthen Putin’s position inside Russia. While we considered this to be unlikely at that time, that is what now seems to be the case.

At issue, firstly, was Prigozhin’s demonstrated fanatical loyalty to Putin (who had made Prigozhin his personal chef at one point, and then made him the head of the already-established Wagner PMC). Second, were Prigozhin’s, frankly bizarre and inconsistent (bordering on the incoherent) statements on various social media platforms, ranting (not too strong of a term) about the Russian Ministry of Defence not simply hamstringing his forces by deliberately denying them supplies and other critical combat support, but of actively bombarding them, in their forward bases, killing large numbers of the mercenaries…none of which made any sense, at all.

In response, Putin addressed the Russian nation and the world early on the 24th (US time), calling Prigozhin and any Wagner troops supporting him rebels and traitors, and calling on the Wagner mercenaries to detain Prigozhin and/or return to the Ukrainian front. Shortly after that address, Lukashenko “brokered” an end to the “fighting”.

So…where does this leave us, as of the afternoon (US time) on June 26?

The putsch is over. Wagner forces are returning to southern Ukraine. Prigozhin’s whereabouts are unclear. What has the result been, overall?

 

  • First, Putin’s hold on power – despite the desperate ravings of certain sections of the popular media – has been greatly strengthened: the abortive putsch saw many anti-Putin oligarchs and lower-level military commanders and officials either ‘sit pat’, or actively try to ingratiate themselves to Prigozhin. Where their loyalties to the Putin regime may have been questionable before the putsch, their stances are now out in the open, for all to see.
  • Second, there has apparently been no significant disruption in the logistical throughput passing through Rostov-On-Don, meaning that the Russian and mercenary forces on that front have suffered no real interruption to the flow of personnel, supplies, or equipment. Likewise, tactically speaking, there has been no opportunity for Ukraine to exploit “disruptions” in Russian ranks.
  • Third, is the interplay between Russia, Belarus and Wagner. With Prigozhin “exiled” to Belarus – to date, a ‘silent partner’ to Russia, allowing significant Russian forces to be based in their country – there is the significant possibility that Progozhin will take many of his Wagner troops with him (the idea of Russia allowing all Wagner troops to go to Belarus is a non-starter, as the mercenaries are too vital as shock troops). Those troops, likely under a different corporate name, would both strengthen the Russian units now in Belarus, while also providing vital training services for Belarusian forces, who have no combat experience to speak of. This could be enhanced, due to reports during the “not-a-putsch”, of Wagner units opening prisons, arming the freed inmates and adding them to their forces, something Wagner has done in the past, with official sanction. Where Wagner was suspected to have fielded approximately 50,000 troops worldwide, with some 25,000 fighting in Ukraine, that figure may have been significantly increased.

 

Overall, it would appear that Putin has staged a solid deception operation that has measurably strengthened his power base, added forces to his army prosecuting his war in Ukraine, and greatly shored up a close ally, an ally which may well need a “loyal” force of battle-hardened mercenaries to secure his regime, as Lukashenko is reportedly in ill health.

As a result, the world collectively has a lot of egg on its face, to Putin’s benefit.

And that, as it lowers the Western public’s opinions of their governments and news media in general, bodes ill.

 

 

 

 

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

AN UNHINGED REVOLUTION – Russia On The Brink Of Civil War
5 min read

AN UNHINGED REVOLUTION – Russia On The Brink Of Civil War

Michael Cessna June 24, 2023

 

 

 

 

SUMMARY – On June 23, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a petty criminal-turned-hot dog vendor-turned-restaurateur-turned mercenary warlord led his mercenary army, the infamous “Wagner Group”, in what he describes as a “March of Justice” against the Russian Defense Ministry, accusing that governmental body of launching deliberate attacks on his troops in order to destroy his army. As of the dawn of June 24, Prigozhin’s forces have captured the major city and vital command and logistics hub of Rostov-On-Don, securing the city center, as well as the main regional military headquarters. Russian leader Vladimir Putin has vowed to crush the Wagner mutiny in a public address on the morning of June 24. These actions have dire implications for the world. This is a developing situation.

 

The Current Situation – The Wagner PMC has been the core of Russia’s recent battles in Ukraine, acting as elite shock troops in brutal battles throughout the region, particularly in Bakhmut, at the end of May. The mercenary army has been in action around the world, primarily in Africa (in Chad, Libya and Sudan) and the Middle East, earning a reputation for combat effectiveness, corruption and brutality.

Over the last few months, however, the 62-year old Prigozhin has been increasingly seen as unstable, making increasingly angry and bizarre claims that the Russian Ministry of Defence has been deliberately attacking his forces, claims that the Ministry has vehemently denied. It is these attacks that appear to be the linchpin behind the crisis.

 

The “Long March” Begins – On June 23rd, Wagner troops variously either left their positions to follow Prigozhin in his march to Rostov-On-Don, or turned and fired on regular Russian Army troops. This has completely disrupted Russian operations in Ukraine. Additionally, Western intelligence services have been caught flat-footed, not remotely suspecting Prigozhin’s actions, indicating that Prigozhin may not have been suborned.

As of the morning of June 24th, Wagner forces have been reported in the city of Voronezh, an approximate 6-hour drive from Moscow. In Moscow itself, loyalist troops and armored vehicles have been deployed into the city itself to protect the Kremlin and various areas where the oligarchs supporting the Putin regime live. There are also reports of scattered fighting and other potential mutinies at various bases around Moscow.

The danger, and the reason this action by Prigozhin is so dangerous, is that the vast bulk of Russia’s regular army is physically inside Ukraine at this time, meaning that there are very few forces between Prigozhin and Moscow who are either willing or capable of standing up to Wagner’s battle-hardened troops in any kind of fight.

 

 

Predictive Analysis

 

The Bad…Good and Ugly Being Irrelevant – Information on the situation remains highly fluid and uncertain, but some analysis is possible.

To begin, Prigozhin’s actions are frankly bizarre. “Friendly Fire” incidents happen in war, often frequently. Even in extreme cases, these kinds of incidents are no reason for a mutiny that can only be seen as not simply irrelevant, but highly damaging to an active war effort.

What is currently unknown – and is a decisive factor – is whether or not the flow of supplies through Rostov-On-Don has been disrupted or not.

This leads to three possibilities, none of them good:

 

  1. Prigozhin may have been “turned”, or “suborned”, by a foreign intelligence agency to strike out against Putin’s government. It is hard to understand why Prigozhin would agree to do such a thing, as he owes everything good that has happened in his life in the last thirty-odd years to Vladimir Putin, personally. And, while not having any real, professional military training, Prigozhin must certainly understand the impact his actions will have on the Russian war effort against Ukraine. The fact that Ukraine itself does not seem to be taking advantage of this disruption immediately, would tend to indicate that they had no knowledge of Prigozhin’s actions beforehand. This is backed up by anonymous sources within the Western intelligence communities, who have confirmed that no one knew or suspected the mercenary chief’s actions until he struck out on his suicide charge.

 

  1. Conversely, swinging into pure speculation-mode, Prigozhin may be tilting at this particular windmill at the direct order of Putin, himself, in an old-school-Hollywood bit of skullduggery, taking a radical action that would allow Putin to declare martial law, and make a clean sweep of the Russian oligarchs (most of whom, like Putin, are former KGB officers) standing in his way from a return to Stalinist-style policies of control, effectively creating a kind of “Soviet Union, 2.0”, with Putin as absolute and unchallenged ruler. In this scenario, Prigozhin could be “tried for treason” and “sentenced to prison”, and then retired to a nice country home in Siberia, far away from cameras and reporters. While certainly requiring some extensive mental gymnastics, this is not outside the realm of possibility.

 

  1. Lastly, there is the most frightening possibility: That Prigozhin has actually become unhinged, and truly believes that his actions of the last forty-eight hours are perfectly justified. If this is the case, all bets are off, because Putin has been facing a quietly increasing rise of resistance from the oligarchs he relies on to retain power. This could lead to an all-out Civil War in Russia, a nuclear-armed superpower with a nuclear arsenal comparable to that of the United States, with the potential for unauthorized uses of nuclear weapons. Peripheral to this, is the possibility that, should Ukraine “steal a march” on Russia, and make a sudden spate of critical gains, the Russian military command could panic, and use tactical nuclear weapons to attack Ukraine’s Main Supply Routes (MSR’s) to hold their advance amid the confusion. Such an action would cause a panic in both the European Union and in NATO…and no one knows what will happen after that.

 

 

Conclusion – Yevgeny Prigozhin’s actions are unprecedented in the modern day. Nothing like this has been seen on so critical a geopolitical scale since the Russian Revolution of 1917. While pithy remarks about Machiavelli being right on mercenaries might be true, they are also largely irrelevant to the current situation.

By his actions, whatever their rationale might be, Yevgeny Prigozhin and his mercenary army have placed the world in significant danger of all-out war, on a scale never before seen.

The FreedomistMIA is keeping a close watch on this situation at press time, and will update this story for our readers as the situation develops.

 

 

 

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

 

Conflict Update – Sudan Unravels, As Its Crows Come Home To Roost
5 min read

Conflict Update – Sudan Unravels, As Its Crows Come Home To Roost

Michael Cessna April 21, 2023 4

 

 

 

 

Conflict monitoring is an odd field: You try to monitor the world, and eventually specialize out of necessity. The recent descent into chaos in Sudan, Africa’s third-largest nation by size, is no different.

Beginning on April 15th, a series of armed clashes began in Khartoum, the capital of the African nation. The opposing sides are the regular Sudanese Army, and a paramilitary force called the “Rapid Support Force (RSF)“. The two forces had united in 2019 to oust Omar al-Bashir, the country’s long-time dictator, in a military coup d’etat; two years later, in 2021, the two parties staged another coup to derail Sudan’s return to a democratically elected government.

The situation has deteriorated, in barely a single week, to the point that the United States and other powers  (YouTube link) are rapidly deploying forces to Camp Lemonnier, located in the state of Djibouti, on the Red Sea coast, in preparation for a possible evacuation of various embassy’s and foreign nationals – a daunting prospect, given that Khartoum’s international airport is not currently usable, and because the capital city is nearly 800 miles inland.

The source of the current “lover’s quarrel” is the Regular Army dragging its feet over formally integrating the RSF into its force structure, as well as delays in payroll to the paramilitary force, with its leadership claiming that they want to return al-Bashir to power.

Who are the RSF?

In 2003, fighting erupted in Western Sudan as non-Arab (i.e., “black African”) tribes united against the al-Bashir government’s continued campaign of oppression and discrimination against them. The result was the Darfur War (sometimes called the “Land Cruiser War” because of the extensive used of ‘technicals’), a genocidal conflict that killed hundreds of thousands, and created between two and three million refugees.

 

Map of Darfur within Sudan, July 2011. CCA/3.0

 

The RSF began life as the so-called “Janjaweed”, a Sudanese Arab tribal militia assembled by al-Bashir’s government to suppress the Black African inhabitants of the region. Supporting this, were the remnants of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s “Islamic Legion”, an openly racist and pan-Arab organization intended to unite the Saharan region by force.

As the Darfur war reached a stalemate (that would ultimately result in a nominal ceasefire agreement in 2020), al-Bashir’s government began using a now-experienced and capable Janjaweed – under their commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – as extra muscle throughout the region, especially in places where the dirtiest of atrocities were needed.

Oozing to life in 2013 as an outgrowth of the Janjaweed, the RSF was quickly used by al-Bashir as a kind of “expeditionary force”, sending significant numbers of troops into both Chad and Libya (in the latter case, supporting the Libyan National Army of Khalifa Haftar), and a stunning 40,000-strong corps-sized unit into Yemen to fight against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The main difference between the RSF and the Janjaweed, is in the level of formal support and arms provided to them by the Sudanese government, with uniform weapons and vehicles.

The RSF is not simply large, with over 100,000 men under arms, but is also highly mobile, with an estimated 10,000 ‘technical’ trucks (YouTube link)…and it has developed an impressive economic infrastructure to support itself, thanks to the business chops of its leader and his family.

Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as “Hemedti“, locally), who dropped out of primary school in 3rd grade to work to support his family, started out as a well-respected camel herder in the Darfur region. As he positioned himself as the chief commander of first the Janjaweed, and then the RSF, he used the forces loyal to him to help is company, Al Junaid, to corner the gold mining industry within Sudan, as well as a host of other industries, ultimately controlling up to 40% of Sudan’s exports.

And, like most warlords with sufficient resources, he has made life well for his loyalists in the RSF, who now follow his orders without question, helped by him polishing his speaking skills. This, along with a “charm campaign” managed by Western public relations firms to improve Hemedti’s image, has combined to form a kind of “mercenary micro-state” of a type that is highly unusual in the modern day…In many ways, the RSF is the nightmare scenario that world security analysts have been dreading since the rise of the “corporate terror group” model, when al Qaeda appeared in the late-1990’s.

In a very real sense, the leader of the regular Sudanese armed forces and Hemedti’s rival in the power struggle, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, have created a monster they can no longer control.

But, ultimately…who cares? Why should you care?

The current fighting in Sudan will almost certainly determine who will be the next ruler of the nation. As well, major powers – both global powers, and up-and-coming regional states seeking to expand their influence – are all jockeying for position, and that kind of jockeying can swiftly lead to an expanding conflict.

And all of this is happening literally on the banks of the Nile, Africa’s ancient major river system. No matter who wins this conflict, this will pose significant issues to Egypt and its population of over 100 million, already alarmed over Ethiopia’s dam building project that seriously threatens the downstream ecology and climate of the region.

Lastly, is the serious potential for major-power involvement, up to and including combat: Russia’s Wagner Group mercenary company has significant ties to the RSF, and in the region, generally. The Wagner Group has been reportedly guarding some gold mining areas for the central government since at least 2019, with speculation that Wagner-defended gold is being using used to fund Russia’s war in Ukraine. Numerous foreign corporations have major investments throughout the region, and the expansion of the “private military company” market in the last twenty-five years means that there is little incentive to not hire lots of ex-military guns to guard their investments.

And, looming over the regular Western military commands’ psyches is the shadow of 1993’s “Battle of Mogadishu”, but on a far larger scale, with far fewer advantages for the Western powers.

The future does not look sunny.

 

 

 

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

 

 

Katie Hobbs “Won” the AZ Governorship with 25,000 Unaccountable Votes
1 min read

Katie Hobbs “Won” the AZ Governorship with 25,000 Unaccountable Votes

Freedomist Editor January 26, 2023

MORE MISSING VOTES HIGHLIGHT 2022 ARIZONA ELECTION FRAUD – In the Kari Lake trial that attempted to hold the fraudulent Democratic Party accountable for its egregious violations of basic state election law, it was exposed that the result of the “election” was determined by the insertion of a mysterious batch of 25,000 votes that have yet to be validated by the states chain-of-custody ballot laws.

Azerbaijan Creating Middle Corridor to Rival Sea Transportation
1 min read

Azerbaijan Creating Middle Corridor to Rival Sea Transportation

Paul Collier January 25, 2023 2

AZERBAIJAN BECOMING LINK BETWEEN CHINA AND EURASIA – Azerbaijan released a report on the performance of it’s rail-line, the Baku-Tblisi-Kars (BTK) line which began operation in 2017.  The rail-line is proving to be a major trade hub between China, Central Asia, and Europe.  The company, Azerbaijan Railways Company (ADY), is reporting a 30 percent increase in tons transported in 2022 compared to 2021. They’re also reporting that the China-Europe route is twice as fast as sea transport (15 days to 25-45) and cost 50 percent less than air transport. Japan was a recent new customer for the BTK line.

CCP Loses Spy Asset in NASA
1 min read

CCP Loses Spy Asset in NASA

Paul Collier January 25, 2023

U.S NASA SCIENTIST CONFESSES TO SPYING FOR CHINA – China lost a valuable asset from within NASA when Meyya Meyyapin, a high-ranking NASA scientist, was arrested for giving top secret information to the Chinese Communist Party.  He pled guilty January 24, 2023.  He has been working with NASA since 1996.  He has been a high-ranking official since 2006.  It is unclear how long he was spying for the CCP during that time.

Josh Hawley Pushes to Ban TikTok
1 min read

Josh Hawley Pushes to Ban TikTok

Freedomist Editor January 25, 2023

CHINA’S TIKTOK FACES SENATE CANCELLATION –  Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) has introduced a bill to the Senate that would ban TikTok from the American marketplace.  Hawley called TikTok “China’s backdoor into Americans’ lives.” The U.S. Traitor representing TikTok countered, “We hope that he will focus his energies on efforts to address those issues holistically, rather than pretending that banning a single service would solve any of the problems he’s concerned about or make Americans any safer.”

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