The U.S. House appears poised to pass legislation that would force TikTok to completely sever all ties with the CCP or else be banned. The problem is the final bill might include a trojan horse that would allow the government to ban ANY social media app congress deems to be a threat to election security, even if they’re owned by Americans.
Former President Donald Trump, who once supported a ban (and was working towards that goal) has hedged his bets, but not for the Trojan Horse reason cited above. He said, “There’s a lot of good, and there’s a lot of bad with TikTok. But the thing I don’t like is that without TikTok, you’re going to make Facebook bigger.”
A tech firm named Cnano USA has admitted that the company is infested with members of the Chinese Communist Party. That same company is building a new facility in Kansas that is conveniently located near two major U.S. military bases.
The news was revealed with the President of the company, Shawn Montgomery, admitted to having CCP members in his company during his testimony this month before the Kansas House Committee on Commerce, Labor, and Economic Development.
Donald J Trump and Joe Biden are set to repeat the battle of 2020 as both men have now unofficially won enough delegates to clinch their respective parties.
Trump added three more primary wins in Washington, Mississippi, and Georgia, winning each election by more than 80 percent of the primary vote. The news comes on the heels of a recent purge of the RNC by Trump’s daughter-in-law, Laura Trump, the new co-chair of the RNC.
ValueAct, an “activist” investment group, has come out hard in support of Disney’s current Bob Igor led board in opposition to two other activist groups that are looking for substantive changes at Disney. What ValueAct failed to let voters know is that they have a vested interest in keeping Disney as it is, especially under Igor’s leadership, since they have been managing Disney’s pension fund since 2013.
One of the competing investment groups, Blackwell’s Capital, sent out a note urging voters to disregard any recommendations by ValueAct as they are too entangled with Igor and his board to give an objective opinion. Blackwell Capital wrote“Blackwells diligence revealed that the Board failed to disclose in the press release that ValueAct or its affiliates have been managing over $350 million of Disney’s pension fund assets, and that ValueAct has been earning fees ranging from approximately $55 million to $95 million for the services provided to Disney’s pension fund since as early as 2013.”
Whether prompted by his handlers or not, President Joe Biden decided to give an apology speech for calling the murderer of a 22-year-old Georgia University Student an “illegal” rather than “undocumented” person. He also credited these same illegal aliens with building America in a speech that only America’s enemies would love.
Biden stated “And I shouldn’t have used illegal, I should’ve… It’s undocumented. And look, when I spoke about the difference between Trump and me, one of the things I talked about on the border was his – the way he talks about vermin, the way he talks about these people polluting the blood. I talked about what I’m not going to do, and what I won’t do. I’m not going to treat any, any, any of these people with disrespect. Look, they built the country. The reason our economy is growing, we have to control the border and more orderly flow. But I don’t share his view at all.”
… When host Jonathan Capehart asked if he regrets using the word “illegal,” Biden said “yes.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) criticized Biden, saying that he “Should have said undocumented” as well.
The Biden re-election campaign’s national co-chair, Mitch Landrieu also slammed the president’s choice of word.
“He probably should’ve used a different word and I think he would know that. But what you should notice about that is not that he made a small mistake,” Landrieu told CNN. “The big thing that he didn’t write, and this is what this president always does, is express empathy to people, he expressed kindness to people. He understands because, as you know, he lost a number of children in his life.”
Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-Ill) said that he was “Disappointed to hear President Biden use the word ‘illegal.’”
Meanwhile, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) complained that Biden’s choice was “incendiary” and “wrong.”
A new center-right coalition is expected to take over the government of Portugal after elections saw center-right and far-right parties win the majority of the seats. The highlight of the evening came from the right-wing Chega party which, after being formed in 2019, saw its vote shares grom from 1.3 percent in 2019, to 7 percent in 2022, to now 18 percent in 2024.
The election highlights populist surges not just in Portugal, but also in other EU member states, causing some to either hope or fear a possible populist domination in this year’s EU elections.
Portugal veered rightwards following November’s grift scandal that toppled the ruling socialists (PS), with Chega securing approximately 45 seats in the 230-seat parliament, unprecedented for a party founded only in 2019 in a historically left-wing state.
While the centre-right effectively retained its electoral base under the umbrella of the AD alliance, upstarts Chega appear to have eaten into one-third of the PS vote share.
With no real concessions won, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-AR) oversaw the passage of a partial budget in the House that was signed by President Joe Biden. The total amount of the spending bill comes to $460 billion and will keep “essential” agencies funded through fiscal year 2024.
… The measure contains six annual spending bills and had already passed the House. In signing it into law, Biden thanked leaders and negotiators from both parties in both chambers for their work, which the White House said will mean that agencies “may continue their normal operations.”
Meanwhile, lawmakers are negotiating a second package of six bills, including defense, in an effort to have all federal agencies fully funded by a March 22 deadline.
“To folks who worry that divided government means nothing ever gets done, this bipartisan package says otherwise,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, said after lawmakers passed the measure Friday night just hours before a deadline.
John Barnett, 62, was found dead in his truck outside a hotel in Charleston South Carolina, allegedly from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was scheduled to be deposed in the Boeing Safety case but failed to show up. He was an early whistleblower who worked with Boeing for 32 years before exposing their unsafe manufacturing practices, even suing the company for ignoring his complaint.
… ” Barnett, a 32-year Boeing veteran, told the BBC in 2019 that he’d found faulty emergency oxygen bottles while working on the 787 Dreamliner a few years prior. He sued the company after claiming it slow-walked his complaint, sidelining him and eventually pushing him into retirement. Boeing has denied wrongdoing.
We’ve previously discussed the “democratization of military training”, way back in 2022, looking at the idea of individuals, with no previous military training or experience, teaching at least one of those skills to themselves. Since that article, the ability to acquire those skills – what Great Britain used to call “small tactics” – has only expanded throughout the internet; indeed, all that is necessary is knowing what information to ask for.
Of course, certain things are required to teach oneself these kinds of skills, primarily access to at least basic small arms, such as rifles, handguns and/or shotguns. Of course, for the longest time, access to such weapons could be problematic; in many places in the world – and increasingly, within the United States, itself – that requirement can still present issues. Recently, however, that impediment has been reduced through the use of highly realistic “toys”, primarily “Airsoft” weapons, which mimic actual military-type weapons in current use. While Airsoft toys have significant issues in trying to impart realistic levels of firearms training, they can be effectively utilized to cover many of the basics, drastically reducing the need for “live fire” training and experience. Likewise, while keeping in mind that using Airsoft for military-like training has serious handicaps, it can help teach the basics of small-unit maneuver, at least up to the squad to platoon levels.
This ability to train realistically – even if not precisely up to the level of “actual” military levels – is already making its impacts felt in places such as Burma, where insurgents fighting a brutal military junta’s forces have been able to couple effective training with 3-D printed firearms to “bootstrap” themselves into effective guerilla infantry formations.
So terrified has the “power elite” within the United States Government become, they are resorting to desperate actions to ban even a hint of such training options for civilians – in effect, creating an underclass dividing civilians from prior-service military personnel…The fact that such actions are specifically counter to Congress’ own foundational requirements does not seem to even be a consideration to a group desperate to retain their own power and authority.
The Minute Man, sculpture by Artist Daniel Chester French (1850–1931), 1875, Concord, Massachusetts. National Park Service. Public Domain.
That said, there is another aspect to the training issue: that of “leadership”.
Military leadership – contrary to the views of many in the military, political and corporate sectors – is very different from “leadership” in either the corporate or political sectors. Leadership in a law enforcement agency does bear some resemblance to military leadership, but there are fundamental differences even there.
At its core, military leadership is much more difficult to define, let alone execute in the field. While there is a legal expectation of obedience inherent in military leadership, as there is in the political and law enforcement spheres, this almost never true in the corporate sector. Likewise, while law enforcement officers are expected to voluntarily face danger, there is seldom – if ever – a legal requirement to risk their own lives, as the verdict in the trial of the armed officer in the Parkland high school mass shooting demonstrated…This is very much not a verdict that would be laid in a military court martial for a similar offence.
In a very real sense, military leadership is centered on the fundamental principal that the commissioned or non-commissioned officer holds both the legal responsibility and moral authority to order their subordinates into situations that have a high chance – and potentially a guarantee – of resulting in said subordinates death or severe wounding. Such a responsibility is something that few politicians will ever face, in the course of their political careers; in the United States, the only political leaders who hold such authority are the President of the United States (in relation to the Federal Armed Forces), and the various governors of the Several States (in relation to their State National Guard commands).
The prescient question for this article, however, does not necessarily revolve around “legitimate authority”; in fact, the nature of his article more or less assumes that the notion of “legitimacy” does not come from a “vertical hierarchy”, but from a “lateral agreement”.
In the real “old days”, military leadership came from the strongest, meanest and most capable warrior, who used their fighting prowess to gain a band of followers who followed them because of their demonstrated skill and wisdom. In time, this evolved into various forms of social hierarchy, primarily in the form of “kingship” and an associated aristocracy, based on military ability and personal loyalty. Aside from the occasional aberration, such as the Roman Centurion system, this remained the case in Western Europe until the 17th Century.
The First Muster, 1637. Artist: Don Troiani. Public Domain.
Beginning around that time, the idea of the old “feudal levy” began to evolve into that of citizen militias. These types of formations were frequently self-organizing, in the literal sense of the term, where a group of local people – usually at the village or town level – would assemble on their own, pronounce the formation of some level of militia unit, the members of which would then volunteer to “place themselves under military discipline” (a very ‘loaded’ term, and one which the modern military struggles with to this day). And then, they would frequently do something so unheard of today, it is nearly impossible to find references to it: the self-mustered militia soldiers would elect officers from among their ranks as leaders.
In the British colonies of North America, the various colonial governors preferred to appoint officers to military ranks, such as George Washington’s direct appointment to the rank of Major by the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, but the reality was that colonial governors could not afford to be too picky with a group of militia self-organized in time of need.
While the election of officers from within the ranks could certainly be problematic and prone to corruption, incompetence, and discipline problems, it actually tended to work out more often than not. George Washington’s frequent criticism of the various Colonial militias was aimed primarily at their officers being more concerned about keeping their positions by not enforcing too strict a regimen of discipline on their men, and likewise not training their men too strenuously, since those men could easily vote them out of their positions at any time. This was not true, however, in all of the hodge-podge of militia units Washington had to work with, but it did have a negative impact. While this negative impact led to the creation of a “regular” army, that army remained tiny for the entirety of the War of Independence, relying on local militias to fill its gaps for the entire course of the war.
As time went on, of course, the idea of local militias began to fade out of the public mind, especially as states struggled to retain sole control over their state military forces. Now, the same parties within the US government trying to outlaw military training for civilians outside of the armed forces, with the aid of their allies in the “popular press” have demonized the term “militia” to the point where most American equate the word to “terrorist”…
…But that is a whole other discussion.
To return to the point: Can a civilian – with no formal training or military experience – “self-teach” themselves to become an effective military leader? A leader capable of not simply leading a military formation, but of creating a basic training regimen for whatever troops they can “attract to their banner” (to borrow a phrase)?
The answer, as can be surmised, is…it’s complicated.
Reading various works on military leadership, both from the “old days” and newer works, is always a good start; a basic reading list will be presented at the end of this article. However, there is always a break point, where theory and reading must be put into practice.
And that’s the difficult part: a military officer – whether appointed from a higher authority or self-taught – is very much a chief in need of ‘spear carriers’: without troops to lead and teach, the self-taught “officer” will never know whether they have effectively learned the lessons their readings have taught them.
The majority of readers of this article will almost certainly never have to actually face this issue in “real life”…and you shouldn’t want to, by any means. But – the situations and threats of the world of the early-21st Century may require those skills.
It’s your decision whether or not to pursue the idea of teaching yourself how to lead troops. While I certainly cannot make that decision for you, you should be very concerned about government flunkies who don’t want you to do so.
Two engineers, Luis Wenus and Robert Lukoszko, decided to see if they could build a drone that could be used to kill humans autonomously. They were alarmed at how fast they were able to create such a drone, programming it to essentially chase humans. A drone armed or loaded with explosives could target gatherings for terrorist attacks, the engineers worry.
Wenus, the lead in the project, is a self-described “open source absolutist” who also uses the pronouns “e/acc,” which is a signal he is all for unfettered AI development as rapidly as possible, come what may. Yet his work is sure to be used to justify constraints on AI, and even more, on drone development and use by non-government agents, aka you and me.
Drone technology is the new frontier in the battle for the right to self-defense as reflected in our republic’s 2nd Amendment.
… Wenus said his experiment showed that society urgently needs to build anti-drone systems for civilian spaces where large crowds could gather. There are several countermeasures that society can build, according to Robin Radar, including cameras, acoustic sensors and radar to detect drones. Disrupting them, however, could require technologies such as radio frequency jammers, GPS spoofers, net guns, as well as high-energy lasers.
While such weapons haven’t been deployed in civilian environments, they have been previously conceptualized and deployed in the context of warfare. Ukraine, for example, has developed explosive drones in response to Russia’s invasion, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
The U.S. military is also working on ways to build and control swarms of small drones that can attack targets. It follows the U.S. Navy’s efforts after it first demonstrated that it could control a swarm of 30 drones with explosives in 2017, according to MIT Technology Review.
Back FREEDOM for only $4.95/month and help the Freedomist to fight the ongoing war on liberty and defeat the establishment's SHILL press!!
Are you enjoying our content? Help support our mission to reach every American with a message of freedom through virtue, liberty, and independence! Support our team of dedicated freedom builders for as little as $4.95/month! Back the Freedomist now! Click here
.jpg%2F440px-Joe_Biden_(49385177488).jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=8de1d34e8e3a558d11578aebb358a63c6a6b90887de510583be217d3d152517e&ipo=images "Biden Signs Partial Budget Bill")
