After U.S. Secretary Antony Blinken and Papua New Guinea Defense Minister Win Bakri Daki signed a new military agreement in May, opposition to the agreement, which has yet to be ratified, formed. Opposition Leader Jospeh Leland is leading the charge, telling Benar News that the agreement “has sparked unprecedented protests and opposition all over the country. The issue of sovereignty and constitutionality of that agreement is now being tested.”
What’s at stake here is whether the Papua New Guineans want to be committed to what is, effectively, an anti-China policy while living in China’s backdoor. While the opposition leader doesn’t question the government’s right to make agreements with foreign nations, he claims, “As leader of the opposition it is my duty to ensure that all lawful checks and balances are strengthened or are available and that at all times, PNG’s sovereignty is not unnecessarily compromised.”
He believes this agreement does breech PNG’s sovereignty. A Pacific Analyst, Mihai Sora, believes the government has enough to get the agreement ratified, but the government has failed, so far, to explain the benefits of the agreement. The tensions leave the door open for the CCP to seek to influence the island nation through the opposition party to tilt the nation towards China, as has happened in the Solomon Islands.
The protests are real, and as the DNC-CCP continues to push its anti-human agenda on its “allies,” those “allies” are finding better terms with China and Russia, who aren’t seeking to make them support abortion or gay rights or “anti-racist” (which are racist) policies like the Biden administration has been doing, and aggressively so.
America is in danger of losing more friendly ports of call as China continues its campaign to freeze America out of the South China sea.
On July 26 of 2023, a military coup unseated the president of the West African nation of Niger; details of this situation and its wider implications are the subject of a Freedomist monthly, subscription-only article, set to go to press as this article is being written. While coups d’état are not unusual in post-1960 Africa, what made this one unusual was that it was the sixth since 2020, and was only the latest in a string of some twelve coups in the region, beginning in 2008. Another unique feature in Niger is the open public praise of Russia, complete with homemade Russian flags.
And this is aside from the absolutely remarkable statements from both the US State Department and the Pentagon’s AFRICOM command that they have no idea and no way to track what happens to the Third World military officers (some of whom earn Master’s degrees in US and British military universities) that they train.
These coups are not complex events to understand – not that the various “think tanks” advising policy makers around the world seem to understand them. At all. In fact, the tone-deaf mewlings of people overly impressed by the letters after their own names begs inquiry as to whether or not they are using word-salad AI Chatbots to write their papers.
Additionally, the non-military sphere is heating up as well, as the BRICS Group has just extended invitations for membership to six states: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. This is no small thing…again, however, not that the US, British of Western European foreign policy, military and financial power structures seem to care.
And this is also separate from the catastrophically embarrassing failures of the same nation’s attempts at training Second- and Third World military forces to something approaching a Western military standard. From the nation of Georgia in 2008, to the collapse of the Iraqi Army in 2014, that of the Afghan National Army in 2021 and the abysmal performance of the “retrained” Ukrainian Army in 2022-23, Western – meaning, United States and NATO countries – military training programs have consistently failed (and failed miserably) to train up effective forces. Given that the current US Secretary of Defense, retired General Lloyd Austin, testified before Congress (YouTube link) on the spectacular $500 million failure to train more than a handful of “friendly” anti-regime forces in Syria, it would seem obvious that rather penetrating questions should have been asked, on numerous occasions.
But, I digress…Back to the original question: Why is it so hard to understand what is happening in world affairs?
There are only three realistic possibilities: incompetence, delusion and/or corruption.
Incompetence at this level, while alarming to the uninitiated, is depressingly common in areas of higher education. Classroom theories about lofty and obtuse notions of “democracy”, finance, resource management and social equity fail instantly and completely when confronted with the stark realities of the real world – as education widens in the population base, the “common folk” begin to learn just how badly they are being screwed…and eventually, they will stop taking it, rise up, and either stand on their own, or at least look for a new partner that isn’t insultingly paternalistic and slimy.
That, in a nutshell, is what just happened in Niger, as the population is fed up with France acting as the glowering, judgmental schoolmaster, desperately trying to hold on to a zombified economic dominion over its former “colonies.” Russia – while certainly no saint – has no real colonial history in Africa, and is remembered by many as a reasonably friendly power from the Cold War era.
Turning to the possibility of delusion, that is also an easy, if depressing, possibility to grasp. The sad fact is that Western institutions of education have spent at least forty-odd years hammering at the nail of “democracy”, as if it were a panacea to all of the world’s ills. This is done despite the bald facts that “democracy” is extremely fickle, and fails abjectly when forcibly introduced into a populace who has little, if any, history or inclination to properly use what is a notoriously clunky system, a system that encourages discrimination at virtually every level if not carefully carried out. Countries and peoples that have political systems imposed on them with little education or even training quickly spiral into internal unrest, if not civil war. This is the historical record, from Sri Lanka to Iraq, to Niger; where exceptions appear, those simply ‘prove the rule.’
Corruption, too, is a distinct possibility. The Western “establishment” deeply fears an Africa whose national peoples – even though their “nations” are, for the most part, wholly artificial constructs with boarders drawn by distant colonial powers with delusions of adequacy – might someday agree to set aside their differences, overthrow their corrupt “leaders”, and tell the West that their free lunch is over…and lest you, the Reader, dismiss this as an empty threat, you would be wise to remember that cheap African minerals are why you were able to afford the computer, tablet and/or smartphone you are reading this article on.
In contrast to the incoherent bleatings of people with more letters after their names than actual experience, critical thinking and/or “plain common sense,” the issue at hand is not that the United States, France and other Western powers are somehow deliberately scheming to topple governments with whom they are already friendly (because they stage-managed the elections that put those governments in power), using officers trained in their own advanced schools of military education, in order to install governments antithetical to those Western states’ views and desires while aligning themselves with said Western states’ semi- (if not full-on) hostile opponents (read that again, if you need to; I did)…it is far more a matter of “keeping the pot simmering,” to keep the local “partner nations” off-balanced, and in dire need of “friendly support”…the notion that local military officers, professionally trained by Western militaries, might go home, look at the rank corruption and incompetence of their “democratically elected” governments, and decide that “drastic measures” are required to save the country, is apparently unfathomable inside the air conditioned think tanks of Washington, DC, London, Paris and Brussels.
There is, however, another dimension to this situation: Grand Strategy.
African countries that have had coups between 2020 and 2023 (July 2023). Credit: Discombobulates. CCA/4.0
The BRICS Group, led by Communist China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia, has used the wave of coups across the African Sahel region – the so-called “Coup Belt” – to their distinct advantage. When zooming out to a wider Africa map, it is clear that the pattern of coups in the African Sahel region stretch in a near-unbroken line from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean…and every coup in those states in the last fifteen odd years has been done with at least tacit Russian or Chinese support. With the BRICS Group inviting in new members, this opens the possibility of a revival of a British idea from their imperial days in Africa: instead of a “Cairo to Cape Town Railway”, the wave of Russia-friendly governments produced by the wave of recent coups opens the possibility of a “Port Sudan to Dakar Railway”, cutting across the breadth of the continent, causing a vast and violent shift in global commerce, as it would allow a transshipment route for cargoes that would bypass the Suez Canal…All that is needed for such a project is money (see: Saudi Arabia joining BRICS, above), and a much-improved security situation, neutralizing both “islamistinsurgents” and general banditry. This would also open the possibility of reviving the “Cairo to Cape Town” route, as well as additional north-south spur lines. Russia is well-versed in the impacts of a continent-spanning rail line, as their more-than-a-century-old Trans-Siberian Railway remains a vital economic artery for the Russian state.
Another dimension, is the neutralizing of ECOWAS, the “Economic Community of West African States”, an economic cooperation sphere which has been increasingly flexing its military muscles, intervening in several member states over the years, for a variety of reasons. In Niger, however ECOWAS’s immediate order to the coup’s ruling junta to immediately return the deposed Nigerien president to power, was met with a blunt refusal – a refusal that has now been formally backed up by the nations of Burkina Faso and Mali, both of whom are currently led by military junta’s who also succeeded in their own recent coups. And in the broader ECOWAS nations, there is very little support for the idea of a military intervention, especially in light of increasing attacks by AQIM and Boko Haram in recent months.
On top of this, the Organization of African Unity (the “OAU”) has also taken action that is not being well received on the “African Street”. These unpopular actions in recent weeks hold the possibility of seriously fragmenting both organizations.
Which, to return to the corruption angle, also brings up an ugly possibility, one verging into full-on “Conspiracy-Theory Land” (a place that is increasingly “Conspiracy-Fact Land”): that Western militaries are being deliberately hamstrung in fighting islamist insurgencies – not simply in Africa, but around the world.
This is in no way the fault of the Western troops at the “pointy end of the spear” – major policy theories and decisions are presented to troops detailed to execute them far less often than they are presented to the general public, regardless of country. But there is a clear pattern in the preceding thirty or so years: Western forces are sent into a state which – although theoretically rich in natural resources – is almost hopelessly backward, and kept that way by Western interests who want both cheap resources, no matter the cost, and “strategic positioning,” also no matter the cost.
Military force has its limits. The problem with Georges Clemenceau’s tired saw, that “war is too important to be left to the generals”, is that politicians – and the “political” generals advising them – are almost always in a far worse position to be making military decisions than their generals.
This is as true in Africa as it is in Ukraine. In the latter case, the hysterical incompetence and base greed of “corporate donation”-driven politicians has brought the world closer to open nuclear conflict than at any time since at least 1983. (YouTube link)
But in Africa, this hysterical incompetence actually presents a far greater danger to the West: African states with enough military competence to make it difficult to invade them all, who can form a solid negotiating bloc – especially one with support from Russia and Communist China – can up-end Western technology and transport infrastructures to the point of collapse, without firing a shot. Those directing affairs in Washington, London, Paris and Brussels believe that they can “manage” these coming “adjustments”; they cannot, but that is not stopping them from proceeding with their plans, plans driven by arrogance, hubris, and not a little racism.
The people running things in the West are playing a game by rules that they think that wrote, and which they assume cannot be changed unless they want to.
The Universe will only tolerate a certain amount of stupidity. When that limit is passed, the Universe has a habit of collapsing things, in any of a number of way – none of them good.
To quote the Athenian scholar and general, Thucydides, “The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.”
Prepare accordingly.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
President Donald Trump posted an MSNBC article that attacked Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for not pushing the Covid-19 vaccine enough and not shutting down Florida for longer than he did. The share has baffled some Trump supporters while others seem willing to tolerate the flaws of a man they otherwise find themselves aligned with.
This writer does not support Donald Trump, but I’m also not afraid of Trump becoming re-elected. If the choice is Trump or Biden, there’s no question as to who I would hope to win. I view Trump as being a man of questionable character that does not align with my Christian values, so I cannot bring myself to vote for him, but I also can’t help but hope he wins if he’s running against Biden.
The lawfare assault on Donald Trump is something we continue to extensively cover. In the next issue of FIA monthly, we will be publishing an in-depth report of all the lawfare indictments of the former President. Trump is right when he says the DNC-CCP target isn’t him, it’s the American people.
The Republican Presidential field is, in this writer’s opinion, troubling across the board, as there is no candidate that is not without significant flaws that cause me to question their true commitment to live by American republican standards. There is no clear alternative to Trump.
It is important, I believe, for Americans to look at Donald Trump honestly, as a flawed man with a demonstrated low character who seems to support the plandemic in a bigly way and has a spotty track record regarding the second Amendment. He supported the bump stock ban and the no-fly no-buy proposal that would ban people on the no-fly list from owning guns.
I believe he represents a faction of billionaire elites who have played along with America following the China model (a mixed economy that preserves the authoritarianism of socialism and the worst exploitive nature of capitalism without virtue) and now have hedged their bets, seeing the problems with the China model (that it was built on unfair market advantages and by leveraging growing debt that gamed the system with false numbers).
Now, they’re ready to turn back to the American model, but not nearly as fully as this writer would like to see. They’ll still be weak in standing against abortion, which defies our founding American principle of every life being sacred. They’ll support the next plandemic. They’ll support some form of gun control laws. Still, Americans can certainly more fully live lives as Americans if this faction wins then if the DNC-CCP continues to consolidate and retain power over these lands.
Within that environment, the republic has a much better chance of being fully restored than under the DNC-CCP’s billionaire faction, but let us not make more of Trump than what he is, let us now consider him the only man who can save America. No single person can do that. What can save America is American defiance in the face of tyranny, and that tyranny sometimes will come from Trump if he is re-elected.
San Diego State University has decided that anyone who wants to teach medical students at their institution must PROVE that they not only believe the anti-American ideology of Woketarianism, they must demonstrate how they are taking action to support this violent revolutionary movement. This university receives tax dollars so the government is funding an institution openly working to destroy it.
Redstate has reported on the school’s listing for candidates to teach its medical students that lists requirements that go beyond your scientific credentials. They posted the job listing, which starts off asking for relevant qualifications, but it continues (from Redstate):
The document instructs, “Please use short descriptive phrases to provide specific [illustrations] of how you meet the Building on Inclusive Excellence (BIE) criteria.”
Examples of involvement are offered:
Indigenous student mentoring committee, 2017
Ability ally program sponsor, 2018
Grant for health disparities research in rural Black communities
For the remainder of the form, each applicant must prove:
Experience or commitment “to research that engages underrepresented communities”
Commitment to “engaging in service with underrepresented populations within the discipline”
Experience or commitment “to extending knowledge of opportunities and challenges in achieving artistic/scholarly success to members of an underrepresented group”
Knowledge “of barriers for underrepresented students and faculty within the discipline”
Experience or commitment “to teaching and mentoring underrepresented students”
Research interests “that contribute to diversity and equal opportunity in higher education”
Experience or commitment “to integrating understanding of underrepresented populations and communities into research”
Experience or commitment “to developing expertise in cross-cultural communication and collaboration”
Lest you be confused at what seems, on its face, innocuous language. This is the language of the Woketarian, and Woketarians are reliant on the philosophical suppositions of post-structuralism, which holds that EVERYTHING is connected to EVERYTHING, so when one sees requirements that demand you demonstrate how you are helping “underrepresented” populations, that word should be connected to EVERYTHING in the woketarian ideology.
That ideology of fear, hate, and fake hope, the ideology of power for the DNC-CCP, holds as its central tenant that white people invented evil, and therefore everything white people created should be dismantled, including the American republic, Christianity, and even fact-based evidence leading to impartial adjudication. Without this belief that “we have to kill the white devil or we’re all gonna die,” the progmerican left would have no power whatsoever. This is the fear that drives the terrorism these people commit every day against innocent Americans.
It is an ideology of a different country, progmerica (which is no America at all), than the one this seditionist university has derived at least some of its funding from. And now, they want to assure that every medical student that goes through their halls is indoctrinated in this anti-American, anti-human, anti-Christian, anti-white, anti-heterosexual cult. They want our doctors to hate us if we ain’t “woke.”
Who can trust a medical institution that not only allows such terrorist corruption in their schools, they require it?
The Maui fire is getting more and more suspicious as we learn of authorities trapping residents of Lahaina being prevented from being evacuated, sirens not being activated to warn the residents, and perhaps most troubling, where are the missing children from King Kamehameha Elementary School?
A journalist from American Thinker, Susan Daniels, decided to contact residents of the island to figure out fact from fiction. What she learned only heightened concerns that hundreds of children were killed as a result of either gross negligence on the DNC-CCP-run island, or something far worse.
Residents of the scarred island told me that everything on the news is a lie. The mayor of Maui, Richard Bissen, said that 850 people are still missing. The same day the governor said 1,100 are missing. If they actually know how many are missing, then they must know who is not. Where are the children of Lahaina?
The truth is they have no idea how many people are missing because there is no way to gauge how many tourists were in Lahaina when the fire swept through. And in 2022, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Hawaii had the fourth highest homeless rate in the nation and most of them, I am told, were in Lahaina.
The Democrat Mayor of Lahaina, Richard Bissen, appears to know more than he lets on in a now viral clip on X that shows him being confronted by reporters, asking, “how many children are missing?” He has the eyes of a liar when he meekly replies, “I don’t know,” as if a competent government t wouldn’t be fully aware of how many children were missing given the nature of their parents and relatives to assure the government KNEW they were missing.
As one commenter on the Twitter thread stated, perhaps the number of children missing is unknown because the parents are also dead, but children have relatives, and those relatives would surely have let the government know the parents AND the kids were missing by now.
So far, now 1,100 people are now missing, up from the initially reported number of 805, but given the nature of the region, being a tourist hotspot, it will be uncertain for some time how many tourists are missing and thus presumed dead.
Many residents and tourists, including children, probably died in the line of traffic that formed where authorities prevented them from escaping. Eyewitness accounts attest to the claim that authorities blocked the one paved road out of Lahaina. One resident, Kekoa Lansford, said “I could see from the bypass that people were stuck on the balconies, so I went down and checked it out. And I could see that people were on fire, that the fire was just being stoked by the wind, and being pushed toward the homes.”
One resident, Kim Cuevas-Reyes, made the wise decision to ignore authorities that attempted to direct her family, who had managed to escape in their car, towards the fire. She said the authorities were attempting to direct her family to turn right onto Front Street towards the Lahaina Civic Center, but she decided in turn to turn left, driving in the wrong lane past a pile of cars that were following authorities’ directions. She said, “The gridlock would have left us there when the firestorm came. I would have had to tell my children to jump in the ocean as well and be boiled alive by the flames or we would have just died from smoke inhalation and roasted in the car.”
How many of those officials knew they were sending people to their deaths? Was it incompetence or something worse?
The siren that could have saved hundreds of lives were not activated because the manager of the sirens, Herman Andaya, claimed he thought then residents would be confused and would run to higher ground, where the fire was coming from, because the sirens are only used for tsunami alerts, which is a lie, as the sirens are used for any emergency, and are tested every day. He has “retired,” citing health reasons, but it is probably so he can flee the island where surely his life would be in danger if residents ever got their hands on the either incompetent man or the man complicit with something far worse.
Water was not going to reach Lahaina to help them fight these fires as a woke anti-Americanist was managing the distribution of water, and they refused to do so until they consulted with farmers to assure their feelings wouldn’t be hurt by the decision. That criminal and now mass murderer M. Kaleo Manuel.
According to the sources, Manuel wanted West Maui Land to get permission from a taro, or kalo, farm located downstream from the company’s property. Manuel eventually released water but not until after the fire had spread. It was not clear on Monday how much damage the fire did in the interim or whether homes were damaged.
Manuel declined to be interviewed for this story. DLNR’s communications office said in an email that it was supporting the state’s emergency communications response and “unable to facilitate your inquiry at this time.”
Finally, there is this, the Maui Police Chief, John Pelletier, who received his high-paying job immediately after covering up or botching the mass shooting in Las Vegas, claimed his officers went door-to-door to alert residents, but could provide no corroborating evidence that backs up his claims, nor have any residents come forward to validate his claim.
At this point, it is too early to fully separate fact from fiction. Conspiracy theories abound, and some may turn out to be true (as sometimes conspiracy theories turn out to be). For now, this writer will wait longer to get more information to determine whether this fire was a demonstration of the gross negligence of the DNC by its very human-denying nature or whether this was intentional, be it to advance the terror narrative that global warming is killing us so we need to hand over our sovereignty to the “experts” to protect us or to clear out the land to let the rich elites buy it up.
Given the past three years’ experience with the plandemic, this writer is ready to believe the worst about a government that has already proven it is willing to murder its own people to advance its elite-serving agenda.
ED.NOTE: For those who subscribe to our monthly publication, FIA Monthly, we may soon be doing a full report on the Maui fire either in the October or November issue, so stay tuned for that.
The Biden administration is looking to the CCP to help them stifle the dissent of Americans using the CCP-owned app TikTok. The truth was revealed in a Forbes report that shows the Biden administration is attempting to enter into an agreement with TikTok that will allows the DNC-CCP full access to the app and full decision-making regarding what the app allows and what the app censors
The agreement, however, is only half the story, as the statement made by TikTok in response to the exposure of the secret agreement shows the DNC-CCP is already using TikTok to target and censor Americans, with the cooperation of the CCP. This is a blatant and vulgar act of sedition of the highest kind by the ruling revolutionary party in America, the Democrat Party.
The statement from TikTok read, “As has been widely reported, we’ve been working with CFIUS for well over a year to implement a national security agreement and have invested significant resources in implementing a firewall to isolate US user data. Today, all new protected US user data is stored in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in the US with tightly controlled and monitored gateways. We are doing more than any peer company to safeguard US national security interests.”
The draft agreement was completed in Mid-2022, behind closed doors. It shows how the Biden administration is hoping to learn from the Chinese Communist Party how to use social media to control and punish the masses for dissent, something the CCP is the leader in the world at executing. It is not an American administration that would make such decisions, which is reflective of the reality that the DNC-CCP calls people traitors not for being Americans, but for NOT being progmericans, which are no Americans at all.
Let’s face it – tanks are sexy. So are “combat vehicles.” We’ve all seen them on television for years: big, brutalist vehicles, racing around a course, firing monstrous cannons, or grinding their way across the desert. Massive engines of war, practically defining the idea of the “warrior ethos.”
A Brigade of the U.S. 3rd Armored Division masses for the invasion of Iraq during the Gulf War, February 1991. US Army photo. Public Domain.
Or, perhaps, they are carrying infantry, dramatically exiting their vehicle, perhaps under fire. These kinds of vehicles fulfill another part of the “warrior ethos” equation, with warriors heading into violent, close-range, face-to-face battle with a dogged opponent. Very Audie Murphy.
US Army soldiers from 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, dismount from a Stryker APC, Mosul, Iraq, 2005. US Army Photo. Credit: SPC Jory C. Randall, US Army.
The idea of “sex” selling military equipment is alive and well, as can be seen by the marketing at any international arms show.
But this, of course, begs the question: Is this all there is? Of course, there are other aspects of “militarydom” that news media outlets and “infotainment” channels talk about relentlessly, as long as the public expresses interest in “things war-like.” These include paratroops, Rangers, or commandos, or special forces either stealthily creeping through enemy territory, or storming a “bad guy” hideout to neutralize said bad guys, or to rescue the hostages in dramatic fashion, especially if news cameras are present. Again – we’ve all seen these images and videos repeatedly, either on the news or in popular entertainment…and, for the most part, these all definitely deliver and validate that sort of drama, courage and honor.
This, of course, brings us once again to the question: it that it? In a word – no. Not by a long shot.
Combat troops require support. While combat troops are certainly capable of improvising, they are far better at executing their combat missions when the “non-combat” troops are relentlessly driving food, fuel, ammunition and spare parts forward, and doing the jobs that the combat units do not need to expend time and energy to learn: maintenance, medicine above the 1st Aid level, building (or destroying) structures – occasionally under fire – all of which are things that the combat forces need, but are too busy to spend time doing.
In “the biz,” this is expressed as the “tooth-to-tail ratio”, or, the proportion of combat to support troops. This is a very dense subject to get into, and there are a wide array of opinions on the subject, most of which disagree at one level or another with all of the other opinions. The point, however, is that any group with pretensions to military force is going to have more support troops who are unlikely to see actual fighting, than combat forces intended for straight up combat.
And those support forces need equipment – a LOT of equipment – and the unique supplies and spare parts to keep those running. And a main component of that equipment is armored support vehicles.
Lurking in the background, seldom photographed, and even less talked about or reported on, are the “combat support vehicles.”
These vehicles are not cargo trucks, but the sort of vehicles you can see on your daily commute when passing a construction site – everything from road graders to backhoes, bulldozers. These vehicles frequently have a coat of “military green” paint slapped onto them; hopefully, they have slats of armor plate welded onto them to protect the operator. They are then sent out to build anything from roads, to towns and camps for refugees, to large airfields.
A United States Navy Seabee uses a grader to construct a parking lot during the combined US/Honduran training operation “AHUAS TAR” (BIG PINE), 1983. Photo Credit: TSGT Ken Hammond. US National Archives. Public Domain.
But these vehicles also include highly specialized vehicles, such as minefield breachers and high-speed trenching machines, like the Soviet BTM-3. The BTM, in particular, has made a resurgence in the Ukraine war (YouTube link), as both Russia and Ukraine quickly turned to trench warfare, as the war bogged down into a bloody stalemate. With trench systems resembling those of World War 1, the BTM and its later derivatives and cousins have worked frantically to construct vast trench systems far faster and more efficiently than individual soldiers can. After a trencher slices through the area, troops need to do no more than to expand the position, “filling in” the parts that the trencher vehicle cannot easily do.
Unfortunately, since these vehicles, as highly effective and vital as they are, are rarely given any kind of real consideration…because they are not “sexy.” And, disappointingly, the leaders of most countries have little interest in these vehicles (because they are not “sexy”), so the vehicles sit, rarely used or considered when discussions of “militarydom” occurs…until, of course, tensions suddenly escalate into actual war, and those vehicles – many times, barely running – become a decisive combat multiplier, usually outweighing actual “combat vehicles” in value.
And that’s before we talk about trucks.
If you’ve read this far, I will offer you the following advice: The next time your elected officials start talking about the “defense budget,” spend some time, and look into what they actually want to spend your money on. It’s your tax money, after all, that is spent to “defend” you.
You might want to look into how it is being spent.
On January 6, 2021, Americans peacefully gathered to protest the certification of an unconstitutional mass mailer election that our courts failed to recognize as being unconstitutional. Among the crowd were federal agents seeking to turn a peaceful protest into an “insurrection,” designed to legitimize the DNC’s criminalization of all political opposition to its authoritarian, anti-American rule. The DNC-led January 6 committee omitted and possibly destroyed evidence that destroyed their narrative and refused to talk to the one man who knew more than anything what happened on that day, the former Capital Police Chief Steven Sund, who was prepared to testify that the Capitol Police were not provided with intelligence the Federal government had (the parts that went rogue in open opposition to the then-sitting-President), and seemed to orchestrate the appearance of an insurrection for political ends.
“Coming into it,” Sund said, Capitol Police received “absolutely zero” of the “intelligence that we know now existed talking about attacking the Capitol, killing my police officers, attacking members of Congress, and killing members of Congress.”
“None of that was included in the intelligence coming up,” Sund said. “We now know FBI, DHS was swimming in that intelligence. We also know now that the military seemed to have some very concerning intelligence as well. “
“None of the intelligence,” Sund said, was shared with the Capitol Police chief.
“I’ve done many national security events and this was handled differently,” Sund added. “No intelligence, no [Joint Intelligence Bulletin], no coordination, no discussion in advance.”
Sund also noted that, unlike the DNC-controlled security details, two Pentagon leaders wanted to shut down DC for fear of violence. “Acting Secretary of Defense [Christopher] Miller and General Milley had both discussed locking down the city of Washington D.C. because they were so worried about violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6,” he stated.
Yet despite that, as the day approached, Acting Secretary of State Miller signed a memo “restricting the National Guard from carrying the various weapons, any weapons, any civil disobedience equipment that would be utilized for the very demonstrations or violence he sees coming.”
Sund said he called for national guard deployment as required by law, but was shut down by DNC-CCP activists, “I was denied twice because of optics and because the intelligence didn’t support us. I was denied by Paul Irving, House sergeant-at-arms, and also Mike Stenger, Senate sergeant-at-arms.”
He didn’t call them DNC-CCP activists, this writer is, but the label is accurate, for no American would have done what these seditionists took part in, the execution of a version of the Reichstag Fire that consolidated Nazi power.
A fire was set to the Reichstag by the Nazis that was blamed on its political opposition, giving it the public support it needed to murder its opponents. This is exactly what the DNC is doing with January 6, and what they continue to do so long as they hold on to power in the face of only token opposition by the GOP, a party that refuses to call the Democrats the revolutionary anti-American far left traitors to the American republic that they are.
The genesis of this article came from a completely different angle, namely, the deployment of laser weapons to the battlefield. However, as things frequently go, that initial idea led to something of much more immediate interest.
Previously, the Freedomist has covered some aspects of “improvised warfare” that some seem to take as James Bond-like fantasy. Yet, as we progress through the third decade of the 21st Century, remotely controlled drones – available in most countries through their local Amazon store – capable of both conducting tactical combat surveillance, as well as tactical air support by dropping small fragmentation grenades, are serious and maturing battlefield threats, threats that military and security forces are struggling to counter.
“Improvised warfare” has been around since the first caveman grabbed the jawbone of his last dinner to bash in the noggin of another caveman trying to muscle in on the first one’s turf. Throughout military history, outside of the heroically vast and sweeping battles of storied yore, there has always lurked the “PBI” – the “Poor, Bloody Infantry” – struggling to make do with usually-substandard weapons and equipment, improvising on the fly, on the idea that “if it looks stupid, but works – it isn’t stupid.”
This is also true in naval warfare. “Suicide boats,” in the form of “fire ships”, go back to at least the 3rd Century AD in China, and the 5th Century AD in the Mediterranean, and those dates are only the earliest we have on record. The use of fire ships in combat has always been problematic, as controlling the vessels after the skeleton crews abandoned them was impossible, and the abandoned vessels could easily come back on the attackers.
Chinese fire ships used by the navy as floating incendiaries, from the Wujing Zongyao military manuscript written in the year 1044 during the Song Dynasty. Public Domain.
As naval technology advanced however, fire ships, as such, disappeared, replaced by explosive-laden boats propelled by early steam engines. These boats had some advantages, not being as subject to winds as the old ships, and their explosive warheads were much more capable of inflicting serious, if not fatal, damage to large warships. Still, the inability to steer the boats remotely left their utility still strictly limited.
As with so many things in the military sphere, during World War 2, everything changed. The intersection of technologies with mass production and sincere desperation, allowed the first tactically useful guided weapons, not simply on land and in the air, but at sea, human control was still the primary aiming method until the last moment.
Post-WW2, the use of explosive motorboats continued, eventually evolving into actual “suicide boats”, where the crews rode the craft directly into their targets. While this was always a danger for the operators of these boats, very few navies outside of WW2 Japan set out with this as their operating profile. Beginning in the 1980’s, this began to change, first with the LTTE in Sri Lanka and with Iran in its “WW1, 2.0” war with Iraq. This is, in fact, what happened to the USS Cole (DDG 67) when it was attacked at anchor in October of 2000, as the suicide crew happily “saluted” the American crew before detonating their massive charge, nearly destroying the ship.
And then – another “sea change” (no pun intended) happened.
As the Soviet Union collapsed, and Communist China finally figured out how mix capitalism with a brutal, totalitarian governmental system, the West welcomed the Communist remnants into a burgeoning world trade system with open arms. As the global economy shifted and changed, the technology sector exploded in its own form of “business as war.” Technology once reserved only to the “Great Powers” became ‘democratized’, available at reasonable prices to the general public. While major nations certainly had far better and more capable – and much more expensive – systems, smaller states (and groups) suddenly had access to technology and manufacturing bases that significantly increased their capabilities versus local opponents (including their own citizens, but that’s another conversation, entirely).
Container port in operation. Credit: Piqsels.com. Public Domain.
All that was waiting was another spate of desperation to drive improvisation.
As the “Global War on Terror” (the “GWOT”) drove on in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the many small, localized wars it spawned drove desperate innovation, once again. Various ethnic and religious factions around the world desperately sought some sort of advantage. This has led to everything from “homemade tanks”, to artillery, to ‘sci-fi’ weapons manufacture.
But now, desperation-induced technological innovation has caught up with the navies of the world.
On January 30, 2017, the Saudi Arabian frigate RSN Al Madinah (FG 702) was struck and seriously damaged by an explosive-laden speedboat. Initially, it was believed that the craft was a piloted suicide boat deployed by the Shi’a Islam Houthi rebels of Yemen, which country has been in its most recent civil war since 2014. Soon, though, it became apparent that the attack craft was actually a remotely- controlled craft.
Speculation immediately turned to Iran. Iran, in addition to being co-religionists to the Houthis, was already supplying the rebels with short-range ballistic missiles and combat drones. In this regard, Iran differs from Ukraine only in that they supply their craft externally.
Ukrainian naval drones, c.2022. Unknown author.
Given the rapid advances in remote-operations technology, it would be no great task to re-engineer common pleasure boats to function as drone attack craft; as well, the issue of a simplified, “standard issue” refit kit (similar in theory to an aircraft JDAM unit) is virtually guaranteed.
But ultimately – what does all this actually mean, in the grand scheme of things?
Simply, insurgents and guerrillas are now much more capable than they were in the past, as they are now capable to extend remote-controlled warfare into the nautical dimension. With the democratization of military training, this opens the ugly possibility of radical forces being capable of enforcing localized (if not regional) combined-arms dominance over all the most capable of national militaries.
The fact that this is an operational possibility worthy of consideration is not something that should alarm only strategic planners – it is something that average citizen needs to seriously consider.
Act accordingly.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
One of Hunter Biden’s lawyers allegedly contacted the court to get an item removed from evidence that could hurt Hunter. They did so while pretending to be a Republican, a charge they deny. The Judge was having none of it. She threatened to sanction the lawyers (which she still might). She then nullified the plea deal, citing no case law to support it, and not wanting to give Hunter Biden a blank check to avoid further prosecution.
The Judge, U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika, a Trump appointee, asked Hunter, “Without me saying I’ll agree to the plea agreement, how do you plead?” Hunter replied, “Not guilty, your honor.”
U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware pointed out one of the charges Hunter faces is tax evasion, saying “Hunter Biden received taxable income in excess of $1,500,000 annually in calendar years 2017 and 2018. Despite owing in excess of $100,000 in federal income taxes each year, he did not pay the income tax due for either year.”
The staffer of the law firm defending Hunter Biden, Jessica Bengals, was accused of pretending to be a Republican when he called into the court. The Judge said “It appears that the caller misrepresented her identity and who she worked for in an attempt to improperly convince the Clerk’s Office to remove the amicus materials from the docket.”
Bengal’s response was “I am completely confident that I never indicated that I was calling from Mr. Kittila’s firm or that I worked with him in any way,”
Kevin McCarthy rightly pointed out that without a GOP-majority in the House the deception behind this plea deal would never have been discovered. In response to this latest development, McCarthy said “If you’re sitting in our position today, we would know none of this if Republicans had not taken the majority. We’ve only followed where the information has taken us. This is rising to the level of impeachment inquiry which provides Congress the strongest power to get the rest of the knowledge and information needed.”
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.jpg%2F440px-210120-D-WD757-2097_(50861226426).jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=4f948ef3c73352f51aaccfac0e4b0489e78092903bc3e6788b5d9187342cd11a&ipo=images "Hunter’s Plea Deal Falls Apart as His Law Team is Exposed for Lying to the Court")
