FORMER BIDEN OFFICIAL NOW WORKING FOR CCP’S TIKTOK – Jamal Brown, the former Pentagon official and campaign spokesperson for Joe Biden during the 2020 Mass-Mailer Presidential Campaign, is now taking a top position with the CCP’s owned and controlled social media app TikTok. President Donald Trump was trying to ban TikTok before the mass mailer President reversed the decision. Now it appears he’s also lending his best minds to help the Communist Party do better harvesting hearts and minds from American teens, for the good of the whole.
Senior Republican and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr discusses the Chinese Communist Party’s data harvesting practices for its ‘malign goals.’
A former campaign spokesman for President Biden and top Pentagon official has taken a job at TikTok.
It was first revealed in Politico newsletter on Tuesday that Jamal Brown is “joining TikTok to manage policy communications for the Americas, primarily focusing on the United States.”
TikTok has not appeared to put out an official statement regarding the hiring decision, but Brown’s Twitter bio has already been updated to show his employment for the Chinese-owned social media app.
From February 2021 until February 2022, Brown served as the deputy Pentagon press secretary at the U.S. Department of Defense. He previously worked as one of three national press secretaries for Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.
Previously, we have talked about ersatz combat vehicles at length. While 300 angry people, armed with 200 machetes, 100 rifles and 50 rounds of ammunition made a respectable revolution as late as the mid-1990’s, the proliferation cheap, reliable and effect modern combat rifles around the world have shifted insurgent capabilities and tactics, there has been little movement in the other realms of physical combat, outside of the land environment.
Where any group armed with modern automatic weapons can turn themselves into “motorized cavalry” by seizing a used car and truck dealership and a tanker truck of fuel, there have been few examples of groups organizing actual combat ships on water, using what are essentially armed civilian pleasure craft – it happens, but infrequently.
Likewise, the use of equally ersatz militarized drones has been on the rise, for surveillance, assassination and combat. This theater of use has been accelerated in recent years, as many drones with significant capabilities, from a military perspective, are available “off the shelf” for well under US$200, with many retailing at under US$100. Expanding the capabilities of such devices requires little investment for a group able to recruit young and tech-savvy teens and early-20’s with an interest in gaming and computer mods.
Far more rare, are instances of “guerrilla air forces.” Appearing in significant numbers only twice since WW2, civilian aircraft being used as “armed combatant craft” usually appear in one’s and two’s, used by small states and groups who can only afford (or receive through donations) the kind of small, single-engine aircraft that are normally used for leisure flying or primary flight instruction for trainee pilots.
The question at hand, then, is this: Can an insurgent force create their own air force? That is what we will examine in this article.
The first questions to answer are, Where is the insurgent force getting its aircraft?, and What kind of aircraft can they easily acquire?
The first thing to understand, is that our hypothetical guerrilla force is not (probably) going to be buying craft like the AT-6B Wolverine, A-29 Super Tucano, AT-802L Longsword. These aircraft are being developed by defense contractors for established governments; for an insurgent group to obtain dedicated craft like this would require major-nation support. What we are discussing here, is the insurgent force acquiring specifically civilian craft, and using them as an “air force.”
An Afghan Air Force A-29 Super Tucano soars over Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 14, 2015. USAF Photo. Public Domain.
The insurgent force will be limited, first, by its financial levels – aircraft, even small craft like a Piper or an immortal Cessna 172 (go ahead – reflect on the irony…Moving on…) or 208 Caravan are expensive, for a small group, with a Cessna 172 coming in at around US$40-50,000 for a used model, each. Obviously, this is a major impediment, unless a group is very well funded.
On the other hand, these small aircraft can be effectively armed; can land on almost any flat patch of ground or blacktop road long enough; require no overly complicated tools or equipment to maintain, and have cheap and readily available spare parts and maintenance manuals available on the open market. These aircraft can – and are – be hidden in rural barns and warehouses very effectively, only requiring a door large enough for their wings.
Given the above, then, the next question is, Where can the prospective insurgent air force get its pilot?
The one major downside to an insurgent force using aircraft is the need for competent training. While learning to fly a basic aircraft such as a Piper or a Cessna is not actually difficult for most people with a decent high school education to learn, teaching one to fly requires a pilot with at least 250 flight hours to begin training for such a rating as an Instructor Pilot (IP). However, there are plenty of IP’s out there who could be recruited to train pilots for an insurgent force.
Ground maintenance on these common civilian airframes, as previously stated, is not difficult, and spares are common enough to not present major issues. That brings us to weapons: what can you arm these airplanes with?
Simply placing one or two people armed with rifles in the back seats of these kinds of aircraft, and having them shoot at enemies on the ground is not complicated. Likewise, hanging machine guns out of a side door is also relatively uncomplicated to set up.
Afghan Air Force Sgt. Razeg, a Gunner, fires an M-240 weapon from an Mi-17 Helicopter during a mission from Kabul, Afghanistan, Nov., 2012. USAF Photo. Public Domain.
Salvage and theft of opposition government aircraft – as well as weapons bought on the black market – is another important source of ground-to-air capability. In like manner to recovered helicopter rocket pods being used as ground-to-ground multiple rocket launchers since the civil wars in Libya, the same pods could be mounted to civilian airframes.
This is especially true for smaller pods, such as the venerable Hydra-70 rocket pods. In fact, the prevalence of mounting the ex-Soviet SA-5 rocket system, fired by UB-16 and UB-32 launchers to “technical vehicles” in both Libya and Syria have begun to inspire Western firms to begin cashing on the market, with such “drop-in kits” as the new V.A.M.P.I.R.E. system, which is a drop-in kit for a conventional civilian pickup truck, giving it the ability to fire four Hydra-70 rockets at a time in the ground-to-ground role.
Hydra 70 rockets in two M261 launch pods, mounted to an AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter, unknown date. US Army Photo. Public Domain.
As well, should the guerrilla force come into possession of anti-aircraft weapons such as the Stinger missile, that force could conceivably mount such weapons to a civilian airframe, which would be a very nasty surprise to any opposing aircraft that did not know about them.
Note that the foregoing applies to helicopters, as well, although rotary-wing craft are generally more expensive than their comparable brethren.
So…Is it possible for a guerrilla/insurgent force to create and operate an actual “air force” on the cheap? The answer, clearly, is a solid Yes, albeit with caveats concerning the perennial problem of money. Such a force would clearly be no match against a First World air force, but it likely won’t need to, at least initially.
Never become complacent inside your box…because someone is always outside, thinking about how to get in.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
TIKTOK REVEALS UK AND EU USER DATA CAN BE ACCESSED BY CCP – TikTok’s head of privacy for Europe, Elaine Fox, may have inadvertently revealed the CCP has access to European private user data when she responded to a query about who can access this private data. She said, “we allow certain employees within our corporate group located in Brazil, Canada, China, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States remote access to TikTok European user data.”
Elaine Fox, the platform’s head of privacy for Europe, said in a statement on Wednesday that a global team helped to keep the user experience “consistent, enjoyable and safe”.
Although TikTok currently stores European user data in the US and Singapore, “we allow certain employees within our corporate group located in Brazil, Canada, China, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States remote access to TikTok European user data,” Ms Fox said.
“Our efforts are centred on limiting the number of employees with access to European user data, minimising data flows outside of the region, and storing European user data locally,” she added.
ELON MUSK WITH THE LEFT’S MORALITY POLICE – Elon Musk, the alleged champion of free speech who recently bought the social media giant Twitter, has just met with the worst offenders of leftist morality policing, including the ADL, the NAACP, and Color of Change. He appears to have made an agreement with them to meet some of their concerns, signaling to many Americans his faux commitment to free speech. The move could potentially alienate the left, who will never get enough, and the right, who have simply had enough.
Civil rights leaders confronted Elon Musk about the uptick of tweets containing racial slurs since he took over Twitter in a virtual meeting Tuesday afternoon….
The group — which included the heads of the Anti-Defamation League, Color of Change, Free Press, the Asian American Foundation, the NAACP, and the George W. Bush Presidential Center — walked away with a few verbal commitments from Musk, which he tweeted publicly early Wednesday.
But attendees say they’re waiting to see whether Musk follows those commitments with action. “He seemed to be listening. He seemed to be earnest,” said Jessica González, co-CEO of the nonprofit Free Press. “But he’s also shown himself to be inconsistent. We will judge him by his deeds, not his words.” Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
FCC COMMISSIONER CALLS FOR TIKTOK BAN – One of the five FCC Commissioners, Brendan Carr, publicly called for a ban of the Chinese Communist Party owned app, TikTok. He said, there is not “a world in which you could come up with sufficient protection on the data that you could have sufficient confidence that it’s not finding its way back into the hands of the [Chinese Communist Party].”
A commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday called on the U.S. government to ban social media platform TikTok over concerns about how the China-owned app handles the data of American users.
The remarks, made in an interview with Axios, come as the fast-growing app holds ongoing negotiations with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, about whether it can continue business in the U.S. if it is sold from Chinese parent company ByteDance to an American company.
Elon Musk has taken control of Twitter and ousted the CEO, chief financial officer and the company’s general counsel, two people familiar with the deal said Thursday night.
The people wouldn’t say if all the paperwork for the deal, originally valued at $44 billion, had been signed or if the deal has closed. But they said Musk is in charge of the social media platform and has fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and General Counsel Vijaya Gadde. Neither person wanted to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the personnel moves.
Billionaire Elon Musk is now officially in charge of Twitter and has fired several top executives after closing his US$44-billion deal to buy the social media company on Thursday, according to multiple reports.
The Associated Press, Reuters and the Washington Post all reported the news of Musk’s takeover, citing anonymous sources who were familiar with the move.
CEO Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal and legal policy chief Vijaya Gadde were escorted out of Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco after the deal was completed, the reports said.
Elon Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, putting the world’s richest man in charge of the struggling social network after six months of public and legal wrangling over the deal.
Among Musk’s first moves: changing the leadership. Departures include Twitter Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal; Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal, policy and trust; Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, who joined Twitter in 2017; and Sean Edgett, who has been general counsel at Twitter since 2012, according to people familiar with the matter. Edgett was escorted out of the building, said two of the people, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public.
Elon Musk officially became Twitter’s owner late on Thursday as his $44 billion deal to take over the firm closed. Musk promptly fired top executives at the company, including CEO Parag Agrawal, CEO Ned Segal, and Vijaya Gadde, the “trust and safety” lead notorious for her fanatical left-wing censorship campaign.
The Washington Post reports that on Thursday, Elon Musk arrived at Twitter offices to officially confirm his company takeover after the $44 billion purchase deal closed. Musk had previously stated plans to cut Twitter’s staff of approximately 7,500 employees to just over 2,000.
Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter became final Friday, and the new boss has already implemented some major changes — and teased a few more.
Musk fired several Twitter executives, ousting both the recent CEO and the woman who was reportedly responsible for the permanent ban on President Donald Trump.
The new boss ousted chief executive officer Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, top legal and policy executive Vijaya Gadde, and general counsel Sean Edgett, The Wall Street Journal reported.
He supposedly already ousted CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and Head of Legal Policy, Trust Safety Vijaya Gadde
Conservatives celebrated. Liberals ranted.
I’m not excited about Musk taking over because he’s not a friend to conservatives or liberals. Just remember that. Despite what he says, Musk is in it for himself. He loves to make money, like everyone else, so don’t be shocked if he sells in a few years.
On Thursday, Elon Musk finally closed his deal to buy Twitter after months of twists and turns. The deal seemed as if it was dead just a few months prior, but here we sit, with one of the world’s largest (and most politically active) social media platforms now in the hands of a free-speech absolutist.
Musk wasted no time before dropping the hammer. He walked into the company’s San Franciso-based headquarters and started firing all the partisan hacks who had done their best to quash speech over the last several years. Perhaps the most satisfying firing was of Vijaya Gadde, who made the decision to censor the Hunter Biden story just prior to the 2020 election.
Three of Twitter Inc.’s top executives who were said to be fired after Elon Musk completed his takeover are poised to collect more than $100 million in severance and payouts of previously granted equity awards.
Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal, who stepped into the role less than a year ago, is eligible to receive roughly $50 million, according to calculations by Bloomberg News. Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and Vijaya Gadde, head of legal, policy and trust, are in line for about $37 million and $17 million each, respectively.
….Musk’s first order of business was to fire all the executives. Most notably, Twitter’s top lawyer, executive, and speech cop Vagina Goode. I don’t feel like looking up how to spell her real name, so I’m going with what Alex Jones calls her. You know who I’m talking about. Vagina was the one behind kicking people who had opposing viewpoints off of the platform. Now, she gone.
The question now is what leftists upset that the bird app will allow differing opinions are going to do now. Demoted tech jounalismer Taylor Lorenz, who will need to find other ways to deplatform people to help her stay young, set the stage.
Former President Donald Trump said Twitter is “in sane hands” now that Elon Musk has officially purchased the social media platform.
“I am very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands, and will no longer be run by Radical Left Lunatics and Maniacs that truly hate our country,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday morning. “Twitter must now work hard to rid itself of all of the bots and fake accounts that have hurt it so badly. It will be much smaller, but better.”
LAWSUIT EXPOSES DNC-BIG TECH COLLUSION IN CENSORING COVID-19 INFORMATION- A major lawsuit called Missouri v Biden has exposed 67 officials and agencies that have allegedly participated in working with Facebook, Twitter, and Google to assure the DNC take on Covid-19 and Hunter Biden laptops was enforced by censoring everything that defied it as “misinformation.”
“We allege that top-ranking Biden administration officials colluded with those social media companies to suppress speech about the Hunter Biden laptop story, the origins of COVID-19, the efficacy of masks, and election integrity.” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt
A little noticed federal lawsuit, Missouri v. Biden, is uncovering astonishing evidence of an entrenched censorship scheme cooked up between the federal government and Big Tech that would make Communist China proud.
So far, 67 officials or agencies — including the FBI — have been accused in the lawsuit of violating the First Amendment by pressuring Facebook, Twitter and Google to censor users for alleged misinformation or disinformation.
BIDEN MIGHT MOVE TO QUASH TWITTER DEAL – After Elon Musk recently cut against the administration’s foreign policy position on the Ukraine War, Bloomberg reports that insiders have exposed plans by the administration to use the cover of “national security” to prevent Elon Musk from purchasing Twitter. So far, the administration is not commenting publicly.
The Biden administration is reportedly mulling launching national security reviews scrutinizing some of Elon Musk’s business ventures, including his Starlink internet service and pending $54.20 per share buyout of Twitter. The news dragged down shares of the social media company.
Sources told Bloomberg that U.S. officials are concerned about the billionaire’s behavior in the wake of his recent tweets about pulling the plug on Starlink funding in Ukraine, the country’s conflict with Russia and his plans to acquire the social media giant with a group of foreign investors.
No matter how you consume your news, whether from the “mainstream” or from more “alternative” sources, recent months have been all abuzz about the “mighty HIMARS“; and the HIMARS is, indeed, a very capable system…for those who either have friends, or who can afford it. But — what about us? What about the “poor’s“? Every weapon has a development cycle, and HIMARS is no exception. In this article, we will take a (very) brief look at the history of rocket artillery, and a singular weapon that is everything the HIMARS is not: cheap, simple, flexible, and readily available for anyone or any group with even a modest mount of cash.
Rocket artillery is far from ‘new.’ In fact, rockets were arguably the first practical use for gunpowder when it was invented in China, in the 9th Century AD. As gunpowder migrated westward, however, the idea of rocketry largely disappeared, until the late 18th-early 19th century, when rocketry began to reappear, most famously in the form of the Congreve Rocket. These early attempts were wildly unreliable, including having a nasty habit of exploding on their own, or returning to their owners in the most unpleasant of manners. Thus, it should not be surprising that rockets mostly disappeared from European-style warfare after about 1850 or so.
Fireships firing rockets and details of storage and launch. Colonel Congreve, 1814. Public Domain.
As a result, it would take until World War 2 to resurrect rocket artillery in a meaningful way, with the German introduction of the “Nebelwerfer” (or, ‘smoke mortar’) multiple rocket launcher (MRL) system. The system fired a variety of rockets, normally 5 – 7 at a time, depending on their exact size and weight. While initially intended to deliver chemical weapons, the distaste – and fear – from all sides outside of Asia about using such weapons caused the Germans to quickly develop high-explosive rounds for the various calibers. These were used to devastating effect by the Germans, initially…not so much for their raw destructive power, but for their terrifying psychological effects on troops who had never imagined the sound the rockets produced.
Nebelwerfer crew in action, Soviet Union, 1944. German Federal Archives.
All of the major Allies quickly copied the concept, and by the end of the war, were deploying far larger and more capable designs. However, the love affair with short-range multiple rocket systems wouldn’t last. By the mid-1950’s, most “First World” nations had largely begun to abandon the battlefield MRL; the notable exception was the Soviet Army and it’s subject armies, who maintained the devastating BM-21 ‘Grad’ into the present day. The reason for this abandonment of MRL’s was that, despite the MRL’s decided advantages (they were cheap and lightweight, compared conventional artillery, and were capable of firing truly impressive amounts of rounds in a time far shorter than regular artillery when grouped into batteries), they had significant disadvantages: their range tended to be shorter; they took far longer to reload; they were nearly impossible to use in “direct fire”, a feature of conventional artillery; and their rockets’ velocity was far too low to actually penetrate dug-in shelters or tank armor.
Nebelwerfer crew moving into action, France, 1944. German Federal Archives.
The reason the Soviet Bloc hung on the BM-21, was that while it had all of the disadvantages cited above, it had a very powerful warhead, a long range, was simple and easy to maintain, and was far cheaper and easier to build than conventional artillery. The Soviets accepted the downsides of the MRL idea, and found a way to incorporate it into their artillery fighting doctrine.
BM-21 Grad on display at the Karen Demirchyan Complex, Armenia. CCA/4.0
The Chinese Communists, following their disastrous – if effective – intervention in the Korean War (1950-1953), had a terribly disorganized arsenal. As China had spent the previous fifty years alternating between civil wars and hellish foreign invasions (WW2 actually begins in 1937, in China, instead of Poland in 1939), the PLA was stuck with a hodge-podge of weapons from at least six or more sources, they were badly in need of a complete rearmament strategy, literally from the top, down.
The immediate problems for the CCP was that their manufacturing base had to be completely rebuilt – which, being fair, was a problem for most of the active participants of the war, although Mao Tse Tung’s “Great Leap Forward” almost destroyed the country wholesale – but, more cripplingly, they had very little money to buy foreign equipment. Unable to pay even the Soviet Union for enough field artillery, the PLA went looking for an alternative.
And, in 1963, they created one of the most important, but least-known, pieces of artillery in modern history: the 107mm Type-63 MRL.
Type-63 107mm MRL. 2016. CCA/4.0
A 12-shot launcher mounted on a 2-wheeled trailer, the system weighed in at about 1,300lbs/602kg, and only needed a crew of five. It was capable of firing a wide variety of ammunition (albeit limited to HE-types, as well as incendiary and smoke rounds) to (initially) c.5mi/8km; ranges were quickly improved. Some models could be broken into 2-tube loads for transport through rough terrain, by either people or mules. Eventually, a variety of single-tube launchers were developed for the rocket ammunition. The PLA realized that they had a good thing, and eventually equipped each infantry division with 18 units.
It was also quickly realized that the unit’s light weight made it easy to mount on small vehicles, giving the launcher the ability to quickly fire its rockets, and quickly relocate to avoid counter-battery fires.
IRGC Ground Force Commandos loading a Type-63 type MRL. 2017. CCA/4.0
As word got around, and the units began to be used by Communist guerrillas and regular armies, the system became a source of hard currency through exports and licensing; at least seven countries would eventually obtain legal production licenses for both the launchers and their ammunition.
Naturally, the advantages of the Type-63 became apparent to every rebel, guerrilla and terrorist group in the world, and those entities quickly began competing with small armies to buy, steal or beg units on both the legal and black markets.
The Type-63 has proved itself to be a significant game-changer in “low intensity conflicts” because it allows small forces operating on a shoe-string budget to seriously threaten adversaries who cannot afford the advanced systems, like battlefield radars or C-RAM (which are fantastic to have, if you can afford or get them, somehow), to counter the fast-moving artillery. As a result, lightweight, highly mobile “technical” units can add a significant punch to their operations.
While susceptible to well (and expensively) equipped Western armies, the Type-63 remains a significant threat to anyone without powerful “friends” willing to commit to their aid.
The Type-63 has been reshaping battles for nearly 65 years, at this writing. There seems to be no end in sight for this venerable weapon…not least, because it is now being deployed on high-speed inshore craft…Newer may often be better, but old weapons will still harm you.
AFTER THREATENING TO STEAL MONEY FROM CUSTOMERS WHO SHARE “MISINFORMATION,” PAYPAL CLAIMS IT WAS ALL A MISUNDERSTANDING– PayPal made a bold assertion that it had a right to fine its customers for spreading misinformation when it changed its policy to reflect that assertion. After losing stock value and customers, the seditionist corporation is now feigning ignorance, claiming it never intended to do what it claimed it would actually do.
(Bloomberg) — PayPal Holdings Inc. said it has no intention of fining customers for spreading misinformation, after attracting criticism for publishing a new user agreement outlining such a plan.
The issue gained traction over the weekend after the company published policy updates prohibiting users from using the PayPal service for activities identified by the company as “the sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials” promoting misinformation, in an Acceptable Use Policy due to kick in on Nov. 3. A penalty of $2,500 could be imposed for each violation, according to the update.
The notice included “incorrect information,” a spokesperson for PayPal said in a statement to Bloomberg News. “PayPal is not fining people for misinformation and this language was never intended to be inserted in our policy.”
Shares of the company tumbled as much as 5.3% to $85.43, the biggest intraday decline since July 26. They dropped 4.7% to $85.90 at 9:48 a.m. in…
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