It seems the Chinese are removing any ambiguity in their stance regarding the Myanmar Junta, choosing to openly endorse the Junta by meeting with its leaders face to face. India and Thailand have joined suit, signaling their beliefs the junta is here to stay.
China’s Vice Admiral Lui Zuzhu met with Myanmar’s chief of the General Staff, General Maung Maung Aye while nine junta ministers have also flown to China to meet with officials. Meanwhile, Indian Ambassador to Myanmar, Vinay Kumar, met the Junta’s deputy leader, Soe Win and Thailand’s ambassador to Myanmar met with Myanmar’s electricity minister Nyan Tun.
The reality is the junta is in a similar position the United States was in when we occupied south Vietnam. We occupied the cities but held little sway over the countryside. As Billy Joel says in the song Goodnight Saigon, “We held the day in the palm of our hands. They ruled the night, and the night seemed to last as long as six weeks On Parris Island. We held the coastline, they held the highlands.”
This is the reality in Myanmar, where resistance to the tyranny of the junta has not ended, where the “rebels” have taken to become their own arms manufacturers, building guns and drones that continue to thwart the junta’s efforts to consolidate their power.
But China, India and Thailand are betting that the junta will eventually win, and so they want to be in good standing with the new authority of the land, even as the rightful, democratically elected leaders suffer towards death in prisons.
It is a gamble, this writer believes, they will lose. I doubt very much the rebels, who will eventually take back their lands from the usurpers, will not soon forget what these nations did in their time of need, how they turned their backs on them for the sake of their own petty bottom lines, inured to the suffering of the land.
China has released another map claiming territory from a neighbor, one that is also a member of BRICS (Brazil, India, China, South America). Recently we reported on China doing a similar thing with another BRICS ally, India, now they’ve done the same with Russia, whose busy attempting to annex a whole neighbor, but using bombs, not cartography.
In this version, China claims the whole of Bolsoi Ussuriysky Island, a disputed territory they agreed to split between them in the past. Russia’s response to this map-perialism was delivered by by a Russian spokesperson, who said, “Russia and China have repeatedly confirmed the absence of mutual territorial claims….the Joint Border Commission is functioning effectively.”
It seems the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, needs China more than he needs the motherland’s territories, and China appears to know this. The Indians showed they are co-equals with Russia in their response, with Modi even bringing up their border disputes at the recent BRICS summit in South Africa. Apparently, the Russians are third-rate now, a subservient partner. What will the Russian people think of this demotion, if they even find out?
In 1974, authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, writing in their seminal science fiction novel “The Mote In God’s Eye”, coined a character concept called “Crazy Eddie”, a concept-figure who would appear in a society’s mindset at time of extreme social stress, and take the most insane and contradictory actions possible, which usually resulted in accelerating the collapse of a society or civilization.
The world is in a remarkable state of tumult as of September 1 of 2023. The war in Ukraine is well into its second year. In Africa, a wave of military coups is obliterating France’s sixty-plus year old “totally-not-an-empire”, sending the region and the wider world into a frenzy of impotent rage, as no one wants to wade into a quagmire against black nations standing up to imperialist and corporate interests. Russia and China, aside from rattling military sabers to whet the appetite of the ravenous bloodlust of the Western media and entertainment spheres, are quietly marching towards an economic checkmate against the West, in a move that will not simply destroy the Western business models, but will smash Western economies flat, potentially reducing many Western European economies to a state no scene since the post-World War 2 recovery, and the Marshall Plan…only there won’t be a Marshall Plan this time. Maybe a Putin-Xi Plan, but not a Marshall Plan.
Pretty heavy for an opening bit, eh?
Amid all of the current tumult in the United States – the possible return of Covid lockdown restrictions not least among those – there is a quietly increasing crescendo calling for actual military intervention – meaning, “invasion” – of Mexico, in order to “deal” with the flow of illegal drugs.
I wish I were joking.
The current power bloc in Washington, DC – supported by their cohorts in The City of London, Paris, and Brussels – had goaded Russia into what they thought would be a “warm-n-fuzzy” kind of “Cold War, 2.0”; what they got was a full-on invasion. Although there initial, hysterical screams to “go to war” with Russia, both from within the power blocs and from those in the general public who should probably be on emotional-management medications, it soon dawned on most people that “going to war” with Russia would almost certainly mean a “nuclear” war, that no one would “win”.
Then came Africa: Beginning in 2017 (YouTube link), people seemed to suddenly remember that there were still islamist jihadi’s out in the world, burning, looting, raping and killing people in order to serve the warped vision of religion espoused by a tortured political prisoner. However, murderous religious maniacs were “so three years ago”, and virtually no one on the “Western Street” considered barely-literate bandits hiding under the cloak of religious fervor to be an existential threat to Western civilization. Likewise, the recent wave of coups – not coming at the behest of Western governments and corporations – aren’t exactly revving the martial engines of Western populations being crushed under rancid economies and continual political scandals.
Something else was needed…And in the United States that answer is, increasingly, the illicit drug problem.
And it is a problem: tens of thousands of Americans die every year from drug overdoses, a large percentage involving the drug fentanyl. Unlike the normal cries for “Bayonets UP!”, however, this group of calls comes from the opposite side of the aisle: instead of Democrats leading the charge for military intervention, this time, the main thrust is coming from the Republican side of the fence.
This should not be a surprise, given the GOP’s continuous cries against illicit drugs. After all, it was no less a figure than Richard Nixon, who authorized the placing of cannabis (aka, “marijuana”) on the list of drugs as a Schedule 1 compound, right next to heroin – a position it retains to this writing – in 1970. And, like the vigorously enforced alcohol raids of the Prohibition Era – also enforced by successive Republican administrations – the GOP’s “war on drugs” has directly sparked the explosive growth of massive, high-revenue and well-armed and frighteningly well-equipped drug cartels, who have an international reach, and who have now diversified into human trafficking.
Given the abject inability of the US military to deal with the opium trade in Afghanistan during its twenty-year long occupation of the country – which saw opium poppy fields expand five-fold – the idea that a smaller military, struggling with recruiting efforts, and quietly speaking the dreaded “D-Word” out loud, can deal with the various drug cartels is not a matter for political or military debate, but a matter to be dealt with by mental health counselors.
The US military is having trouble recruiting people with bonuses exceeding $50,000 to sign up. As Mexico itself has discovered, military recruiters have a hard time competing with their counterparts in the Cartels, especially if the Cartel recruiters can use Mafia-like threats against potential recruits’ families. Likewise, the Cartels not only pay what regular forces term “combat pay”, but offer bounties against specific targets.
As well, with revenues between US$20 billion and US$60 billion per year (minimum), and far less overhead than conventional corporations and nation states, the Cartels have plenty of cash left over for high-intensity R&D: the wave of combat footage coming out of Ukraine, showing drones – from both sides – dropping small bomblets into trenches and bunkers are merely the current state of a technology pioneered by the Cartels, and refined in Syria in the aftermath of the rise of ISIL.
Much worse, from both a tactical and an operational standpoint, is the ability of Cartel members to blend into the general population. While islamist jihadis are comparatively easy to target, as they belong to a very narrow slice of the US population, Cartel members are a subset of the largest minority group in the United States. Where – to get rather “ugly” about it – potential jihadists tend to limit themselves to Muslim mosques, Cartel soldiers are largely Catholic, and are thus able to circulate freely among the Catholic population, the fastest-growing Christian denomination in the world.
The Cartel’s leadership echelons are not idiots. In fact, a distressing number began as military professionals, as is clear from their ability to organize a military-style logistics system. They are watching the rhetoric coming from within Washington, DC and various other organs, both from within the government, and from government-adjacent groups – nothing presented here is new to the Cartels.
Decades of neglect of border security, up to and including the recent encouragement of millions of desperate economic refugees to cross the southern border of the United States illegally – an action which helps to fuel the cartels’ diversified revenue structure, to say nothing of the very real physical dangers of the northern Mexican deserts and the human trafficking predations of the “coyotes” – has fueled an massive surge in drug-related deaths across the United States. Communist China is certainly complicit in this, as they are the Cartels’ prime suppliers of fentanyl precursor drugs…something they have no issue supplying, as Beijing sees this as “payback” for the Opium Wars…but that is a whole other story.
With the hyperventilating actions of people who should know better, calling for a Presidential authorization to use military force against the Cartels, alongside equally breathless and stentorian calls to designate the Cartels as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” (FTO’s), and coupled to a military establishment that has seemingly lost its way, to the point where it is quietly considering a return to a military Draft, the notion of an all-out “hot” war on the southern border of the United States is the height of lunacy, a lunacy driven by both sides of increasingly incompetent power blocs.
“We, the People” have allowed our “elected” leaders to paint us into a corner, a corner from which there is no real way out, except through the use of extreme levels of violence.
Kind of like Africa in the last few months.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Far-left sites are pushing narrative Taiwan is doing nefarious things to trick Americans into being Pro-Taiwan and anti-China, including targeting “Chinese-Americans” for prosecution, working with the FBI to do so. The CCP propaganda pushed by the far left further shows why this writer refers to the Democratic Party (now fully controlled and led by far-left anti-Americanists) as the DNC-CCP, to reflect this unholy frenemy alliance between two corrupt ideologies who share two common enemies, the Church of the one true living God and the American Republic.
Mintpress News is alleging that Taiwan is working with the Feds to target Chinese-Americans for prosecution. They are also “intimidating” U.S. politicians who appear to be too friendly to China. Finally, they are funding U.S. think-tank groups to the tune of million of dollars, groups that are pro-Taiwan and anti-China. The article that brought this to our attention was in Monthly Review Online, which appears to be a Pro-China website. Mint Press News, according to the far left “information” site Wikipedia, is also a far left website.
As of September 1, 2024, if you go to the front of Monthly Review Online, you will see a storuy about Isabel Crook, a “longtime friend and supporter of Monthly Review,” who died recently at the age of 107. She resides in Beijing.
The Wikipedia entry for Mint Press News states, MintPress News (MPN) is an American far-left news website founded and edited by Mnar Adley (née Muhawesh) which was launched in January 2012 and also publishes the MintCast podcast. It covers political, economic, foreign affairs and environmental issues. Editorially, MintPress News supports Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and the governments of Russia, Iran, and Syria. It opposes the governments of Israel and Saudi Arabia, and reports geopolitical events from an anti-Western perspective. In one contentious article, MintPress News falsely asserted that the Ghouta chemical attack in Syria was perpetrated by rebel groups rather than by the Syrian government.
Described as a conspiratorial website, MintPress News publishes disinformation and antisemitic conspiracy theories, according to researchers at Rutgers University and others. MintPress News was a major media domain that spread disinformation about the White Helmets, a Syrian volunteer organization. The site has been accused of regularly publishing pro-Russian propaganda.
The reality is Taiwan is doing what every nation in the world does in America, an open society, seeks to influence it by sponsoring groups that support its agenda and lobby congress to be favorable to that nation’s interests. Whether or not America should continue to allow this for anyone is one question, characterizing their actions as being any different than the countries the far-left supports, countries like China in particular (and now, more and more, Russia, as China and Russia are now, apparently, best buds).
Taiwan working with the Feds to root out CCP spies among us, though, is a good thing, and these “Chinese-Americans” aren’t being targeted because they’re pro-China, they’re being targeted for being traitors to America, for being operatives of the Chinese Communist Party.
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
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.
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.
Since 2021, there has been a war simmering between the United States and Iran. The US began seizing – via court-based “arrest” orders – ships carrying cargo (mostly oil) –out of Iran, to various nations that the United States has under economic sanction. The nations under US sanctions, such as Venezuela, have no real method to respond to the United States.
Iran, however, is a different matter.
Iran has begun seizing ships in the Persian Gulf by force, and in earnest, in response to the actions by the United States; the number is now up to twenty vessels. Additionally, some firms in the United States have begun to refuse to unload ships seized with Iranian cargo, fearing Iran seizing their vessels in retaliation.
Because of the clear threat presented to the “freedom of the seas”, the United is now responding to Iran by reinforcing its forces in the Persian Gulf with additional destroyers…and a few thousand US Marines.
While the first inclination of many will be to recall that the United States severely damaged the Iranian Navy in 1988’s Operation Praying Mantis – launched in response to an Iranian naval mine severely damaging the USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58) – that was some thirty-five years ago.
Iranian frigate IS Sahand (74) burning on 18 April 1988 after being attacked by aircraft of U.S. Navy Carrier Air Wing 11. US Navy photo. Public Domain.
Iran’s naval capability – while still no match for the US Navy in a direct fight – has significantly improved since their defeat, very likely enough to cause serious damage to United States forces in the process. Such a defeat, were it to happen, would almost certainly spark hysterical screams from within Washington, DC, demanding an all-out invasion.
LtGen Paul K. Van Riper, USMC (retired), c.1995. LtGen Van Riper led the “opposing force” in the “Millennium Challenge 2002” exercise. USMC official photo. Public Domain.
This is certainly not a whimsical or marginal threat. There has been a long-standing resistance within the Washington establishment to any rational negotiations with Iran; indeed, this escalated after then-President Donald Trump called off a disproportionate attack in response to Iran shooting down an unmanned US surveillance drone in 2019. In fact, hysterical calls for war with Iran have been a steady feature of US rhetoric for over a decade.
While the reasons for this hysterical behavior by long-serving chickenhawks in the Washington Swamp are unclear, they are nonetheless real. And with the weak, disconnected and floundering administration currently in place in the Swamp, wallowing in failures both domestic and foreign, highly irrational decisions are a serious possibility.
Iran is not Iraq. An irrational and ill-advised war against the current iteration of Ancient Persia – no matter how technically weak it may appear – would be an absolute disaster for the United States in the immediate sense, but also for the wider world, as the impact on the global trade system would not simply be catastrophic, but could swiftly escalate out of control.
For far too long, the people of the United States have bought into the mythology of “American Invincibility”. While this belief was justifiable until about 2010, it is no longer the case. The US Navy currently fields less than 300 vessels; all of the armed services except the Marine Corps have admitted that they expect to fall short of their recruitment targets by at least 20%, if not more. As the Biden administration openly admitted less than two weeks before this writing, US industry has not been able to step up the production of basic artillery ammunition to meet the needs of the administration’s support to Ukraine.
There is nothing left for the United States’ potential need for combat operations, should that happen.
Munitions Production on the Home Front, 1914-1918. Imperial War Museums. Public Domain.
And there are painfully few options available, if any still exist at all. Despite some twenty-odd years of near-continuous combat, neither US industry nor the wider population have been mobilized for the possibility of a major war…or wars. In 1941, as the forces of Imperial Japan were attacking Pearl Harbor, the United States had been girding for war for nearly two full years, mobilizing a “command economy” to increase the production of war materiel to support Great Britain in its war against Hitler’s Germany, and instituting the first peacetime military draft in the country’s history, giving all of the armed services of the day time to bring in and train troops in readiness for war.
None of that has been happening in the last 20+ years. And the cold reality is that it is likely not possible, without twenty years, minimum, of corrective measures: Thirty years of globalism’s industrial and business realities have removed the bulk of heavy industrial manufacturing from within the borders of the United States. Likewise, there is virtually no chance of the Draft being reactivated; while it is certainly still on the books as a legal option, the social policies instituted, promoted and encouraged by the Democrat Party in the last fifteen years have poisoned the recruiting well for the military, encouraging the armed service’s core demographics to pointedly not step forward to enlist. Basic training has been eroded to the point where the vast majority of troops with under ten years service are not psychologically prepared for combat at any level.
And yet – the chickenhawks of the Swamp persist, thinking that their actions to please their vote base have had no impact on military readiness – despite facts to the contrary – because they are so disconnected from the real world…
…Now, if the issue were simply Iran and a shortfall for materiel’s shipments to Ukraine, this might not be that large of a problem. A problem, certainly, but not a critical one.
However, as many chickenhawk cheerleaders crow over the recent attack on the Kerch Bridge over the Sea of Azov, Russia’s response was swift and decisive: Russia has abandoned the deal it agreed to previously, which allows the export of Ukrainian grain crops to supply the world’s food needs.
Satellite picture of Crimea, 05-16-2015, with location of the Kerch Bridge in red. NASA. Public Domain.
Russia is now actively targeting the port city of Odessa with long-range missile strikes, and is laying naval mines to close off Ukraine’s remaining coastal regions. Moscow has also hinted at the possibility that it will attack commercial vessels attempting to reach Ukraine.
The real danger in this series of moves lies far to the south, where Egypt is critically dependent upon Ukrainian wheat to feed its population. In the face of this loss, Egypt – already struggling with massive unemployment and the irrational and childish dismissal of its concerns over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dame (GERD) project by the government in Addis Ababa.
This is important, because if Egypt lashes out against Ethiopia in desperation – using an air force largely reequipped by the US – it could easily spark a much wider war, a war that could easily result in the closing of the Suez Canal…an act that, as was demonstrated by the grounding of a single container ship in 2021 for less than a week, would up-end the world trade system.
Which loops us back to Iran.
If the United States tilts that windmill, it will destroy the International North–South Transport Corridor, the decade-old project by Russia, China, Turkey, India and Iran to build a trade corridor designed to drastically shorten the transit of commercial cargo, bypassing the Suez Canal entirely.
This is a hair-trigger environment that is capable of sparking World War 3. This is not hyperbole, in any way.
It is solely the construct of the Swamp – a body that imagines itself as completely immune to anyone it deems “lesser”…which term includes you and I.
Let that sink in.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
A shooting just before the Women’s World Cup in Aukland, NZ has left 2 dead, 3 injured, with the shooter also being killed in a shootout with police that injured one officer. The shooter, Matu Tangi Matu Reid, 24, was on house arrest for domestic violence he was convicted of carrying out against his then-girlfriend.
After New Zealand passed some of the most anti-gun laws in the world (second only to countries like China and North Korea), another mass shooting has demonstrated confiscating guns from law-abiding people won’t stop insane people from mass killings, be it with guns, cars, knives, or chemicals.
The shooter is a non-white, also dispelling the other favorite leftist trope to scare people to hand in their guns, that it’s only white supremacists mass murdering the world, so it’s racist to resist gun confiscation plans.
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