September 24, 2023

Philosophy & History

Coughing Tiger, Drunken Dragon – The Danger Of Globalization
5 min read

Coughing Tiger, Drunken Dragon – The Danger Of Globalization

Michael Cessna September 22, 2023

 

 

 

 

Amid all the shrill backbiting over continuing to flagellate the dying Ukrainian efforts against Russia, as well as the capering of France trying to stave off the disintegration of its African satrapies, as those states internally realign themselves with Russia and China – by force, when necessary – a specter lurks in the background, the proverbial “elephant in the room”: Communist Chinese insecurity over Taiwan.

In this insecurity, lay the seeds of global economic collapse.

At the end of World War Two, Communist leader Mao Zedong led his “People’s Liberation Army” out of their mountain hideouts, and slid in behind Soviet forces occupying Manchuria, swiftly arming themselves with ex-Japanese military equipment captured from the defeated Imperial Japanese Army. Thus armed, the Communists went on the offensive against the exhausted Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) forces, which had born the brunt of fighting against the Japanese for the preceding eight years (1937-1945).

Despite several billion dollars in US aid, and the poorly though-out deployment of the III Amphibious Corps and elements of the 7th Fleet, the sheer exhaustion and demoralization of the KMT resulted in a series of worsening defeats on the battlefield, until, in 1949, the surviving KMT military and government units retreated (for the most part) to the island of Formosa (now, Taiwan), and established a government in exile.

That is the situation as it remains, today.

Communist China, throughout its bloody and draconian history from 1950 until today, cannot abide that a recognized province of the country is not under its thumb. This manifests itself in the news of today, as near-continual violations of Taiwan’s declared air and sea boundaries by Communist military forces. The normal response of the United States has been to occasionally deploy aircraft carrier battle groups into the disputed waters as a dare to the Communists to fire on them.

The question for many, however, is – why? After all, the United States famously showed Taiwan the door in 1972, which made the country a diplomatic pariah state…so, why does the United States constantly go “eyeball-to-eyeball” with Communist Beijing over the island? For that matter, why can’t Beijing just let it go?

Two answers: For Beijing – and particularly for Premier Xi Jinping – Taiwan is a gaping sore for the Communists, as the island rapidly prospered under the KMT’s governance, while Communist China wallowed in poverty, famine and induced technological stagnation under the increasingly mentally unstable Mao…and that, in spite of the extreme brutality of the KMT’s actions in securing the island, beginning in the late 1940’s. As prosperous as Communist China has become in the aftermath of the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, the Communist state still lags behind Taiwan by a long distance.

Second, the United States knows a fundamental truth that many around the world (and particularly within the United States), a truth that is the basis of this article:

 

Any Communist attempt to invade and conquer Taiwan – even if it failed – would collapse the global economy overnight.

 

The reason for this is brutally simple: microchips.

 

Circuit board. Public Domain.

 

Silicon chips, semiconductors, or integrated circuits as the Reader prefers, are what drive modern technology, from the device you are reading this article on, to the CPU in your car, computer chips drive every object of any consequence in your everyday life.

And Taiwan produces at least fifty percent (50%) of the world’s supply.

Most of Taiwan’s chips are produced by one company, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC). Unlike other manufacturers like Samsung and Intel (who manufacture chips for internal products), however, TSMC chips are not proprietary to them. Instead, their chips supply manufacturers of computer-driven hardware around the world, companies like Apple, Nvidia and Qualcomm, to name just three. Other nations around the world currently hover at less than half of TSMC’s production capacity; the United States currently holds about 12% of the global manufacturing capacity.

Invasions, as proven by the Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, are bloody, messy and highly destructive affairs. Any actual Communist Chinese attempt to seize Taiwan would be no different, the severe problems of a combined arms assault on the island equating to a probable Communist failure aside. To say that such an invasion would “disrupt” TSMC’s operations is a laughable understatement, not least because standard military doctrine virtually guarantees direct attacks on the company’s production facilities, to say nothing of worker attrition from “collateral damage”.

 

Devastation in Bucha, Ukraine. CC0/1.0, Public Domain.

 

What would such a circumstance mean for the global economy? Simply, virtually all generalized computer and electronic device production and repair or upgrades utilizing semiconductors would grind to a halt, as stocks of chips dried up virtually overnight. This is due to the phenomenon of “just-in-time delivery”, an outgrowth of the wave of globalization that has been the norm since the 1990’s.

The Reader may recall the term “supply chain disruption” that became popular during the recent pandemic. Workers at both manufacturing plants, but also – critically – stevedores and loading crane operators stayed home, either terrified of catching the disease, by legal order, or both. This ricocheted throughout the global supply and transport system, and was greatly aggravated by what many considered to be a minor event, namely the grounding of the container ship Ever Given in March of 2021. The effects of these body blows to the global economy continue as of this writing.

 

Container Ship ‘Ever Given’ stuck in the Suez Canal, Egypt, March 24th, 2021. Copernicus Sential photo. CCA/2.0 Generic

 

In regards to a hypothetical – but very possible – Communist invasion of Taiwan, the disruption would be vastly worse, as there is no way for global manufacturers to quickly retool to make up for the loss, even if a ceasefire were quickly closed…And note that this does not address the general disruption of commercial cargo traffic in and out of the Communist nation, in the event of such a war.

But, there is an even greater danger lurking in this very possible scenario: the facts that not only will Taiwan not go quietly, but that they have a plan to take Communist China with them.

Without resorting to nuclear weapons.

The non-Communist Chinese in Taiwan all know full well what a Communist takeover of their country would entail. Given the Communist state’s recent history, to say nothing of its habit of “disappearing” political dissidents and anyone who disagrees with their regime too loudly. Because of this, there lurks a plan that Taipei lets slip every once in a while, to remind Beijing of what the consequences of invasion would be.

 

The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, China, 2009. CCA/2.0 Generic

 

Taiwan’s “doomsday” plan (YouTube link) would be a series of strikes against the Three Gorges Dam. If concentrated, such a strike package would collapse at least a section of the dam, releasing the force of 39.3 km3 to pour downstream in a massive deluge.

Provisionally, this action could kill up to 400 million people…And this is not an idle threat, as the KMT has done it before. To say that this could result in a nuclear response is a given…with everything else that derives from that.

Right now, Communist China is desperate to appear tough and capable. The chances of bluster turning into an actual invasion are very real, however.

This fact is something that should be taken seriously by anyone reading this.

 

 

 

The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Why Armies?
5 min read

Why Armies?

Michael Cessna September 8, 2023

 

 

 

 

“The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.” – Sun Tzu, Chinese general and strategist, c.500B.C.

 

There are some questions floating out there, which are generally considered as “no-brainers” – questions that appear so basic, that everyone just assumes that they know the answer, when in fact their understanding of the question is merely superficial, at best. Questions such as “Why is the sky blue?” for example – the correct answer is simple, but many people are unable to formulate the correct response.

Which brings us to the title of this article.

Why do armies (military forces, really) exist? At first glance, the possible answers appear to be self-evident. For many people, their nations create and maintain military forces to defend the country and its peoples. However, their neighbors may see the same nation’s military forces as everything from brutal police enforcers to mercenary enforcers for large business interests.

In fact, that last idea formed part of a statement from Smedley D. Butler, Major General, USMC (ret.), in a speech he gave in 1933. Butler had, in fact, seen monumental levels of corruption in 33-odd years of military service in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He had fought in numerous wars and interventions during those 3+ decades, from Mexico to Central America and the Caribbean, to France in World War One, and in the Far East.

 

“It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.” – Smedley D. Butler, 1933

 

He was not incorrect.

Likewise, many people point to the opposite extreme, best exemplified in the South American nations of Argentina and Chile, from the 1960’s to the 1980’s, where those nation’s armies were used primarily as heavy muscle to back up the nominally anti-Communist actions of brutal and irretrievably corrupt military junta’s.

Throughout history, from the time of the savagery of the Assyrians, to the rationalizations for the 1990-91 looting expedition of Saddam Hussein (some of which, if we are being honest, were valid), and beyond, military forces have been used to grab everything from gold, crops and women, to industrial plant equipment and raw materials, despite that inevitably becoming an ultimately losing proposition.

And it is no secret that military forces are extremely expensive, even when military leadership, governments and economists manage to carefully balance military budgets (an almost unheard of event, on a par with finding an actual herd of unicorns). This is because – for the reasons just outlined above, among others – military forces are a net drain on their parent economies, as they can never produce enough economic output to balance the expenditure necessary to create, organize, equip, train and maintain them.

 

“Raising a host of a hundred thousand men and marching them great distances entails heavy loss on the people and a drain on the resources of the State. The daily expenditure will amount to a thousand ounces of silver. There will be commotion at home and abroad, and men will drop down exhausted on the highways. As many as seven hundred thousand families will be impeded in their labor.” – Sun Tzu

 

And yet, the rule remains: military forces are necessary for a society to maintain, because whatever other uses militaries are put to, there is always someone on the other side of the river/mountain/ocean that wants a piece of what you have, and is not willing to negotiate for it.

There is, however, a trap inherent in all military forces, that being the breathtaking feel of the power and majesty of command. That is not hyperbole – it is very frighteningly real. “Drunk on power” is not an empty statement. The knowledge of having the ability to wield the power of literal life and death over hundreds, thousands, millions – or more – people can be more intoxicating than any mere chemical action.

People with that particular failing also believe that they are smart enough to disregard Sun Tzu.

 

“To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” – Sun Tzu

 

That is not “paranoia” – that is history…and History does not care whether you believe it or not.

So, where does this leave us?

“We, the People” – of whatever nation – need military forces. Despite the dangers of armed forces having the monopoly of violence within their borders (which, ignorant arguments to the contrary, is the entire purpose of the US Constitution’s Second Amendment), the People, as a whole, need an organized, well-trained and well-equipped force to protect them. Like any tool in a home, like any kind of vehicle, device or machine, the object itself is just an object – it is inanimate, and has no mind of its own. The “good” or “evil” actions that tool is used for, is solely the responsibility of those putting it to use.

It is responsibility of the citizens of a nation to hold their governments accountable when their military forces are misused…because if they don’t try, they have no right to complain: You, the Citizen, are paying for your military forces. Even if you have never been in a military force, if you think you have a say in how your country operates, you need to inform yourself about “things military”, in general, and your country’s military in particular.

That’s part of what is known as “adulting”.

 

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” – George Washington, First Annual Address to Both Houses of Congress, Friday, January 8, 1790

 

 

The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Toward A New Civilizational Paradigm
9 min read

Toward A New Civilizational Paradigm

Bill Collier September 4, 2023

Creating a freedom-building movement through restoring the social fabric of a just and prosperous society is necessary and quite possible outside the corpostate system of institutional top-down down control of culture. It is also possible and morally essential to do this unilaterally, within our lives, relationships, and associations, without trying to change or control anyone who doesn’t actively and willingly want the kind of life we do.

In short, we propose that we must have our own independent and self-sufficient economic, financial, health care, education, food, energy, entertainment, news organizations, and other entities. These will be created within the framework of our overall freedom structures which we create in our hearts, in the way we treat and interact with others and in how we organize ourselves to creagea strong sense of community from the personal and local levels to a global scale.

To accomplish this, we propose a way to pursue liberation and independency, bounded by civic and moral virtues rooted in Christ but inclusive of all, which both works for the individual and scales to organized distributed communities and entire mass movements.

What we want to make clear is that personal empowerment requires some form of shared responsibility for our vision of a free and prosperous society and, more directly, each other’s safety, wellness, success, and happiness without becoming collectivist, cultish, or in any way authoritarian or xenophobic.

This further requires becoming intimately familiar with a civilizational paradigm that is not a product of the corpostate system, that totally exists outside of it, and the internalizing these ideals, principles, and practices to such an extent we live them ourselves and together with whoever wants to do the same. Hence, the subject of this article.

While we propose and think that the new civilizational paradigm will be a broader Freedomism based on the UPDR Ideals, and therefore will be called The Upadarian Civilization, the important thing here is the ideas and their attendant blueprints and frameworks for living together, not necessarily the name. We will, however, assume that these names suffice and will use them.

We begin basically with the proposition that knowing and internalizing a new civilizational paradigm in our own hearts and brains, body and soul, led by our spirit man, is in and of itself transfigurative. This means that if you become intimately familiar with this new civilization paradigm and embrace it warmly in your heart, it will change your actions, habits, relationships, and the very way you build community with others almost automatically.

We want to distinguish between the Upadarian civilizational paradigm, which is the root of Freedomism, along with the Actiun Baza (base of action) philosophy for a true reading of the reality of power, on one hand, and the historic Christian faith from whence it is derived, on the other hand.

The Christian faith addresses our eternal souls and inner peace and happiness, and we think it is essential as a foundation. Our civilizational paradigm addresses more practical needs and is not itself something all Christians must embrace. It is also not limited to only Christians: anyone can use and apply it and thereby become sort of sociocultural “citizens” of our unofficial international Commonwealth.

(A BRIEF ASIDE: Though we are searching for a better word, for now we refer to people as “citizens” of our Commonwealth not in a legal, official sense, but more by common affection for an identification with the ideals and principles which our unofficial Commonwealth, as a distributed global community, is based upon.

Hence, all who embrace these ideals are “citizens of the Upadarian Commonwealth” without needing to join anything or make it official. We distinguish between The Upadarian Commonwealth as the unofficial global community of all who embrace the new paradigm, the Virtual Commonwealth of Upadaria as the name for our platform, and The Crown Commonwealth of Upadaria as the planned international non-territorial Commonwealth that will interface with governments and other entities.

People will become citizens with a small c of the Upadarian Commonwealth, though a better name is sought, eCitizens of the platform as paid subscribers who back our efforts, and, eventually, as God prospers us, actual dual Citizens with our non-territorial Commonwealth and their own countries.)

When you envision civilization itself from this new, albeit ancient and sacred, paradigm’s perspective, you begin to see changes in your life and relationships and you WILL over time see a real increase in your total level of freedom and abundance.

Our paradigm is delivered in a unique way, through fictional stories and a “future history” that entertains as it informs, educates, and empowers. All of this came to me initially through a series of what I believe are supernatural encounters in which I was entrusted with these stories almost as if I had lived in the days when this new civilization was established, namely the year 2147, and came back to this time.

I “remembered” this life in the new civilization and impart its “history” to both warn people of the dangers that will come and to offer hope for how to either prevent the bad things or at least keep you and your own circle of trust and care safe and prosperous regardless of what is happening around you.

On the night of February 6, 1982, into the morning of the 7th, the 6th also being the day I was re-baptized at age 13, I was awoken to voices from hell, if seemed to me, calling my name and threatening me. My twin brother actually saw and heard parts of this, independently of me. I was immersed into a new REALITY of war, fighting human forces, which I could see were demonically controlled, who wanted to seize me and end our existence outside of their control.

While these demonic voices were haunting and scary, my instinct was to go and confront them and defeat them. As I did so, the physical space around me was altered, and troops defending and led by myself were fighting bad guys in a pitched battle right on my grandmother’s property where I lived with my father.

This experience opened the door, as suddenly I had the gift of discernment and when I shared Christ with others, speaking into their lives about things only known to God, they were quite interested in what I had to say. I was fully operating in the gifts of discernment, prophecy, word of wisdom, and other gifts. This set a pattern of confirmation for me whereby every time I was given something of significance to this vision I would experience some form of personal breakthrough and have favor to preach to others. Very often, a critical need was met for me or a family member, and someone would become converted to Jesus Christ.

Ultimately, not to labor the reader with details yet, I “saw”, or “remembered” an entire history of how this new civilization emerged here and there around the world and how a new Commonwealth was created as the guardian of the new civilization. This BEGAN, however, with the new dawn of a Christian national people, the Upadarians, who became the vanguard of that new civilization as well the architects of what would become its genesis structures.

I want to make this clear: for me, there was a sense of remembering the lifeways and sense of community within this new civilization and feeling homesick for it. This came with a desire to somehow FIND or get back to that by urging others to embrace this way of life and create a sense of community among themselves.

In 1987, I believe the Lord bade me through godly counsel to lay this down, with an understanding that only if God directed me to pick it back up should I consider doing so. During this season, which I did not know would end, I barely if at all spoke about Upadaria as a national people group or as the name of a new Christian civilization. In 1994, I had an encounter that showed me I needed to pick this back up, but to explore it and solidify it within me, and not to share it yet.

In 1997 I had an encounter at a Christian men’s meeting wherein it was both supernaturally confirmed to me that I must use the names and terms God gave me and that I no longer needed to hide this vision from anyone else.

In 2004, thanks to advice from my twin brother, I began to research the names God gave me only to discover they come from many languages, some ancient. I also learned that the names had meanings which could impart wisdom and tactics for launching the nation first and building a whole new international non-territorial Commonwealth around it. The work of sorting and defining these things in digestible parts is ongoing

While it is true my encounters and experiences became and will remain essential to the overall vision, others are beginning to find the veracity of this vision and their God-given role within it in their own ways. Thus, my experiences are part of this history. They are not the sole experiences that will, in time, also be essential to it.

One thing that was impressed upon me was to keep the names , the initial blueprints and frameworks, and to impart this vision as I received it. I later confirmed this was through some sort of immersive experience based on the fictional stories, and which later I could see was possible through the web in ways I couldn’t have foreseen back then.

Our planned digital homeland is based on users experiencing life in the Crown Commonwealth of Upadaria in the future, though the name of the platform is “The Virtual Commonwealth of Upadaria”. It is being designed not merely to impart this vision but to help facilitate face-to-face local gatherings and community groups based on Upadaria. As they create local Round Table Groups, participants will even use their “Upo Identity” from the platform for real-world activities and collaboration toward actualizing the ideals, principles, practices, and goals imparted through the fictional future history.

Participants will create a Upo Identity (though this isn’t mandatory) within the platform that they use in any gatherings or activities with fellow Peers of our spiritual nation, citizens of our unofficial Commonwealth, or eCitizens of the virtual Commonwealth, keeping their outer identities in strict confidence. The idea of this Upo Identity is to discover, verbalize, and activate your true inner self, using that as the basis of your new identity, which works from within your outer identity and shows itself effortlessly, organically, and naturally ever more outwardly.

Some will still just prefer to learn by rote, and to retain their outer identity as their Upo Identity, but we suspect they will get more from this experience by letting their imagination and creativity flow. As you both learn the history and and the underlying concepts of this new civilization, and as you explore and create your Upo Identity to reflect who you see yourself as in God’s eyes, free from all limits, the changes occur without conscious effort.

A new civilizational paradigm is needed because the current one has become dead, uncreative, corrupt, and depraved and if you remain dependent upon systems based on this pradigm you will suffer loss and lack and make yourself easy prey to freedom takers and antichristian zealots, who will persecute you.

Consider how Hollywood’s “remakes” of classical and beloved stories or their treatment of beloved franchises has destroyed the original vision behind these things and replaced it with something that doesn’t even come close to the original and you will see how civilization itself is being re-made into something that is utterly useless and foul.

Just as Hollywood remade classics into pure garbage, the ruling class has remade society into pure garbage. They are feeding you poison that is killing your happiness and stealing your prosperity. Even if you are a Christian, if you unconsciously or consciously follow or are connected to the systems these people have designed, based on their warped altreality, you will short-circuit your own calling.

A new civilizational paradigm is needed. Though we provide our own ideas and vision, you can take whatever path you like, you can consciously choose your own way, so long as that way is founded upon the eternal and sacred precepts of the Kingdom of God.

The BabelSodom Corpostate Politocracy
18 min read

The BabelSodom Corpostate Politocracy

Bill Collier September 3, 2023

A RIGHTEOUS ANGER DECLAMATION AGAINST THE WICKED RULERS OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul: be not cut off in her iniquity; for this is the time of the LORD’s vengeance; he will render unto her a recompence.
Jeremiah 51:6 KJV

Babel/Babylon and Sodom and Gomorrah (BabelSodom for short) are the true COUNTRY our depraved ruling class are loyal to: when the organs of the ruling class establishment declaim against us as “insurrectionists”, understand that their country isn’t America. While they are the true REBELS against our Union of free and constitutional Republics, and especially our Bill of Rights, to these people in power, we are in rebellion against them lording their agenda of authoritarian decadence over us.

Either the Freedomist remnant, the liberty-loving plurality of Americans, will save this country from ruin or, if this country’s people refuse such a call, we will at the least save our families and ourselves because GOD WILL NOT LET A FAITHFUL AND TRUE PEOPLE FALL. We are at war with what we refer to as the “BabelSodom Corpostate Politocracy”, which we will expalain in this article. We did not chose this war. We are at war with these ruling class corruptoids BECAUSE THEY DECLARED WAR ON OUR GOD AND OUR LIBERTY AS A PRECONDITION OF THEIR TYRANNY.

Understand that we do not return violence for violence, we will not become like Antifa or faux rightist organizations such as “the Proud Boys.” We will not become like the violent climate change radicals or the racist ethno-nationalists. Of course we recognize that there are reactionary and/or xenophobic elements on the right who pose a potential authoritarian threat to our liberty, but their power is infinitesimal compared to how the ruling class have lately enabled the left to run riot, literally and figuratively, over human agency, human dignity, and human flourishing.

But as to our battles, regardless of who we are dealing with, left or right, they are fought through words and deeds, unilateral local collaboration, and creating associations and organizations at scale, which are totally outside the control of our wicked rulers. Our agenda is truly inclusive, tolerant, and pluralistic! We do not need or want violence, although by no means should this be taken to mean if someone burst into our homes we wouldn’t protect ourselves. What it means is that there are 100 ways to liberate ourselves from the reach and control of this “BabelSodom” cartel, none of which use violence or any coercion against anyone else.

Now, let us reveal the enemy in their strategies, tactics, mindset, and methodology.

The Federal government and most every major corporation, along with most state and local governments, school districts, colleges, universities, the press, Hollywood, and Madison Avenue, are all corrupt! They are OCCUPIED by people whose agendas and beliefs are rooted in Babylon, Babel, and Sodom, equating to a Corporate-Government war against freedom waged through the politization of society.

From these concepts, e.g. Babylon and Babel, we derive our somewhat klunky, but unfortunately necessary, term “the BabelSodom Corpostate Politocracy.”  We abbreviate this to “BSCP”, which hilariously could also be “BS Communist Party.” But it’s much more complex than that and in order to defeat it we must understand it accurately, even if this means digging deeper and accpeting complexity. 

Our fractured ruling class establishment today is an unstable and unholy alliance between corporations and governments in a complicated and complex dance of competition and frenemies vying both for mastery over their peers and yet united with them against the workaday producing classes in our society. Their tactic is to create a situation where politics dictates and controls everything. While everything is now politicized, only the upper crust, the topmost few, truly control politics. Our entire civilizational infrastructure and every institution has become a con, a fraud, and an ongoing crime against humanity.

The construction of this authoritarian decadence as official and corporate policy, against basic human agency and dignity, is also reflective of an entire civilizational paradigm that is weak, flawed, and self-destructive. The existence of such a corrupt and morbidly over-sexualized, perverted ruling class establishment is NOT “progress” or “evolutionary”, it is degenerative and devolutionary, and it is a sure sign Western Civilization is dying and will take the world at large into chaos with it.

These criminally debauched (in moral, not legal terms) rulers have created a wacko coalition of race hustlers, climate lunatics, sexual deviants, and lazabouts looking for freebies. Their deranged coalition of miscreants believe progress is having sex with anything that moves, grooming kids to be sterilized sexual deviants who hate their own parents is somehow saving “trans kids” from fictional “genocide”, and other wacko, alarmist, and fantastical lies whose genesis is in hell itself.

It is not enough for them to limit this child corrupting agenda to how they raise their own children, which they abort before they can be born. These childless lunatics leer at your children and LUST for their very souls! Why do we see people with minor drug offenses being treated more harshly then pedophiles if not for the fact the ruling class are sympathetic to child abusers and harsher on people who’s only crime is an addiction for which no help us offered.

If indeed “man-made climate change” was so bad, why aren’t we creating portable nuclear power stations owned by every community, so that they can both be locally energy independent and stop most emissions? Why aren’t we pursuing house-portable and house-affordable technologies, beyond JUST solar and wind, and giving homeowners rebates, grants, and credits to become as self-sufficient for energy (using climate-friendly means) as possible? Why do most building codes favor energy-inefficient stick built designs while eschewing cob, hay bail, and other construction methods that are both cheaper and easier for less trained people to build, which would massively save on emissions and energy use?

The answer is that man-made climate change is not the problem being solved, the “problem” is too much individual and local independency and the “solve” for this is to USE climate change to propose, as the Red Pope (puppet of the global corpostate establishment) has done, a “global governance” which can only be read as a one-world totalitarian dictatorship. Everything from making energy super expensive and centralized to 15-minute hellscape cities, to proposals to ban meat, all tend to help only the ruling class, they hurt the people, and, compared to house and local community based solutions that empower the people, are of negligible effect on the weather.

All of this is symptomatic of a dying civilization and cannot be stopped any more than someone in advanced stages of dementia can be saved without a miracle! We can escape the reach and being controlled by the old civilization’s structures and paradigm, but we cannot save that civilization from dying its natural death.

(PUT A CARET HERE: Do not allow yourself to feel hopeless! Our proposal for saving America from this ruination is for Americans to voluntarily embrace a new civilizational paradigm predicated on a Christian foundation, but offering freedom and abundance to all. It is full of creative and moral energy that gives life and hope. Barring that happy outcome, we propose that those who gather under the banner of the new civilization will, in the main, be saved from this tragic collapse of freedom and morality.)

Most Democrats and some Republicans are actively loyal and subservient not to America, but to this BabelSodom “country!” This is how civilizations die. Their ruling class becomes corrupt and depraved and in shifting their entire focus from the good of the People to their own parochial interests, they eventually adopt what amounts to a new “country” to which they give their loyalty. At the same time, the general population is divided between the bearers of the new ideal, who become a strong minority, and an apathetic majority who, ironically, fight for the slavers against the freedom builders!

This is why your own dearest friends and family have turned against you and why you are told you cannot say certain TRUTHS lest you lose your job! We defy that, but we need to raise up an army of backers and activists until we have found and gathered as much of the remnant of true Americans as we can!

We are battling against a new form of colonialism and imperialism meant to subjugate the entire world population to the DIKTAT of BabelSodom. They may not know the true name of the Beast they serve, they may call it “world governance” to “prevent climate change”, or a “progressive international order”, or any number of other euphemisms, but it is BabelSodom.

America is under foreign occupiers!

We must understand that the original spirit and intent of America, call it our soul, is something our very “rulers” want to rape, plunder, and kill! It is that gruesome. When you see the jailing of men and women in Western countries for daring to use common sense and stick to Biblical/ancient morals that are universal and eternal, you can see how “foreign” these utterly unhinged rulers have become. When wood-burning stoves are banned for poor people for whom this is their only affordable source of heat, in the name of climate justice, this is actually genocidal and unjust, but also a symptom of leaders who have lost their way.

What is worse, we can assume, rightly, that most of these rulers are making deals with hostile foreign interests using money and resources they never earned! They pillage our money and the fruits of our labor which they have plundered through crony monopolism and government theft, including high taxes and fraud, waste, and abuse. They steal from us and use our labors to serve their allies in foreign countries like China, Russia, Iran, and the like. America’s enemies are being served by our rulers.

For America’s ruling class, our taxes, our wages, our lands, which they tax, our pension money we have no control over but the evil firm Blackrock does, and even the bodies of our service members who they use in their illegal wars, are ALL plunder that serves them. America itself, our natural resources, people, and military, are controlled and used in ways that harm our country but fatten the ruling class’s portfolios! We are but prey to them, to be used, sucked dry, and then aborted by denying us critical care when we are no longer useful. 

To be clear: the purpose of Medicaid and Medicare is to ration health care and ultimately dispose of those who are no longer “profitable” to the ruling class. Denials of essential care are the means by which the ruling class “cull the herd”, which they deem us to be nothing more than. 

Enter the arm of this agenda, the means by which they wield their power over us to make us like cattle. We introduce you to the corpostate!

What is the corpostate? The corpostate isn’t a real thing, you can’t point to it on a map or say this or that legal structure is the corpostate. It is a word that defines an unholy alliance between corrupted politicos and bureaucrats on one side and mega financiers who control almost every major corporation, especially through capital investment firms like Blackrock.

The line between government policies and corporate policies is blurred, and when one needs the other to act, because it lacks the direct legal authority, they always do that for each other. This isn’t classical fascism, where the government essentially controlled the corporations. It is difficult to see which is controlling which, but the same people often occupy some official or other positions within both, almost like a revolving door, and this even happens at the lower tiers of their minion hierarchy. Biden’s son Hunter, front man for Biden’s allegedly criminal syndicate, is a perfect example of this weird mix as his “employers” wanted to influence his father, while his father wanted to fleece some cash and also influence that industry. 

When Biden, the mail-in faux pResident, wanted to silence dissent, he couldn’t directly get the government to go after his opponents, but the Silicon Valley mafia was willing to censor on his behalf while claiming “muh private company” status. This confused the right and caused most conservatives to cede the field to this unjust act, done at the behest of America’s most corrupt President ever. The reality of power is that the platforms control commerce and the public discourse and building alternatives to them us much harder than it should be because government backs them and puts the finger on the scales against their erstwhile competitors. 

(Note: We still favor building alternatives as opposed to regulating the existing platforms. We are working on that, and, with your backing as a paid subscriber, we can expand our efforts. So far we have invested in and partially own an email sending platform, LibertySender, to replace big tech’s censored versions. We created a vast subterranean network of web and social media properties that reaches millions and gets around the censors, and our own bespoke private news intelligence service, Freedomist Intelligence Advisor, which is a continuation of the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, founded some 47 years ago. We are working on an alternative Christian-based virtual-to-local community, called Upadaria, to enable people to both engage in commerce and make connections for collaboration, while also being part of the public discourse because content posted there can potentially be seen by millions through our subterranean network. We are also working on other projects, including our own advertising network, to supplant the Silicon Valley mafia.)

The corpostate isn’t easily defined, and it’s not easy to say which side is in control. Meanwhile, even among the government shot-callers and the corporate shot-callers, there are factions vying for mastery, and this goes all the way down to your county or town.

Why does a relatively conservative county still have many leftwing nutjobs in human services, the schools, and much of the county bureaucracy and why are County Commissioners so seemingly unwilling to stand up for the rights of the People? Why don’t those Republican Commissioners clean out the subversives?

The answer is your County Commissioners are con artists working for the corpostate, which they are not conscious of but which nonetheless they serve, who wouldn’t consider for one second going against the secretly leftwing county solicitor and other chief bureaucrats who tell them what they cannot and not do as if the unelected “officials” are really the ones in charge.

Exceptions do not disprove the rule of thumb, which almost always applies.

This is HOW they rule, but their tactic to divide us and wrest control and wealth from families, the church, and communities is defined as a “politocracy”, led by the Democratic National Committee, which is the politburo of their organization.

So, what is a politocracy? Very simply, politocracy is the politicization of everything, from family and culture and even religion. Politicization means things are made political and political means, whatever that thing is, it would be a requirement or prohibition dictated by government for all. It is public policy or “affairs of the city”, i.e. the public. Political means it applies to everyone and is not left to private persons or private free associations and enterprises.

When marriage became political, by the Supreme Court’s ad hoc law from the bench legalizing so-called “gay marriage”, it became possible, and inevitable, that those who cannot countenance marriage outside a man and woman should face discrimination from the government. Hence nonsense like, “Decorate the cake and with your own hand endorse something that goes against your conscience.” Gay marriage was dictated to destroy true marriage, depress our birth rate, and especially to destroy Christianity and other faiths of any kind that do not countenance such a backward definition of marriage.

(This is not an argument against people deeming themselves married and having official recognition for legal protections. The point is HOW it is used, not that we as Freedomists care what two grown adults choose to do with their lives and relationships.)

Everything is political means everything is dictated either directly by the state or indirectly and subversively through the corporations who hold an illegal monopoly over financial systems, the public discourse, communications, energy, food, and medical/health services, as well as education and news. Political means that if you don’t obey their dictate you may be arrested or have your bank accounts frozen, or be banned from every platform which anyone who wants to advance in this society MUST use or become internally banshed from opportunities.

That is politocracy in effect. But another feature of politocracy is that, while politics rules everything, in our case, via this corpostate structure, very few people actually control politics. Their reasons and justifications are legion, like the demonically possessed man in the Gospels: climate change hysterics, fear of Trump and his supporters starting an insurrection against their reign, Islamic terrorism, Russia, and on and on. They have more excuses for their abuse of power and violations of human rights than one can count!

Don’t be confused by their “issues”, the end goal is always more of our lives come under the control of politics even as fewer of the topmost shot-callers control politics.

A few dozen very wealthy people, often meeting together, trade in human flesh as their Babylonish economic system is based on human blood (hence debt-based fiat currency). They make conscious decisions and plot what will happen and what will be said to manipulate people to literally vote away their fortunes and their freedom. It is not different than a con men getting you to give them access to your own account: they took the money, but you willingly opened the door for them.

It is also true, as they say, “no conspiracy lasts more than a few weeks”, to some degree, but if we review the paths taken these past 80 years we find the devolution of society and the destruction of our social fabric has been no accident.

These filthy rotten perverts all go to the same schools and read from the same playbook. Though for many this is unconscious, all are worshipping demons, which they call names like climate justice, social justice, and the such. These are all lies, and the ruling class has, for the most part, consciously used these bogeyman scare tactics knowing they are lies.

What then is their country that they unconsciously swore allegiance to? We call it BabelSodom.

Babel speaks to the Tower of Babel as humankind’s great sin against the Heavenly Order, a world of diverse and independent kingdoms and national peoples who look to Jesus for guidance and law, in their bid to try to create a one-world totalitarian dictatorship.

Babel also speaks to Babylon, an economic system described in Revelation as trading in human flesh and blood! This is an entire socioeconomic system where workers are either exploited by corporations or enslaved by an authoritarian socialist dictatorship. Ultimately, we become commodities to be bought and sold, and we are only fit to be allowed to live if we produce for the masters.

Sodom needs no explanation for some. Briefly, however, Sodom represents debaauchery and perversion that are not merely allowed and tolerated but that are crammed down everyone’s throats and forced onto innocent people who want nothing to do with it. We see Sodom in the insistence on teaching kids they may be trans and the lionization of anything “non-hetero”, while decent normal people (“hetero”) are demonized by school teachers until anything but normal becomes a “norm” that leads to massive mental illness among our youth. School shootings are a direct product of teachers who are depraved BabelSodom acolytes, again despite the fact that they themselves do not realize this.

The “polls” showing some 40% of HIGH SCHOOL KIDS refusing to identify with their God-given sex and who reject normalcy in favor of asinine perverted labels and pronouns, represent at least an attempt to make CHILDREN hate the truth and despise themselves, their parents, God, and this country! The perverts in charge get an orgasmic pleasure from imposing this garbage even as their media declare us conspiracy theorists and pretend none of this is really happening or that it isn’t as dangerous as it truly is.

The BabelSodom Corpostate Politocracy may sound like a mouthful, but it is a true description of the actual reality of power in this country, with almost all Democrats being on board, some Republicans being on board, and most Republicans being willing to collaborate to save and/or enrich themselves.

The shorthand for all this is just to say BabelSodom, as if it were a country these miscreants are patriotic toward. This is their true country, not America, which they hate. They are erecting a system that is predicted as the final end state of fallen man before, having fulfilled their evil so bad they rebel even against Satan, are swept aside by the Armies of Heaven and thrown into the lake of Fire not by men but by God.

In short, most corporate and government shot-callers gave their souls to their true country, BabelSodom, and they are no different than colonizers. Having siezed the reins of power through subversion and legerdemaine, they plunder and exploit this country’s people and natural resources for their country, which country is BabelSodom, a global antichristian secularized caliphate of tyranny.

Everything authoritarian, godless, exploitative, and destructive to the human spirit is BabelSodom. It matters not if it claims left or right status, though today the shining example and chief champion of BabelSodom in American are the left as most rank and file among the right are actively opposed to BabelSodom, whatever it calls itself now, under whatever flag it waves. The right has devolved into reactionaries and cultists following grifters and personalities who offer only words, not bone and blood solutions that take power from the wicked and give it to the righteous.

While the useful idiots on the left who talk so much about safe spaces and trigger warnings commit acts of violence, their goal for the moral and the freedom minded is to prevent them from having any safe space that isn’t controlled by our occupiers. One looks for a remnant, the new Pilgrims, who will pick up the fallen banner of a country whose nations of people honor God in freedom, peace, and abundance.

One wonders how to find, attract, gather, and organize this remnant of TRUE Americans of every race and ancestry or national origin to pursue a path of independency from this hellish BabelSodom Corpostate Politocracy!

While the Freedomist founders are Christians and our core ideals and principles are forged in Kingdom DNA, the precepts of historical Christian orthodoxy, our agenda is to see every American be free in every way, whether they are Christians or not. Freedomists include freedom-minded people of high moral character working to awaken the remnant of true Americans to build independency locally. We also seek to build connections and organizations at scale, which can provide economic, social, and political resistance to the ongoing war on freedom by the BabelSodom Corpostate Politocracy.

Subscribers gain insights into news that is raw, uncensored truth, delivered to readers through platforms that cannot be shut down through the corpostate power structure. They gain knowledge and wisdom on ways to build personal and local independency, to make yourself and your family cancel proof, and to make you a HARD target to attack. Our series “Hope Exit” details PRACTICAL ways to build independency through finding and exploiting the gaps for freedom that allow us to exit from our enemy’s control.

There is NEVER total control. In even the worse places like Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and now Canada and the UK, there are always gaps for freedom because these minions of hell, being humans, lack absolute omnipotent control and will NEVER, EVER succeed in their apocalyptic goals!

We know that even the participants and lever pullers are only human and can be scared, fooled, tricked, and outfoxed, especially if, as we believe, our side, the Freedomist remnant, is actually on the side of God, guarded by the Angels. You don’t have to be Christian to be a Freedomist, but make no mistake, our roots and our cause are as much about spreading the presence and influence of the Kingdom of God among us as any ministry or church!

Freedomists alone stand between chaos and liberty, between slavery and abundance, between depravity and decency, between death and life itself. Many are Freedomists who do not know they are, but men and women of every race, sex, ancestry, national identity, and creed or faith who love the essence and true pro-freedom understanding of our Bill of Rights is a Freedomist.

The Freedomist remnant can save this country, but we NEED YOU to join us, for now as a premium subscriber, whatever you can afford, although we remain committed to providing essential and useful content for free because we know how hard the economy is now on the producing classes, workers and entrepreneurs. You can join us for free, or you can choose to back us as a subscriber. Either way, you will find nobody is saying the things we are saying the way we are saying them. Nobody is pushing for personal and local independency. Most do not realize how necessary and possible this is!

The BabelSodom Corpostate Politocracy is poised to strike down and destroy the Freedomist remnant and everyone who craves true freedom, bounded by a balance of virtue, liberty, and independency! But we will not fall or be defeated, we may be a remnant, but as noted, we are on the side of the Angels while these depraved fools who claim to be “on the right side of history” are in fact following doctrines of devils.

Join us or become prey to the most demented and destructive ruling class in human history.

When ‘Forever Wars’ Fail – Delusions vs Realities
8 min read

When ‘Forever Wars’ Fail – Delusions vs Realities

Michael Cessna August 26, 2023

 

 

 

 

 

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.

No word on how the Western troops at the sharp end feel about this. (YouTube link)

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 “islamist insurgents” 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

Discount War – How The ATGM Changed Everything
6 min read

Discount War – How The ATGM Changed Everything

Michael Cessna July 28, 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the tank appeared on the battlefields of World War One, it sparked terror among armies, who had no answer to it at first. The Germans attempted to counter it with new artillery tactics and later, new artillery weapons to destroy the armored beasts, followed by their first attempt to copy the British behemoths. After World War One ended, all of the militaries involved (the professional ones, at least) reviewed their activities during the war, trying to learn what had gone right, and – more importantly – what had gone wrong.

Regarding the tank, it was found to be useful, certainly, but it suffered from all the ills of any prototype concept, being ridiculously unreliable, too large, too slow, and poorly armored by the end of the war. The next two decades saw continual developments in all of the nations who felt that they might well be on the front line of the next war which – platitudes and wishful thinking about the “war to end all wars” aside – knew was coming.

World War two proved to be the watershed in tank design that most militaries expected. Designs were refined, weapons were improved, and tactics were evolved by force. In general, the things that didn’t work were ruthlessly cast aside, in favor of what worked. This cycle, of course, worked in both directions.

Tanks have severe weaknesses. For the crews, the most important weakness was a painfully limited view. Sticking one’s head outside a tank in the middle of a fight was not conducive to long life, and the visions blocks inside the tank had severely limited fields of view (and still do), limiting the crews’ ability to see anything outside of their steel box. For this reason, specially trained infantry had to escort the tanks across the battlefield to protect them long enough to make it into contact with the enemy…whose infantry could be expected to be armed with whatever anti-tank weapons they had access to, usually in large quantities.

The infantry forces of the world were not about to concede the battlefield to the metal beasts, however.

From the beginning, in WW1, non-armored forces struggled to find countermeasures against the tank. By 1946, dedicated anti-tank artillery had been joined (albeit briefly) by anti-tank rifles. During the “interwar period”, anti-tank hand grenades were developed; while effective, the grenades were really desperation weapons, given how they had to be used. Another weapon was the anti-tank landmine. A very effective class of weapon, they are strictly defensive in nature, and could be problematic in use, as the mines themselves could not be easily re-positioned at need.

Then came the “bazooka”.

A combination of simple rocket technology pushing a small warhead based on the “Monroe Effect”, the first crude “bazookas” deployed by the US Army proved to be highly effective tools for the infantry. Their only real downside was their very short range, compared to tank cannons. Still it was a major advance.

 

Soldier holding an M1 “Bazooka”, 1943. US Army photo. Public Domain.

 

The American bazooka was copied directly by the Germans, in their “Panzerschrek” (or, “tank’s bane”), who had jump-started their own research program early in 1943 with their “Panzerfaust” (or, “armor-fist”), a one-shot weapon much like a conventional hand grenade. Both weapon concepts continue today, in a variety of models.

But, it was quickly recognized early on that a ‘middle ground’ was needed. Where conventional – if specialized – artillery was effective, the materials involved in building the dedicated weapons took away from more conventional artillery fire missions. At the same time, hand-held weapons – while also effective – were quickly being countered with better tank armor, and better coordination between enemy tanks and infantry.

In the aftermath of World War 2, the victorious states quickly divided into two mutually hostile camps, initiating the “Cold War”. And, like their fathers in the interwar period, continued the search for the middle ground.

To a great extent, anti-tank artillery disappeared after WW2, in a concession to realism, because the class of weapons was simply not dynamic enough to keep pace with the speed demands of a modern battlefield. It was here, however, that the next development arrived.

Although very crude versions of the “recoilless rifle” were developed in World War 1, the Second World War would see their mechanical maturity, and the first deployments in combat, in the hands of German paratroopers.

 

A U.S. Special Forces soldier fires a Carl Gustav Recoilless Rifle during a training exercise conducted in Basrah, Iraq, May 2, 2009. US Army Photo. Public Domain.

 

Resembling a conventional artillery tube, the recoilless rifle barrel is much thinner, for its caliber. Recoilless rifles work, basically, by firing a shell from a specially designed shell casing. This casing is perforated to allow a portion of the ballistic gases to vent to the rear, through a hollow breach. While not completely “recoil-less”, these weapons were a serious threat to tanks, as their warheads were fully capable of destroying a “main battle tank” of the day in one shot. And, while too heavy to be carried by hand, they were still light enough to be mounted in the back of a Jeep or pickup truck.

 

Mounted M40 Recoilless Anti-Tank Rifle. Photo credit: Vijay Tiwari. CCA/4.0

 

The recoilless rifle, in its turn, was sidelined by improvements to tank armor. Replacing it, however, was the ATGM. The Anti-Tank Guided Missile dawned in the early 1950’s. They were crude by modern standards, were hard to control in flight, and had a limited range, but technology was advancing rapidly, and the weapons improved dramatically in the 1960’s, especially in warhead technology.

The 1970’s dawned, and with it, the ATGM. In 1972, the US Army deployed the TOW Missile System to Vietnam, where it quickly began destroying tanks, being fired from helicopters. But this was just the proverbial ‘opening round’.

On October 6, 1973, the armed forces of Egypt invaded the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula. The furious, three-week long battle that resulted fundamentally changed the landscape of war for the first time since World War 1.

The Israelis had built up a well-deserved reputation for military prowess, one that would hold true in 1973…but not without taking a severe bruising in the process.

When Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal and overran the Israeli defensive line, they halted and set up their own line, waiting for the Israeli counterattack. That should have been the first sign of trouble. Israeli tank commanders, however elected to not wait for more infantry to come up to support them, and attacked directly into the Egyptian line. The result was a bloodbath: the Israelis lost more than sixty tanks in a matter of minutes, as Egyptian ATGM troops cut the unsupported tanks to shreds.

 

An Israeli M60 Patton destroyed in the Sinai. Photo credit: Sherif9282. Public Domain.

 

The Israelis had met the Malyutka.

The 9M14 Malyutka (NATO Reporting Name : AT-3 ‘Sagger’), first produced by the Soviet Union in 1963, is probably the most-produced ATGM in history, a weapon still in both production and use as of this writing.

 

Serbian-made modified Malyutka wire-guided anti-tank missile on display at “Partner 2009” military fair. Photo credit: Kos93. CCA/4.0 Int’l.

 

A tiny weapon, the Malyutka/Sagger fits into a briefcase-sized carrier. Assembled at its launch sight, the missile has an effective range of 500-3,000 meters. Its warhead remains potent even today: although no longer effective against most tanks, it remains very effective against buildings and light vehicles. The weapon’s warhead is in the same general category as that of the RPG-7, but has a much longer range.

Armies – and other groups – took note.

Now, there are a wide array of ATGM’s prevalent throughout the world. From the European MILAN launchers mounted to Toyota Hilux pickup trucks in the Chadian desert, to American Javelin missiles destroying invading Russian tanks in Ukraine, lightweight military forces around the world have finally found the balance they need to meet heavier forces equally on the field.

 

U.S. Army paratrooper engages targets with Javelin shoulder fired anti tank missile during a live-fire exercise as part of Exercise Rock Sokol at Pocek Range in Postojna, Slovenia, March 9, 2016. U.S. Army photo by Paolo Bovo. Public Domain.

 

The dust these changes have stirred up have not fully settled as of 2023. Tanks remain dangerous actors on the battlefield, pundit declarations to the contrary aside. But, as we increasingly enter a period of “discount war”, high-powered weapons in the hands of light, fast-moving forces with tiny logistical footprints and easy-to-acquire and -operate combat vehicles is forcing a serious rethink of the scope of military action…

…At least, among those who pause long enough to reflect on the question.

 

 

 

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

Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes, Part 2 – Is the PMC Era Coming To An End?
7 min read

Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes, Part 2 – Is the PMC Era Coming To An End?

Michael Cessna July 8, 2023

 

 

 

 

 

Mercenaries have been around for a very long time; so long, in fact, that working as a “sell sword” is regarded as a prime candidate for the title, “The Second Oldest Profession”; the Freedomist even covered this previously. During the Italian Renaissance, the sometimes substantial forces of various condottieri mercenary captains had a noted and significant impart on Western History. In the modern day, from 2003 onwards, this has been exemplified by the rise of the “Private Military Company” (PMC).

While some people may think that mercenaries are a relatively recent phenomena, having been largely eliminated after the Napoleonic Wars, the truth is that the profession has continued on up to the present day, albeit on a more individual level, more than massed units like the hired Hessian troops of the American War of Independence.

(An important note is that those to whom the 19th Century term “filibusters”, as related to military activity, applied were not ‘mercenaries’ in the traditional sense, as military filibustering was rarely done at the behest of any internal faction in a country. Military filibusters were essentially well-armed bandits with political aspirations.)

Many military figures of world history were mercenaries at one time or another, figures like the Athenian general and historian Xenophon, author of The Anabasis, which chronicles the withdrawal of some ten thousand mostly-Greek mercenaries from the Achemenid Empire, to Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, the Prussian professional soldier who joined George Washington’s army, and had such an impact on it, that he is regarded as one of the ‘founding fathers’ of the United States Army.

 

Baron Frederick William von Steuben, c.1780. Painted by artist Charles Willson Peale (1741–1827). Public Domain.

 

In the aftermath of the overthrow and ultimate execution of French king Louis XVI, France instituted what we would now refer to as “national mobilization”, the vast size of the armies the revolutionary government was able to field proved so attractive to nations everywhere, notions of unique national character were deliberately reinforced. As a result, it came to be considered odd – if not more than a little dirty – to serve in the armed forces of another state.

And yet such service, primarily for money, continued. The French Foreign Legion, established in 1831, was created to place foreigners who had previously served as mercenaries in French royal service, into the French Army for service outside of France. Smaller such units appeared from time to time, but after about 1820 or so, the “Soldier of Fortune” phase began in earnest, first with the Filibusters, but soon incorporating many individuals, mostly former soldiers but also a few pure amateurs, who were what we would now call “adrenaline junkies”, following reports of wars breaking out in various places around the world, where formal military education and technical abilities were scarce. The advanced education and experience of many of these individuals often proved invaluable to their employers. As just one example, British Royal Navy Captain (later Rear-Admiral) Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, was instrumental in creating the revolutionary navies of Brazil, Chile and Peru, in the 1820’s and 30’s.

 

Admiral Lord Cochrane, portrait of James Ramsay, c.1830. Public Domain

 

By the 1890’s, “freebooters” and soldiers of fortune were seemingly everywhere, fighting for almost all sides in world conflict zones. With the advent of weapons such as practical machine guns and quick-firing artillery, coupled to a highly permissive “cash-n-carry” environment for buying weapons, meant that those individual’s technical skills were often absolutely decisive in conflicts in remote areas.

Following World War’s 1 & 2, however, the world saw the return of mass national mobilization, and a reinforcement of the perceived uniqueness of national character. As a result, aside from long-established units like the French Foreign Legion, “mercenary work” mostly vanished completely, for about fifteen years. As the tensions of the Cold War increased, however, the decolonization of Africa initiated a series of “proxy wars”, which would define much of the following thirty years. In 1961, mercenaries returned to the world’s consciousness in force – both literally and figuratively.

In 1961, Thomas Michael Hoare (who would come to be known as “Mad Mike”), a former officer in the British Army and veteran of the Burma Campaign in the Second World War, was hired by Moïse Tshombe, the leader of the nascent breakaway province of Katanga, to form the core of an army to secure the state’s independence.

Although that effort was ultimately unsuccessful, Tshombe – in the absolutely wild world of Congolese politics (YouTube link; language warning) – was recalled to become the country’s fifth Prime Minister in mid-1964, to deal with the so-called “Simba Uprising”, a massive and extremely bloody rebellion in the vast state’s northeastern regions. Tshombe, in turn, recalled Hoare to recruit a force of mercenaries to act as a spearhead to the wavering Congolese Army. Hoare promptly recruited mercenaries through newspaper advertisements in South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and formed his unit as “5 Commando, ANC”.

 

Troops of the mercenary-led 5 Commando, ANC, during Operation ‘Dragon Rouge’, 1964. US Army Photo. Public Domain.

 

Although the force got off to a rocky start, it was quickly whipped into shape (mostly by enforcing a regimen of discipline that western armies had long ago abandoned.) Hoare quickly began rolling up the Simba’s, in a series of operations that resulted in the liberation of Stanleyville (now Kisangani). In traditional mercenary fashion, Hoare’s c.300 mercenary troops and their Congolese allies happily sacked the city in the aftermath, blasting open bank vaults and looting anything not nailed down. Atrocities – although nowhere near the levels committed by the Simba’s – were rampant. Hoare’s unit would ultimately be disbanded in 1967, after some six years of mostly-successful operations. A few other pseudo-units of (mostly White) mercenaries came and went in the Congo during the 1960’s, contributing to actions that would leave the Congo devastated into the modern day.

Mercenary activity simmered for another twenty years, with Western mercenaries – usually, but not always, former soldiers – taking part in many, possibly a majority, of the conflicts of the 1970’s and 80’s. In the aftermath of the rise and fall of “Executive Outcomes” (defunct in 1998, but recently reestablished), the prototype for the modern PMC, the United Nations passed a frankly idiotic and laughably unenforceable prohibition against mercenaries, “formally” outlawing the practice and denying them status as prisoners of war under the increasingly irrelevant Geneva Conventions…which were rarely, if ever, extended to captured mercenaries, in any case.

The September 11th, 2001 attacks are what ultimately rode to the rescue of the mercenary profession. The reason was painfully simple: With the end of the Cold War in 1991, most of the nations of the world severely trimmed their massive military establishments, leaving their capability to deploy military force critically short. As there were no national mobilizations after the attacks, and the dawning of the “Global War on Terror” mostly took the form of actions by small units of superbly (and expensively) trained special forces units, backed up by comparatively small numbers of conventional troops, the military landscape seemed to have changed.

 

A Special Forces company commander meets with village elders and members of the 1st Kandak, 209th Afghan National Army Corps April 10, 2007. Photo Credit: Specialist Daniel Love, U.S. Army. Public Domain.

 

However, this change was actually a mirage, an image warped by a declining lack of military knowledge among the general population. In fact, the cuts in manpower during the 1990’s had been so deep, across the globe, that military forces – including those of the United States – were left completely incapable of operating for any length of time in a war zone. With the various wars and military actions abroad becoming increasingly unpopular “back home”, there was no interest in trying to expand the manpower numbers of western military forces (which is an entirely different story on its own), a solution had to be found, and quickly.

This is what led to the rise of the 21st Century PMC.

Private Military Companies are a polite legal fiction, designed to hide their status as mercenaries (thus avoiding legalistic maneuvers by nations of the UN) by usually referring to them as “security contractors”, who insist that they take no active role in military actions, merely defending themselves. It’s a paper-thin dodge, and one no one with any concept of self-decency ever really believed.

As of the beginning of 2022, however, the world’s military calculus has begun to shift once again. With military actions such as the Tigray War and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, the return of mass warfare (long thought vanished as a realistic possibility) has returned, with a vengeance.

Massed wars – “main force conflicts”, if one prefers – like these in the modern era are inimical to most flavors of PMCs. Fighting insurgents armed with individual small arms and a few light weapons is one thing – contesting a battlefield against a first-tier military state is another matter, entirely. To borrow the words of author Thomas Ricks, few “contractors” within any PMC has a dog in any fight like that.

While PMC’s will continue to be employed in the short term, it is a virtual certainty that the non-state supported, independent PMC will vanish within ten years.

…Assuming, of course, that Western States can fix their broken military forces.

Let that sink in.

 

 

 

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

Lies, Damned Lies And Deceptions
13 min read

Lies, Damned Lies And Deceptions

Michael Cessna June 30, 2023

 

 

 

 

A Highly Unofficial Military Assessment of the UAP Threat

 

We need to talk. It’s time for “that” discussion.

On April 27th of 2020, the Department of Defense officially released three videos of “anomalous objects” or “unidentified aerial phenomena” (along with some even more shocking revelations in 2022). These videos, recorded as “gun camera” footage by F/A-18 fighters of the US Navy in 2004 and 2015, were leaked in 2007 and 2017, respectively, sparking off furious speculation as to what the objects recorded actually were. For its part, the Navy and the DoD admitted publicly that they had no idea what the origin or nature of these objects actually were.

While that might true for the people issuing the public statements, it is yet another bald-faced lie by the government. If that sounds harsh, or even histrionic, it isn’t – it is an objective truth, as we will show below.

Let’s talk about the videos, first.

 

 

Exotic Craft

 

While the videos may seem pretty mundane at first glance, they are most certainly not…especially when one begins to read more deeply into the situations behind the videos in question. The short answer, based on the testimony of skilled, veteran pilots – people trained in air-to-air combat – is that these craft are performing maneuvers that are not possible within the currently accepted realm of physics.

For you, the Reader, your choice is simple: you can believe the testimony of professional officers and pilots, trained to engage with hostile aircraft, or you can believe the hysterical denials of wholly unqualified rando’s on the interwebz trying to sell you a website membership, a book or a magazine subscription.

Choose one.

The other issue at hand is the number of craft being sighted. In the now-famous “Tic-Tac” video, described in detail (Spotify link) by retired US Navy Commander David Fravor on the Joe Rogan Podcast in 2020, the additional details of the story – not discussed on Rogan’s show – were laid out (YouTube link) by whistleblower Luis Elizondo in 2019. In short, radar and air defense operators aboard the USS Princeton (CG-59) reported tracking up to one hundred objects at once, over the course of the week prior to the intercept by Commander Fravor. According to the operators from the Princeton, these craft dropped down from 80,000 feet, essentially out of nowhere.

Ok…So what?

Seeing a single object doing extraordinary things can be written off as either a mistake or a hoax. Seeing a hundred such objects is neither. The United States Navy – inter-service rivalry jabs aside – is not in the habit of re-tasking extremely-expensive-to-operate aircraft to investigate hoaxes and jokes. It is simply not done in the real world.

Given that reality, why is the number of targets spotted on radar important?

Right now, if the Reader has the money, you can order a “kit car” online. In a couple of weeks, a truck will arrive with several large boxes of components, and you can assemble a fully functional and road-legal automobile in your garage. Doing so, however, does not make one an “automobile manufacturer”. The same is true for aircraft.

According to Cmdr. Fravor’s description, the object he and his flight of F/A-18’s intercepted was about the size of his fighter. Presuming – a loaded term, to be sure – that the other radar tracks were similar in size to the intercepted unknown, a number of craft equivalent in number to the entire complement of a modern aircraft carrier, appeared to descend from orbit, within the engagement envelope of an aircraft carrier battle group, essentially with no warning.

 

F-18 Hornet of the US Marine Corps. Photo Credit: Pixabay.com Public Domain.

 

Clearly, if these claims are true – refer to the above comment – the US Navy (at the operational level, at least) has no idea what these craft are, nor who they belong to.

That’s a problem.

The other problem is: Like a kit car or plane, making a one-off craft with a breakthrough propulsion system in your barn is not “manufacturing” said craft. Making a hundred – is. In the “biz”, that is called “serial production”.

So…If the United States is not making these – as the government insists that they are not – then who is? It isn’t the Russians. Nor is it the Chinese. There is simply no nation or organization on Planet Earth that can do so, because (“conspiracy theorists” aside – who have had a pretty good track record over the last few years) no one has the technology displayed by the recorded craft.

The reason this can be stated so conclusively, is that any craft with this range of performance characteristics is a dominating advance – a leap in technology so decisive, any nation on Earth that can place such craft into serial production can and will dominate every other nation on Earth. Yet…no one has done so.

And recall: the first of these videos were recorded in 2004, some nineteen years ago, at this writing.

 

 

Prepping the Battlefield

 

So – if no one on Earth is producing these craft, who is? What are they doing here? Why aren’t they landing in Washington, New York, London, Moscow or Beijing, popping their hatches and say, “Take me to your leader”?

If these sightings are neither hoaxes, drug-addled ramblings, mistaken identities, “ball lightning”, “swamp gas”, “lenticular cloud formations”, “extremely slow-moving meteors that change direction” (my personal favorite) or craft from terrestrial nations…the only other alternative is that they are from “elsewhere”. That is the presumption we will work from in this article, going forward.

“Prepping the Battlefield” is military slang for a directed and wide-reaching survey of a potential battlefield. The purpose is to identify the terrain and nature of the potential opposition, in order to refine a potential battle plan.

 

US Marines on reconnaissance exercise, 2003. USMC Photo. Public Domain.

 

Now, there are a large number of people, with…unfortunate…critical thinking skills, who will insist that any species capable of crossing the vast gulfs of space at presumably faster-than-light speeds would have no trouble soundly defeating “puny humans” like us.

People with such tangled thought processes are why there are safety warnings on Pop-Tarts.

History is replete with examples of technologically advanced groups being soundly defeated by peoples well behind them in technology, but that is not the issue here. The issue is that technology is not linear in development. The ability to build a typewriter does not equate to the ability to build a computer. Industrial or mechanical abilities can only define possible technologies; they do not guarantee the existence of technologies.

So – presuming that “aliens” are coming here from outside the solar system, and are neither invading, nor formally contacting us as the “Galactic Brotherhood”…why are they here?

Aside from a few hazy reports from so long ago that most of the witnesses are now long dead, the modern “UFO” milieu began in 1947, with the Roswell Crash.

 

Roswell Daily Record from July 9, 1947 detailing the Roswell UFO incident. Public Domain.

 

What is not often discussed, however, is the fact that Roswell was not the only incident in 1947. In fact, there were multiple incidents that year, incidents that led to the United States Air Force to launch not one, but two formal investigations of what was going on in United States airspaces because, to paraphrase the words of former UK Ministry of Defense investigator Nick Pope, countries do not fail to pay attention to uncorrelated targets in their airspace.

Not surprisingly, this pair of investigations, spanning the period from 1948 to 1951, concluded that there was nothing to see, that virtually all of the reported sightings – including those from professional and military aviators – were uniformly either mistaken identity, outright hoaxes, or any number of unusual but natural phenomena, because clouds always look like aircraft, apparently.

So adamantly and rigidly did the US Air Force adhere to this stance that as late as the late-1990’s, that organization issued no less than two separate reports on the Roswell incident directly, both of which did not simply lie and demean the general public, as well as its own officers, but that openly claimed that its own records of major projects were completely mislabeled as happening at least a decade earlier than they did.

…But – why? Why all the secrecy and deception, especially after it became painfully clear to the public that the military and the government were proverbial lying through their teeth? There are two reasons. In reverse order: first, because once you defend a secret as vigorously and for as long as the government has regarding “UFO’s”, you are going to commit more than a few crimes along the way (YouTube link).

Second was the desperate attempt to avoid widespread public panic. One basic mistake made by most “UFOlogists” in the modern day is to equate the attitudes and perceptions of today, to the late-1940’s; this is comparing apples to hydraulic jacks.

In 1947, World War 2 had only been over, in an official sense, for barely a year. In many cases, the military and political leaders at the “sharp end” of this wave of sightings had seen friends, and sometimes family members, killed, seriously wounded or possibly even severely reprimanded and forcibly retired. Additionally, the panic caused by Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” broadcast was only nine years in the past. Going on-air, nationwide, and admitting that the government had no idea what or who were responsible for the extraordinary things in the sky would have caused an immediate, worldwide panic.

Given all of the above, we return to the core question: Assuming that these craft are a) real, b) are from and operated by entities that are not native to the Earth – What are “they” doing?

 

 

An Unofficial Military Assessment

 

      • UFO’s, UAP’s, “flying saucers”, etc., are here. They are not contacting us, at least publicly. Many people – in the tens of thousands – have reported seeing the craft. Some people have claimed various types of contact with the crews of the craft.

      • Beginning from at least 1947, there has been an intense series of what can only be described as “surveillance flights” began to be observed over the Earth, primarily in the United States, but quickly spreading outside the country. These flights were concentrated in regions near military bases, government centers, “high tech” laboratories, and production and refining facilities relating to the production of both missile systems and nuclear materials.

      • It is a fact that the first known atomic weapons were detonated in 1945, barely two years prior to the wave of sightings in 1947. (NB: There were scattered reports (YouTube link) of “Foo Fighters” among Allied pilots during World War 2, indicating a possible early phase of surveillance.)

      • With clear interest in terrestrial states’ development of atomic weaponry, it is equally clear from the pattern of observable surveillance that this was a major factor of interest. The implication is that these “visitors” view such systems as a threat.

      • If that is true, the lack of outright physical attack in the 1947-1950 period makes little sense, assuming that a) the “command authority” of the reconnaissance elements conducting the surveillance viewed such developments as a threat to themselves, and b) that this alien society was significantly advanced technologically over that of post-World War 2 Earth.

 

Functionally speaking, these points are contradictory, as logical threat response would dictate that some level of direct intervention – the proverbial “landing on the Capital Mall”, if not actual military invasion – would be necessary. Indeed, in 1947-1950, the nations of the Earth were in absolutely no position to effectively resist any such action.

Or…were we?

 

 

A Dangerous Place

 

Referring back to the technology discussion above and considering – with trepidation – the “Ancient Aliens Hypothesis” [sic] in concert with this, it is entirely possible that these alien visitors did not develop weapons technologies in sync with us…And specifically, as regarding firearms.

The “Ancient Aliens Hypothesis” presumes that non-human aliens have been “visiting” Earth – “interfering” is not too strong a term for that hypothesis’ view – for thousands of years. Yet, when one looks back through verifiably ancient works of art, there are no personal weapons identifiable other than swords, spears, slings, and bows and arrows. Certain implications contained in Indian Vedas do indicate the possibility of high-technology weapons – potentially atomic weapons – there is no representation of identifiable firearm-type weapons.

 

Mesopotamian god. Pixabay.com Public Domain.

 

Eschatologically and religiously, there are non-Abrahamic scriptural and textual descriptions implying “magical” instruments being wielded by “the gods” that could be taken as various types of directed-energy weapons. Presuming that aliens did visit Earth in the remote past, a non-human alien deploying a laser-type weapon – or even a taser-equivalent – could easily be seen as “godlike”, even leaving aside “miracles” like instant communication, advanced medicine and “talking boxes” (i.e., computers). This is even more true, when handheld weapons such as simple clubs and crude swords would appear helpless in the face of aliens.

This is important, because the vast majority of credible contactee reports indicate that the alien crews are physically far smaller and weaker than the average human. This syncs up with the timing of credible reported contacts, the vast majority of which occur at night. Humans are ‘diurnal’, in nature, meaning that humans operate best in daylight and typically sleep at night, as opposed to nocturnal creatures, which are active at night, and generally sleep during the day.

The implication is that, all other things being equal, the alien ship crews as physically described would likely faire poorly in hand-to-hand/unarmed combat against an aroused and angry human who is unimpressed or unaffected by their high-tech weapons.

However, consider individual firearms. The firearm, as such, is a comparatively ‘brand new’ development in human history, being barely nine hundred years old. And modern firearms – shooting high-velocity, aerodynamically stabilized projectiles – are another matter, entirely over the simple ‘black powder’ muskets of barely two hundred years ago.

While seemingly counter-intuitive, it is entirely possible that the alien race[s] behind the sudden “visitation” campaign that came to public prominence in 1947 never developed firearms, simply because firearms are a unique development in technology, having no relation to any other relational sphere.

There are, however, other possibilities for non-engagement:

 

      1. One factor to consider is a demographic one – maybe the aliens from Zeta Reticuli have a comparatively low population, or are loathe to losing a good chunk of it in an all-out, D-Day style invasion of Earth.
      2. There may also be logistical concerns: perhaps, while being able to travel interstellar distances, the technology to do so is complicated and expensive in some way, limiting the number, capacity and/or size of ships that can be sent.
      3. Another potential factor could be a ‘near-peer’ threat closer to the alien’s home area, leaving them unable to divert sufficient forces for security reasons.

 

 

While there are numerous possible reasons for the non-engagement, at least publicly, there is another intriguing possibility: treaty violations.

Much has been made in the fringe areas of UFOlogy about the “Galactic Brotherhood” or the “Galactic Federation”, concepts dating at least to the 1950’s. More sober and mainstream UFO researchers have uniformly dismissed the very idea, but that may have been hasty.

In recent years, Dr. Joseph P. Farrell, PhD (Oxford) has presented a theory (YouTube link), based on translations (YouTube link) of the Assyrian “Epic of Ninurta”, postulating that a war was fought across the Solar System in the extremely distant past, and that the peace treaty that resulted from the end of that war is still in force at some level. If such a treaty does exist, that would almost certainly be a limiting factor, per Option #3, above.

In support of such an idea, research conducted (YouTube link) by Dr. John Brandenburg, PhD (UC Davis) indicates the distinct possibility that the planet Mars was once bombarded by nuclear weapons at a scale that make the current arsenals of Earth look like firecrackers in comparison.

 

 

“Disclosure”, at last…?

 

Assuming that the above points are even plausible – and especially if they are true – then, what actions would military and political leaders have taken in the period of 1947 and onward?

First, a dedicated study would need to be conducted, both of any recovered objects (biological, as well as technological) as well as a detailed look back through history (“classical education” used to involve far more than simply Greco-Roman writers). The behaviors of alien craft would need to studied, at far more depth than in this article, in order to try to guess at the focus of their reconnaissance, while a deception campaign would need to be deployed to try and confuse the aliens about what our level of knowledge actually was. All of this would have to be coordinated in such a manner, that the operation’s progress would be difficult to impossible to intercept.

In that last regard, the Earth establishments of 1947 had a distinct advantage over their descendants of today, since the use of human couriers carrying locked briefcases was far more common than it is, today. Such a communications method would force the aliens to physically intercept every single person with a briefcase, something they simply would not be able to do. In the modern day, virtually every communication passes through some form of digital interface – and as anyone who has had their computer hacked knows well, attacking a digital signal is almost comically easy. Hand-carried information? Vastly harder.

As the decades passed, information and technologies would be gleaned and exploited, albeit slowly. But, if the deception operations against the aliens were successful, the nations of Earth could eventually reach a level where it was not viable to actually invade or even attrit human capacity with a “main force” attack, by making direct military action too expensive to contemplate.

But.

In the world of terra firma, maintaining such a dire body of secrets means that governments and agencies are going to do a lot of highly illegal things (YouTube link) to wholly and completely innocent – even patriotic – people. The people who carry out these kinds of operations have a vested interest in keeping these secrets for as long as possible, because if the secrets are released without ironclad guarantees of legal immunity to those who willingly carried them out, those people will be lucky to spend the rest of their lives in prison, if they are not lynched, first.

Is the United States government finally admitting, “we are not alone”? Given both the official recognition of leaked gun-camera footage, and the recent “whistleblower” testimony of USAF intelligence officer David Grusch, it seems that an admission may – after over seventy years – be coming…

…Because at some point, the big secrets have to come out.

 

 

 

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

The Devil’s Egg – The Hand Grenade
7 min read

The Devil’s Egg – The Hand Grenade

Michael Cessna June 16, 2023

 

 

 

 

 

The Early Hand Grenade

 

The hand grenade has been employed in warfare, in one form or another, for over 3,500 years. Very early on after gunpowder was perfected, well before the first real “firearms”, there were hand grenades. The first gunpowder grenades were small, fired-clay pots that were filled with gunpowder, small stones and scrap metal, had a simple fuse stuck into them and were hurled at an enemy. This was an easy development, because other such pots had been filled with thickened, flammable oil, and thrown at an enemy to cause burns, ignite flammable structures, and sow confusion and fear – essentially, what we would now call “Molotov Cocktails” – as well as various type of smoke making and stink bomb-type noxious mixtures.

The main problems with these early types of grenades were many. Their fuses were highly unreliable, for starters; this made them extremely dangerous to use, as they could easily explode early…assuming that the fuse didn’t sputter out, turning the grenade into a dud. Also, the early grenades suffered from the same issues of modern grenades, as there was a long development arc to learn how to balance the weight of the grenade canister, to the weight of the gunpowder charge, to the outer case’s design, to how to store and carry the devices. And, through trial and error, it was soon found that hand grenades are very non-discriminatory – if the thrower is too close when the grenade explodes, its fragments will hit the thrower as well.

An illustration of a fragmentation bomb from the 14th Century Ming Dynasty book “Huolongjing“. Public Domain.

 

It is that last part is what kept the grenade from truly widespread use: safety issues aside, the range of hand grenades is limited by the strength of the thrower. And, given the unreliability of fuses, getting close enough to physically hurl a grenade at an enemy was “problematic” at best; cannons were simply better. Although solutions were tested in the 17th and 18th Centuries, such as the creation of “grenadier” units – men chosen for their physical size and strength, seen as being better at throwing objects long distances – were tried, both the technology and the battle tactics of the era eventually made the throwing of hand grenades a largely pointless exercise; grenadiers eventually stopped carrying hand grenades entirely, instead refocusing their size and strength into acting as elite shock troops, used to storm enemy formations and entrenchments…most people tried to not think about the casualty rates.

By the end of the 19th Century, however, technology had advanced to the point where hand grenades could be equipped with reliable fuse mechanisms, while advances in metals and explosives could make hand grenades vastly more effective.

Hand grenades (as opposed to “rifle grenades”, which will be a subject for another article) are today one of the most widespread non-firearm “force multipliers” in use throughout the world. There are numerous misconceptions about hand grenades and their uses, largely engendered by Hollywood (the “pulling the pin with your teeth” being among the most egregious) that we will strive to correct here.

When World War 1 arrived, the war soon bogged down into the stalemate of trench warfare, it was soon realized that the infantry needed an edge when assaulting a trench. In both the Allied and Triple Alliance camps, some people remembered the grenade, and set to work. The results were very different – the German “Stielhandgranate” (known as the “potato masher,” from its distinctive shape) and the British “Mill’s Bomb” became the default standards.

Mills bombs. From left to right: N°5, N°23, N°36. Photo Credit: J-L Dubois, 2007. CCA/3.0

 

As the world passed through the inter-war years, then through WW2 and Korea, more types of grenades came into use, as the utility of the devices as married to advancing technology became evident. Today, grenades are everywhere, in a multiplicity of types.

 

Hand Grenade Types

 

There are several types of grenades in use, today. All of the types have very different characteristics, and thus should be used only in the right situation. Hand grenades can only be thrown about 30 meters/yards, and typically weigh between 0.75 and 1.25 lbs. Offensive and Pyrotechnic grenades are often rigged with tripwires as booby traps, although any type of hand grenade can be technically used as an IED.

There are five general types of hand grenades in current use:

  1. Defensive
  2. Offensive
  3. Pyrotechnic
  4. Gas
  5. Special Purpose Munitions

 

 

Defensive Grenades

 

The Defensive Grenade (the “Mill’s Bomb”, referenced above) is what most people are probably thinking of when they hear the word “grenade”. This class of grenade is a high explosive, ‘fragmentation’ grenade, like a WW2 “Pineapple” grenade. These are termed “Defensive” because such grenades are designed to be used from behind “cover” (YouTube link).

A World War II re-enactor equipped with a replica Colt M1911 pistol, a pair of Mk 2 “pineapple” grenades (L) and a smoke grenade (R) on his uniform. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Nathanael Callon. Bastogne, Belgium, 2012. Public Domain.

 

These grenades explode violently, sending out a shower of fragments in all directions. In general, if you are within about 7 meters/yards of a Defensive grenade explosion, you have a better than 90% chance of becoming either a very serious casualty…or becoming very dead. If you are within 15 meters, chances are good that you will be wounded in some manner.

Russian combat F1 defensive fragmentation hand grenade. Photo Credit: Samo8383. CCA/4.0

 

In general, grenades technically have a 5 second fuse; one should expect a 3 second fuse, at best. Note, however, that when dealing with captured supplies, that anything recovered (or “dropped accidentally”) from a lone supply truck should be treated as suspect material.

 

 

Offensive Grenades

 

Offensive grenades – sometimes called “blast” or “concussion grenades” – are designed to kill/wound/stun through “blast effect” (the physical force of the blast) rather than through fragments. See the “Stielhandgranate” reference, above. The casings on these grenades are essentially vaporized by the blast (often, the casings are waterproof paper).

German soldier in Russia, about to throw a Stielhandgranate, c.1941. Author unknown. Public Domain.

 

For some reason, the Germans attached a handle to this grenade, which increased its throw-range (because the handle acts as a lever) by about 30% over the more “baseball”-like shapes, such as the Mill’s Bomb. It should be noted that WW2 Soviet RGD-33 stick grenade reversed this trend.

Soviet RGD-33 stick hand grenade. Photo Credit: MKFI, 2010. Public Domain.

 

The lethal radius of an Offensive grenade is about 3 – 4 meters, with a casualty radius of about 6 – 10 meters. Offensive and Defensive grenades are usually about the size and shape of a baseball.

 

 

Pyrotechnic Grenades

 

“Pyrotechnic” is a classification for grenades that do not cause casualties through their mechanism, but that do different things to support combat operations. In general, this means generating either smoke or illumination.

Smoke grenades produce smoke, usually in a variety of colors, the most popular being red, blue, green, yellow and white. These are useful for concealing movement, as well as signaling.

In contrast, illumination grenades use some kind of very bright-burning material, often magnesium, to light up dark places, usually well in excess of 200,000 candlepower.

Pyrotechnic grenades of all types are usually about the size and shape of a 12oz. soda can.

U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Israel Garza explains tactical concealment using M18 smoke grenades to Forces Armèes Nigeriennes partners at Nigerien Air Base 201, Niger, Dec. 15, 2018. U.S. Air Force Photo by Staff Sgt. Daniel Asselta. Public Domain.

 

 

Gas Grenades

 

Almost universally, “gas grenades” employ CS gas (2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile) as their “tear gas” agent. For those reading this who may have previously served in the armed forces and have gone through the “gas chamber”, but have never had a full-strength riot grenade used on them, the real, “tactical”, grenade is far worse.

American-made tear gas grenade utilizing CS gas, used by Egyptian riot police. Photo Credit: Sherif9282, 2011. CCA/3.0

 

Tactically, CS grenades make fantastic contact-breakers for an outnumbered patrol that may be surprised, and has to withdraw quickly. This is because gas training is almost never taken seriously by most militaries…which is why it is vital for every unit to maintain gas masks, and train regularly to “don and clear” as rapidly as possible…However, it should be noted that gas grenades are technically classified as a “chemical weapon” in some quarters, which is why

Gas grenades are generally about the size and shape of a “regulation” softball. They do not generally break into more than 8 or 9 fragments, and have only a very tiny explosive charge in the fuse, just enough to break open the grenade body and disperse the agent within.

 

 

Special Purpose Munitions

 

“Special Purpose Munitions” is a catchall term for “everything else”. This includes both “stun (or ‘flash bang’) grenades” (lots of loud noise and bright flash, but no fragmentation and little real blast effect…unless you’re hold it when it goes off), low-powered “sting-ball” grenades (low explosive charge – or even compressed gas – and the “fragments” are low-velocity rubber balls), and “demolition charges” such as Thermite (which burns hot enough to melt through most types of steel) or White Phosphorous (“WP”, also known colloquially as “Willie Pete”), which disperses particles of phosphorus over a wide area.

A Flash-Bang Explodes In The Air. Photo Credit: Hongao Xu, 2020. CCA/2.0

 

The phosphorus tends to ignite flammable objects, and inflicts severe burns on human beings, and cannot be extinguished by water, because it carries its own oxidizing compound. The only thing that can be done to remove the WP matter is to submerge the patient in water, and remove the glowing “coals” from their body with forceps or tweezers.

Fortunately – or unfortunately, depending on your personal viewpoint – the hand grenade of today is the infantryman’s personal artillery: used intelligently, the hand grenade can get at enemies hiding around corners, hidden in rooms in a building, in folds in the terrain, or behind cover – all places rifles and pistols cannot reach.

While the technology behind the hand grenade is certainly lethal, and may be upsetting to contemplate for some, it will do to remember the words of the Chinese general Sun Tzu, writing c.500BC:

 

“There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare.”

 

 

 

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

The Military Bicycle: The Idea That Won’t Die
9 min read

The Military Bicycle: The Idea That Won’t Die

Michael Cessna June 9, 2023

 

 

 

 

In the twenty-first century, few people in Western societies give much thought to bicycles. The machines are usually seen as something one gives to a child as a birthday present; or, something one buys to use for exercise in the sunshine. In some cities, and especially in Asia, bicycles are used as a primary mode of transportation, both in day to day living for activities like going to work and shopping, as well as in actual business, such as postal and product deliveries, but also as taxis for passengers, in those areas that still allow ‘rickshaw’ traffic.

Rickshaw in Japan, 1897. Credit: Rev. R. B. Peery, A.M., Ph.D. Public Domain

 

Very few people give any thought to the bicycle as a military tool, but it was – and remains – a vital component of many military operations.

The modern bicycle dates from a design created by the German Baron Karl von Drais, who invented his “Laufmaschine” (German for “running machine“) in 1817 (patented in 1818), that was called “Draisine” (English) or “draisienne” (French) by the press; this term would evolve over time into “velocipede”. Von Drais’ design was the first commercially successful two-wheeled, steerable, human-propelled machine on record.

It should be noted that it also quickly earned the nickname of “bone-shaker”, for obvious reasons.

An early ‘velocipede’. Photo of a Lithograph from 1819. Public Domain.

 

But, the design fascinated people, and progress was made in developing it. Many of these designs, such as the ‘penny-farthing’ of Englishman James Starley and Frenchman Eugène Meyer, are outright silly and fanciful, more suited to the pages of a Jules Verne novel than to any kind of useable machine. All that began to change in 1885, and first line militaries around the world began to take notice.

An example of a ‘penny-farthing’. Skoda Museum, Czech Republic 2003. CCA/3.0

 

In 1885, John Kemp Starley, James Starley’s nephew, invented what became known as the “safety bicycle”. Departing from past designs by making both wheels identical in size, employing a high-necked caster to better anchor the handlebars for steering, and incorporating the first rear-wheel chain drive on a bicycle, all combined to vastly improve the ride, handling and speed of the bicycle.

The younger Starley’s design – which was widely copied, as he had failed to patent the design – was swiftly followed by the last two major developments that would draw serious military attention to the bicycle for military use.

The first innovation was the reinvention of the pneumatic tire by John Dunlop in 1888, greatly smoothing out the ride and simplifying the design, and the patenting of the folding bicycle by African-American inventor Isaac R. Johnson, approved on October 10, 1889. Johnson’s design is also the first recognizable appearance of the “diamond frame” design that is still common over a century later.

Racing bike, showing the diamond frame. Photo Credit: Julius Kusuma. CCA/3.0

 

These two developments created an explosion of interest in cycling throughout the United States and Western Europe in the early 1890’s, actually causing an economic bubble near the turn of the century. It is at this point that the ‘Turmoil of the Century’s Turning’ happened.

The decade from 1895 to 1905 saw multiple – and massive – wars break out all over the world, from the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, to the Second Boer War (1899-1902) in southern Africa, which saw Great Britain deploy nearly 300,000 Imperial troops by steamship – to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. In the midst of these massive conflicts – a sort of “dress rehearsal” for World War 1 – there was the Spanish-American War of 1898, and the “China Relief Expedition” of 1900, with saw an allied force of British, French, Japanese, Russian, German, Austrian, Italian, and American troops marching from the Chinese city of Tientsin to rescue the diplomatic staffs in Peking (now Beijing) at the height of China’s “Boxer Rebellion” (1898-1901).

“I’ll Try, Sir!” – American troops in the relief of Peking in China on 14 August 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion. H. Charles McBarron, Jr., for the US Army. Public Domain.

 

All of these major conflicts – as large and expansive as most of the wars of the twentieth and twenty first centuries – made the various militaries realize that they needed to continue to innovate and upgrade their forces, a process that had already been happening in earnest for over thirty years.

Infantry – the core of all military forces – moves at the speed of a walking soldier, unless there are tools such as railroads, motorized vehicles or airplanes to carry them…and even then, they will still be walking. As well, the infantry have been carrying much of their own equipment for most of that time, to the tune of some 120lbs (c.54kg) on their backs. Something needed to be done to improve their mobility.

Typical US infantry load. USMC photo. Public Domain.

 

Bicycles were obviously useful to horse-drawn armed forces as messengers, as the cyclists did not need to worry about sick or lame animals; bicyclers were relatively easy to fix if something broke down. Other functions were tried out, including using bicycles to lay communication wire, create local maps by fixing clinometers to the frame, and patrol rail lines; there were even experiments to use them as ambulances and to haul machine guns around the battlefield. While not usable in the cavalry role – which should be apparent from the nature of the machine – could the infantry use it?

Italian Bersaglieri infantry with folding bicycles, c.1917. Public Domain.

 

This led to the creation of “bicycle infantry”: infantry units began to test out bicycles during long-distance rides, more or less to see what happened. This is where James Moss enters out story.

Then First Lieutenant James A. Moss, of the 25th United States Army Infantry Regiment (Colored), the storied “Buffalo Soldiers” (the United States military was still heavily segregated then) obtained permission in 1896 to take fifteen volunteers from the regiment on an experimental series of rides that culminated in a 1,900 mile ride from Missoula, Montana, to St. Louis, Missouri. Moss’ unit completed the trek – which avoided roads and paths where possible, sticking strictly to overland travel – made the trip in some 40 days, at an average of 6 miles per hour (pdf link). While the US Army was ultimately satisfied with conventional infantry units, armies outside the United States took notice of Moss’ experiments. (James Moss would go on to lead a bicycle-equipped unit in Cuba, and would later write a set of basic instruction manuals for troops and officer that form the basic framework of basic military instruction manuals today.)

25th US Infantry Bicycle Corps at Fort Missoula in 1897. Lt. James at right. Public Domain.

 

When World War One broke out, the bicycle served in all theaters. However, it was rarely deployed into direct combat, primarily due to the confines of trench warfare in Western Europe, and a simple lack of resources on the Eastern Front, in Russia. This unspectacular performance, overall, signaled the death knell of the military bicycle to the military pundits of the time.

However, other officers came out of World War One with a better understanding of bicycles and their military uses.

In the Second World War, bicycles were deployed extensively in Malaya, where Japanese intelligence officers, familiar with the Japanese Army’s use of c.50,000 bicycle infantry in the 1937 invasion of China, made sure in their pre-war scouting to note the presence of bicycle shops throughout the British-controlled colony. Likewise, Germany and Italy deployed units of bicycle infantry in rugged terrain, where horses would struggle. Many guerilla and partisan units – and the intelligence teams from the Allies who supported them – used bicycles for scouting, messages and to run electric generators to power radio systems that reported on Axis forces until the end of the war.

A German unit using a tandem bicycle power generator to power a radio station, September 1917. Public Domain.

 

Post-1946, the bicycle again faded into obscurity in most of the military world, although bicycle infantry units would continue to serve for decades in Swedish and Swiss military units. In one place, however, the military bicycle would reach its peak – in a place called Vietnam.

France, although it had been soundly beaten by Hitler’s Germany in 1940, was desperate to retain its colonial empire. When French forces returned to Indochina in September of 1945, the Vietnamese were less than impressed. Where French troops had capitulated to Japanese troops more or less without firing a shot, the resistance in Indochina had been led by native Vietnamese, and mostly by the Communist Party led by Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap (who were supported (pdf link) by the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the war). After French forces seized control of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) by force in September of 1945, the Communists retreated into the mountains and countryside, vowing to continue their war, now framed as a war of independence from France. This brought about the “cargo bike”.

The Communist forces, known as the ‘Viet Minh’, waged a brutal guerilla campaign in the rural areas of the country, causing steady and damaging casualties to French forces. However, the Viet Minh faced all the same challenges as a pre-WW2 non-motorized army, but with the added problem that suitable pack animals were few in number, and human porters could only carry a tiny amount of the supplies needed.

Viet Minh mechanics took the commonly-available bicycle, and began modifying it, resulting in a vehicle that could reliably carry up to 400lbs (c.181kg) at the pace of a walking adult human. While not the equal of a cargo truck or a boat, this was a far better solution. And it very shortly made its effects known.

Vietnamese army bike – Vietnam War Museum in Hanoi. Photo credit: Przemek P, 2010. CCA/3.0

 

In 1954, Viet Minh forces surrounded and destroyed the cream of the French Army in Indochina, at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. France deployed its best units, numbering over 12,000 troops, in a badly thought out plan to bring the Viet Minh to battle in order to destroy them. At the extreme range of supply and support aircraft, the French troops found themselves over-extended and cut off, as French ground forces could not break through to reach them. The Viet Minh surrounded the town the French had fortified, and fought a nightmarish siege for nearly two months. Eventually, some 11,000 French troops would surrender; nearly 8,000 would die in a march to prison camps that rivaled the Bataan Death March in its brutality. The result was France agreeing to Vietnamese independence, surrendering their Indochina colonies in whole, which would lead to yet another war…but that is another story.

Viet Minh troops plant their flag over the captured French headquarters at Dien Bien Phu, May 7, 1954. Photo credit: Roman Karmen. Public Domain.

 

One of the primary reasons the Viet Minh were able to crush the French was their ability to move supplies, and the ‘cargo bicycle’ was at the heart of the Vietnamese logistical triumph. But again, the military use of the bicycle receded into seeming obscurity, despite its next successful showing against American forces in Vietnam…

…And yet – the bicycle remains in use as a military tool by guerilla and insurgent forces around the world. Why?

Within its obvious limits, the military facts of the bicycle of today remain unchanged from those same facts discovered by James Moss and his unit of Buffalo Soldiers in 1896: the bicycle requires no fuel, beyond the food required for its operator; it moves essentially silently, at a constant speed of up to twelve miles per hour; it raises no dust in its passing; it can operate in most weather and terrain conditions; and it can be used to power various systems, from air circulation fans to electric generators, and does so with no heat output, again, aside from the signature produced by the operator.

Three Swedish bicycle infanterists armed with m/45 SMGs and Bantam anti-tank missiles, Sweden, 1965. Public Domain

 

Given the ludicrous progress of the US Army’s new Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV), it might be time for regular militaries to think about “going old school”.

 

 

 

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

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