Politics

Rumors of…Something

Michael Cessna May 30, 2023

On May 21 of 2023, CBS news released a story concerning the Senate Sergeant at Arms, retired US Army LtGen Karen Gibson, offering satellite telephones (pdf link) to the 100 members of the United States Senate, as an “enhanced security measure.” The wording in the wider reporting on this occurrence is odd, with at least one outlet opining that the ‘offer’ of the devices “…has been extended to all 100 senators…”.

*Karen Gibson, Sergeant At Arms of the United States Senate. Official photograph. Source: US Senate. Public Domain.*

Odd…So – Not all Senators were offered the phones initially? Why? It’s not like the Houses of Congress have ever been shy with budgetary items for themselves.

Moving on.

While the public reason for issuing Senators with these devices is to “enhance security” in the wake of threats to members of Congress – citing the January 6, 2021 protests and the recent attack on the husband of former house Speaker Nancy Pelosi – the deeper picture is not so straightforward.

“Continuity of Government Operations” (or “COGOPS”) are operations, protective measures and security procedures designed to maintain government functions in the face of some catastrophic event. An artifact of the Cold War, the idea behind ‘continuity of government’ came from the very real threat that a Soviet surprise nuclear strike could destroy the entirety of the United States’ elected leadership in a single, Pearl Harbor-like strike. Numerous measures and programs were instituted (the Congressional bunker at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia among them), and one of the many was a monitoring system that can and does track the locations of all members of Congress.

The problem with a cell phone-based tracking system is that, in the event of major damage being done to the cell tower network in a region (by whatever mechanism), your personal cell phone will not be able to connect to the network. While the cell phone identification numbers of the members of the “National Command Authority” (the President, Vice President and the President’s Cabinet), the Supreme Court and both Houses of Congress all have priority access to the nation’s cellular telephone network in case of a “disruptive event,” that priority access is worthless if there is no network to connect to.

In contrast, a satellite phone network works by connecting a phone directly to the satellite communications network. This network is largely immune – at least in theory – from being significantly damaged by most conceivable “disruptive events.” It also allows a much cleaner and clearer signal when trying to locate a particular person.

The notion that members of Congress require satellite phones for their personal and family security is, to be blunt, laughable to the point of being offensive.

There are very few things could potentially impact the cell grid to the point of requiring satellite phones as a substitute emergency communications device. We’ll briefly look at a few of those possibilities below.

The preeminent threat of this type, as of mid-2023, is a large scale nuclear attack on the United States, an idea that would have been unheard of barely ten years ago. This would obviously have a vast and destructive impact on the nation as a whole, but would particularly impact the telephone system. The primary vectors of a nuclear-induced incident would include electromagnetic pulses (EMP) critically damaging unprotected and unhardened points within the network across a wide area.

But there are other possibilities, many of which may seem to approach a level of hysterical hyperbole.

The notion of a “supervolcano” such as Yellowstone, erupting is a certainly extremely remote as a possibility…but not an impossible one. Similarly, a smaller volcanic eruption at – for example – the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, has the potential (YouTube link) to generate a tsunami that would make the tsunamis in the Indian Ocean in 2004 (YouTube link) or the 2011 event at Fukushima, Japan (YouTube link) look tiny in comparison.

An even more remote – but still very real – potential avenue of disruption would be a cometary or meteoric impact. The Earth is being continually bombarded by meteors; they can be seen as “shooting stars” in the night sky. The vast majority of these objects never actually reach the Earth’s surface, burning away to vapor long before coming close to the surface…some, like the 1908 Tunguska Event, are another matter entirely.

However, an event such as the Burckle Impact Event – which occurred, in geological and astronomical terms, only yesterday – or a smaller-scale version of the 1994 impact of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 into Jupiter (just on a smaller, Earth-sized scale) would obviously damage the systems of the world to the extent that the survivors may well be reduced to barbarism…but that is not an option that any government – and especially that of the United States – is willing to entertain. And mitigating that fall – no matter how remote a possibility the causative event may be – requires some level of a functioning government, which as always, is rooted in those placed in authority.

*Meteor impact; artist concept. Credit: Don Davis, 1991, NASA.*

It is perfectly acceptable to detest those in government – especially when they deserve it – but it also must be acknowledged that any civilization above the most basic level requires some form of leadership in order to function. What you, the Reader, should be doing, is figuring out your own strategy to get through what may well be coming.

…Because governments rarely update their COGOPS in public.

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

Durham Report Confirms Obama, Biden, Clinton Behind Weaponization of FISA Court to Target Trump

Paul Collier May 19, 2023

The fake news report that former President Donald J Trump was colluding with the Russians to win the 2016 election was once again exposed, this time by the Durham Report, which admits that the top leadership of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) colluded with the FBI and Justice Department to attempt to take out their political opponent, Trump. Everyone, from Obama to Biden to Hillary Clinton (who funded the initial bogus investigation that created the damnable lie that is the Steele Dossier, which was used to justify this lawfare assault on American liberty) knew the evidence was fraudulent, but pushed forward with their investigation afterwards.

The crime continued after Trump won the election, with DNC operatives from Pelosi to Schumer using U.S. House and Senate power to attempt to remove a sitting President from office using the well-known fake “facts” that they used to justify impeaching Trump not once but twice. The Durham report admits that a coup took place, one orchestrated by the seditious DNC, but fails to recommend criminal charges.

Pakistan In Crisis – A Sudden Upset

Michael Cessna May 12, 2023

“…While economics is a gun, politics is knowing when to pull the trigger…” – Caspian Report

In April of 2022, Imran Khan – the highly popular, 70-year old former international cricket player who had risen to the leadership of Pakistan, a state with one of the largest Muslim populations in the world, on a broadly “Populist” style platform – was removed from office as Prime Minister by a no-confidence vote, the first time such an action had happened in Pakistan’s history.

The no-confidence vote that led to Khan’s removal, on its own, had shady origins, and potential foreign interference. On March 27, 2022, following the first attempt at a no-confidence vote in Parliament had been dismissed, Khan pointedly accused the Biden Administration of interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs, in an affair now known as “Lettergate”, in which Khan stated publicly that he had received a letter via a diplomatic cable from Pakistan’s embassy in the United States, that he claimed threatened “horrific consequences” for Pakistan, if Khan was not removed as Prime Minister; Khan’s government reacted to the cable with a strongly-worded demarche. Khan was blocked from releasing the actual details of the cable in question by Pakistan’s Official Secrets Act of 1923, but stated that he was prepared to show the diplomatic cable to the Chief Justice of Pakistan.

The possible reasons for such interference in Pakistani affairs are not difficult to understand. When Khan became Prime Minister in 2018, he immediately launched a vigorous campaign to start tackling the serious economic issues (YouTube link) Pakistan faced, cutting military spending, forging a realistic payment plan to address the country’s balance of payments to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), committing the country to a renewable energy strategy, and then had to navigate the economic disaster brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the same time, however, Khan angered the Biden Administration by steadfastly refusing to distance himself from Russian leader Vladimir Putin, even visiting the Russian Leader in Moscow the day Russia formally invaded Ukraine.

*Vladimir Putin (R) with Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan (L), 24 February, 2022. Photo credit: www.kremlin.ru, CCA/4.0.*

But Khan did not stop there.

After attempting to smooth relations with India, Khan pushed forward with the country’s already strong ties to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which would create an economic transportation corridor (the CPEC) from the nation’s shared border in the Pakistani portion of the disputed Kashmir region, to the Indian Ocean port of Gwadar.

*Gwadar Port, Pakistan. Undated photo. CCA/3.0*

Notably, CPEC was promptly placed on the chopping block by Khan’s replacement as Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, in August of 2022.

For its part, the Biden Administration – reeling from the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in August of 2021 – was clearly smarting from its demonstrated weaknesses at all levels of governance, and needed to do something to reinvigorate its failing image. Much like the so-called “Maidan Revolution” of 2014, the removal of Khan from power immediately began to decouple Pakistan from the PRC’s orbit, and threatens the Communist nation’s “Belt & Road Initiative”.

Major General Chris Donahue, commander of the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division, XVIII Airborne Corps, boards a C-17 cargo plane at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, 29 August 2021, becoming the last US soldier to leave Afghanistan. Photo by Jack Holt, US Central Command. Public Domain.

But – for the average American…so what? Why should American’s care about all of this maneuvering in a foreign country many American’s know or care very much about?

The reason the average American needs to pay attention is that the political crisis sparked in Pakistan by Khan’s removal has erupted again, with disastrous results.

Khan – who refused to go away quietly, leading protests in an attempt to hold a special election that would likely return him to power if it were held – appeared at the Islamabad High Court on 9 May 2023 to address corruption charges. After voluntarily appearing at the court, and while being processed, the courthouse was stormed by a unit of the Pakistan Rangers, a Federal paramilitary police force operating under orders from the National Accountability Bureau, who bizarrely arrested Khan, dragging him out of the courthouse, to an undisclosed location.

In the aftermath of this, large and violent protests and rioting erupted across the nation, with angry mobs attempting to storm both regional military headquarters, as well as the local headquarters of the ISI, the Pakistani version of the CIA. Despite calls for direct military force to be used to suppress the rioting, a wide array of military commanders in the nation refused, point-blank, to apply such force. This has led to an alarmingly confusing situation, including the removal of some military commanders.

This has raised alarming concerns as to who is actually in charge of Pakistan’s armed forces, as the raid to arrest Khan seems to have come at the orders of the Chief of Army Staff, General Asim Munir, with the support of Prime Minister Sharif. (The position of “Chief of Army Staff” is the Pakistani equivalent to the US Army’s “Chief of Staff” position.)

On 11 May, the Pakistani Supreme Court ruled Khan’s arrest illegal, and ordered his immediate release. As this article goes to press, Khan has been released, and cannot be rearrested on the same charges until at least May 17…

…But, again – why should this matter to Americans?

Simple: Pakistan is not Iraq; nor is it Sudan, Bolivia or Myanmar. Pakistan is different, because Pakistan is a nuclear-armed nation…a nation that shares a land border with another nuclear-armed state, with whom it has already fought several wars. And, although relations had begun to improve while Khan was in office, those have noticeably cooled since his replacement.

Pakistan has had a shaky internal situation for decades, and beginning in 2004, the internal situation deteriorated into an actual insurgency by multiple groups, some focused on religion, like the “Pakistani Taliban”, al-Qaeda and ISIL, but also inflaming and rejuvenating supporters of an independent Balochistan.

With the sudden deterioration of the situation in a nation of nearly 248 million people, some 96.5% of whom are Muslim, the world is now facing the distinct possibility of a multi-sided civil war in a nuclear-armed state, that could lead to the reality of nuclear terrorism, potentially including actual nuclear war, something long believed to have been buried, as many of the factions now swirling in Pakistan would have no issue with loosing nuclear fire onto India, if they were to secure nuclear weapons, which would naturally provoke an immediate response.

While no “smoking gun” evidence has been released that shows conclusive interference by the Biden Administration in Pakistan’s internal affairs, the possibility cannot be dismissed. The Biden Administration has demonstrated absolutely irrational and even self-destructive behavior since assuming power in the United States…and the results of those irrational and self-destructive behaviors are now coming home to roost.

If you’re not worried – you need to catch up.

DNC Supports Tlaib’s Anti-Jewish Event in Capitol

Paul Collier May 12, 2023

The DNC racists are at it again. The party of anti-racism that bases its entire claim to power on the lie that white people invented evil so everything they “created” should be destroyed (including the American Republic, Rule of Law, Due Process, and Integrity) is at it again displaying their overt racism, this time attacking the very right of Israel to exist.

The Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), stopped antisemite and DNC darling Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) from holding a conference that condemns Israel’s existence. It called the founding of Israel a catastrophe and seeks to paint Israel as an apartheid terror state that should be wiped off the face of the plant.

The purpose of the event is to stir up hatred against the nation of Israel and Jews in general, though their surface purpose is stated as being, “To uplift the experiences of Palestinians who underwent the Nakba, and educate Members of Congress and their staff about this history and the ongoing Nakba to which Israel continues to subject Palestinians, we’ve partnered together to host this congressional and community educational event, to be followed immediately afterward by dinner.”

Nakba means catastrophe and is identified as the founding of Israel.

The Hitler-aligned representative has been spewing antisemitic dog whistles since becoming a congressmember, in addition to once declaring the Constitution is just a white supremacist construct (making her an anti-American revolutionary openly serving in the U.S. government, which makes her a typical Democrat).

The Republican Jewish Coalition (The Democrat version hates the Jews almost as much as Tlaib does) said of the event that it was a coalition of antisemitic leaders of the DNC, also noting of the racist Tlaib, “Rashida Tlaib, who has repeatedly used antisemitic tropes, is hosting an event to attack Israel with groups that defend terrorism and support the antisemitic BDS movement.”

It should be noted that a DNC-controlled House would not only allow the violent event to take place, they’d call you racist for rejecting it. Also, the Senate Democrats and Socialist Bernie Sanders rescued Tlaib’s violently racist event, giving her a platform to spew her anti-American, anti-Jewish ideology with the full approval of the Democrat Party, the party of antisemites and seditionists.

Thanks to the DNC providing legitimization of the genocidal anti-semitic movement this seditious woman represents, she is now using the RNC’s efforts to stop this terrorist action in the halls of congres from taking place to raise campaign funds.

She wrote in a fundraiser to her anti-American constituency, “In an attempt to suppress the truth and silence Palestinian voices, McCarthy tried to stop the event by blocking the use of the auditorium it was planned for. But he failed to silence those voices or their truth, as the event proceeded in a different location with a packed, standing-room-only audience.”

“The U.S. government enables and perpetuates the Israeli government’s war crimes and massacres with U.S.-made weapons and billions in unconditional funding.”

Tlaib added that giving her money helpls her “stand up to U.S. and Israeli attempts to silence and erase Palestinians.” Methinks a little projecting is going here, with Tlaib and her coalition of hate wanting to eliminate Israel and the Jewish people.

Lawsuit Alleges Biden Government Colluding with Big Tech to Violate First Amendment

Freedomist Editor May 9, 2023

A lawsuit filed this past month alleges members of the leftist organizations Election Integrity Partnership and Virality Project colluded with government officials to pressure Big Tech to censor Americans’ speech that did not meet with the approved leftist narrative these anti-American organizations are marketing. The founder of The Gateway Pundit, Jim Hoft, and the co-director of Health Freedom Louisiana, Jill Hines are suing the companies for their use of government agents to pressure Big Tech to censor their speech that challenged the narratives these far-left activist organizations favor, that the mass mailer election of 2020 was totally legitimate and the Covid-19 vaccine is completely safe and effective. GO DEEPER

GOP Bill Would Stop Biden’s Plan to Use the Government to Get Out the DNC Vote

Freedomist Editor May 9, 2023

Efforts by the Biden administration to weaponize the government to become a DNC outreach resource are being challenged by a bill introduced in the U.S. House by Representative Claudia Tenney (R-NY) and the Senate by Senator Ted Budd (R-N.C.). The bill, called the “Promoting Free and Fair Elections Act” aims to stop Federal agencies from working with non-governmental organizations to conduct voter registration drives or voter mobilization activities. The bill is in response to the Biden order to federal agencies to “promote voter registration and voter participation (by) soliciting and facilitating approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations and state officials to provide voter registration services on agency premises.”

As The Wheel Turns – Modern Ersatz Armies

Michael Cessna April 28, 2023

Previously here, we have reported on various aspects of warfare, both ancient and modern. The tools change all the time. Sometimes, the specific techniques to employ that technology changes, the better to employ the new sets of hardware that come out of inventor’s workshops and laboratories. But the basic rules, as the saying goes, do not change over time.

The proverbial “rag-tag band of rebels” – or revolutionaries, or guerrillas, as the reader prefers – have been a feature of warfare from the very beginning. In fact, a strong argument could be made that such groups were the very first “fighting forces” to appear on the battlefield; “organization” is the basic requirement for “organized warfare,” and that organization had to start somewhere.

But that is lost in the mists of eons.

Organized warfare, as such, waxes and wanes. The Mediterranean Basin and the European continent – south of the Danube, west of the Rhine, and north of Africa’s Mediterranean coast, and even extending into the Black Sea – was dominated by Rome and its army. This was, for the time, the best organized, regularly supplied and funded army in recorded history; the only real comparisons known are the armies of Sargon the Great and Alexander of Macedon…and yet, Rome “collapsed” (at least in Western Europe) in the 5^th Century; the final destruction of Rome in the east – what is now better known as “Byzantium” – would take another thousand years.

That Rome collapsed (both times) was not the fault of either form of its armies (that’s a long discussion). There were numerous factors involved in both series’ of collapses; in both cases, the ultimate failures of the Roman armies were merely the final acts. Indeed, it is no stretch of the imagination to say that the highly professional, disciplined and minutely organized Roman and Byzantine armies are what kept their respective states alive as long as they did.

Infantry wins wars, and the more professional your infantry, the faster and more decisively you win, all other things being equal. But, continuing with this historical digression, the battle of Adrianople in 378AD ushered in a perception of the superiority of mounted horse cavalry over professional infantry; whatever the actual historical truth of the battle (the arguments of Oman and Burns aside), the perception held true, and those ideas would lead directly to the rise of the mounted knight as the main military component of the medieval period. Horse-using elites were certainly not new, but they were never truly decisive, no matter how diverse the mercantile and military (YouTube link) trade networks were.

*Full-size replica of the Uluburun shipwreck, St. Peter’s castle, Bodrum, Turkey, 2004. Photo credit: Georges Jansoone. CCA/3.0*

In the aftermath of those Roman collapses, warfare reverted to a more localized and tribal form of organization. Even in the Levant, where the First Caliphate and the later Ottoman Sultanate largely ruled from the 7^th Century onwards, government regulation and control were not what they had been under either Roman or Persian rule. Warfare was largely thrown back at least a thousand years, each time.

Technology played a large part in this seesaw. Spears, swords, bows and arrows, and metal armor are all relatively easy for a blacksmith to turn out. As long as armies were small, and some form of “hard tack” (to use the modern term) was set back in a castle of some sort, small armies could maneuver cross-country without too much trouble. Bands of what we would now call “guerrillas” could also maneuver easily, as they generally operated in their native areas, and knew where watering holes and useful resources were located.

The advent of gunpowder changed all of this, however. While developed in Song Dynasty China in the 9^th Century AD (on the European calendar), the first use of the formula as a weapon dates to the early 10^th Century, in use against Mongol tribes. Once gunpowder became dominant as an infantry weapon in Europe, in the late 15^th to the early 16^th centuries, the scales that had been tipping slowly back towards infantry dominance slammed down decisively on the infantry’s side: now, as gunpowder weaponry rapidly progressed from the matchlock through to the flintlock, it became comparatively cheap and easy to recruit and train infantry en masse to a level sufficient to return cavalry to their nominal roles of scouting and decisive shock action.

*Vive l’Empereur!, 1891. Édouard Detaille (1848–1912). Charge of the 4th Hussars at the battle of Friedland, 14 June 1807. Public Domain*

But, that tipping of the scales had consequences, as gunmaking was a very specialized skill, as its requirements were very different from making simple metal objects like blades or horseshoes.

Likewise, the advent of motor vehicles changed the factors of “battle calculus” yet again, by replacing the horse with the motor engine. While the automobile has a host of limitations, those drawbacks are minimal in comparison to those of horse cavalry…

Which brings us, at last, to our core topic: “Ersatz Armies.”

As noted above, “irregular” forces – rebels, guerrillas, etc – have frequently struggled to compete with better-organized and supported “regular” armies. Such groups have to improvise methods of supplying not simply weapons, but food, medicines and other basic needs of a military force. In the past, these services and products were generally stolen from an enemy government, or were supplied directly by a foreign government, supporting the guerrillas. More infrequently than is generally assumed, a guerrilla force might purchase arms from “black market” arms dealers; in those cases, the guerrilla forces were teetering dangerously on the edge of being a criminal gang, more than a “heroic band of fighters for the people.”

But, with the sudden and rapid anarchy taking place in Sudan, another factor has once again reared its head: a deliberately created ersatz army.

In 2003, the Sudanese government in Khartoum recruited a group of tribal militias that coalesced into what is now known as the “Janjaweed”. This grouping of tribal militias went on to commit a host of terrible crimes, encompassing all the worst categories of criminal activities. So bad were these events, both the Sudanese dictator of the time, as well as one identifiable leader of the group, have been formally indicted for war crimes.

In the aftermath of the worst parts of the Darfur Conflict, the Janjaweed was not paid off and stood down by the government of Omar al Bashir – instead, it was expanded, given better training and weapons, had its name changed to the “Rapid Support Force” (RSF) (YouTube link) and was then used a force of “shock troops” to fight in regional wars, such as Libya and Yemen, where they proved willing to do the dirty jobs no self-respecting and –disciplined military would touch.

In effect, al Bashir created his own version of Adolf Hitler’s SA or SS – a powerful armed force, separate from the regular military, willing to do whatever was asked of them. Unlike Hitler, however, al Bashir lost control of his non-Army force; this resulted in the RSF collaborating with the regular Sudanese military to remove him from power. And, as these things almost always do, this resulted in a falling out among thieves, leading to the current disaster in the country.

What makes the RSF different from similar groups in the past, however, is its size and equipment. The RSF is estimated to number around 100,000 men (YouTube link), and have been equipped comparatively cheaply, with the most basic of infantry weapons and gear, as well as the ubiquitous “technical” vehicles. A hundred thousand troops, even if poorly trained, is nothing to scoff at, even if you intend to engage them directly.

Sudan is not unique: while other states may not have armed groups to the extent of the RSF, it is a far cheaper thing to do, than most people think…But these types of forces – with little or no control, nor moral training, but with effective weapons and training – are growing in number.

Ponder that, the next time you hear about drug cartel armies on the south side of the Rio Grande (YouTube link).

Fox News Unmasks Itself in Tucker Carlson Cancellation

Paul Collier April 25, 2023

FOX NEWS CANCELS SELF AFTER CANCELLING TUCKER CARLSON – Out of the blue, Fox News announced that the legendary top ratings news host, Tucker Carlson, would no longer be working for the company, effective immediately. The company claimed the departure was mutual. Immediately after the ouster #BoycottFox trended on Twitter and stocks lost $1 billion in value.

Anonymous sources are saying the firing was related to a discrimination lawsuit by a former booking producer targeting, in part, Tucker Carlson’s team. Murdoch allegedly was also not happy of Carlson’s coverage of the January 6^th protests where Tucker alleged the FBI was an active instigator in inciting violence.

Tucker was in the midst of negotiating for a contract extension that was earmarked for 2029 at roughly $20 million a year, while Murdock is rumored to be shopping Fox News to a buyer. The Daily Mail is reporting an anonymous Fox News source telling them, ‘Tucker still hasn’t been given any indication of why he was taken off the air. His producer Justin Wells was fired too. We believe Rupert wants to sell the company and it’s harder to find an institutional buyer with Tucker as the main star. Tucker gone makes it more of an appealing media company to buy.’

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said of the ouster, “Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News. Couldn’t have happened to a better guy. What I will say, though, is, while I’m very glad that the person that is arguably responsible for the — some of the largest — driving some of the most amounts of death threats, violent threats not just to my office, but to plenty of people across the country, I also kind of feel like I’m waiting for the cut scene at the end of a Marvel movie after all the credits have rolled, and then you see, like, the villain’s hand re-emerge out to grip over like the end of the building or something. But de-platforming works and it is important and — there you go. Good things can happen.”

A sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives openly celebrates the notion of “deplatforming” members of the press for having non-DNC-approved thoughts, while accusing Tucker of inciting violence, which she herself was ACTUALLY doing in the violent rhetoric (particularly so because she is a member of the government) she openly shared on multiple social media platforms. She wants more violence as a means of political persuasion, as is the nature of leftism at its core.

Just before the cancellation, AOC said this about Tucker and Fox News, further violent rhetoric claiming to be against the very thing she is accusing others of:

“I believe that when it comes to broadcast television, like Fox News, these are subject to federal law, federal regulation in terms of what’s allowed on air and what isn’t.”

“When you look at what Tucker Carlson and some of these other folks on Fox do, it is very, very clearly incitement of violence — very clearly incitement of violence. And that is the line that we have to be willing to contend with.”

Donald Trump came out in support of Tucker, and expressed shock at the sudden departure. He said, “I’m surprised. He’s a very good person and a very good man, and very talented. I think Tucker’s been terrific, especially over the last year or so.”

Former Fox News Host Meghan Kelly called the decision “a terrible move.” She said Fox News made a “massive misjudgment of what their audience wants.”

On Meghan Kelly’s Sirius XM Podcast, she said, “This is a terrible move by Fox, and it’s a great thing for Tucker Carlson. I don’t know what drove Fox News to make this decision, and it was clearly Fox News’s decision because they’re not letting him say goodbye. That’s my supposition. That’s not inside knowledge.”

El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele felt compelled to comment on Carlson’s ouster, suggesting there would be a smear campaign against Carlson and further attempts to censor the man, no matter where he goes, since “they” couldn’t kill him, though they would if they didn’t fear the public outcry.

The former lead man in the failed Lincoln Project, George Conway, parroted the DNC-NPC talking points, reducing anyone not in their orthodoxy as being unthinking, uncritical, while claiming to be for diversity in the middle of a celebration of cancelling a news host for having dangerous views.

Conway stated on The Morning Joe Show, where Americans go to die, ”That’s the appeal of him to the MAGA base. Because they want to, they want to make things simpler for themselves. They don’t want to think for themselves. Democracy is complicated. Democracy is messy. Democracy is diversity. We don’t like that, these people who watch Fox News. And Tucker appeals to that. Not just the authoritarian streak, but also, you know, the great replacement theory. He wants to gin up, gin up the right, you know, with racism.”

Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson is probably getting approached by every conservative news outlet, and, if they have the money for it, Rumble as well. Imagine Tucker exclusively on Rumble. So far, Tucker has chosen to remain silent save for a change to his Twitter profile that including adding preferred pronouns of she/her with a Ukrainian flag to boot.

If you go to his official website, Tuckercarlson.com, you get an opportunity “to become a tuckercalrson.com insider” by texting Tucker to 44055. If you do, then you can “Find out what tucker’s up to next.”

Conflict Update – Sudan Unravels, As Its Crows Come Home To Roost

Michael Cessna April 21, 2023

Conflict monitoring is an odd field: You try to monitor the world, and eventually specialize out of necessity. The recent descent into chaos in Sudan, Africa’s third-largest nation by size, is no different.

Beginning on April 15^th, a series of armed clashes began in Khartoum, the capital of the African nation. The opposing sides are the regular Sudanese Army, and a paramilitary force called the “Rapid Support Force (RSF)“. The two forces had united in 2019 to oust Omar al-Bashir, the country’s long-time dictator, in a military coup d’etat; two years later, in 2021, the two parties staged another coup to derail Sudan’s return to a democratically elected government.

The situation has deteriorated, in barely a single week, to the point that the United States and other powers (YouTube link) are rapidly deploying forces to Camp Lemonnier, located in the state of Djibouti, on the Red Sea coast, in preparation for a possible evacuation of various embassy’s and foreign nationals – a daunting prospect, given that Khartoum’s international airport is not currently usable, and because the capital city is nearly 800 miles inland.

The source of the current “lover’s quarrel” is the Regular Army dragging its feet over formally integrating the RSF into its force structure, as well as delays in payroll to the paramilitary force, with its leadership claiming that they want to return al-Bashir to power.

Who are the RSF?

In 2003, fighting erupted in Western Sudan as non-Arab (i.e., “black African”) tribes united against the al-Bashir government’s continued campaign of oppression and discrimination against them. The result was the Darfur War (sometimes called the “Land Cruiser War” because of the extensive used of ‘technicals’), a genocidal conflict that killed hundreds of thousands, and created between two and three million refugees.

*Map of Darfur within Sudan, July 2011. CCA/3.0*

The RSF began life as the so-called “Janjaweed”, a Sudanese Arab tribal militia assembled by al-Bashir’s government to suppress the Black African inhabitants of the region. Supporting this, were the remnants of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s “Islamic Legion”, an openly racist and pan-Arab organization intended to unite the Saharan region by force.

As the Darfur war reached a stalemate (that would ultimately result in a nominal ceasefire agreement in 2020), al-Bashir’s government began using a now-experienced and capable Janjaweed – under their commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – as extra muscle throughout the region, especially in places where the dirtiest of atrocities were needed.

Oozing to life in 2013 as an outgrowth of the Janjaweed, the RSF was quickly used by al-Bashir as a kind of “expeditionary force”, sending significant numbers of troops into both Chad and Libya (in the latter case, supporting the Libyan National Army of Khalifa Haftar), and a stunning 40,000-strong corps-sized unit into Yemen to fight against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The main difference between the RSF and the Janjaweed, is in the level of formal support and arms provided to them by the Sudanese government, with uniform weapons and vehicles.

The RSF is not simply large, with over 100,000 men under arms, but is also highly mobile, with an estimated 10,000 ‘technical’ trucks (YouTube link)…and it has developed an impressive economic infrastructure to support itself, thanks to the business chops of its leader and his family.

Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as “Hemedti“, locally), who dropped out of primary school in 3^rd grade to work to support his family, started out as a well-respected camel herder in the Darfur region. As he positioned himself as the chief commander of first the Janjaweed, and then the RSF, he used the forces loyal to him to help is company, Al Junaid, to corner the gold mining industry within Sudan, as well as a host of other industries, ultimately controlling up to 40% of Sudan’s exports.

And, like most warlords with sufficient resources, he has made life well for his loyalists in the RSF, who now follow his orders without question, helped by him polishing his speaking skills. This, along with a “charm campaign” managed by Western public relations firms to improve Hemedti’s image, has combined to form a kind of “mercenary micro-state” of a type that is highly unusual in the modern day…In many ways, the RSF is the nightmare scenario that world security analysts have been dreading since the rise of the “corporate terror group” model, when al Qaeda appeared in the late-1990’s.

In a very real sense, the leader of the regular Sudanese armed forces and Hemedti’s rival in the power struggle, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, have created a monster they can no longer control.

But, ultimately…who cares? Why should you care?

The current fighting in Sudan will almost certainly determine who will be the next ruler of the nation. As well, major powers – both global powers, and up-and-coming regional states seeking to expand their influence – are all jockeying for position, and that kind of jockeying can swiftly lead to an expanding conflict.

And all of this is happening literally on the banks of the Nile, Africa’s ancient major river system. No matter who wins this conflict, this will pose significant issues to Egypt and its population of over 100 million, already alarmed over Ethiopia’s dam building project that seriously threatens the downstream ecology and climate of the region.

Lastly, is the serious potential for major-power involvement, up to and including combat: Russia’s Wagner Group mercenary company has significant ties to the RSF, and in the region, generally. The Wagner Group has been reportedly guarding some gold mining areas for the central government since at least 2019, with speculation that Wagner-defended gold is being using used to fund Russia’s war in Ukraine. Numerous foreign corporations have major investments throughout the region, and the expansion of the “private military company” market in the last twenty-five years means that there is little incentive to not hire lots of ex-military guns to guard their investments.

And, looming over the regular Western military commands’ psyches is the shadow of 1993’s “Battle of Mogadishu”, but on a far larger scale, with far fewer advantages for the Western powers.

The future does not look sunny.

Despite Their Denial, Biden Really Did Order the FBI Raid on Mar-a-Lago

Paul Collier April 17, 2023

BIDEN APPARATCHIK DENIES REVELATION BIDEN ORDERED TRUMP MAR-A-LAGO RAID – After w watchdog group exposed Mass Mailer President Joe Biden’s direct involvement in the FBI raid of his political rival, Donald Trump over unsubstantiated claims that Trump was mishandling Top Secret Documents (while ignoring actual law violations by the Mass Mailer President and his criminal thug family), an apparatchik for the DNC-CCP in the form of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARR) is pushing back on the claim by misrepresenting law.

America First Legal, who exposed the seditious act by the anti-American regime’s head puppet, released a statement in response to the ill-formed defense of the President, “NARA’s allegations belie a misunderstanding of its statutory role in providing access to records under the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and indicate a belief that it was not used by the Biden administration (whether knowingly or unknowingly) as a means to an end.”

The statement came from America First legal VP Gene Hamilton, who spoke to the Daily Signal.