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A new report shows that global container shipping rates have jumped some 29%, as of the end of April, 2024. While the Pentagon is confident that military actions against the Iran-back Houthi terrorists in Yemen are succeeding in tamping down attacks on shipping, the mess of port congestion around the world is also seriously impacting the shipping world, which will inevitably cause significant price increases on all imported goods.
Read more here, or watch here.
On January 24th 2024, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a statement, concerning the right of the State of Texas to defend itself from invasion, because – quoting from the statement – the Federal Government as a body and specifically, the administration of President Joe Biden, have broken the Compact between the Several States and the Federal Government (the foundational concept that underpins the notion of the “United States of America”) by not simply pointedly and openly declining to defend the nation from a literal “invasion” at the southern border, but in actively taking measures to prevent the State of Texas from defending itself.
Abbott specifically cited the Biden administration failing to fulfill its duties under Article IV § 4 of the Constitution, which has now required Abbott, as Governor, to invoke Article 1 § 10 Clause 3 of the Constitution requiring him to take measures to defend the state.
This statement was issued on the heels of a frankly stunning decision by the United States Supreme Court on January 22nd, which allowed the US Border Patrol to remove razor wire barricades emplaced by Texas National Guard troops assigned to defend Texas’ border with Mexico along the Rio Grande River. In effect, the Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration in suborning an invasion of the United States.
The massive influx of illegal aliens is a subject we have discussed here previously. The fairest “neutral” assessment of the impact of illegal immigration comes from, of all places, Wikipedia:
“The economic impact of illegal immigrants in the United States is challenging to measure, and politically contentious…”
However, given the reactions of “sanctuary cities” – most of them longtime strongholds of the Democrat Party – to having waves of “migrants” dumped (waves that are not even comparable to the numbers being dumped on Texas) on their doorsteps, not just by Republican-led states such as Texas and Florida, but by the Federal Government itself, it is clear that the staggering numbers are having an immediate, clear and disproportionate impact on the nation (leaving aside said migrants frequently complaining bitterly about the aid and shelter they are given, including appeals to citizens to house illegal aliens in churches and private homes).
In response to Governor Abbott’s January 24th statement, many politicians have begun to hysterically demand that President Biden federalize the Texas National Guard to halt the Texas program to stem the flow of illegal migrants, and to restrict them to using the legal crossing points, and to follow the established legal processes.
This situation (which has been building for well over a decade as of this writing), and the breathless demands to invoke the Insurrection Act to stop Texas’ actions, has brought the nation perilously close to an actual “civil war”, for the first time since 1860. This is because, as of this writing, some twenty-five state Governors have definitively stated their support of Governor Abbott and the state of Texas.
Actually federalizing a state’s National Guard against the wishes of their state’s governor has been done before, famously in 1957 in Arkansas in regards to the “Little Rock Nine”. A popular misconception is that a state’s National Guard cannot be federalized without that state’s governor consenting to the mobilization. As demonstrated in Arkansas, this is patently untrue.
The National Guard was created by the Militia Act of 1903, known popularly as the “Dick Act” after its sponsor, Ohio Congressman Charles Dick (R), in response to the severe manpower shortage in the US Army in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War (1898) and the subsequent campaigns against Filipino guerrillas in the Philippines Insurrection (1899-1902).
This latter campaign was hampered by American volunteers – who had been enlisted for a period of two years – insisting on being sent home after the conclusion of the war against Spain. As those who had volunteered specifically for the war against Spain were technically still a part of the Militia of the United States, they could not be required to serve longer than the conclusion of the war unless they specifically volunteered to do so.
This manpower issue came from Article 1, § 8, Clause 15 of the “Militia Clauses” (which includes Clause 16 of the same Article and Section) of the Constitution, which strictly limits the call-up and use of the Militia to executing “…the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions…” As a result, the United States quickly found itself significantly hampered in the Philippines by not having enough troops.
The “Dick Act” was written specifically to bypass the restrictions of the “Militia Clauses”, in order to create a new military entity in the form of the National Guard (and later, the Air National Guard). In effect, the “Dick Act” created a type of reserve formation for the US Army (before the creation of the actual “Army Reserve”), which (ultimately) would be equipped and trained by the US Army, but which be paid for by the states, who would also be allowed to use the military formations within the state, at the discretion of its governor. However, if the Federal government decided that they needed to mobilize the National Guard, they could do so at any time…whether a governor agrees with the Federal government or not, as was demonstrated in 1957, in Arkansas.
In the context of the hysterical demands of partisan political hacks, this would mean that President Biden would have to declare the State of Texas to be in rebellion against the United States – something that has only happened once in United States history – in order to force the Texas National Guard to disregard the orders of its state Commander in Chief in the face of an active invasion of their state.
Stop, and consider that implication.
If President Biden were to take such an ill-advised action, that would place the Texas National Guard in the position of obeying either the Federal Government – and allowing a massive invasion of their home state by massive numbers of “military-age males” who certainly did not walk north from homes in Mexico, or Central or South America, because “economic asylum seekers” do not buy airplane tickets from Africa to Mexico, in order to walk north…
…Conversely, the Texas National Guard could refuse orders to federalize. This would constitute “Mutiny”, under Article 94 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ, the legal code of the US armed forces), at the very least. This would place the Federal government in the position of having to arrest up to 19,000 people en masse.
In like manner, there would then be the question of the reactions of the various states and governors who have expressed their solidarity with Governor Abbott’s actions…
This perilous situation is the ultimate outcome of decades of neglect, political pandering and the abject failure of successive Federal governments to execute the most basic of their duties, duties that the Several States voluntarily allowed the Federal Government to maintain authority for, as a condition of their joining the Federal Union in 1789. Leaving aside the obtuse legalities of this situation, the reality is that the American Left – led primarily by the Democrat Party – has driven the nation to a potential breakpoint, where the States may well declare the sitting Federal Government to no longer be a legitimate body. Such an action could go in several directions, none of them good, and all of them highly dangerous.
And while pundits and armchair-warrior-gamers may believe the nearly incoherent ramblings of President Biden, the reality is that the United States military and law enforcement establishments are not able to enforce any nationwide martial law order; in fact, it is questionable if they could enforce such an order over any large metropolitan area, given what happened the last time Federal troops were deployed under “Operation Garden Plot” was engaged.
…In the end, this writer has no solution to this problem, other than telling the Federal government to do its job in securing the borders of the United States, which it has consistently failed to do for over forty years.
The alternatives are not desired by any sane person.
The Islamic state of Iran has significantly escalated tensions in the Red Sea, by deploying the warship Alborz to the crucial Bab el-Mandeb Strait a day after US Navy helicopters drove off Iranian-backed Houthi pirates of Yemen following their attempted seizure of the Singapore-registered container ship Maersk Hangzhou, sinking several Houthi boats and killing an estimated ten pirates, on December 30, according to CENTCOM.
This also comes some 10 days after the Liberian-flagged tanker MV Chem Pluto was struck by a suspected Iranian drone while at sea, en-route from Saudi Arabia to India on December 23rd.
The Alborz, an Alvand-class frigate, was originally bought by the Imperial Iranian Navy in 1971.
The move by Iran raises the distinct possibility of hostile action between the Iranian vessel and the various, dozen-or-so warships of Operation Prosperity Guardian, assembled in late-December to counter repeated missile and boarding attacks on international shipping, claiming to be countering the Israeli response to the unprovoked attack on its civilians that began on October 7 by the Hamas terrorists operating in the Gaza Strip.
The Freedomist will continue to monitor the situation as it develops.
RED SEA, 12.12.2023, 1100hrs CST – The Japanese-owned, Norwegian-flagged general oil and chemical tanker MK STRINDA was struck by a missile fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen, while transiting the Bab el Mandeb strait, late on the 11th. the ship reported damage and a fire, but reported no casualties.
The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Mason responded to the tanker’s distress call, and is rendering assistance as of press time. The Mason, along with other US Navy warships, have engaged Houthi missiles and drones fire at Israel as part of the Houthi’s
This is the latest in the escalating piratical activities of the Iran-backed terror group in recent weeks, including their helicopter assault to seize of the M/V Galaxy Leader and their attempted seizure of the M/V Central Park.
The Houthi group is a religious sect that is the main party in a civil war that has raged since 2014. Although the hard-line Shi’a Muslim group is reported to be receiving assistance from many corners, no state has recognized them as a legitimate state. They were, and remain, a group of bandits, pirates and terrorists.
The Freedomist will continue to monitor the situation.
In the last week or so, many people have been sharing images of what they feel are alarming amounts of military air traffic culled from various online tracking websites, purporting to show a “highly unusual” increase in air traffic throughout the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean (a.k.a., “The Levant”).
For those who are exploring a new landscape on the internet, such as aircraft and ship tracking websites, these images can, in fact, look incredible. Most of the online maps are indeed very cluttered, to such an extent that many computers have a hard time keeping up with the running updates, unless a user “drills down” to a very narrow region.
And to be fair, given the recent events within the region, with terrorist massacres in Israel, leading to brutal counterattacks by Israel, and the hysterical responses from throughout not just the region, but the threat of this new “Yom Kippur War” expanding to include most of the region – something that the few sane leaders of the world ‘body politic’ is desperate to prevent – is certainly making many people terrified of anything new and strange, that is presented with either incomplete, or flat-out wrong context, deliberately or otherwise.
The short answer to the “unusual increase” in aircraft activity in the Middle East is that it is a giant “nothingburger.” The long answer is far more mundane…but not so the reason behind it.
The fact is that Israel has severely neglected its defenses, both internal and external, for at least twenty years. Externally, Israel fell into the complacency trap of “Victory Disease” (the laziness and complacency resulting from too many victories), in that it felt that its “Iron Dome” missile defense system was mostly unbeatable, while its more conventional forces could easily handle anything that “Iron Dome” could not.
Internally, this dangerous complacency was compounded by Israel’s disastrous moves, beginning in 2012, to restrict the ability of Israeli citizens not on military or police duty, to owning or possessing military style firearms.
And on October 7, 2023, Israel and its citizens were given a stark wake up call as to why you should never beat your swords into plowshares before the right time.
As a result, Israel suddenly found itself in a desperate, grueling and bloody war against an implacable and bloodthirsty enemy at one end of its country, while facing another potential – and much more dangerous – foe to their north. While this is certainly not an unusual circumstance for Israel, Israel the state, as well as Israeli citizens, now finds itself being rudely forced to reorient its mental perspective on reality.
All-out war, as should be clear to anyone who has read an article on the Russo-Ukrainian War in the last almost two years, consumes people, ammunition, vehicles and supplies at a ferocious rate. While the scale and pace of the war in Israel may not currently be at the same overall scale as what is happening in Ukraine, when adjusted for scale, Israel is not much better off than Ukrainians.
In answer, the United States – long Israel’s only truly reliable ally – has doubled down on US support to Israel in the current conflict, complete with sending two complete carrier battle groups to the region, potentially committing US forces to direct combat in the conflict.
And fears of a widening of the conflict have already been realized, as the USS Carney, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, has shot down multiple missiles launched by Houthi insurgents from their base areas in Yemen.
Obviously, no matter the Reader’s feelings – one way or another – about the current conflict, the United States has to supply Israel with weapons, ammunition and much else, exactly as it has for Ukraine. Normally, such supplies are sent by ship, and then by rail or road. The reason is simple: it is vastly more efficient than air transport.
Sometimes, however, speed is essential. Relatively small and light supplies, like ammunition and medical supplies, can be rushed to a conflict zone relatively quickly, as these are always the most critical supplies that would be needed early on in a conflict. In the case of any sudden uptick of military air traffic, however, there is currently another factor:
Volcanoes.
In 2010, a series of volcanic eruptions from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland in April of that year completely shut down all air traffic in Europe outside of Spain and a tiny portion of France. That was, obviously, a very annoying situation for many travelers, as it up-ended flights throughout the world.
Now, however, another Icelandic volcano threatens to erupt: the Blue Lagoon thermal spa, long a popular tourist destination, is threatening to erupt.
Military planners, already struggling to juggle the delivery of supplies to multiple active and potential combat areas, now have no choice but add the potential of a natural disaster shutting down European airspace for an unknown period. The only real option is to start drawing supplies from existing bases in the region, and sending those to Israel…by air.
At the same time, however, those supply bases will need to be restocked, and fast, given the potential for regional escalation. This problem can be solved via a surge in sending war materials and equipment to those bases via conventional shipping…that seems to be happening.
The Ready Reserve Force ship MV Cape Orlando is currently underway from Tacoma, WA, crossing the Pacific Ocean. The Cape Orlando, originally berthed in Oakland, was actually boarded by pro-Palestinian protesters on November 4th, delaying its departure for Tacoma. (The protestors were not charged.)
While the MV Orlando is certainly the most public of the ships potentially carrying supplies to the combat area, it is also certainly not the only one.
What is happening is clear: a giant “shell game” is underway, with supplies being shuffled as quickly as possible, to cover as many holes as have been left open by shockingly poor military policies by the West and its allies over the preceding c.30 years…But such circumstances cannot endure forever.
Because, as the Chinese general Sun Tzu wrote some 2,500 years ago, if you try to defend every point equally, every point will be weak.
A funny thing happened on the first of November of 2023. A few hundred (ultimately, up to eight hundred) Non-Commissioned Officers in the active duty US Army were stunned when they received orders, via email, to report – within a week – to a school none of them were expecting to attend: the Army’s recruiting school at Fort Knox, Kentucky.
This order, coming with no warning, is up-ending hundreds of enlisted families as there is little time to reorder the lives of married NCO’s. Compounding the problem, none of the soldiers ordered to the school knows where they will be assigned, leading to extreme uncertainty on where their new posting will be, as active duty recruiters are spread out across the country. This is guaranteed to strain relationships to the breaking point, compounding an already high divorce rate within the service.
As we reported previously, the harsh realities of the third decade of the 21st Century have caused not only the US Congress, but also the Defense Department, to begin discussing an idea that would have been unthinkable just ten years ago: the reinstatement of conscription, i.e., the Draft – and not simply the draft of the old days, which was male-only, but a draft which would almost certainly apply equally to women.
Needless to say, the sudden nature of the Army’s move has added fuel to the strident denunciations of the very idea by “Gen-Z” and their “Millennial” parents…And the Army’s move on the 1st of November is elevating the hysteria.
For the troops, it’s not so much that the recruiting school itself is overly difficult. It is the fact that most recruiters only volunteer for the duty reluctantly, as their usual alternative is a tour as a drill instructor, something that many NCO’s dread. This is because there has always been a stigma to the duty, dating from at least the official end of the draft in 1973, in that failing to meet assigned quotas of recruits can seriously damage the continuing career prospects of the recruiter. Recruiters are usually long serving NCO’s, with ten to twelve years in the service when they enter the recruiting school; this means that they have seriously committed to the idea of twenty to twenty-five years of service, in order to retire with a reasonable pension. That continued career, however, could be seriously damaged by a failed tour as a recruiter.
The reality, despite Gen-Z’s hysteria, is that the Army’s move has come – officially – as an unexpected result of recruiters and possible recruiter candidates leaving the service at an unexpectedly high rate. Functionally, sending an emergency draft of NCO’s to school to become recruiters – whether they want to be or not – is not a preparation for a reinstatement of conscription.
As we discussed previously, the military’s recruiting woes, where all of the military services except the Marine Corps and the Space Force, are missing their recruiting targets, are made worse when taking into account the comparatively small size of the Marine Corps and Space Force in contrast to the other services. The effects of badly managed “forever wars” and conflicts for over twenty years, coupled to other astoundingly bad decisions, have left the majority of the US population severely disinclined to support enlistment in general.
Obviously, the resulting falling recruitment numbers have left the US military, as a whole, in a dangerous situation, as mounting threats – from Ukraine and Israel, to Iran and China – equate to the likelihood that the United States may well find itself in a very large war – or two…or three – sooner than later. And, after spending some twenty years laser focused (albeit with a very smudged lens) on fighting insurgencies, the armed forces got a stark wake-up call from the Russo-Ukrainian War on casualty rates in large scale combat, to the point that the Army is desperately trying to relearn the flawed strategies of the 1970’s and 80’s, all while missing the mark in spectacularly catastrophic ways, that would be funny, if their effects were negligible…which they are not.
Having stated the above, while the Army’s sudden orders are not a herald of a return to conscription in and of themselves, there is are a pair of outlying possibilities, that it could signal a middle ground” move, neutralizing a flawed medical screening system that has slashed the number of recruits by upwards of 25%. The return of medical waivers for volunteers for minor conditions dating from as long as a decade prior, would be seen as a solid move to increase recruit intakes. Of course, such a move would also open the way to waive medical issues for potential draftees.
Secondly, this move could signal actual preparation for renewed conscription laws, where recruiters could be assigned secondary duties to process a new wave of draftees. As we implied previously, a reintroduction of a Draft for Gen-Z and/or some Millennial’s would almost certainly spark a wave of draft dodging and draft riots on a scale that would make those of the Civil War era pale in comparison.
And, of course, a third possibility is hanging in the air, namely, the idea of offering bounties and legal amnesty via recruitment to those “military age males” currently flooding across the southern border of the United States…
…However, considering how armed forces frequently act in their countries origin, this may well be more of a curse than a benefit.
SUMMARY – On June 23, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a petty criminal-turned-hot dog vendor-turned-restaurateur-turned mercenary warlord led his mercenary army, the infamous “Wagner Group”, in what he describes as a “March of Justice” against the Russian Defense Ministry, accusing that governmental body of launching deliberate attacks on his troops in order to destroy his army. As of the dawn of June 24, Prigozhin’s forces have captured the major city and vital command and logistics hub of Rostov-On-Don, securing the city center, as well as the main regional military headquarters. Russian leader Vladimir Putin has vowed to crush the Wagner mutiny in a public address on the morning of June 24. These actions have dire implications for the world. This is a developing situation.
The Current Situation – The Wagner PMC has been the core of Russia’s recent battles in Ukraine, acting as elite shock troops in brutal battles throughout the region, particularly in Bakhmut, at the end of May. The mercenary army has been in action around the world, primarily in Africa (in Chad, Libya and Sudan) and the Middle East, earning a reputation for combat effectiveness, corruption and brutality.
Over the last few months, however, the 62-year old Prigozhin has been increasingly seen as unstable, making increasingly angry and bizarre claims that the Russian Ministry of Defence has been deliberately attacking his forces, claims that the Ministry has vehemently denied. It is these attacks that appear to be the linchpin behind the crisis.
The “Long March” Begins – On June 23rd, Wagner troops variously either left their positions to follow Prigozhin in his march to Rostov-On-Don, or turned and fired on regular Russian Army troops. This has completely disrupted Russian operations in Ukraine. Additionally, Western intelligence services have been caught flat-footed, not remotely suspecting Prigozhin’s actions, indicating that Prigozhin may not have been suborned.
As of the morning of June 24th, Wagner forces have been reported in the city of Voronezh, an approximate 6-hour drive from Moscow. In Moscow itself, loyalist troops and armored vehicles have been deployed into the city itself to protect the Kremlin and various areas where the oligarchs supporting the Putin regime live. There are also reports of scattered fighting and other potential mutinies at various bases around Moscow.
The danger, and the reason this action by Prigozhin is so dangerous, is that the vast bulk of Russia’s regular army is physically inside Ukraine at this time, meaning that there are very few forces between Prigozhin and Moscow who are either willing or capable of standing up to Wagner’s battle-hardened troops in any kind of fight.
The Bad…Good and Ugly Being Irrelevant – Information on the situation remains highly fluid and uncertain, but some analysis is possible.
To begin, Prigozhin’s actions are frankly bizarre. “Friendly Fire” incidents happen in war, often frequently. Even in extreme cases, these kinds of incidents are no reason for a mutiny that can only be seen as not simply irrelevant, but highly damaging to an active war effort.
What is currently unknown – and is a decisive factor – is whether or not the flow of supplies through Rostov-On-Don has been disrupted or not.
This leads to three possibilities, none of them good:
Conclusion – Yevgeny Prigozhin’s actions are unprecedented in the modern day. Nothing like this has been seen on so critical a geopolitical scale since the Russian Revolution of 1917. While pithy remarks about Machiavelli being right on mercenaries might be true, they are also largely irrelevant to the current situation.
By his actions, whatever their rationale might be, Yevgeny Prigozhin and his mercenary army have placed the world in significant danger of all-out war, on a scale never before seen.
The FreedomistMIA is keeping a close watch on this situation at press time, and will update this story for our readers as the situation develops.
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 5th 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.
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 7th 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 9th Century AD (on the European calendar), the first use of the formula as a weapon dates to the early 10th Century, in use against Mongol tribes. Once gunpowder became dominant as an infantry weapon in Europe, in the late 15th to the early 16th 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.
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).
With the recent arrest of an Airman of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, the United States’ defence and intelligence establishments are once again under fire for apparently lax information security. In fact, this is the second time in less than a year that this has happened.
At first glance, this seems like a very bizarre thing…until you realize, sadly, that it is not.
In both cases, the leakers involved were not leaking classified intelligence – including casualty reports, battle plans, friendly agent identities, strategic concerns from and about allies, and technical intelligence, to name but a few – because they had been “honey trapped”. Likewise, the leakers were not employed by foreign state intelligence agencies, nor were they crusaders trying to expose crimes committed by the US defense and intelligence apparatus.
Instead, incredibly – or, sadly, not so incredibly – the leaks were the result of rabid video game players trying to prove how cool and ‘edgy’ they were.
While some of the leakers may be older, this is the result of the programming of the so-called “Generation Z”. This is the first generation to grow up with social media as a main facet of their lives. When “social media” as we would now recognize it, first arose in 1997, no one had any real idea of what its impact would be. Whatever the imagined intent, what it has evolved into, is a sort of electronic version of an elementary school playground at recess, with no adults present to regulate it.
Where older generations who entered the various defense and intelligence services would never, in their wildest nightmares, have taken classified materials to their local watering hole and deliberately passed them around to score social points, this is becoming increasingly common for a deliberately infantalized generation of youth. While there certainly were, and are, spies and informants stealing and passing on information for money, ideology or “love”, those reasons were at least tangible and understandable. Scoring social media points is, to be blunt, pointless in the extreme.
Coupled to the insanity of the RESTRICT Act (deliberately misconstrued as the “TikTok Ban” bill), this works to sweep away all the foundations of legality of the Rule of Law, in the fleeting hope of gaining some sort of security.
And, like the hysterical attacks from the music industry against services such as Napster and Grokster, idiocies like the RESTRICT Act are guaranteed to have exactly the opposite effect, as outraged online activists will find ways to send out increasingly large amounts of classified material – not for the older reasons, nor even the newer reasons, but simply out of anger at such tight restrictions. The fact of facing heavy penalties for doing so, are irrelevant once the information is “out in the wild,” as the saying goes: the damage will have already been done.
But the above does not address the real question: Why are these kinds of leaks so dangerous?
For those not familiar with intelligence gathering, as a discipline, the short answer is that, in the “old days,” obtaining intelligence – meaningful intelligence – on a hostile target was hard…very hard. An intelligence agency – from East or West – had to insert “non-official” (or “illegal”) agents into the target country; those illegal agents would then have to either infiltrate a facility, or suborn an intelligence worker (assuming that they could identify them). Conversely, they could hang out in bars, nightclubs or restaurants (good for staging a honey trap) outside the gates of military facilities, or take menial jobs at establishments outside the gates such as working as a barber or as a waitress, in an attempt to glean nuggets of information from random conversations…Not very flashy, and not very James Bond, but such methods did work.
(My favorite intelligence warning in the mid-1980’s, was an order that came down, telling service personnel to stop…”liberating”…large bottles of Tabasco® sauce from restaurants outside base main gates in preparation for going to the field or “rapidly redeploy strategically”, to make the early Meals-Ready-to-Eat (MRE’s) at least somewhat palatable. The problem had gotten so bad, those base-local restaurants developed their own internal intelligence networks, and were suddenly “out of Tabasco” when they learned of a local unit deployment…thus giving hostile agents a dead giveaway that large unit movements were afoot.)
With the rise of online gaming and their associated forums and chat servers in the early 2000’s, however, intelligence agencies quickly grasped that their agents could sit behind Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), in the comfort and security of their home nations. They could then “lurk,” monitoring boards silently, while not communicating very often, waiting to pounce on discussions where people who should know better would often drop bits – or entire files – of classified data…and those agents wouldn’t even have to hound the leaker, because the rest of the forum or chat group would do that for them, unwittingly.
This kind of thing came naturally to intelligence agencies, as it was a form of OSINT [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence]. OSINT, or “Open-Source Intelligence,” is a method, or discipline [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_gathering_disciplines] of intelligence collection where a person meticulously (some might say, “obsessively”) scours every publicly available source of information on a subject they can find, and attempt to collate and boil-down the resulting information into a general picture.
OSINT differs from more expensive, technological or hazardous methods of information collection – like finding human sources of information, satellite reconnaissance, radio signal interception, etc. – in that it simply requires an illegal agent to buy multiple piles of newspapers and magazines, and inhabit libraries relentlessly. While also not very flashy, OSINT analysis often leads to very clear pictures of a nation’s defense strategies. As well, it lends itself very well to crowdsourcing [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing].
So…Where does this leave us, in mid-April of 2023?
Unfortunately, there are serious problems within the information security apparatus in the West, as a whole. With the need to bring in a new generation of intelligence workers, the West – as opposed to Russia and Communist China – is finding that the “Woke” agenda that has been allowed free rein over the last decade has badly polluted the potential recruiting pool, as people who have been raised in a culture where ephemeral “electronic cred” is as important, if not more important, than being a “quiet professional”.
And, as those who promoted that social context are discovering, there is no putting the toothpaste back in the tube.
The goal of this column is to present news from around the world that is not often – if ever – covered by more mainstream entities, using local sources wherever possible, but occasionally using news aggregators not used, again, by the mainstream media. Also, please note that we do use links to Wikipedia; while Wikipedia is well-known as a largely-useless site for any kind of serious research, it does serve as a launch-pad for further inquiry, in addition to being generally free of malicious ads. As with anything from Wikipedia, always verify their sources before making any conclusions based on their pages.
This column will cover the preceding week of news.
To make it easier for readers to follow story source links: anytime you see a bracketed number marked in green – [1] – those are the source links relating to that story.
North America, Central America & the Caribbean
United States
The “Strategy of Tension” continued in the United States this week, with what can only be described as a “swarm attack“, hoax bomb threats were called in to dozens of locations around the country, again primarily to college campuses (including as far out as Hawaii, and another in Canada), but also to businesses and public buildings, repeatedly overloading emergency services in the impacted areas. The focus of the ‘swarming’ this week was the State of Florida – although smaller swarms occurred in Ohio, New Jersey and Virginia – as opposed to the states of Texas and Louisiana, last week. And, also as with last week’s reporting, although there are 21 news links, these represent as many as a dozen additional hoax threats, as some stories report on multiple threats. [1]-[21]
[Source 1] – [Source 2] – [Source 3] – [Source 4] – [Source 5] – [Source 6] – [Source 7] – [Source 8] – [Source 9] – [Source 10] – [Source 11] – [Source 12] – [Source 13] – [Source 14] – [Source 15] – [Source 16] – [Source 17] – [Source 18] – [Source 19] – [Source 20] – [Source 21]
Additionally, an increasing number of actual explosive devices are being disarmed and recovered by police and military bomb-disposal teams, throughout the nation, including three actual explosive devices found in Calaveras County, CA this week, alone. [1]-[3]
[Source 1] – [Source 2] – [Source 3]
Haiti
In Haiti, reports from the global medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) (“Doctor’s Without Borders”) are coming out that thousands of residents in the capital of Port-au-Prince’s notorious Cité Soleil slum have been cut off from food, water and medical aid, as rival gangs – some reportedly allied to various factions within the police and military – battle each other in what is rapidly spiraling into a war-zone/collapse scenario. The protests had begun in May of 2022, over a lack of fuel for generators, as Haiti’s electrical grid has never recovered, following a series of massive earthquakes over the last twelve years, due to endemic instability and corruption in the tropical nation, that included the assassination of the country’s President, Jovenel Moïse in July of 2021.
[Source 1] – [Source 2] – [Source 3]
Mexico
In Mexico, the long-running drug war continues, as police recovered remains – many beheaded – of drug cartel victims across the country. [1][2] This, as police in Mexico City rescued two kidnap victims being held for ransom, in a furious shootout with cartel members armed with automatic weapons, including a belt-fed machine gun, that freed the victims and resulted 14 arrests, although four officers were wounded in the shootout. [3]
Meanwhile, in the state of Sinaloa, on the country’s Pacific coast, police and military forces conducted a joint operation that resulted in the arrest of Rafael Caro Quintero, co-founder the Guadalajara cartel. Although the 69-year old was found hiding in the bushes by a tracker dog named “Max“, tragically, a Blackhawk helicopter of the Mexican Navy crashed during the operations, killing 14 of the 15 occupants, leaving the survivor in serious condition. Quintero remains on the FBI’s Most Wanted List for the 1985 kidnapping, torture and killing of US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, after he escaped custody following a botched court hearing in 2013 that attempted to free him after 28 years in prison on a technicality, but which was dismissed by Mexico’s high court…but not before Quintero was spirited away. [4][5]
[Source 1] – [Source 2] – [Source 3] – [Source 4] – [Source 5]
South America
Colombia
The week saw a sudden uptick of violence in Colombia, as one government soldier was killed and four others wounded in an ambush in the town of Chigorodó, Antioquia. The ambush was reportedly carried out by members of the so-called “Clan del Golfo (The Gulf Clan)” drug cartel.
Brazil
In Brazil, authorities responded to a suspicious package discovered following a threatening call to the Russian Embassy in the capitol of Brasilia on the 14th. Authorities isolated the package, then removed it to a secure location and detonated it safely. Examinations of contents and the investigation into the incident continue at press time.
Europe
In England, the passport office in Newport, Wales was evacuated after a suspicious package was received that contained a white powder. The building was sealed off, and staff were medically examined. The powder was determined to be non-toxic, and the facility reopened later in the day. [1]
In Leeuwarden, in the Netherlands, several town council members and administrative staff were evacuated following what police termed a “credible bomb threat“. A police investigation discovered no devices, nor suspicious persons, despite an earlier report of a man with a bomb. Investigations continue. [2]
Finally, in Moldavia, the Chisinau International Airport – Moldova’s main international air transit facility – was temporarily closed following an emailed bomb threat against the airport. operations resumed after some three hours, while security checked the airport buildings, but no devices were found. Chisinau International has been the target of several hoax bomb attacks in the previous weeks.[3]
[Source 1] – [Source 2] – [Source 3]
Africa
Once more, fighting in Nigeria dominates the African news scene, as repeated violence continues around the country. Gunmen, variously reported as either “bandits” or as “terrorists“, have continued a vicious campaign of bombings, kidnappings, assassinations of state-level politicians and random murders, design to incite fear among the population, even as police try to increase security for targets deemed most at risk, specifically schools and churches. [1]-[12]
In somewhat better news, relatively speaking, Nigerian troops in the northern state of Borno, reacted swiftly to reports of Boko Haram terrorists blocking roads in the state, and kidnapping people. The troops reacted, and drove the terrorists off, reportedly killing at least ten. [13]
Nigeria has been struggling with a so-called “bandit war” and a bitter Islamist insurgency since 2009.
[Source 1] – [Source 2] – [Source 3] – [Source 4] – [Source 5] – [Source 6] – [Source 7] – [Source 8] – [Source 9] – [Source 10] – [Source 11] – [Source 12] – [Source 13]
Across the border, in Cameroon, Boko Haram reportedly killed two civilians in an attack on a village in the country’s far north, as the government sought to tighten internal security after a bomb blast rocked a crowded market in the nation’s capital. Although no injuries were reported, this is the second such attack in as many weeks.
Further south, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), ceasefire negotiations in the Kivu region of the country’s far east are on the verge of collapse, as a Chinese ex-patriot worker was killed in an attack in South Kivu, as rebels reportedly abducted up to 50 people in the region, including as many as 30 children.
[Source 1] – [Source 2] – [Source 3]
In Benoni, South Africa, police arrested a “Mozambican man” on charges of possessing explosives on the 13th, as attacks by Islamist insurgents continue to increase in number and violence, even as the Mozambican government insists that it is winning its war with Muslim insurgents that has been raging since 2017. [1]-[4] This is in stark contrast to the assessment of veteran defense journalist John Stupart, Director, African Defense Review, who points out that the current situation is, if anything, worse than it was a year ago. [5]
[Source 1] – [Source 2] – [Source 3] – [Source 4] – [Source 5]
Middle East
The ever-shaky ceasefire in Yemen may be about to collapse completely, as a sudden burst of attacks this week threaten to renew fighting on a large scale. Yemen has been trapped in the throes of a civil war since 2014, part of the wider Iran-Saudi Arabia Proxy War.
[Source 1] – [Source 2] – [Source 3] – [Source 4] – [Source 5]
In Syria and Iraq, scattered skirmishing and assassinations continued this week, as the US State Department warned that the situation in the region would worsen, even including a possible Islamic State “resurgence”, if non-Syrian/non-Iraqi foreign fighters for IS were not returned to their home nations. [1]-[6]
[Source 1] – [Source 2] – [Source 3] – [Source 4] – [Source 5] – [Source 6]
In Afghanistan, Taliban forces clashed with Iranian border guards, as scattered fighting destroyed infrastructure and killed dozens, including religious scholar Sheikh Sardar Wali Saqib. Elsewhere, the increasingly unstable Taliban are beginning to fight amongst themselves, as internal skirmishing killed several, and the Taliban began arresting their own officers because of “internal disputes”. [1]-[6]
[Source 1] – [Source 2] – [Source 3] – [Source 4] – [Source 5] – [Source 6]
In Pakistan, Balochi militants of the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) murdered kidnapped Army officer Lieutenant-Colonel Laeeq Baig Mirza, as a rescue team closed on the insurgent’s position. The team managed to kill two of the terrorists, but the remainder escaped. LtCol Mirza was kidnapped on the 12th by the militant group. Balochis have been fighting for their independence from Pakistan and Iran off and on since 1948. [1][2]
Elsewhere, Pakistani forces killed a reported dozen terrorists in various operations, with one soldier being killed. [3][4]
[Source 1] – [Source 2] – [Source 3] – [Source 4]
Finally, in India this week, outside of Jammu & Kashmir, the nation remained largely quiet, with little security activity outside of the on-going Jammu & Kashmir terrorist insurgency that has plagued the region since 1947.
[Source 1] – [Source 2] – [Source 3] – [Source 4] – [Source 5] – [Source 6] – [Source 7]
