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  • Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense Nominee

    Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense Nominee

    The Hang-Chadian Nature of Divorcesque Confirmation Hearings:

    Does Pete Hegseth have the right maturity, experience, character, and personal constitution to be U.S. Secretary of Defense?

    Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Confirmation Committee argued over whether this particular American son was ready to protect the family estate. Except in this case, the partisan parenting philosophies were reversed. The Republican Party was the indulgent, permissive parent for their party nominee’s demerits while Democrats were all about discipline and moral principles in re Mr. Hegseth.

    From another angle, Pete Hegseth may not deserve to be Secretary of Defense not because he doesn’t have the talent, scars, and experience enough to bring a unique perspective, but because given his background he may have wounds, moral injury, and personal chemistry that the pressure of the top job would make worse. Would Pete Hegseth be a better fit for an advisory assistant or deputy SecDef role focused on his longest or best quality experience and education? Would it be innovation? Process reform? Fielding and testing of systems? Where would he serve with greatest effect?

    Bible Belts Worn in Committee

    There was coached testimony, right things said on deterrence and innovation, gotcha questions, worst demerits denied, and everything negative deemed forgiven by Jesus and Mr. Hegseth’s wife, implying that Hegseth is as good for the SecDef job as anyone else who needs forgiveness and redemption. Whereas Christian scriptures include everyone as falling short of the glory, what does that mean in the context of filling the top Defense post?

    Is Mr. Hegseth as qualified as any other combat veteran with distinguished service records, leadership experience, strategic training, and less overall baggage? Was there not a better SecDef nominee from among all qualified combat veterans willing to serve? Of course there probably is, but POTUS 47 likely remembers when he was POTUS 45 how he discarded decorated combat experienced geo-strategic leaders of theater-wide operations, roundly respected appointees who knew more than he did. He had coated them with lollipop flattery during their appointments, then dropped them in the dirt and excrement he tracked into the halls of government tweet after classless tweet.

    Even the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board wrote about the lack of substance in Mr. Hegseth’s confirmation hearing, noting the statements of what the nominee is “for” without his specifying how he would accomplish the historic defense priorities faced by U.S. Armed Forces today. Yet in Mr. Hegseth’s defense, few who are questioned publicly for sensitive strategic positions should get into the granularity of planning for all to hear, although they should give sound-enough answers to show they know the job they are nominated for.

    Senators Play at Religion in Service to Political Ideology

    Amendment One reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” and yet majority senators on the Confirmation Committee divined that nominee Pete Hegseth’s representations that his leadership demerits are redeemed by Jesus make his potentially disqualifying acts and words no longer relevant to Senate screening.

    In American governmental history, Jesus’ saving grace is usually reserved for morale building fireside chats, stumping in evangelical territory, criminal sentencing hearings for convicted persons, or parole hearings. Not confirmation hearings for Secretary of Defense.

    Hegseth’s Case for Hegseth

    Pete Hegseth made his case for serving as Secretary of Defense with the following basic arguments, denials, and assertions:

    (1) innovation and competition whether in defense contracting or in leadership reform will best serve warfighters and the people they protect (true);

    (2) that he is not bigoted toward women or minorities in military service but believes in high standards related to the jobs involved while seeming to deny his more extreme past statements on the subject (predictable mixed truths and denials);

    (3) deterrence should be proportional to the threat and he acknowledged that Russia and China are building their nuclear arsenals yet without spelling-out his vision for meeting deterrence goals. Hegseth may have said less because he was not asked enough about how the President-elect’s foreign policy, immigration, and domestic security policies will affect deterrence; and

    (4) the several serious allegations against Hegseth for bad character, abusing personal power, assaulting women, alcohol abuse, making extreme statements about fellow Americans as enemies, and incompetent non-profit leadership are mostly from anonymous sources and therefore irrelevant. Real, confirmed bad judgment was ‘not being perfect,’ for which Jesus and his wife have forgiven and redeemed him.

    Upshot

    Mr. Hegseth argued standards for combat service should be high, and if women can meet the high standards alongside men, he implied that they are welcome to serve in combat roles. Yet if those standards are high for troops in the field, how much higher should the standards be for trustworthiness, mental maturity, and character of the one who would lead and serve them all?

    The cynical use of religion in a Senate confirmation or other government hearings on fitness for leadership posts belies the reason why character, temperament and judgment issues are brought up in the proceedings. If there is a history of bad character, temperament, and judgment for a SecDef that recurs after appointment, what could adversarial powers do with that? What would it do to morale in the Armed Services? How would it reflect on the tradition of a professional military? How would it affect unity in the ranks? Based on those questions, how would it affect U.S. national defense?

    If after considering letters in support of Mr. Hegseth’s nomination from fellow veterans, evidence showing a significant span of time free from the influence of his personal demons over his actions, the Senate Confirmation Committee votes to confirm this particular nominee, the man will need the country to remind him of the higher standards and better lights he expects of others wishing to serve.

  • Pitch: Tech Firms Should Provide In-Person ID Verification & Related Secure Tech Service

    Pitch: Tech Firms Should Provide In-Person ID Verification & Related Secure Tech Service

    For security of identity, it makes little sense for companies to require people to scan and send official documents proving their ID across servers on the internet to an online company that for whatever reason has flagged online activity or presence as “suspicious.” For one, consider that the company security challenger is communicating with a person they have flagged as a possible ID thief to begin with. There’s a good chance that ID thieves or black hat hackers have or can get access to their targets’ identifying documents in other ways, so having them scan those in could worsen a possible fraud loss.

    On the other hand, if it is the consumer that is required to prove ID to the company over the internet, the company asks the customer to put sensitive information at risk to do so. With constant serial hacks and thefts from online companies, institutions, and governments it is clear that the internet and its many, many, many moving parts and inroads is a sieve. Consumers cannot count on companies to keep their data safe; cannot count on the data to remain safe in transit; and cannot even trust their own devices due to persistent threats lurking and reloading through ISPs, supply chains, aged-out hardware, infected government computers, the vaunted citizen liability mess we call credit bureaus, and other attack vectors, whether the compromise is in hardware, software, supply chains, peripherals, updates, insiders, services, and or due to the human factors by which busy people cannot effectively keep up with nor run down repetitive security rabbit holes.

    Rather than the above, firms should phase in face to face customer care in which physical presence with document ID confirmation can unlock accounts, troubleshoot, advise or deal with infected devices, preserve data, and other services. This may involve mutual partnerships with co-working spaces, small office unit companies, retail stores, banks, and other client-facing venues with private meeting spaces.

    A physical presence for doing this would be a customer-loyalty investment, a marketing / upsell opportunity, and would likely save time and labor costs for the company because walking someone through a process remotely takes as much time and sometimes longer that troubleshooting in person, with physical ID, presence, and relevant device(s) available for technicians to work with.

    Providing (directly or outsourcing) a face to face service desk would also cut into black hat hackers’ success rates since they rely so heavily on anonymity to conduct fraud, theft, and worse.

    Finally, a fringe benefit of providing face to face service is a return to more in-person human connection, respect, and dignity in part lost to the impersonal aspects of internet and phone interaction. This builds trust, a real commodity.

  • Trump’s rhetorical Greenland spectacle

    Trump’s rhetorical Greenland spectacle

    President-elect Donald Trump, by calling for the effective U.S. purchase or annexation of Greenland, an autonomously-run territory of European NATO ally Denmark, seems to be playing mind games with Copenhagen, yet by so doing does damage to Ukraine, Israel, and NATO in open, obvious benefit to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

    Problem 1: By doing so he has created a spectacle of imperial fiat and imputed a measure of U.S. policy equivalency to Russian ruler Vladimir Putin’s imperious land and resource claims against Ukraine, Georgia, Chechnya, and other former Soviet states. It also tends to justify ambitions of Mideast imperial caliphate movements wishing to end the state of Israel, and autocratic mercantilism inside a number of African states.

    Problem 2: Together with his America First historical DNA, the President-elect plays threat-politics with an ally that was historically annexed, invaded, and occupied by Hitler’s forces. The America First movement historically enabled, appeased, and consorted with Hitler’s Germany while the Danes ultimately put up a brave anti-nazi resistance with British help.

    Problem 3: The notion of acquisition of Greenland for strategic purposes is wasteful in the extreme as Denmark is a NATO ally with an established close-relationship with the United States.

    Upshot: The NATO Alliance is strategically, economically and politically advantageous to the United States, and throwing acid on it does no favors to the American people. Imagine spending trillions on Greenland only to have it irradiated and melted down by Russian nuclear attack. Exponentially more effective would be to spend the trillions instead creating a deterrent and interdictive capability that Moscow nor Beijing will deem worth challenging. For resource needs, the private energy and mining sectors can more efficiently trade with Greenland and Denmark while saving the taxpayers trillions and keeping our staunch allies. That is the conservative mindset Republicans once stood for.

    None of these destabilizing tactics and communications from 2015-2021 prevented the Taliban from preparing to dominate Afghanistan; Moscow’s preparation for the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine; nor the dictatorial axes’ indirect and direct provisioning of the eventual, major attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023; all of which would not have happened so quickly during the next U.S. presidential term if solid deterrent and interdiction work had been done before 2021. If anything, these antics helped dictators and terror sponsors at the expense of the United States and its allies.

    There is a quote spreading on the internet for which I have not been able to find the source, but which the President-elect needs to meditate on from now until he is actually once again in the Office:

    Once you understand the power of your words, you won’t just say anything. Once you understand the power of your thoughts, you won’t just think anything. And once you understand the power of your presence, you won’t just be anywhere. Know your worth.

    More importantly: Know the worth of the people your words and actions are supposed to safeguard, protect, and defend for the general welfare.

    By now, the President-elect knows how his words can put U.S. troops at risk. If the President’s words knowingly benefit adversarial powers putting U.S. troops in their crosshairs and U.S. troops take casualties because of it, the reasonable suspicion of treason moves closer to probable cause.

  • Internet Morphs WSJ Article on 2021 IC Differences on Covid-19 Origin into “Cover-up”

    Internet Morphs WSJ Article on 2021 IC Differences on Covid-19 Origin into “Cover-up”

    Feature photo from China Daily.

    On Friday December 27th, 2024, the Wall Street Journal published “U.S. Intelligence Review of Origins of Covid-19 Masked Deep Divisions,” (also titled “Behind closed Doors: The Spy-World Scientists Who Argued Covid Was a Lab Leak”) reporting that the FBI was the only member of the IC with “moderate confidence” that Covid-19 was of laboratory origin yet was excluded from an intelligence community briefing ordered by President Biden in August 2021. That briefing sought discussion of two main hypotheses: (1) zoonotic transfer from animals to humans or (2) laboratory origin, implying viral outbreak from a lab leak.

    The Wall Street Journal was not first to reveal FBI Microbiologist Jason Bannan’s differences with other government officials regarding the likelihood that Covid-19 had a laboratory origin. See the publicly posted Brookings Zoom call of May 2024 in which FBI’s Mr. Bannan lays out his reasoning Covid-19’s laboratory origin is more probable than zoonotic transmission to humans.

    The Journal reported that Mr. Bannan had this to say in what was reportedly his first on-the-record interview:

    “Being the only agency that assessed that a laboratory origin was more likely, and the agency that expressed the highest level of confidence in is analysis of the source of the pandemic, we anticipated the FBI would be asked to attend the briefing,” Bannan recalled in his first on-the-record interview on the subject. “I find it surprising that the White House didn’t ask.”

    Yet the Journal also reported the response from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that it was not customary to invite individual representatives of the agencies to such a briefing of the President and that: ‘the FBI assessment that pointed to a lab leak was accurately represented,’ that ‘divergent views within the intelligence community were fairly represented at the briefing,’ and that the ODNI and national Intelligence Council “complied with all of the Intelligence Community’s analytic standards, including objectivity.”

    In addition, the WSJ report also cites Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of government efforts to get control of the Covid-19 pandemic during the first Trump Administration, as having never ruled out the lab-leak hypothesis although openly favoring the zoonotic natural origin view.

    Not Being Invited to a Briefing Versus a Coverup of One’s Documented View at a Briefing Are Two Different Things

    Much rides on what was actually presented at the intelligence briefing to President Biden, how it was presented, what level of importance was accorded it, and why. Yet if the DNI’s office was truthful with WSJ, then President Biden heard the FBI laboratory origin argument at the briefing. Neither did the WSJ piece report that Jason Bannan alleged that the President did not hear an accurate representation of the FBI assessment.

    If the lack of invitation to an FBI representative occurred while other agencies had representatives there, and if the FBI’s alternative hypothesis and supporting evidence was minimized and or omitted, then that would be a case of cooking an intelligence cake without all of the ingredients to make it rise to the level of quality that truly serves the American people and their constitutional government.

    What International and Domestic Internet Information Shaping and Warfare Outlets Made of the Story

    The top search results below tell a story of how Friday’s Wall Street Journal piece has morphed into a “cover-up” story of the FBI’s lab leak hypothesis regarding Covid-19, and considering WSJ’s News Corp ownership and conflicts raises yet again the issue of adopting false Russian intelligence narratives that would tarnish or destroy the legitimacy of the United States government for political gain and favor. After fully reading the Journal’s article here, weigh and consider how it was spun and misrepresented below (to include in some cases the spelling of the FBI scientist’s last name searched under both Bannon and the apparently accurate spelling Bannan):

    Some Parting Thoughts on the Journal’s Story, the Internet’s Spin, and the Effects of the News Corp Spin

    The reason President Joe Biden ordered the urgent intelligence community effort to determine Covid-19’s origins was largely due to China’s poor cooperation with World Health Organization inquiries into the virus’s origins, and inconclusive findings by the previous administration. China’s clear conflict of interest in controlling facts on the ground, investigating itself, and potentially losing face if its own biological laboratories were negligent or reckless gives greater credence to those who rejected World Health Organization’s initial investigation as dispositive.

    That News Corp owns other outlets less professional in reporting than the Wall Street Journal, such as the New York Post, and other outlets taking license with the reported facts to make them into a “cover-up” or “buried report” story is highly interesting given the influence of Wendi Deng (formerly Murdoch) over past News Corp access to coveted Chinese markets, her intimate knowledge of News Corp from the inside, and the fact that she introduced Rupert Murdoch to his latest Russian American wife who happens to be a retired molecular biologist who immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1991.

    Moreover, China and Russia have been working together in strategic competition and gray warfare against the United States and NATO while supporting proxies and weaponized migration against the U.S. and its free nation allies. China has supported Russia’s war on Ukraine. Russia and China have favored Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran over Israel before and after the attack on Israel of October 7, 2023.

    The Department of Energy has since also joined the FBI in its assessment that a laboratory leak is the most likely Covid-19 origin, per the report. Neither did FBI Director Christopher Wray apparently try to influence or silence his own agency’s expert assessment of a laboratory origin as might ostensibly please some shadowy, favored Russian intelligence conspiracy story of an American ‘deep state.’ Rather, Director Wray openly backed his agency’s experts in February 2023. President Trump has chosen to constructively fire Christopher Wray as FBI Director by advance notice, and Mr. Wray resigned to avoid dragging the FBI into a politically partisan drama game as could do more damage to the perception of legitimacy of the United States government.

    While China can be accused of covering-up and or delaying crucial Covid-19 pandemic information in 2019-21, News Corp’s reporting and editorial rinse and repeat cycles about Covid-19 serve to divert attention from Beijing’s culpability and drive blame narratives aimed at the internal American population and political arena.

  • The Ouster of Christopher Wray

    The Ouster of Christopher Wray

    If President-elect Trump had learned anything since his first term he would have retained Christopher Wray as FBI Director for the duration of Wray’s term. Instead, Trump ousted an effective FBI director who served in the best traditions of the FBI’s national security and law enforcement missions.

    Specifically Mr. Trump hated that FBI agents under Director Wray did their job and cooperated with DOJ and National Archives to conduct a search and seizure re missing classified documents retained by Mr. Trump and his staff at the Mar-a-Lago resort despite government requests to return them. The FBI is required to enforce federal laws as in the example below.

    Mr. Trump hated that career FBI Agent Christopher Wray did not interfere with his field agents’ judgment, the law’s basis for probable cause, or the determinations of law between the Department of Justice and a federal judge.

    Director Christopher Wray fulfilled his oath and his national security mission for the United States. Trump publicly punished him for it.

    Yet Mr. Wray acted with fiduciary care to keep the Bureau independent and non-partisan.

    Neither was the FBI or its director the decision maker with regard to President Biden’s classified document finds and relinquishments. Special Counsel Robert Hur handled that matter.

    Damage assessments would not likely be made public as might give adversaries TMI, but members of Congress from mainstream parties have asked for them.

  • Keeping the U.S.A. Out of Foreign Nation State Hands

    Keeping the U.S.A. Out of Foreign Nation State Hands

    Here is a historic quote no less true today during attempts to put Kash Patel over the FBI, Tulsi Gabbard over the ODNI, and Pete Hegseth over the Defense Department:

    “If Russia seizes the West’s secret services, it controls Western policies. If it taps into Western intelligence services, it makes them serve the Kremlin. That’s the prime Soviet objective.”

    –Igor Gouzenko, Defected Russian Intelligence Officer

    Divide with Dysfunction, Compromise with Controversy

    Even if one puts on blinders to Mr. Trump’s open, willing acquiescence to Mr. Putin and enablement of Kim Jong Un in his first term, it should be clear that by appointing inexperienced, embittered, character-challenged, and conspiracy-theory touting appointees to head ODNI (Gabbard), Defense (Hegseth), and FBI (Patel), President-elect Trump hands the de-facto KGB government over Russia (and China’s communist party) the prize of a degraded, malleable U.S. intelligence agency and defense leadership team.

    To one like Kash Patel who lied to then Secretary of Defense Mark Esper that Nigeria’s permission had been secured to use its airspace for U.S. Navy SEALS to rescue a hostage, how much more would Patel cavalierly compromise the safety of FBI, CIA, and military intelligence professionals in joint operations for political points with his boss should he be appointed FBI director? This is likely why in Trump’s first term former CIA Director Gina Haspel threatened to resign if Patel were given a role at CIA, and then-AG Bill Barr strenuously protested his installment over a law enforcement agency.

    Conquering the Vacuums Left by America First

    President Putin can no more be trusted to enter into binding agreements than Josef Stalin as revealed by historic defector Igor Gouzenko to Western intelligence that the Soviets had betrayed the United States and allies despite U.S. lend lease and covert infiltration aid behind nazi lines, thus causing an end to cooperation in 1945. How much more while the U.S. opposes Putin who now aggresses as Hitler did against independent Ukraine?

    Yet consistent with America First errors of the 1940s, the incoming Trump Administration has telegraphed that it intends to compromise with Russia on Ukrainian sovereignty and ‘make a deal’ giving Ukrainian territories seized by Putin’s aggression to Russia, echoing the failed America First approach to Hitler and Hirohito of the 1940’s.

    The current Biden Administration, U.K, E.U., and other dedicated freedom nation governments have helped check Russian power from its aggressive imperialistic invasion program in Ukraine, refusing to engage in self-defeating appeasement that encourages tomorrow’s larger aggressions, however, most believe too reticently, as if running a slow code response to a patient in distress.

    Now Russian power faces a possible loss of its Syrian regime puppet due to Putin government miscalculations in supporting the aggressors and sponsors of the terrorist assault on Israel of October 7, 2023 and following, causing former Syrian populations victimized by the Syrian and Russian governments to flee Lebanon back to Syria.

    The IDF had uncovered massive Russian arms caches in Hezbollah controlled Lebanon evidencing Putin’s miscalculation, even as it was no secret that Russia had supported Iran’s arms flow to Iranian proxies in Syria, Yemen, and Gaza that piled-onto Israel post-October 7. Russia and China have also supported Iran and Hamas at the United Nations over time, undermining the defense of Israel.

    Now Syrian government forces find themselves pushed back by Syrian insurgents that have seized Aleppo, are threatening to cut-off Homs from the coast, and are closing in on Damascus.

    The incoming Trump Administration seems to have ignored these trends and remains bent on compromising with Putin, which will embolden Xi Jinping to risk aggressing against Taiwan if it happens.

    If under these circumstances the new Administration promotes usefully compromised, character-challenged, and inexperienced intelligence community heads it will hew to the advantage of global dictatorial expansion, isolation of the United States from allies, alienation of international trade partners, inefficient use of domestic resources, and loss of strengthening, life-saving alliances keeping freedom alive in the world.

    Upshot

    While compromising a superpower may be psychologically complex over time, the way a superpower refuses to be compromised is by all serving public and private sector professionals and trades refusing to follow illegal orders, unconstitutional orders, and divisive conspiracy theory narratives.

  • Who Has America’s Center of Gravity: The United States of America’s Race for President, 2024

    Who Has America’s Center of Gravity: The United States of America’s Race for President, 2024

    The Center of Gravity of the United States is mostly about who the great majority of Americans really are, deep down, toward others. Deep down, are they about loving their neighbors or hating them?

    If hatred rules, the United States will fall apart in division and poverty, and our adversaries will move in and rule us harshly. That hasn’t happened. Hatred is the path to hell, and that is against every major faith practiced in America except perhaps some outlier sects, and the great majority of Americans do not believe in those.

    The Center of Gravity of the United States is more than any statement, pledge, creed, or law. It includes all of these and more. It is more than identity, race, gender, faction, organization, party, leader, or doctrine. It is not of words alone. It is the countless actions of all persons past, present, and future who have served and will serve their fellow Americans unselfishly.

    Dividers and destroyers are bad leaders who choose favorites and constantly switch them out, creating hatred and division. Why knuckle under to that hatred trance and lose everything, soul included? That’s not strength, that’s weakness for the United States. No person any one of us loves will benefit.

    Revenge does not win, whereas unity, preparation, deterrence, and a strong, unified defense with professionalism not hatred, can prevent loss of our people, our allies, and what is good about our way of life.

    Love your neighbor as yourself, and a house divided against itself cannot stand, taught Jesus, the Jewish Rabbi, Savior to Christians, prophet to Muslims, and great teacher to secularist ethicists.

    Mercenaries and narcissistic people are unprofessional, poor leaders who usually commit crimes and become tyrants. They feed off of hatred, anger, pride, selfishness, excess, prejudicial judgement, and playing favorites with conflicts of interest. Vote against them.

    As a nation, individually and collectively we must cast out such sicknesses and love our neighbors of all backgrounds and demographics. We need merit, evidence, and good ethics guiding our decisions. We need balance, freedom, and space for others, not materialism, unwarranted distrust, abuse, trauma, excessive luxury, obsession, narrowness, and addiction.

    Within the ethos of loving our neighbors the USA requires warranted distrust of those who would destroy their neighbors and divide the nation. The fulfillment of laws and the spirit of the laws fairly, without favoritism, discretionary mercy on the repentant, and grace that wins friends is what we need in leadership of Americans at home.

    What makes the United States special includes the relationships, families, communities, individuals, friends, loved ones, wonderful species of all kinds of creatures, competitors, faith, feelings, thoughts, ideas, work, worship, spirit, labor, intellect, art, sport, science, ethos upon ethos, business, and sacrifice of so many people that it is too great to comprehend. Our military people have fought for these qualities in the USA and our leaders must lead for and with them lest we fall.

    Freedom is a core element in the Center of Gravity of virtues in the USA, as is the rule of lawful decision making where Americans differ. These ideals are what makes the people of the United States able to fall and get back up again, to unify, thrive, think, debate, agree, and unify again.

    To set aside heart hardening pride and adopt heart emboldening powers of love, mercy, courage, service, and wisdom, from richest to poorest, is also the Center of Gravity of the United States. The rich help the poor meet their needs and grow their wealth, and the poor can help the rich let go of the wealth that chokes out their spiritual and emotional happiness and joy.

    That is how E Pluribus Unum is achieved from the ideals and virtues that are our national center of gravity prompting us to live them out in our lives together.

  • Africa, Awaken to Intentions of Putin, Xi Jinping

    Africa, Awaken to Intentions of Putin, Xi Jinping

    Africa’s future leaders will discover that they are expected to acquiesce to Russian and Chinese imperial foreign policy expectations in which Africans are tools, or they will be removed, even by signature Putin methods.

    A more accurately evocative image by which to remember the KGB ideals of the Russian nationalist Putin despite his diplomatic charm offensive, is an allegory for what Putin has made the Russian flag to mean. Russia’s tricolor has White on top, once standing for purity yet under the KGB-leader, death. White death is on top burying the colors beneath: blue which often stands for truth and beauty, and red which stands for life, or the lifeblood of the people.

    In Ukraine, Russia’s behavior under Putin’s ethno-nationalist leadership is exemplified in his death-cult ideal toward Ukrainians and toward his own, as he sends Southern Russia’s needy migrant workers and current and former republics’ sons to war first; those who Muscovites call ‘blacks’ to the Ukrainian front. How real can Putin’s respect for African heritage be?

    As the President of Equatorial Guinea reportedly embraces Mr. Putin’s foreign policy via former Wagner Group, now branded as the Russian state-sponsored mercenary group Afrika Korps, here are a few reality checks to remember.

    Erik Prince (U.S. sourced mercenary, Putin confidant, and Trump loyalist) earlier this year tried to justify the outright colonization of Africa. These statements are not made for fun, but to desensitize free nation voters to the likely behavior of autocrats and their preferred candidates in countries Putin wishes to overthrow.

    Should that bother the head of Equatorial Guinea and his African state counterparts, or just about everyone in the Global South? Yes. Yes it should.

    Remember what Putin did in Grozny, Chechnya; or against Syria’s majority long oppressed by the Assad regime. Ask: how were seven million Venezuelans driven from their own country by a regime a fraction of their numbers? Answer: Moscow and Beijing kept their oppressors in power: from Chavez to Maduro, the imperial ideology of Russia and China has cursed Venezuela for decades.

    Russia and China wish not only to enslave the Caucasus, Eurasia, and the Middle East, they want Africa and Latin America also.

    After a hypnotic conversation with the deceptive diplomacy of Russia’s Sergei Lavrov, you may say the United States flag is also red, white, and blue. That is a symbol of the oft-used false equivalencies Putin’s KGB-state tries to make between Russia and with the United States.

    Against daunting odds, the United States has made of its ideals something greater over time. Within the traditional U.S. colors, this: the colors are intermingled, giving-off starlight within the beautifully true dark blue, itself filled with light, while the first colored stripe on top of the flag is the warm people’s color of red, intermingled with the white stripes standing for enlightenment, not skin color. The people of the U.S. and their veteran heroes have by today made of Old Glory the ideal that is E Pluribus Unum to signal repentance and reform from the hypocrisy, slavery, and segregation of the past. That work is ongoing and the majority believes in it.

    The people of the United States today having elected an African American president is now close to electing a second, who is also Indian American, reaching our ideals despite temporary, sometimes messy political fallout. Have Russia or China ever enthroned or elected one of ethnic African descent? Never.

    The majority of Americans support these ideals, even today in 2024, while rightfully wanting rational, secure controls over immigration so that assimilation to freedom ideals is assured.

    Americans labor under immense technological change while dictators of the East have been spending billions using the freedom enabled by technology developed here for some 30 years to try to rip U.S. American society apart, imposing their dishonest disinformation campaigns. Yet the American people aren’t going to let them win.

    That’s the truth as plainly as it can be told. We need Africa’s leaders’ and future leaders’ to embrace with us ideals of E Pluribus Unum as when in West Africa during the ebola epidemic in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and elsewhere, the Obama Administration sent decisive U.S. military medical assets to help end the epidemic saving millions of lives.

    And consider the European Union today: when Russia helped the Assad regime ethno-religiously cleanse Syria, the E.U., led by Germany, accepted the refugees and helped them find homes during the crisis caused by Putin. In the Western Hemisphere, when Putin helped Maduro weaponize migration by driving away some 7 million Venezuelans, the United States has so far taken in nearly 1 million.

    Freedom can overcome history’s bitterness and the endless failure of tyrants, dictators, and warlords. There is no better way forward whether in Africa, North America, and the European Union.

  • Putin Perpetuates Mass Abuse of the Poor and Middle Classes via Weaponized Migration

    Putin Perpetuates Mass Abuse of the Poor and Middle Classes via Weaponized Migration

    Historic Repeat Thesis: The regime of Vladimir Putin is one of a number of resurgent vanguard dictatorships with ideological-DNA inherited from super-nationalist strains of autocratic authoritarianism shared by Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. Like them, Putin commits mass collateral damage and displacement abuse against poor and middle class peoples at home and abroad. Like them, he does it to protect himself from the consequences of his parasitic expansion strategy.

    Included in Putin’s portfolio of mass human misery: the Chechen wars; the Syrian civil war; the war of aggression on Ukraine; and the resourced, indirect facilitation and UN protection of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Iran’s proxy militia attacks on Israel and the United States over time, including that of October 7, 2023 and the bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in the 1983.

    Russian Regime Abuses

    Vladimir Putin’s abuses of the poor and less wealthy at home and abroad include his:

    (1) wars against neighboring states such as Chechnya, provoking terror against Russians and exported terrorism upon the ejection of Islamists from Chechnya, Dagestan, and elsewhere in Russia’s Caucasus region, plus the related, ongoing cyclic expenses detracting from domestic budgets that may otherwise have improved Russia’s standard of living more evenly;

    (2) wars against neighboring states such as Ukraine and Georgia, using mass conscription of poor Russians and migrant workers from former Soviet republics who are fed into a meat grinder of poorly thought-out, corruption-riddled, deluded, and ill-prepared wars of conquest;

    (3) proxy wars, and active measure power-plays in less powerful non-nuclear states in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and in Latin America by which these proxy regimes cause refugee crises with Russian military and intelligence help, driving refugees toward the free nation geopolitical units able and willing to help them, such as the E.U., U.K., United States, and Canada; and some not so able, even if willing to help: such as Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and others along the global refugee pathways;

    (4) active measures inside developed nuclear and non-nuclear constitutional democratic countries, including the E.U., U.K., and United States to heighten domestic political and interpersonal fear, anger, envy, and rage against forced and pressured migrants seeking refuge and or a better life;

    (5) active measures sending intelligence operatives, proxy terrorists, spies, and or criminal elements into the free nations receiving large numbers of legal and illegal migrants, with these infiltrates taking actions that enhance the division, rage, and instability among domestic citizenries and migrant populations;

    (6) war diplomacy and propaganda aimed at the ‘Global South’ and among populations uprooted by Moscow’s proxy regimes taking advantage of publicized incidents of politicians, vigilantes, police forces, and others in free nations that advocate, create, incite, or carry-out verbal or physical hostilities toward migrants.

    Conclusion

    Putin sponsors strongmen, terrorists, fake religious men, and authoritarians such as Maduro, Ortega, Haftar, Assad, Nasrallah, the Taliban, and Khamenei when they use crackdowns, assassinations, summary executions, and terrorism against their own peoples and neighboring countries. This drives refugee waves toward free nations. It has to stop at the sources in addition to establishing more effective border filters for those already enroute.

  • To Shorten Wars and Prevent Wider War The Biden Administration Should Lift Allies’ Conventional Strike Restrictions Against Iran’s and Russia’s Conventional Military Targets

    To Shorten Wars and Prevent Wider War The Biden Administration Should Lift Allies’ Conventional Strike Restrictions Against Iran’s and Russia’s Conventional Military Targets

    October 4, 2024

    Ukraine & Israel: Ukraine and Israel face common adversaries axially aligned. Russia and China enable Iran and its terror proxies with lethal supply and know-how to wage war against Israel. Russia and China could sanction Iran but do not. Iran, China, and North Korea likewise back Russia’s increasingly genocidal war of aggression against Ukraine.

    Despite these facts, the Biden Administration publicly calls Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear facilities and publicly calls Ukraine not to use long range U.S.- provided conventional weapons against conventional targets and supplies deep inside Russia.

    The Biden Administration restrictions prevent shortening these wars by failing to prevent Iran’s development of the bomb and failing to permit Ukraine to destroy Russian supply lines and capacity as would force retreat or surrender of Russian troops in Ukraine.

    If the Biden Administration lifts its restrictions on Ukraine and Israel, it would equalize power on the ground, shorten wars, save lives, and establish free nation allies by making continuing war too expensive for the tyrannical state and non-state aggressors to politically and militarily sustain.